Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal about how to reform public union labor relations. He gives three "overriding principles."
1. Get public pay back in line with private pay (all else equal, I hope)
2. Have government use the same accounting principles as private businesses.
3. End defined-benefit retirement programs.
Here's his op-ed.
But none of these hits at what I take to be his number one cause for the public union problem (full disclosure: I am a public union member. But I'm no union activist.).
How did this happen? Very quietly. The rise of government unions has been like a silent coup, an inside job engineered by self-interested politicians and fueled by campaign contributions.
Public employee unions contribute mightily to the campaigns of liberal politicians ($91 million in the midterm elections alone) who vote to increase government pay and workers. As more government employees join the unions and pay dues, the union bosses pour ever more money and energy into liberal campaigns. The result is that certain states are now approaching default. Decades of overpromising and fiscal malpractice by state and local officials have created unfunded public employee benefit liabilities of more than $3 trillion.
I agree this is a big problem. It is against the law for employers to make contributions to employee unions for obvious conflict-of-interest reasons. But it doesn't work the other way around when it comes to pubic unions. Of course, by donating to the people who they hope will become their employer, this gives unions undue power to influence government policy for their own benefit, even at the detriment of taxpayers in general. If Mr. Pawlenty is serious about reform, he should start with reforming public union campaign contributions.