Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Public-employees unions are victims of own success

I read with interest Frank Beaty’s Saturday letter to the editor, headlined “Collective bargaining must remain,” which was his take on the collective bargaining dispute in Wisconsin and other states.

First of all, collective bargaining can’t be taken away from us unless we become slaves. We can always bargain individually and collectively. Wisconsin unions are currently bargaining in the streets of Madison and the Wisconsin State Capitol, and there’s nothing in this free country to stop them.

I submit that today’s public-employees unions are the victims of their own success. When the public-employees unions came to our county in Oregon many years ago, I became a member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and was the treasurer of the local.

The first years we bargained with the three county commissioners — with no success that I can recall. Those tightfisted businessmen treated the county’s money as their own. I left county employment but remained in the area.

Gradually, through hard union work, the mix of the commission changed and commissioners more sympathetic to labor came into office.

In retrospect, the major union victory was establishing the union in the first place, which set the stage for gradually improving benefits over many years.

Bargaining is an adversarial process. By dint of hard work, the public-employees unions have been successful in making the process less adversarial.

That successful work has led to wages and benefits that newly elected conservatives view as too much for governments to pay, leading to possible loss of current union contracts with the various governments.

Oddly, the unions’ success may be their undoing.

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