Last Tuesday, David Gardner, Chief of Staff of ASM, along with a number of other ASM representatives, wrote a letter to The Daily Cardinal disparaging Gov. Scott Walker's repeal of collective bargaining rights for the majority of Wisconsin union employees, calling his actions “radical,” the bill “onerous” and his vision “anti-worker.” While imagery portraying unions as heroic defenders of the voiceless man are colorful and emotionally rousing, ASM does not examine the economic damage that collective bargaining induces. Indeed, collective bargaining is inherently anti-competitive and therefore is anti-worker, a concept that most liberals cannot seem to grasp.
Morgan Reynolds, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, notes that labor unions can be adequately modeled as cartels which “raise worker wages above competitive levels by restricting the supply of labor,” in this case, to state school boards. The fundamental law of demand states that as the price of an object increases, consumers will buy less of it. Therefore, as the cost of employing teachers increases, the government, their employer, will hire fewer of them. While it may be argued that a professor or teacher who has worked at a university or school for many years and is well decorated is deserving of higher pay, it cannot be denied that unemployment is high and that there are many young individuals just out of college that are eager and willing to work for less. With an economy that has a high rate of unemployment, graduates our age are unable to find jobs. It is unreasonable that the government, which employs teachers, does not have greater control over benefits and salaries. Education is a function of the state, and it is not dictatorial that the government asserts control over this domain.
Those that think public workers are underpaid and their recent increase in benefits contributions is unfair should note that public employee workers “earned an average of $50,774 in wages and benefits in 2009, about $1,800 more than in the private sector.” Further, the increase in employee pension contributions is only to the national average, and the increase in employee health insurance contributions is only half the national average. I don’t think the demands placed on public employees are unfair at all, and I might even argue the opposite. Government employees are paid by private sector tax payers, and I don’t think that it is appropriate that they should be making more than the people who are paying them.
One more point that is frequently ignored is union membership is forced upon teachers. The argument goes that because all teachers “benefit” from union bargaining, all teachers should be forced to pay for that service. I think this is immoral on its face, and teachers shouldn’t be forced to join organizations with which they may philosophically disagree. If anything, those dues could provide a higher standard of living for union employees.
The initial purpose of unions was to protest harsh and dangerous working conditions and to fight for lower working hours. It cannot be argued that such conditions exist to any significant degree in the workforce any longer, and unions now serve primarily as a vehicle for collective bargaining. However, just as the private sector needs to be flexible during times of economic crisis, so should the government have the flexibility to control and alter its spending when tax income may drop due to economic recession. When unions bully the government and threaten to have teachers and other public workers strike, the functional ability of the government to balance its expenses is limited. Pay increases therefore should be limited to the rate of inflation, which is exactly what Walker’s collective bargaining bill does.
Steven Nemcek is a sophomore majoring in biochemistry and political science. Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
