13 thoughts on ““Rethink”?”

  1. Ok, the story states that public unions are legal in roughly half the states. It should be a simple matter to compare the relative performance of these states, their budgets, and economic performance to get some idea of the impact of public unions (and correlated effects).

  2. There’s an increasing groundswell of support for outlawing public employee unions, and this incident will only add fuel to the fire.

    I do believe the NY sanitation workers have jumped the shark this time.

  3. Since collective bargaining by public employees was made possible by Presidential executive order (Kennedy first and then Nixon modified that order into roughly the current situation), it seems that it would be relatively easy from a mechanical standpoint for a future president to issue a new executive order that outlaws unionization by federal employees. Not sure if it would be similarly simple (again from a pure process standpoint) at the state level.

    Of course, how all of this would be settled in the courts would likely be more complex, particularly given the brazen interpretive natures of so many in the judicial branch.

  4. If you want to find the most doomed of the cities, look for teh ones where the public service unions select and support their own candidates for mayor, city council, et cetera. Once that starts happening the whole city machinery simply becomes a mechanism for shoveling taxpayer money to the unions. Witness Detroit, most of California inclusive, New York…

  5. Jiminator, Congress can reverse an executive order anytime it wants, and then the President’s only choice is whether to misread the law or ignore it outright. But if it’s left to a President to reverse an EO, a future President can simply reverse the reversal.

    I’m pretty sure this is all settled law.

  6. No such thing as “settled law”. With enough will we can change most laws (within the real limits of the Constitution).

    Here in California we will need an initiative to ammend the state constitution to outlaw public employee unions. THe legislature certainly won’t do it as most of them, including our new(old?) Governor, owe their jobs to the unions. I wonder if such an ammendment could invoke soveriegn immunity to prevent lawsuits trying to overturn the ammendment.

    It’s all a pipe dream of course. Looking at how the Cali idiots voted last November, such an initiative would never pass.

    If my job weren’t here, I’d be gone. And I was born here…almost 61 years ago.

  7. Here in California we will need an initiative to ammend the state constitution to outlaw public employee unions. THe legislature certainly won’t do it as most of them, including our new(old?) Governor, owe their jobs to the unions. I wonder if such an ammendment could invoke soveriegn immunity to prevent lawsuits trying to overturn the ammendment.

    It doesn’t matter if you pass an amendment. All the unions will do is get a judge to throw out the will of the voters again. The unions might not even have to buy off a judge because judges get many of the same benefits as other government employees. It’s the best government money can buy.

  8. One party strenuously argues that we can trust bureaucrats with key decisions affecting our health care. How can that same party argue that government employees need unions to protect their merely financial interests?

  9. Larry J
    If it ammends the state constitution, the judges can’t throw it out. If soveriegnt immunity can be invoked in the ammendment, no one would be allowed to sue over the ammendment.

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