Public unions must be made illegal. The US states owe $100 billion in yearly deficits to fund state union workers' pensions and benefits. In Canada it is $12 billion per annum – just at the local and provincial level. There is no possibility that either nation can afford the absurd 'luxury' of public unions whose members earn, during the lifetime of their working 'careers', 100% more than a private sector worker in a comparable job. In essence public sector unions which make up 30% of the workforce in Canada and 22% in the USA, are the working elite, earning high incomes, benefits and huge pensions, but who are supposedly emblematic of the 'working poor' and 'the little guy' fighting for their 'rights' against vicious, perfidious capital-owners.
What nonsense. Unions are political animals funding socialists and Marxists who protect their coddled existence. Public unions own entire political parties and agitate en masse and with great violence against anyone who advocates their dismemberment or even a token reduction in their compensation and perquisites. They are not powerless but very powerful. Public unions have nothing whatsoever to do with the 'working poor' of course. The disadvantaged worker is in the private sector, earning just above the minimum wage. According to USA Today which is hardly a broadsheet for capitalism and the virtues of self-reliance and private industry:
Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.
The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year.
Public employee unions say the compensation gap reflects the increasingly high level of skill and education required for most federal jobs and the government contracting out lower-paid jobs to the private sector in recent years.
Thus according to the lame-stream media and most commentators, someone whose overall compensation is $123.000 USD is part of the 'working poor' and the weak and defenceless class. Fascinating. According to the tax system, those earning more than $100K USD per annum are usually identified as the idle, capricious, rent-seeking 'rich', immoral, obtuse and sly. But not apparently, if you are one of the working elite – a poor, barely clothed, under-fed union worker.
Teachers therefore, as one example, are part of this distraught working-class, 'protected' by unions against the savagery of markets and competition. The public school system is the epitome of incompetence, inefficiency, poor standards and bad product production. Yet for some reason these poor teachers must be sheltered against such evils as pay-for-performance; being fired; or having their schools compete through vouchers and open-transfer programs for students. The horror of it all. As Joel Klein, former chancellor of New York City's public schools, and now the CEO of News Corporation's educational division stated:
Alas, the same kind of pensions are now hollowing out public education. Because there's essentially no competition in education, however, the effect has until very recently been hidden from public view. Today incoming governors—Democrats and Republicans—faced with this dismal equation are looking for a way to undo the damage and get out from under these unsustainable promises.
Public unions are on the Defined Benefit pension scheme which backends huge pension payouts for retired workers. It is a system of guaranteed insolvency. No state in the world can afford this largesse as Mr. Klein, a man who had to work inside the system at a very high level, would know:
Defined-benefit pensions helped bring the once-vibrant U.S. auto industry to its knees. The promised benefits just proved too costly. In that industry, such pensions are mostly a thing of the past. Global competition eventually demanded as much....Whether the investment returns are there or not, defined-benefit pensions require the government to pay retirees a predetermined amount for life. For example, today a teacher in New York City can retire with an annual pension of $60,000 (or more) that is exempt from state and municipal taxes. In short, lots of obligation; little set aside to meet it.
Over half of all nation-state deficits are related to unions, pensions, benefits and the bureaucracy. Governments control 45% of GDP in supposedly 'free market' America and more in the EU-Topia. The increase in statism – whether under the Socialist GW Bush, the Autocrat Vlad the Impaler Putin, or the Marxist-Muslim appeaser the O-Messiah – proceeds apace, simply because the bureaucracy will expand to fill any 'vacuums' or segments of society that it does not already control. The ethos of public unions and their political-bureaucratic managers is one of control, power, and regulation. None of these breed wealth, culture or intelligence. They do however generate bankruptcies, corruption and permanent distortion.
The pensions of Teachers alone will necessitate the confiscation of your personal wealth. Governments will not cut spending – they never do. Expenditures rise on average by 10% a year, in all levels of government. Any cursory check of any government level over the past 10 years will reveal this to be a sordid fact. In order to meet the Teachers-pension gap, governments will become increasingly desperate. They might print more money incurring devaluation and inflation. They might defund 'unnecessary' programs like the military or national security. They might increase immigration in the lame hope of increasing tax revenues. They will certainly increase taxes. But they will also simply take your liquid cash as they are doing in Europe.
Across Europe cash hungry governments are now eyeing billions in private pension funds as an easy target to close deficits. In Hungary and elsewhere governments are giving their citizens a choice: pay your private pension into the state program or lose your right to claim a public pension, but still contribute to the program. This is extortion and allowed Hungary's government to claim $14 billion in cash. This move is being repeated across the Continent in various disguises. Basically the state is simply stealing private monies and using them to fund their deficits.
Public sector unions and their bureaucratic-political abettors have now ensured fiscal insolvency. The only recourse for governments who will never cut spending, will be to implement ever more desperate and overt methods in stealing private money and raising taxes on capital, income, and transfers (including eco-taxes or Mother Earth fees). But remember, this theft is to protect 'the working poor' and the suffering 'union class' who only make $123.000 USD a year in benefits and compensation. Thus do we have a new definition of the 'working class' – those who would be called 'rich' if they worked in the private sector. As long as unions control political parties there will be no union reforms nor sadly, will public unions ever be outlawed, which is the only long-term solution. There will simply be more confiscation of our assets and at some point national bankruptcy.