Allowing government workers to unionize is obscene.
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters. Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1937)
I’m not a fan of unions. Many a problem they have caused to the extent where they have halted nations influenced by power hungry Union bosses with mob-style power.
When I got my first job at a department store at 15yo, they gave us a Union form to fill out at induction and I took it home. My father, a builder who worked for himself and employed people, took one look at it and told me to throw it in the bin.
IRS Unions must be the worst of the worst. What do they have to cry about?
The Post Office also endorsed her. Apparently it has already affected the voter registration process in Republican dominated counties. The applications just keep getting lost in the mail…
A protected government group that goes after the unprotected citizens for payment, and doesn’t care a hoot about the government waste.. what could go wrong?
Mutual aid associations of government workers who run insurance programs, credit unions, and have labor lawyers on retainer are passable. Collective bargaining is not. Employee compensation is properly determined by formulae incorporated into statutes and staffing levels by appropriations bills. With few exceptions, recruitment and promotion should be regulated by examinations of various sorts (primarily written tests). Dismissal should be swift, requiring the counter-signature of three persons in an employee’s chain of command (fewer if they’re near the top). Post-termination reviews should determine the precise terms of dismissal.
==
Note, we live at a time when 1/2 of all union members are public employees and only 6% of private sector employees belong to unions. In the private sector ca. 1955, the ratio of unionized to non-union employees was 0.5. Now it is just over 0.06.
So we’re going to take the word of a president with autocratic tendencies that government employees will never need protection from managers with autocratic tendencies?
The administrative state acts the way it does because its leaders are insulated from correction by the people. Lots of the people are employed by the administrative state – customer service, data processors, janitors, accounts payable. They are even more likely to be abused by bad management than the private sector because their bosses don’t fear government interference like the private sector does. (This is why public housing can get away with mismanagement that would land a private landlord in jail.)
While I agree that collective bargaining over pay should be outside the public employee union’s power, there is a very real danger of abuse of workers, singly or in groups, by the same administrative state management that regularly abuses the rest of us.
Been there, seen it, have the t-shirt.
“that government employees will never need protection from managers with autocratic tendencies?”
FDR was demonstrating the common opinion of most people that government unions were a very bad idea, and he was correct in that. This did not change until JFK, by executive fiat, in 1962 allowed the creation of such unions. Whatever small good those unions provide, the bad they bring, including making most Federal employees assets for the party of the Jackass, is not worth it. They should be banned and replaced by voluntary employee led associations.
“IRS Union Endorses Harris” should be a Trump ad.
Don – without any snark, how would voluntary employee lead associations differ from the union currently in place?
On a separate note, how can a government union, made up of government workers, endorse any candidate without violation of the Hatch Act. When I was in government service, the Hatch Act was so sacrosanct that a coworker was told to take down his uncaptioned picture of Abraham Lincoln, because it was “political”!!
That the IRS employees have a union is a surprise. As the last paragraph of FDR’s statement noted federal employyees organized is just plain wrong. The Civil Service Commission adresses employees grievences . Now a union of a federal agency has endorsed a presidential nominee. Has the union contributed contribluted to VP Harris’ campaign? Or to any other candidate for that matter?
Aren’t there employees of the agency that are armed? What a dangerous mess.
[…] Scenes: Annihilation, by Michel Houellebecq, Reviewed – Spectator AustraliaAllowing Govt Workers to Unionize is Obscene – D. McClarey, J.D., at The American CatholicSecret Service Unable to Protect Trump at […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) figures that there are at least 300,000 federal employees that could join unions.
RE postal unions “Virginia is now ranked last in the nation for on-time mail service. An audit conducted by the U.S. Postal Service‘s inspector general found significant problems at a new regional processing facility in Sandston, including water-damaged mail left unprocessed for months and a worker asleep at a forklift.”
That’s the new regional center. The old regional center was just as awful. A certified tax return of my deceased mother’s was lost. Seems to me there is no difference the same clerks moved only moved into a newer building. The managers are blaming Trumps’s Post Master General. I think they are not smart enough to use the new machines.
Don – without any snark, how would voluntary employee lead associations differ from the union currently in place?
1. The officials would have to work for a living instead of being employed by the association.
2. No one could be compelled to be a member of the association.
3. The association would have to collect membership dues, no automatic deductions.
4. No political contributions or endorsements by the associations.
5. The associations would be audited each year.
6. Multiple competing associations could exist.
Don-
As far as I know, from about 15 years ago:
1. The officials would have to work for a living instead of being employed by the association. *They did*
2. No one could be compelled to be a member of the association. *It was voluntary, unlike the NEA*
3. The association would have to collect membership dues, no automatic deductions. *It was an automatic deduct for dues only if you joined*
4. No political contributions or endorsements by the associations. *Agreed – this should be out of bounds*
5. The associations would be audited each year. *Dunno if this happened*
6. Multiple competing associations could exist *I don’t recall a competitor, but I believe one could have existed. It was in no way a closed shop. Closed ships are bad news.*
For those who say there is sufficient provision within the administrative state to correct any abuses of the administrative state, consider this. Citizens NOT employed by the government are wary of taking on the government. How much more so when they can fire you in addition to the usual punishments of the administrative state…
The crucial difference is that such associations would not provide collective bargaining services and membership would be voluntary. Don’t care if they have a paid staff or not, so long as mean compensation per worker on said staff was within a certain percentage of that of the economy as a whole and the most handsomely paid employee’s compensation package was within a certain multiple of the mean on the staff.
These comments read like an argument against unions in general. Government agencies serve the People, often they are limited by laws which establish policies and procedures for personnel concerns. Well, most corporations exist to serve a huge group of shareholders. These corporations often are limited by laws which establish policies and procedures for personnel concerns.
If we believe that unions have their place, I should think they have their place in government too.
…I have little regard for unions. They too often decide the People (citizens or shareholders) will be best served by… more pay or benefits for union membership.
“The association would have to collect membership dues, no automatic deductions.”
We could readily make this case about taxes deducted from paychecks.
“Multiple competing associations could exist.”
Such would undermine the premise of unions in general. If two or more organizations exist. Management may readily pit them against each other to force wages or benefits lower for both.
John- I have long argued that the outlook of the American worker would be changed for the better if there was no withholding. People would see how much they paid, or be forced to realize they were covertly on the dole.
these comments read like an argument against unions in general.
==
We’re specifically discussing the public sector. Private sector unions incorporate a different set of pathologies. These have not been under discussion.
==
Such would undermine the premise of unions in general.
==
No, it undermines unions whose business is collective bargaining.
If the IRS is unionized, what do y’all think it’ll take to get them to go on strike?
“The managers are blaming Trumps’s Post Master General.”
I keep seeing posts on the local Next Door group saying that the recent decline in efficiency of postal service — such as elimination of a local distribution center which means it now takes an ENTIRE WEEK to mail a letter across town — is all Trump’s fault because his Postmaster General wanted to destroy the USPS and replace it with privatized delivery. There is a serious proposal afoot now to route all the mail that used to go through Springfield IL through St. Louis. We already have local mail being routed through Champaign IL (about 90 miles out of the way). So how much of this really has to do with Trump?
From The Right TELECOMMUTING FEDERAL WORKER GETS PAID WHILE SITTING IN JAIL
?itok=ejQkMmvA
A federal employee and labor union leader collected her government paycheck for time worked even though she was actually sitting in a jail cell on DUI charges, a U.S. senator alleged Wednesday. Tracy Jean Vargas, an employee at the Housing and Urban Development Department, also has been charged in federal court with making false statements about misuse of funds from the union, the American Federation of Government Employees, where she was president of Local 3138. Sen. Joni Ernst, who said a whistleblower brought the case to her attention.
According to the story in The Washington Times Ms. Vargas was arrested 4 times three of them for DUIs. She never submitted a leave request. “It’s uacceptable for any employee to paid on taxpayer -funded union time while sitting in a jail cell’, said Sen. Ernst in her letter to acting HUD Secretary Adrianne Todman. Seems like there is a broader pattern of abuse of remote-work policies.
Art, unions basically exist for collective bargaining. Union members accomplish a given set of tasks in exchange for agreed-upon wages or benefits. Whether revenues come from taxes and fees levied or products and services sold, management has a budget to meet.
I have not seen any particular differences between them.
Art, unions basically exist for collective bargaining.
==
You’re bound and determined to not listen to what people are saying to you. I cannot help you.
“If the IRS is unionized, what do y’all think it’ll take to get them to go on strike?”
Federal employees are prohibited from going on strike — IIRC that was the reason Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, because they went on strike illegally.
“You’re bound and determined to not listen to what people are saying to you.”
I see a discussion about the impact of employees having formed a union. I have considered unions to exist primarily for collective bargaining. You are welcome to provide evidence otherwise.
“Federal employees are prohibited from going on strike”
Yeah, a guy can dream though, can’t he? 😀
But that does raise another question: If they can’t strike, why unionize? I mean, other than the threat of strike, what power to influence does a union have?
“what power to influence does a union have?”
Political. They operate as an arm of the Democrat party. They endorse and fund politicians who help give them sweet heart deals.
Thanks Donald … That sounds unethical, kinda like bribery, but it makes sense.
If I were Trump, I’d make sure the whole country knows that the IRS endorses Harris. I can’t imagine most people thinking that’s a good thing.
That sounds unethical, kinda like bribery,
Precisely like bribery.
IIRC that was the reason Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, because they went on strike illegally.
==
Two other factors. They were public safety employees and the Carter Administration had developed contingency plans which the Reagan people could adapt to the situation. The performance of the Reagan people in this situation was really most impressive. I suspect it really took the piss out of a lot of public sector union bosses when they discovered that even people as crucial and skilled as air traffic controllers could be replaced without disaster.
It also demonstrated that while Reagan was a nice guy, he wasn’t going to be rolled by anyone.