Public Unions Should be Illegal: They are simply too expensive and too demanding

CLICK HERE TO SEE AN ARTICLE I WROTE CALLED PAYING FOR PROTECTION: THE ORGANIZED CRIME OF TEACHERS UNIONS FOR MATERIAL SIMILAR TO THE ONE BELOW.

Leslie Ghiz of Cincinnati City Council goes ballistic on 700 WLW while talking to Doc Thompson about the lack of interest in dealing with the Diana Frey case, the public union president accused of stealing over $750,000 from her members. The source of the complacency she is upset about is the very reason why public positions simply cost too much money to the tax payer. Click here to listen to that broadcast:

There is a disconnect between the reality of the public union leader and the rest of the world. Doc Thompson recently did another show where the average tax payer would have a lot of difficulty coming up with $1000 if they needed to without going into debt. Yet the public union expectation when their contracts demand more money is just to raise taxes to fund their demands, and they don’t care at all that they are draining the communities of their wealth, who simply don’t have the money. You can listen to that broadcast here:

The public sector unions have shown no restraint, no sense of economic understanding, no compassion for their employers, which are the tax payers. They have been excessively greedy, corrupt (Diana Frey and she’s not the only one), manipulative, and perfectly willing to walk off the job if management doesn’t see things their way. Their behavior has driven up the cost of their employment simply to the point of being very unattractive as a labor option.

When the public union representing the teachers at Lakota in 2008 went on strike, and a deal was made to appease them, to keep the teachers from walking off the job, I decided that I would not support another school levy until the public sector union was out of the equation. They simply drive up the cost of education too much. The unions make it impossible to have an intelligent conversation about cost controls, because the direction of the negotiations always migrates back to the welfare of the employee, and not the product they create.

I have noticed that the television stations lately are focused on the catastrophe of public funding and are resorting to the feel-good stories of emotion, which plays straight into the kind of manipulation the unions have used to extort massive sums of money, (tax money) for themselves. It is never asked by the established media why all these public employee jobs are going bankrupt, because the answer is simply too painful. Public employees, particularly teachers are too expensive. They cost too much money to employee, and they did that to themselves with extreme labor practices such as threatening to walk of the job with strikes.

The legislators who made it law that a teacher should have a master’s degree to keep their teaching certificate helped perpetuate the situation with legislation. They did as they always do; they created laws without considering the cost of compliance. That is the problem with electing small-minded people into positions to create laws, because they are unable to take in the whole picture. Since they too are public employees and not responsible for creating the funding, they don’t make the connection but simply take money from the public in the form of taxes, so they bare no responsibility.

Public employees do not exist for the benefit of job creation. They are not there for the convenience of the employee. But that is the expectation. The tax payer is expected to jump through hoops to figure out how to appease the high expectations of these out-of-touch employees.

If I were the superintendent of a school, which I could never be because there are actually laws to keep people like me from being hired by a district, the unions have covered their tracks in every direction, I would simply let the teachers walk the next time they attempted a strike, and I’d hire cheaper labor. It is the cost of labor that is the problem and is creating the demand for more taxes in every sector of government service. Government in no capacity should ever be paid more than the average wage of the public, because it creates an incentive for people to attempt to become a government worker that will do anything to become employed by the government because it’s simply too lucrative.

Teachers should be paid fairly, and if they want to make a lot of money, they should work for a private institution that will pay them according to their expectations. If the United States were the best in the world, I might buy into the union argument that we need to pay for the best to have the best, but the United States education system is not the best. It’s average and that’s being generous, and I think it fails in entirely too many ways. It certainly isn’t worth the amount of money we are pouring into it.

Politicians and news organizations looking to simplify their stories focus only on dollars spent equals’ value to the child, but that simply is not true. We could pour all the money the United States produces into education and the result would still be a flat line. Education is an elusive quality that comes from the strength of a family and the mentors that surround a child. Children just do not learn on an assembly line and making the factory more expensive won’t improve the results.

I’m not against public education. I think it’s a good thing for people who come from broken homes, or poor families. In those conditions, it is possible for a teacher to have a major influence on a child, because the teacher can fill the role that the parent is neglecting. But in families that are strong where there are two parents, grandpa’s and grandma’s and the family has a middle to upper income, there isn’t much a public school has to offer in the development of a child but a baby sitting service. I know that hurts the feelings of many “sensitive” guidance councilors and teachers, but those are the facts. As a tax payer, I’m happy to employee some of those people in my district for some of the underprivileged, but having hundreds and hundreds employees all making extremely lucrative incomes is simply not good business.

But it is the unions who have high-jacked the entire process, allowed no management control on a run-away train that just goes faster and faster requiring more and more money to fuel. To me, they are not worth the money. They are guilty of being too greedy and out-of-touch. To be honest, I have never seen a system so screwed up, as wrong as you find when you lift up the rocks of public sector unions. The entire situation is terribly out of control which directly affects the overall cost. I believe the teachers for the most part believe they are in the profession for the kids they teach. But the union leaders are clearly out for the greed of the position and have shown no restraint on their demands. And the teachers who have voted to keep those types of leaders in place are all guilty of putting themselves over their job to the children and the more I learn, the angrier I become.

Being foolish is not against the law. If the union leaders wish to be so foolish as to be out-of-touch with the rest of the world, that’s their prerogative. But when they ask me to fund their foolishness, that is passing the fool baton to me, and I’m not going to carry it. They make it my business when they ask me for more money to support their folly, and I know better. Therefore, I will not support public sector unions with any more additional taxes until they remove themselves from the process. They are getting in the way of proper management of public employees and should be outlawed. We have tried that little public employee union experiment started by President Kennedy and it has failed, and needs to be abolished as a practice.

The unions will call it union busting. I call it practical. I do not recognize the authority of any union to take my money out of my pocket and do what they please with it. Such a practice is simple robbery. It’s nothing else and needs to be outlawed at every level in government. Until that happens, there will never be any management of government costs which is just plain foolishness when money is the primary concern.

Rich Hoffman
http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
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