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When Public-Employee Unions Attack! January 28, 2010 Can a book about public-employee unions’ excess and thuggery be complete if it doesn’t contain copious anecdotes from the Nutmeg State? Steven Greenhut thinks so, and it’s the reason Plunder! How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation disappoints. In 241 pages and 330 endnotes, the former Orange County Register editor and columnist fails to include a single tale of the rapaciousness of Connecticut’s unionized bureaucrats. Connecticut isn’t the only state overlooked by Greenhut. Plunder! suffers from near-fatal California solipsism. Examples from the entire Northeast are scant, although the region -- New England, plus New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania -- comprises 18 percent of the U.S. population. (The Golden State’s share is 12 percent.) The omissions stem from Greenhut’s belief that the never-ending budget debacle engineered by California’s public-employee unions “is coming to a state near you.” Thanks for the warning, Steve, but it’s already here. In many states, labor bosses seized control of the public sector long ago. Connecticut’s Supreme Court recognized the “right” of government-school teachers to unionize in 1951. In 1965, both educrats and other municipal employees won statutory approval for “organizing.” State employees followed a decade later, and since the 1970s, Connecticut’s politicians and bureaucrats have gone on an unsustainable spending binge their California counterparts have not matched. Despite its less-than-catholic perspective, Plunder! is a handy field guide to the tools and tactics government unions employ to loot taxpayers. Seasoned limited-government rebels will learn little that they don’t already know. But newcomers to the fight for economic freedom -- not a small group, in the era of both Obama and the Great Recession -- will be shocked. Public employees, Greenhut reminds us, “do not behave like noble doers of the public good. Instead, they are regular human beings who use their power and position to advance their own interests.” Armed with overflowing coffers of mandatory dues -- workers must either pay up or lose their jobs, despite U.S. Supreme Court decisions that protect their right not to be coerced into supporting politics -- public-employee unions wield extraordinary influence. They’ve used it so cleverly, few voters have taken notice. It’s expensive ignorance, Greenhut argues, because the result is “a two-tier society where the government elite live far better than the public.” Don’t believe it? Outrageously high salaries, platinum-plated healthcare, extravagant vacation and sick leave, wildly generous (and often early) retirement -- there’s more than enough evidence to conclude that while private-sector workers compete in the oft-unforgiving marketplace, bureaucrats dwell in a fantasyland where job security is unquestioned, workplaces are cushy, burdens are light, and compensation is bounteous. Such coddling has put the nation’s fiscal future is in dire shape. As of February 2009, 43 states had deficits in their employee-pension funds. (Connecticut’s combined state-teacher gap amounts to $14.4 billion.) But contractually committed retirement programs are only part of the unfunded-liability crisis. Other post-employment benefits (OPEB), which include life insurance and healthcare, have put state- and local-government budgets further out of balance. Connecticut’s OPEB bill is a staggering $26.8 billion, a sum greater than an entire year’s expenditures. Plunder! makes its most valuable contribution when it tackles answers to the problems it exhaustively documents. While the solutions aren’t politically palatable -- Democrats oppose reforms, and most Republicans are too cowardly to propose any -- they are simple. The silver-bullet approach is obvious. What state legislatures gave government unions can be taken away: “Public unions should be outlawed. There is absolutely no public good served by it [sic], especially in a world of civil service protections.” Short of repeal, solid suggestions abound. Make employees pay more for healthcare premiums and retirement benefits. Switch to health savings accounts and defined-contribution pensions. Step up investigations of “disability” fraud. Kill early-retirement deals, which save revenue in the short term only to demand more dough in years to come. Subject pension-enhancement proposals to voter approval. Ban double dipping. Follow the private sector’s lead regarding sick days and vacation time. Permit nongovernment entities to bid on public “services.” Enact loophole-free spending limits. Greenhut is not a skilled writer -- his prose is bland and cliché-ridden, and some of his sources (Wikipedia?) are dodgy. His editor doesn’t appear to be acquainted with the hyphen, and the book’s California focus limits its appeal to audiences in other states. So sadly, the definitive chronicle of public-employee unions, and the destruction they have wrought, has yet to be written. In the meantime, Plunder! will have to suffice. Defects aside, it will terrify taxpayers who haven’t been paying attention. D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and lecturer. His website is www.dowdmuska.com. # # # # #
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