FD Roosevelt was right...

Brace yourself.

 

 I support massive reform of the way the government manages union relations. There, I said it...

 

First, review how we got here. Even while championing union rights in the private sector, our 32nd president, Franklin Roosevelt, warned that unioninzed government workers was a bad idea...he supported unions,  in the private sector...

Roosevelt openly opposed bargaining rights for government unions.

 

Roosevelt's reign certainly was the bright dawn of modern unionism. The legal and administrative paths that led to 35% of the nation's workforce eventually unionizing by a mid-1950s peak were laid by Roosevelt.

 

"The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt.

 

But, he wrote, "I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place" in the public sector. "A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government."

 

Roosevelt wasn't alone. It was orthodoxy among Democrats through the '50s that unions didn't belong in government work. Things began changing when, in 1959, Wisconsin's then-Gov. Gaylord Nelson signed collective bargaining into law for state workers. Other states followed, and gradually, municipal workers and teachers were unionized, too.

 

Even as that happened, the future was visible. Frank Zeidler, Milwaukee's mayor in the 1950s and the last card-carrying Socialist to head a major U.S. city, supported labor. But in 1969, the progressive icon wrote that rise of unions in government work put a competing power in charge of public business next to elected officials. Government unions "can mean considerable loss of control over the budget, and hence over tax rates," he warned.

One organization involved in union reforms is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) – an individual membership organization of state legislators. There, task forces comprised of partnerships between public and private members have actually come up with model legislation that promotes bargaining transparency and giving taxpayers a bigger say in contract negotiations.

 Their reasoning?

 “Public employee unions increase the cost of government,” said the spokesperson. “Taxpayers rely on the government to provide services, which allows public employee unions to demand benefits that exceed what would be provided in the private sector.”

Pretty much echoes what FDR said, huh?

The question now is what this will mean for labor unions, especially when as of 2009, 52 percent of their membership were government employees?

States could start to reform by passing restrictions on collective bargaining and the right to strike, or by either scaling back pensions and retirement benefits, making employees share in the cost, or raising the retirement age altogether.

Wisconsin only affirms what Roosevelt had warned us of… looks like they have come full circle. May they be haunted by the ghost of the 32nd president, and his little dog, too.