Free exchange

"it's not as though America is on the brink of socialism..."

Exactly! We've been there since FDR!

The argument for unions has always been that they raise wages. But decades of research has shown that they raise the wages of their members at the expense of other workers. On the bright side, the high cost of union labor forces companies to employ new labor-saving technology earlier than they otherwise would and outsource more.

I dont agree with the arguement that public sector unions are protecting workers from the government and that there needs to be anything remotely similiar to a union for public sector workers. If a government tried to provide sub-standard wages for government employees they would never get re-elected even without public sector unions. In this day and age of constant public criticism it would be easy for the opposing candidate to publicly humiliate his/her rival by highlighting the failure to protect workers. An easy arguement could go like "If he cant even provide good wages for public employees how do you expect him to improve the private sector!"

Additionally, I personally support a minimal role for the government so lower benefits may result in less people wanting to work for the government which could help reduce size.

Perhaps we need to adopt the collaborative union models of Scandinavia, Germany, or Japan.

They work well elsewhere; just not here. I'm inclined to blame our union adversarial model which provides absolutely no benefit to anyone other than its own members.

Make unions obsolete by making the benefits they fight for as labor groups available to the general public. Nationwide single payer healthcare, for example. Insurance is a blackjack game. The American system lets the private companies bet and make profits on all of the winning hands while passing all of the ones that go bust over to their pal, the taxpayer via Medicare, Medicaid, and publicly funded emergency care. The insurance companies then blame the taxpayer for being a horrible blackjack player. Taiwan has a single payer system funded by payroll taxes and doctor's fees that runs for about 15$ US a month premium. They did it by examining the US medicare system and just extending it to everyone. Strangely enough, when the pool of the government insured is extended to the entire working population, it's a lot more solvent. But most Americans would argue that Taiwan did this not because it was cost effective, helpful to labor mobility, or right but because they are notorious communists.

The public sector unions wouldn't fight so hard nor would they have the support of so many members if the benefits they wanted were widely available elsewhere in the economy.

I really like the question, "if not unions, then what?" Unions do foster resistence to change, rather like conservatives who want things to go back to the good old days. However, wouldn't negotiating individual contracts for thousands of employees be time consuming?

Replace the word "unions" in this article with any other political institution of any kind and it would still be equally valid. With all of their faults, I still prefer a society with unions over one without.

"Labour unions aren't altruistic entities. They exist to generate benefits for their members and they don't care, as a matter of course, whether those benefits are generated by increasing the size of the economic pie or taking a share from someone else."

Gosh. Sounds like Republicans, and the Koch brothers, and Fox, and business lobbyists, and Medicare recipients, and...

Fundy

As if I've written elsewhere in reply to your posts:

The US is not a socialist state nor does it operate on socialist principles

If you had ever actually seen or experienced an actual socialist state you would drop your constant nonsensical refrain about the US being one too.

I know you're a self proclaimed 'fundamentalist' but you don't have to be an ignorant one. :)

The concept of the union (like democracy) as the worst system in the world except for all the others is right on the money.

When the employer is competing for employees, this is less of an issue. But when the employer has monopoly (or near-monopoly) power, the workers need that too. Unless they hang together, they can be abused individually for teaching unpopular truths like evolution, investigating a prominent political donor, or simply for speaking out.

"Is now really the time to go union bashing?"

Yes, because unions operate in the exact same way those other, "oligarchic", special interest groups operate. They are all different sides of the same coin: groups of people that abuse their common interest in order to extract rents from the rest of us. And they all need to be stopped.

It will bubble up combined with nativism into an ugly Populism. All it will take is the right voice to fire the resentments.

"When private firms do the same thing, people get really upset and use what legal tools they can to stop it."

Uh...

Ya, I'll go with the rest of the commenters. Private firms are often on the "wrong side" of regulatory reform, trade initiatives, undermining healthcare legislation, yadda yadda yadda (yatta!)

While I'll agree that the righties want to take the legal tools to the unions, the lefties also want to take the legal tools to the corporations, and really they're both equally culpable players in the political arena.

More and more it becomes obvious that all roads do indeed lead to Rome and the metaphorical 'Rome' is campaign finance reform.

Does anyone believe that this debate would be taking place if Public Sector unions were not a primary source of funding for the Democratic Party?
Does anyone not believe that what public support for the unions exists, in this particular case anyway, stems from the perception that the obscene amounts of corporate money in American politics need to be balanced by an opposing reservoir of money, namely labour's?

If public sector unions are too powerful its only because of the political clout which flows from their political contributions, same for big business.

Remove the political contributions, remove the associated power, remove the problem...

Root and branch Campaign Finance Reform....neither side will take the initiative, both parties avoid it...so you know it must be right.