The British Disease, Coming Soon to a Bureaucracy Near You
A specter is haunting America, the specter of public-sector unions.
You’ve seen New Jersey Governor Chris Christie confront the teachers’ union. You’ve seen him confront the police union. Unless you happen to belong to one of those unions — and possibly even if you do belong to one of them — you have probably cheered Christie’s honest, no-nonsense approach to the fiscal emergency brought on by out-of-control public sector unions.
You cheered him, figured he was winning, and turned the channel.
No so fast. We’ll see what happens with unionized state and municipal workers in New Jersey. Christie just might make a difference, and bully for him if he does.
But what about the larger problem of federal unionized employees? How are we doing there? As you may have noticed, Barack Obama is no Chris Christie when it comes to dealing with unions (or anything else, for that matter). Instead of confronting them, he coddles them — and why not? They are his most reliable constituency, indispensable to the livelihood of the contemporary Democratic Party. He takes care of them, and they “encourage” their members to vote for him and other Democratic candidates. It’s a time-tested formula.
Consider, to take but one example, Executive Order 13522, which Barack Obama signed in December 2009. The stated purpose of “Creating Labor-Management Forums to Improve Delivery of Government Services” is “to establish a cooperative and productive form of labor-management relations throughout the executive branch.”
But, as an editorial in the Washington Examiner points out, this anodyne bureaucratese conceals a worrisome power-grab by — or, more accurately, a power-gift to — the unions. It provides for what the Examiner’s editorialist calls an injection of “a massive dose of the British disease into the daily operation of the federal government.”
Remember Britain in the late 1970s? There were labor strikes, shutdowns, slowdowns everywhere. “Company owners and managers,” the Examiner reminds us, “had to secure prior approval from union bosses before carrying out even the most routine workplace tasks. As a result, productivity plummeted, and exports of once-popular British products like cars and motorcycles dropped sharply or disappeared entirely. Economic growth stagnated, investors fled overseas, and the country’s standard of living declined.”
Executive Order 13522 is supposed to “improve delivery of government services.” But as the Examiner points out, the only thing that will be improved is the ability of union bosses to tell managers of government agencies what they may and may not do.
Can there be any doubt that Obama and the Democrats intend to destroy this country?
What I would like to see, if the Republicans can grow a pair, is a Right-to-Work law for the entire Federal government. I do not want the unions abolished, but I would like each individual to have the right not to join a union. Also, that includes not paying any dues to the union. There are many Republicans in the Federal workforce and since the money from union dues is fungible a good part of the Republican employees dues is used to fund Democrats. Also, union members should not receive higher pay than non union members. Now that would truly be a “Free Choice” Act.
Federal employees are not required to join the union, as least not in DoD. I’ve been a DoD civilian since September of 2004, and was an AFGE union member for less than three years of that time. When I transferred from Fort Wainwright, Alaska in 2007 to Fort Lewis, I disenrolled and did not rejoin. The Alaska local limited its activities to member’s interests and did not involve itself in politics. Can’t say the same for the one here. To the best of my knowledge, none of the guys in my shop are members.
Thanks for the info Fairbanks. I stand corrected.
Good for you. I for one would like to see the public sector unions abolished at the Federal level. It is and always has been an incestuous relationship.
Incestuous is merely perverse, public employees unions are a crime against all Americans. I liken it to government joining with cartels.
Did the Kennedy executive order allowing federal employees to unionize ever become legislation? If not then another president could rescind it. If there are 13522 executive orders I’ll wager 13000 plus should be gotten rid of. Someone needs to start working on this, as soon as the next president is sworn in there should be a line of people holding rescind executive orders to be signed on the Capital steps.
I know that most of us are not aware of this. We will be getting kicked in the head at the first opportunity.
I dont’ know that Obama can be specifically blamed. He is merely carrying through what has been going on for many years…putting our country into a tail spin…”new world order” business.
How wonderful! Our government isn’t inefficient enough, O’Brahmin throws another wrench in the works for the taxpayers.
Long ago I stopped saying it couldn’t possibly get any worse when faced with what appears to be insurmountable problems and va-va-voom here comes another Obamanism. Wish I had never heard the word. Cause the word rhymes with turd.
There was a time when unions served a purpose. But what purpose can they possibly serve in government, where the employees are already in the bosom of the mother state?
Well it isn’t like it’s a surprise that unions are one of the primary fronts of the war between marxism and everything that isn’t marxist. The top leaders are avowed marxists. Obama is an avowed marxist. Of course he would do everything he can to support them. He supports ALL of their fronts.
Other than relentless propaganda (which inspired the marxists’ conquest of the msm and academia), the primary marxist strategy is balkanization. They set group against group, race against race, classe against class, sexual preference against sexual preference, religion against secularism, immigrants against citizens, region against region, city against country, welfare recipient against working people, big business against small business, workers against entrepreneurs, unions against businesses….they don’t care about the groups really, as long as they are fomenting anger and discontent. Once the anger is great enough, chaos takes over, and the marxists step in any sieze control.
Look it up.
It’s already happening in the US. (and if you are squishy about the term “marxist”, substitute “panting Ruling Class”, “tyrants”, or “progressives”. The terms are equivalent.)
Didn’t things have to get real ugly and seriously impact the average citizen in an obvious way before the British had the stomach to accept the kind of wrenching change required to halt this disease ?
We aren’t at that point yet I don’t think (although an organized TSA could accelerate this).
What is an effective strategy to win hearts and minds of non-government employees such that they have the courage to accept that government union member friends’ and neighbors’ lives will be disrupted when forced to transition to the private sector for employment?
Didn’t things have to get real ugly and seriously impact the average citizen in an obvious way before the British had the stomach to accept the kind of wrenching change required to halt this disease ?
It’s not as if Thatcher undid all nonsense that had been in place prior to her term as Prime Minister but she did help to turn things in a more sensible direction. It did not win her a lot of friends. She continues to be reviled by all center and left-oriented Brits to this day. It should also be remembered that she was not defeated in an election; ambitious people in her own party organized her ouster for fear that they might not otherwise win the next election.
The nonsense in Britain returned with a vengeance under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Theodore Dalrymple, a practising doctor at the time, has written about how the Blair/Brown Labour Party government made massive reductions in the numbers of unemployed by simply reclassifying large numbers of the chronically unemployed as sick people.
One of the most educational – and entertaining – programs you will ever see on British politics was the BBC series Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister which elegantly illustrated how well-meaning politicians were manipulated into following the designs of the top officials in the bureaucracy. If you get the series on DVD, be sure to watch the bonus features where the writer/producers of the series explain that some of the most outrageous and improbable acts of the bureaucracy were modelled on actions taken by real bureaucrats. A variety of whistleblowers from the bureaucracy shared stories of their experiences in the government on the condition of anonymity.
I expect that the politics in every bureaucratic democracy are quite similar.
I agree 100% about Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. They may be funny but they are just factual reporting of how bureaucrats operate. I once heard a Provincial Cabinet minister state that these series should be required viewing for every politician.
In colloquial jargon, you hit the nail on the head. Every since 1961, when the state of Wisconsin legalized public sector unions, Pandora’s Box has been open. Before 1961 there were no government employee unions. These unions have no adversary at the bureaucracies because the management of the bureaucracies have no dog in the hunt and are sympathetic to labor’s demands. Since the government managers are spending taxpayers money and not their own, they have no dog in this hunt. The taxpayers will always get screwed by public sector labor unions and our only recourse is to outlaw them and deal with fallout from the entitlement crowd. Fat chance, I betcha. It is easier to just bend over and take it, eh? Come to think of it, Pandora’s Box is a lot like our cancerous government.
Federal and state workers of all stripes should not be unionized because when negotiating take place between the unionized workers and the politicians, no one represents us taxpayers…the people paying the bill.
The people of California owe $500,000,000,000 (that’s one half TRILLION) to its public unions — state employees, teachers, police, firemen and prison guards. My state is bankrupt and the politicians who “negotiated” these very bad deals for us are long gone.
Like I said, nobody negotiates for us.
The same is happening at the Federal level.
Involving a union at the “pre-decisional level” basically makes management decisions irrelevant. Any choices they make would be subject to objection and delay from the union. Their very employment would be a negotiable issue at the table when contracts are renewed.
So, with that in mind, I offer this modest proposal: Why not have the President try out that policy on his own administration for the next two years. If it makes him more efficient, effective, and transparent to the extent that he is re-elected, why, it would be good enough for the rest of our Federal Government.
Here is an example of a union interfering with management, a story I heard last Friday. I was talking with a guy who does installation of fire and security systems. He had recently been on an FAA job, installing new doors and card access in a control tower. He spent three days putting in a new door frame, door and card reader. Then he was told to remove everything and put the old stuff back in; apparently the management didn’t talk to the union first – it was a change in “working conditions” and the union had to put their stamp of approval on it.
The economic implosion of Argentina, 10th wealthiest nation on earth in 1913. It’s annual ecomic growth % was greater than that of the U.S. or Germany in that day. It’s GDP was just behind Great Britian and the U.S. at 72% of USA GDP. Today it’s GDP is 34% of the USA. Nice place to live though by all accounts.
“Domestic instability and global trends contributed to Argentina’s decline from its noteworthy position as the world’s 10th wealthiest nation per capita in 1913[85] to 62nd by 2010 (though it remains above the world average in purchasing power parity terms).[4] Though no consensus exists explaining this, systemic problems have included burdensome debt, monetary uncertainty, excessive regulation, barriers to free trade, and a weak rule of law with corruption and a large bureaucracy (unions and entitlements were major considerations in the decline as well)”
America, you are going to spend a life time undoing the wrongs this bastard has bestowed upon you, a lifetime. Community organizer = street corner hustler, you’ve been hustled. America, you desperatly need a Margaret Thatcher moment.
The problem in Britain was compounded by the number of industries run by the state , taken over by Labour governments. Coal mining,steel,electricity,gas supply,railways. When strikes pushed up wages and they made losses the government provided subsidies. Jobs were guaranteed so why not strike.The worst strikers were those who could halt fuel or transport.
The teachers never struck. If the New Jersey teachers strike,will anyone notice? No one learns anything anyway.Why not call out the national guard to act as child-minders?
Tyranny is the problem Revolution is the solution-Impeach this corrupt muslim.
Tyranny is the problem, impeachment is the solution
Impeachment doesn’t work because our elected senators and representatives are no longer under our control. Nor are they under the control of their consciences. To them, their oath to uphold the Constitution is only a bunch of empty words.
Secession is the answer.
Labor unions! They have an interesting history in America. To understand them in historical importance you have to compartmentalize them visa a timeline in America. You don’t have to go far in that timeline to recognize when they became “the” instrumental operatives ushering in the political and social ideologies of European communism and socialism in America. The evolution of labor unionism control by the Cosa Nostra is an interesting compartmental study….and how they’ve transitioned back to the more pure communist and socialist ideologies. The bottom line is; they are simply a major operative component of the long running communist and socialist ideological revolution in America.
In 1935 congress enacted the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) which has evolved into a federal socialist protectionist and expansion machine. From 1880 to 1902 federal employee unions were growing and in 1902 the brakes were put on, for several years transitions of various federal labor union authorities were exploited on behalf of federal employees. By 1916 the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and 1917 the National Federation of Federal Employees. The latter became the first labor union to win the legal right to represent federal workers in 1918. The rest is pretty much history!
Today, the Executive Branch, led by the right ideological President, can essentially circumvent congress and grant powers to labor unions as they see fit to their cause(s). Reversing such Executive law has not seen much success in congress over the many years. The socialist labor unions wield tremendous special interest power both inside and outside of government today, whether their membership ranks are small or large. They’ve simply become, thanks to socialist leaning congress’s and administrations, a powerful socialist political ideology machine and members of most all known forms of socialist parties domestically and internationally.
Obama makes no bones what his political and social ideology is and will do everything within his power and time frame in office, to quietly further enable the socialist revolution through expansion and power of labor unions.
I don’t know by what right the President can issue an executive order like this without Congressional approval. Congress must step up to the plate and legislate whether or not the Administration can do what it wants to do. This is part of an on-going problem of Congress’ having abdicated its legislative role. The chickens will come home to roost. we will lose our republican democracy and go broke at the same time.
Jack….The congress has been surrendering their constitutional authorities to the Executive Branch for decades now….especially legislating commerce and labor circumventing the constitutional “congressional” authorities of Article I, Section 8, Commerce Clause.
Folks have long scoffed at my crusade for a constitutional Amendment of the Commerce Clause but, it is the abuse of that clause that has allowed for America to evolve to the crisis of today, at the hands of the socialist movements and revolution of the past 100 years.
If not amended soon, our nation as intended by the founders, is lost!
It’s disgusting to have a United States’ President as beholden as Barack Obama is to the public unions.
Reportedly, a large proportion of the some 700 “exemptions” granted under Obamacare (so far) are union-benefit related.
It’s beyond disheartening that special interests so compel at the Executive level, in this world, in this economy, and that this President has so expanded the federal bureaucracy.
“jobs saved or created”, pushing paper, making your life difficult.
Barack Obama is nothing even remotely resembling a leader.
Roger,
Is there someting missing from this sentence, ‘Use of the term “pre-decisional” means documents produced prior to a specific policy decision are exempt from disclosure under the FOIA.’
Shoud it be, ‘Use of the term “pre-decisional” means that documents produced during this consultation process, prior to a specific policy decision, will be exempt from disclosure under the FOIA.’
Or have I misunderstood?
More than likely we’ll have to reach absolute bottom, which I can’t define clearly, before the massively ignorant stop voting for Democrats. Perhaps it will be default on our public debt with the massive financial upheaval that will result, massive unemployment, spiraling inflation, who knows but some people are so stupid they won’t learn until disaster strikes.
Clearly a typo. They meant “the highest quality servicing to the American people.”
My theory is that our President is a big admirer of C. Northcote Parkinson and doesn’t realize that Parkinson’s Law is cautionary.
With the interjection of “The British Desease” into the daily operation of the Federal Government, it will follow that an “Iron Lady” will be called upon to clean up the mess that will be created.
I see more “cross-hairs” in our future!
Just so you’re aware, not all federal employees are unionized. My understanding is that it’s not permitted for some critical mission areas, such as intelligence. My point here is for accuracy; I’m not a union fan either.
Public sector unions are not ruining America. The corporate fat cats are the ones responsible, and are looting the country in front of our eyes, while people argue about whether Obama is a Muslim. Warren Buffett has said there is a class war in his country, and his class is winning, even though it shouldn’t be. Ever wonder why your life has sucked since the 1980s? The transfer of income to the richest 1% is why. Numbers don’t lie.
Distribution of income in the United States, 1982-2006
Top 1 percent /Next 19 percent /Bottom 80 percent
1982 12.8%/ 39.1%/ 48.1%
1988 16.6%/ 38.9%/ 44.5%
1991 15.7%/ 40.7%/ 43.7%
1994 14.4%/ 40.8%/ 44.9%
1997 16.6%/ 39.6%/ 43.8%
2000 20.0%/ 38.7%/ 41.4%
2003 17.0%/ 40.8%/ 42.2%
2006 21.3%/ 40.1%/ 38.6%
from: Wolff, E. N. (2010). Recent trends in household wealth in the United States: Rising debt and the middle-class squeeze – an update to 2007. Working Paper No. 589. Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.
As a union employee your wage is bargained for… how is what the fat-cat is getting hinder you? You really believe that corporate fat-cats have conspired to take from the poorest people in the country and take it for themselves? How does that work exactly? Sounds like your money pie is fixed.
Have you considered that innovation and new products cause people to willingly part with their cash? Or not. It’s their choice. What’s not their choice is the gov’t raising fees and taxes to pay the public sector employees.
Single first name.
He’s a pro.
btw, your propaganda stats don’t show that people in the top 1%, 5%, 10%, 50% change all the time. Those stats also don’t show income transfers, massive unmeasured assets like the npv of Social Security and Medicare, and other assets that don’t get measured or are overvalued for “the rich”.
Moreover, it’s virtually impossible to measure true wealth. Whatever they measure, it’s always an inadequate proxy. Is an illegal Mexican laborer with free emergency room health care, who pays no taxes, who gets food stamps, who owns a new truck, an iphone, a plasma screen tv, who eats out a lot, and who gets paid to have babies wealthier than a white welder from 1980? By about an order of magnitude, I’d say.
But you made your $5 for posting anyway.
Bard College is a Marxist hotbed – nice use of bogus data.
Ah, the classic Socialist fallacy: that economics is a zero-sum game. Every dollar Bill Gates makes is stolen from my wallet, food taken from my table, a mortgage payment plundered from my bank account, medicine my poor mother must go without.
Oh, wait, I forgot the other classic tenet of Socialism: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Bill gates pays more, not just in absolute terms but as a percentage of his income, than I do. The only problem I see here is the bit where the good Socialists use Bill’s ill gotten gains to provide me the gravy I so rightly deserve by virtue of being… well, virtuous.
By which I mean, not rich. No, Comrade, make no mistake, I am no kulak or wrecker!
Here in Australia we are in the grip of our own socialist regime but back in the good old days of PM Howard many things were changed to alter the balance of power between unions and the rest of society.
The Howard government took as its starting point that unions have members and that unions have built up generations of restrictive practices to ensure that the leadership stays in power. Think of mini Venezuelas. What they did was attack those restrictive practices and in many cases they were able to do this via the courts. Unions had to institute secret ballots. It was a favourite tactic of union leadership to demand voting by show of hand. Members were often afraid to vote openly against the bullies in charge. “No ticket no start” sites were declared illegal. Unions used to insist that only union members could be employed. This was shown to be illegal and discriminatory.
The bottom line is that an effective way to end up with reasonable unions is to enforce the rules of ordinary democracy and individual rights. Union leadership thus answers to its members and although the interest of the union members and employers still differ, they go about negotiation in a realistic manner to the benefit of both.
“out-of-control public sector unions” is a poor choice of words. It should be “in the full control of the public sector unions.”
A lot of people want to do away with public sector unions. But doing that creates a large number of people with fewer freedoms than the rest of us, so I don’t think that’s the right answer. For me, there are two concrete actions we could take to restore equilibrium to public sector labour relations – restricting PSU’s from concerted political activity and demanding labour relations neutrality on the part of public sector leaders.
Firstly, people have to wake up and understand that it’s a major conflict of interest to let PSU’s have the degree of influence over elections that they do. Under our current structure of laws, PSU’s can allocate large sums toward influencing who sets the tone for management in collective bargaining. We see it all the time – PSU’s donate huge sums to support candidates who promise them favourable treatment or who have an actual reputation of doing so. Mr. Obama is a prime example of this. On the flip side of the coin, they also spend huge sums of money to defeat candidates they view as being hostile to labour. Chris Christie, are you listening?
If a private sector union exerted that much influence over the CEO selection process at a major corporation, most likely a shareholder would file a complaint with the NLRB and upon review, they would determine that it was an unfair labour practice and they’d stop it. Not to mention the shareholder revolt against the Board of Directors which would occur. But it’s routine in the public sector. It should stop.
Additionally, it’s also a conflict of interest for PSU’s to spend large sums of money pressing for passage or defeat of voter-level initiatives which stand to benefit or restrict them. I lived in California for a few years and I watched firsthand how the PSU’s would commit resources to initiating ballot proposals designed to grant them favourable treatment at the taxpayer’s expense. Then, once the measure was on the ballot, they’d commit even greater resources to help ensure that the measure passed in the election. It amounts to an end-run around the collective bargaining process.
Private sector unions don’t have the ability to influence who sets the labour relations tone at the companies with which they negotiate. They can’t work to force changes on management’s policies. Why should public sector unions be allowed to hold this influence? I have no issue with public employees being able to organise in their own interest, but I draw the line at them being able to “stack the deck” in their favour.
The overarching aim of American labour policy since the 1930′s has been to maintain a relatively equal balance of power between labour and management. But those laws were crafted before the rise of the PSU’s. Since PSU’s have key advantages that private sector unions, and since all the growth in unions is in the public sector, that balance has tipped. It’s time to restore it.
The second action we could take is for the electorate to demand that when acting in the capacity of leader of an organsation employing large numbers of people, elected leaders need to represent their interests first. The CEO of any major corporation who was as labour-friendly as your average politician would probably not be welcome at that corporation after the first negotiations. And the board of any other major corporation probably wouldn’t be interested in hiring him once he was shown to be a labour-friendly leader.
That doesn’t mean that the electorate should expect politicians to be openly hostile to unions, just that they should expect that elected leaders are going to represent their interests first when acting in the role of leader of a major employer.
What’s absolutely got to stop is having politicians who’re working as moles on the inside to pave the way for increased union power. Which is what Mr. Obama is doing. It’s inappropriate that he places the interests of 11.9% of the people ahead of the interests of the rest of them.
Federal employee (DoD) for 32 years and counting. Never joined the union. Did not see any reason because I always felt the Government was a very benign employer. In my experience, most people who have problems with their management bring them on themselves.
That said, the unions at the Federal level are relatively weak because they do not have the power to strike. (Thank God for Ronad Reagan who had the foresight, and the cojones, to stand up to the air traffic controllers in the 80s. That sent a message to the Federal workforce about work actions that could not be ignored.) Federal unions do, however, seem to have the ear of some powerful Congressional allies, so they still have some teeth. I would have no problem if they abolished unions for Federal employees.
Everybody in America that wants the Obama Man gone,send me $100.
I would get enough to set up a task force of ex-marines and it would be done.Simple.I would probably throw in Biden and Pelosi and The state crier.By that I mean the house speaker.I cannot stand to watch him cry.He does not cry for the moment,and its not a pretty cry.Its a twisted face cry,and they are the ugliest.Tell him to grow some balls,it’s about time there were a few more men in America because at this time you really need them.
I have worked in the fed gov for a lot of years, first as a military officer, now as a non-union contracted worker. I have seen first hand how fed managers are terrified of doing anything to offend the union. The local union rep already has more power than managers several grades above him. This change will make it worse.
Gov employee unions should be outlawed. Unions in the private sector are a least constrained by the necessity to keep their companies compeditive in the market place. If they push too far their business goes broke, and they are out of a job. Gov unions do not have that constraint, and thus are a monopoly power. Of course, now that gov is going broke as well, they might finally be feeling the market themselves, provided the dems are stopped from bailing them out and dumping their bills on the taxpayers.
Richard I could not agree with you more! My husband too, was in the military and became a Deca managerment specialist three years after retiring. He’s considered Civil Service and he has no union to protect his interests and has to tiptoe around these union asswipes as though they are God. Some of the Union presidents he has dealt with even have tried to break their own rules and intimidate management. Everything you said is true.
Some grieve everything, instead of putting their energy into their jobs, for which the government pays them well. They grieve their schedules,they grieve theri performance evaluations, they grieve because they don’t like this or that; and every other thing that they know is regulated, but if they don’t like something they grieve it through the union anyway. Time wasting gold brickers is what they are.