Read Joe Klein?s latest TIME column, and you?ll learn quickly that he?s no straightforward foe of public-sector unions.
But Klein isn?t willing to ignore the problems such unions create:
[T]here are some very good reasons governors of both parties are trying to limit the power of public employees’ unions. “I’ve spent years pleading for modest concessions from the unions,” says Bob Ziegelbauer, a Wisconsin state representative and the chief executive of Manitowoc County. “The reaction is, ‘You can’t make me.” Ziegelbauer used to be a Democrat and now calls himself an independent, but he caucuses with the state Republicans. He says when he was able to negotiate a settlement with local union representatives, their leaders often would veto it. “There’s a ruthlessness in attitude at the union headquarters. The leaders would rather take layoffs than make concessions.” Sometimes the union intransigence is downright ridiculous. “We spend $650,000 a year to keep our county juvenile-detention facility open. In recent years, we’ve had as few as one or two juveniles incarcerated there at a time,” Ziegelbauer tells me. “I wanted to close down the place and use the facility in a neighboring county. But the union blocked it on the grounds that it was outside contracting.”
Such horror stories are especially common in the biggest cities, where unions have the strength of numbers and a tradition of dealing with, and helping to elect, liberal, pro-union politicians. This is a major advantage that public employees’ unions have: unlike construction workers and miners, they can vote their bosses in or out. Their unions make political contributions, mount advertising campaigns and run phone banks. Public employees tend to be ferocious campaigners and assiduous voters, the sort of constituents politicians find panderworthy. And this power has enabled them to distort the system, especially when it comes to work rules, health benefits and pensions ? concessions politicians are more likely to grant, since they are future promises that, until recently, have had little immediate impact on the bottom line.
As Klein mentions a bit later in the column: ?The strongest arguments against public employees’ unions lie there: in their power to block reform and strangle good governance.?
