Story here. Via King Banaian on Facebook.
That government has monopsony power over many of these workers is a rationale for public unions. Whether the government should be so heavily involved in private goods like health care, education, etc. is an entirely different, although important, question. But government is, and so...
It's disconcerting that the police and fire fighter unions would publicly sign on to this letter. It's understandable why they'd take other public unionists' side, but it opens them up to at least an appearance of conflict of interest. What happens if a company doesn't sign on and needs, say, a fire truck. Do they take a little longer responding? Perhaps this type of conflict of interest is one of the reasons why FDR was against public unions.