Labor policies threaten PA’s future

By Jerry Shenk, 

jshenk2010@gmail.com 

February 17, 2016

Pennsylvania is functionally, albeit unofficially, bankrupt. Local governments, school districts and the Commonwealth have been impoverished, partially because unions such as PSEA, AFSCME, SEIU and dozens of others pour millions of dues-payers’ dollars -- graft money -- into the campaigns of politicians who pass and preserve laws favoring unions and who approve government employee union members’ pay, health and pension benefits.

Democratic icon and labor ally President Franklin Roosevelt described public-sector unions as “unthinkable and intolerable.”

“The process of collective bargaining…cannot be transplanted to public service,” Roosevelt said. “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct or prevent the operations of government until their demands are satisfied.”

Some states, including traditionally labor-friendly Rust Belt states, are dealing with their labor issues. In 2012, Michigan became a right-to-work state, joining neighbors Wisconsin and Indiana and twenty-one others in eliminating union membership as a condition of employment. West Virginia’s legislature is considering the same measure.

Pennsylvania unions jealously protect the labor policies which grant them unique privileges at taxpayer expense. Commonwealth, county, municipal and school district taxpayers bear the burden of forced unionization and private-sector prevailing wage laws which artificially increase the costs of labor without improving worker productivity. Labor monopolies have the same impact on taxpayers as illegal private sector monopolies have on consumers.

Mandatory union participation has been in effect for so long that most workers forced to join unions as a condition of employment never voted for/against certifying the union which receives their dues. When running for reelection every two or four years, Pennsylvania legislators must re-convince constituents of their value as officeholders. Similarly, the legislature should require unions to face their constituent members periodically to demonstrate their value, and, using secret ballots, guarantee workers the freedom to re-certify their bargaining units or to decertify them without lengthy, expensive court challenges.

Right-to-work laws and periodic recertification are pro-labor, pro-personal choice measures which are criticized as “anti-labor” only by the unions which depend upon forced membership and by politicians whose campaigns receive union cash. Right-to-work laws don’t outlaw unions or prevent union organization, and recertification only requires union managers to keep earning their members’ dues.

Former Gov. Tom Corbett supported a right-to-work bill, but remarked that the Pennsylvania legislature “lacks the will” to pass one. Why? Public records reveal millions in generous union campaign contributions to Pennsylvania legislators (of both parties) which explain lawmakers’ antipathy to labor policy reform.

Accepting any amount of union campaign cash renders unpersuasive any politician’s protests that union money doesn’t influence their votes. Talk is cheap. It takes political courage to call or cast votes – and leave records – on right-to-work, prevailing wages or pension reform.

Pennsylvania’s passage of right-to-work legislation, suspension of prevailing wage laws and, ultimately, meaningful pension reform may seem politically improbable, but they’re inevitable, because, otherwise, Pennsylvania cannot meet its financial obligations. When state politicians enact these reforms, preferably from conviction rather than as crisis responses, Pennsylvania’s recovery can begin.