The Road to Fiefdom
City Journal, the house journal of the Manhattan Institute (not Manhattan, KS), publishes this fine article on Blue and Red in its newest issue. The article focuses largely on the influence within Blue metro regions of public-sector employees, and the unions to which they belong. Strikingly, this power is no longer concentrated within the unions; many former public employees have now become elected offficials, Steven Malanga writes: “In New York, for instance, more than two-thirds of city council members are former government employees or ex-workers in health care or social services.”
The growing, or at least persistent, power of municipal governments has the effect of turning naturally Blue cities even more azure. Most private-sector employees in New York City backed Mike Bloomberg; most public employees voted for Democrat Mark Green. Bloomberg’s anti-tax, anti-spending campaign was a direct threat to the jobs of many city workers, who feared having to find new ways of earning their living. Because their jobs are on the line in every election, government workers are especially mobilized in politics: Although they account for only a third of the workforce in New York, Malanga notes, public sector employees represented 37 percent of the electorate in 2001.
Not only local politics but national politics are affected by this shift in composition. Because government workers are reliably Democratic, and because Democrats need to maintain their metro base even as they woo suburban voters with promises of middle-class subsidies, the municipal and government workers’ unions are big players in the national Democratic movement. This is a predictable, if unconscious, response to the unions’ power at the local level. The natural result of overregulation and business-hostile bureaucracy is economic weakening within cities as firms flee to the suburbs and friendlier areas. The unions have turned their cities and school systems into private fiefs. Now, to preserve their power and their members’ paychecks, then, public sector unions have to try to extend their reach beyond municipal boundaries.
For generations, the Democratic party was the party of private-sector unions. Now that the trades union movement in the States has been broken, the donkey has a new rider. If Republicans want to ensure better government and preserve their political predominance, weakening these public sector unions has to be high on our agenda.
Great post title.
Amen, Paul.
I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results.
Although they account for only a third of the workforce in New York, Malanga notes, public sector employees represented 37 percent of the electorate in 2001.
Is this a typo?
33.3% and 37% are not that far apart. I would expect more individuals working in government jobs to vote if only from the proximity to the process.
But remember: The workforce and the electorate are very different measures–the electorate is far larger (senior citizens…) (although I am unsure how this would work in New York due to the immigrant population).
At least you’re honest enough to admit that the Republicans believe in the elimination of every union.
Time to consult Margaret Thatcher’s playbook! She fought this exact same battle, and won big in the UK.
Jim S: At least you’re liberal enough to engage in hyperbole without even noticing it. When liberals expound on weakening the Republican grip on rural politics, are they talking about eliminating the Republican Party or every Republican? Genocide!!
Not all municipal employees vote, at least here in NYC. There are many municipal employees who, as this post suggests, are less interested in engaging themselves in the political process and more interested in having a union-protected job in which they can do a minimal amount of work for a decent salary.
(1) Foltz: The difference between 33.3% and 37% is enough to swing a close election. That’s one factor, but more significantly:
(2) If you’ve been keeping score, you’ll have noticed that elections overall have become much closer in the past few years.
(3) If you’ve been keeping score, you’ll have noticed that the sources people count on for news have become dramatically decentralized over the past few years.
(4) Back to the percentages - that 37% tends to vote AS A BLOCK because they believe (or can be lead to believe) that their jobs are on the line. The remaining 63% of the vote will swing on a number of other issues (party affiliation, perceived ideology, effectiveness of marketing & advertising, etc.). There may be blocks within that number (Bloomberg employees for example) but they will not match the public employee block in size.
The title of this piece, therefore, is most apt. Well done.
Public Employee Unions and Their Clout
f you think that’s just a New York City problem, consider the power of the prison guards’ union in California.
Scary numbers.
Maybe we should disenfranchise people whose snouts are in the public trough.
Oh wait! Seniors on Social Security and Medicare. Parents with kids in public schools. Etc.
Tax and tax and tax. Spend and spend and spend. Elect and elect and elect.
Still works.
Nothing new here, public employee unions run the state of California. The biggest liability is the over promised and underfunded retirement program. The future tax payers are already burdened with bond debt and carrying the cost of state of the art full coverage, low deductable health care and gold-plated 90-percent of best year retirement at the age of 50. Of course, these same slugs are the ones who promote increasing red tape to ensure a bigger need for more overseers to squeeze business and the working class of every drop of blood they can milk.
Welcome to the home of the capitalistic bureaucracy: potholes, we don’t need to fill no stinkin’ potholes!
The red-blue divide does not run along state or even county lines. It’s primarily a divide between a shrinking inner-city blue core population and a swelling red-to-purple nonurban population.
The natural allies of the municipal government unions are all those social groups that comprise large downtown populations: the very poor and very rich; childless secular yupsters; gays.
From a Democratic perspective, what’s wrong with this picture? Aside from the very poor, whose real needs (eg good schools, secure neighborhoods, honest local pols) often go unaddressed by the Dems’ platform, none of these groups is much inclined toward bearing and raising children. So along with the replacement problem you have a substantive problem: the Dems are, increasingly, out of touch with US families and family life.
Secondly, it’s not a good idea for any party to be so heavily dependent financially on downtown gazillionaires like Soros, Lewis and the other guy who gave Kerry and his allies more money than they could figure out how to spend intelligently.
How to break out? Try traveling a bit, say, ten miles or so, to a suburban mall or church or soccer field, and TALK TO PEOPLE. LISTEN TO THEM. I’m willing to bet that Pelosi, Kerry, and Kennedy have not set foot in a suburban mall or ballfield more than once or twice in the last decade. Pitiful, really, when you realize that Tip O’Neill’s faithful have all moved to the suburbs. That’s where elections are won and lost today, and yet O’Neill’s party is now led by downtown goldiggers, socialites, rich kids and investment banker types.
Economic dangers of excessive unionism
If government workers’ jobs are on the line in every election as Paul Musgrave points out, then sure enough they will be in favor of big government, no tax cuts and many other items of the Democrat platform locally and nationally.
Musgrave writes:
…
Implicit in the last comment was the fact that the married went for Bush overwhelming and singles for Kerry. As an old married with children type, I feel that such commitments tend to give us a lengthier perspective and makes our votes take more into consideration (okay, that is a bit smug and not always true - but every couple notes that they start thinking in different terms the moment they realize children are amaking. Those terms are seldom ones of carpe diem.
“Fiefdom” is apt. In the middle ages, the ambitious serf fled the feudal countryside and went to the town because, as the saying had it, “city air breathes free”. Today the migrations are reversed, but the motives are the same.
Picking up on thibaud’s thought as well as Paul’s thesis…the immigrant populations have still got to be factored, in my mind. They are much more likely to head for Baltimore than Burkittsville, because the big cities are where the work is. Their contacts with “the government” (e.g. obtaining food stamps and housing) will steer them towards the Dems, because most (all?) of the social workers/government employees are Dems. (It’s merely anecdotal, but I have noticed that public sector folks are not shy about adorning their workspaces with explicitly political speech.) In effect, the immigrants are the Demmies’ “kids” and their political socialization is directed by the public sector employees.
Solutions?
1) Restrict immigration
2) Get the services out of the hands of the government and more into the faith-based organizations, which are more balanced politically between the Religious Left and Right
3) More Republicans in public sector jobs
Number 3 is my answer. My wife is a teacher and way Red. If you want to change the culture — be it the education system or social services or whatever — we’re going to have to get out there on the front lines, even if it means holding our noses at becoming “union” workers.
Having worked in the public sector for a little while, it’s no wonder our city governments are so screwed up. There’s nothing like a bunch of people who get their jobs from patronage, don’t need to produce results because no one gets fired, and spend most of their time getting out of work, to run a city.
Jim S, not all unions, just most, since most are corrupt and only spend 20% of their dues on collective bargaining. My dad was FORCED to join the AFCME, and did they do anything for him? No, except take his money. In the old days, we called that “extortion.”
Pluto’s Dad
http://eyesontheball.blogspot.com
News Satire that’s right for you
Living in Florida one hears often the jobs here are “lower-paying”…..While true compared to the Northern tier union states, the secret is… There ARE jobs here.
People are moving here. They are leaving the unionized states (yes, including California where companies find it hard to make money under the tax/union wage load).
Unions HAD a place. Now, they are costing the states where they rule.
Forget the responses you union folks will revert to and have used for years; “unions protect”, etc.
They protect themselves, and generate their own political agenda based on which party will insure continuation of pro-unionization rules. The which party comment needs not include the name of the party….it is that clear.
Why do you suppose the unions have been losing in the percentage-of-unionized workers since the 50s? They do nothing in the form of job protection!
Been there, done that…..Caterpillar Tractor, years ago. When the Japanese offered a slightly less-durable product for half the price (they had no union with which to contend) Cat lost thousands of jobs and lots of money! Not one worker’s job was protected…nor even their benefits package for the rest still employed.
Unions have outlived their usefulness…or is it they changed their goals to trying to dictate terms rather than negotiate in good faith based upon fair wages/benefits?
By the way….what input on the union position does the average union employee have? ZERO!
I’d be willing to bet a large percentage of “blue” voters who lose jobs and move to the sunshine end up voting often in the “red” column!
Duke
Duke
Oops! Forgot to include where I have posted on this as well!
Duke
http://pekinprattles.blogspot.com
My take on the “red-blue” split is simply that it is a shorthand differentiator between those who most value freedom and those for whom security is the dominant desire.
It leads to different perceptions, such as “peace” being the absence of conflict (blue) rather than the absence of threat (red). Eliminating threats produces temporary insecurity, which is too stressful for the blues. Think also “job security” compared to “business opportunity.”
The over-simplified result is a political block that promotes on the one hand a version of socialism intended to prevent failure (whereas communism sought to prevent success), and on the other a foreign policy intended to prevent conflict by appeasing adversaries so no one will dislike us.
The ironic and repeatedly sorry lesson of history is that both at home and abroad the “blue” approach is at best a temporary patch, ultimately producing more failure, more conflict, and much less security.
The other major factor driving these trends is low turnout in municipal elections, which usually do not coincide with state/Federal elections; see, for example, http://www.ncpa.org/iss/gov/2002/pd091702e.html (and, in turn, http://weber.ucsd.edu/~jlbroz/PElunch/hajnal_lewis.pdf [108 kB]), which although specific to California is representative of most of the US.
When turnout is only 10% of registered voters (themselves a bare majority of the population), then municipal employees and their family members and close friends may well be able to determine the outcome.
“My take on the “red-blue” split is simply that it is a shorthand differentiator between those who most value freedom and those for whom security is the dominant desire.”
This isn’t really convincing as stated, because both sides would state their ideology objectively provides more freedom and security. Conservatives seek security through increased defense spending, while liberals seek freedom by promoting, for instance, job security (it’s hard to be self-actualized when you’re jobhunting). There are distinctions to be made between these groups, and within the broad alliances of the left and right as well, but they’re much subtler and more persistent than stated above.
Bart,
In your statement:
The over-simplified result is a political block that promotes on the one hand a version of socialism intended to prevent failure (whereas communism sought to prevent success), and on the other a foreign policy intended to prevent conflict by appeasing adversaries so no one will dislike us.
I, for one, believe the two seemingly polar opposites are actually hand-in-hand. In order to prevent failure, the actual accomplishment of that goal involves prevention of success…
This, while certainly never the stated goal of either communism or socialism, has always been the outcome of such social experiments.
Duke
http://pekinprattles.blogspot.com
“The Road to Fiefdom”
In a post titled “The Road to Fiefdom,” Paul Musgrave (referring to this article at City Journal) has broadened some specific observations regarding NY City politics into the national scope. As such, I’d venture that his remarks can be just…
In my blog, OpinionMeister, I link to this article and comment on it. This can be found at http://www.blogger.com/app/publish_status.pyra?blogID=10193939&inprogress
My previous comment had the URL wrong. It is http://opinionmeister.blogspot.com
Had to stop by for another post when I saw this bit of pertinent (I think) satire, which shows what happens when the public sector doesn’t get pruned back regularly. http://www.thedissidentfrogman.com/dacha/index.html
Jay Manifold makes a good point (which I neglected) regarding how low turnout further magnifies the impact of the public sector voting block.
“Now that the trades union movement in the States has been broken, the donkey has a new rider. If Republicans want to ensure better government and preserve their political predominance, weakening these public sector unions has to be high on our agenda.”
Notice how proud he is of unions having been broken. What makes what I posted hyperbole after that brag? What makes my posting any more hyperbolic than post after post that condemns each and every union as corrupt and useless? One of them even asks what input the membership has on policy. Ummmm, could it be elections? Every union I’ve ever heard of has them. Are some of the bad? Yes. Some have corruption issues. Others are bad because they are precisely what the posters here want. Weak. Conservatives say that their time has passed, that there are other mechanisms in place to ensure that the conditions that gave rise to unions don’t recur. Then of course they turn around and say that these mechanisms should be eliminated.
The very conservative in the movement nowadays (and yes, I think they dominate the GOP completely) believe so much in the virtues of an unregulated market that I haven’t heard of one government agency that they haven’t suggested should be eliminated. OSHA should go, it only produces paperwork and costs businesses money. Don’t worry, workers will still be safe, management would never cut corners to save a few bucks. They might get sued. What’s that? Oh, yeah. Tort reform. Don’t worry about it. The EPA? What good do they do anymore? The air is plenty clean and getting better. Same for the water. What does the EPA do? In the conservative mind they only get in the way of business for whacko tree-hugging reasons that just don’t balance with the expense they incur. Before you dismiss what I’ve written too quickly look around you. Listen to the conservative media. Look at the popular conservative books. Don’t you honestly hear a lot of this? Isn’t the core of the modern conservative movement a condemnation of government, worship of markets and social conservatism? And who gets the most action taken on their agenda with this administration and every other recent Republican government? The money boys. The companies that want regulation to go away (which doesn’t include all companies) are the ones that get their bills passed or their desires slipped into other bills. Where am I wrong? How wrong am I? Be specific as opposed to ideological.
“Notice how proud he is of unions having been broken. What makes what I posted hyperbole after that brag?”
Yes, every night I offer up a prayer of thanks to the Gipper and the Iron Lady for delivering us from Hoffa and leading us not into Gompers. Get a life. The unions were broken in the U.S. only partly by government action and mainly by increased international competition. Is it really a coincidence that only in the nontraded and noncompetitive government sector we see the few remaining strong unions?
And although I’m not proud of breaking the unions–given that neither I nor the conservative movement took many affirmative actions to make that happen–I also welcome it. You want strong unions or a dynamic economy? Germany, for one, took a different route than the U.S., and their stagnant economy and broken welfare state is something I’m glad not to be emulating.
Jim S:
The issue isn’t whether the EPA or OSHA do some good. It’s an issue of cost/benefit. Like all government programs, they keep extending their reach.
I think everyone can agree that we shouldn’t have companies dumping their waste products into our rivers and that it’s a good idea to have rules mandating that steel workers placing I-beams six stories up have safety lines.
However, an OSHA rule that one must be 18 years old in order to operate a meat slicer at a deli seems a bit much.
Conservatives, or at least the “libertarian Republicans”, do condemn government. You say that as if it’s a “bad thing” that we deny. Government can do good, but explain how it doesn’t, over time, morph into something intrusive and expensive. For example, justify the continued existence of the Rural Electrification Board. Even better, justify the creation of a new board for Rural Broadbandification when we’ve already got a bueracracy that deals with rural infrastructure.
hmmmm… never thought of them as fiefdoms, however you do illustrate the feeling of self-preservation among these municipal workers. whats surprising to me is the number that vote in each election, has this been confirmed?
“The natural result of overregulation and business-hostile bureaucracy is economic weakening within cities as firms flee to the suburbs and friendlier areas.”
For the terminal result of this condition, see Detroit. Last year saw the first new housing subdivision built in decades.
Folks like Jim S. get so caught up in little details, they have trouble breaking the issue down to its most basic (and honest) formulation.
Conservatives, by and large, are not against “unions.” A labor union, in its purest incarnation, is simply a group of individuals who have chosen to voluntarily associate. In that respect, it’s no different from a rec softball team or the Americans Fighting Cancer Association or any other group.
What conservatives and libertarians resist is the government protection of this one arbitrary group. The National Labor Relations Act strips rights away from one set of individuals (employers) and gives privileges to another (employees who associate and call the association a “labor union”). In a country where individual rights are supposed to reign, this sort of government mandate is clearly a violation of freedom.
If Joe, Dave and Rob want to band together, call themselves a union, and negotiate with their employer for such-and-such, that is entirely within their rights. It is also within the (natural) rights of that employer to voluntarily negotiate, or to decline. It is simply unacceptable, however, to demand with law that the employer MUST engage in “collective bargaining.”
Everyone has a right to “strike.” Everyone also has a right not to contract the services of someone with whom they don’t wish to associate.
It’s really simple.
The US military-industrial complex (soldiers, leaders, industries) isn’t unionized, but it sure as hell does a good job of block voting to protect its interests. It perpetuates failing programs, wastes vast amounts of money on untested and eventually unfielded technologies, and provides benefits far more extensive and lucrative than those given by city government. Let’s see how much indignant hero worshipping that line pulls down onto me.
“Its interests”? Considering that the military, and its accompanying industrial complex, exist to provide a (Constitutionally sound) defense of the entire country, it is the nation’s interests that are served.
The office-clerk labor union down at city hall serves the interests of none but itself. It in fact harms the interest of the broader population, by artificially inflating prices and restricting the labor supply, for which the rest of us pay via taxes.
There is no conflict between freedom and providing for the common defense. There IS a conflict between freedom and government-mandated special privileges for one arbitrarily defined group of individuals. One protects rights; the other strips them away. There’s nothing hero-worshipful about understanding the distinction.
OFF-TOPIC: Is there any way to write a legible post on this site without having to add frikkin HTML paragraph tags to create simple line breaks?
Um, you can use the “enter” key, like everyone else.
And there’s a hell of a lot to criticize about the military and defense contractors. (Individual soldiers I leave out of my criticisms, because their benefits seem pretty commensurate in most respects with their sacrifice.) Aside from, say, TRW lying about missile defense tests, Boeing bribing Air Force officials, and so forth, there’s also the issue of a lack of management skills within the Pentagon, which manages to lose–not misspend, but misplace–billions annually.
Paul,
Using the “enter” key isn’t creating line breaks for me. At least not in the preview version. And because that’s what I see in the preview — a big glob of text — I’ve been going back in and adding code to assure that it posts with proper breaks.
OK, I’m gonna hit PREVIEW now and see how it looks.
Yep, the three paragraphs above appear as a single long paragraph in the preview. But I’ll hit POST this time, without any coding, to see how it appears on the public page.
Regarding the military stuff: I didn’t say there’s nothing to criticize. I just pointed out the flaw in the analogy provided by the other poster. Simply because one group “votes as a bloc” and another group “votes as a bloc” doesn’t mean they can both be targeted with the same form of criticism.
Best,
SP
OK, it worked!
But the preview version sure does throw things off. What’s the point of a “preview” if you’re not previewing the actual post? One might as well just look at one’s words inside the comment writing box.
Best,
SP
The need to get rid of the public sector unions
In the Agora has a great post on public unions. I agree and would go farther by saying that the agenda should be to not only limit their power, but to outright destroy them. Think about this for a second,…
Semolina, the normal response from a company to anyone making noises about a union when there is no NLRB is to fire anyone involved. It sort of limits the ability to request negotiations.
Paul,
My mistake in missing that you cited two different groups of people. I would like to know how large those differences and how those groups are defined before I toss too many comments into the fray. However, I will still contend that I would expect government wokers to be more likey to vote because they work in the system.
Semolina
You miss the point that people vote in blocs to protect themselves. City workers protect their economic well being through the political process in exactly the same way that other groups do. To pull one voting bloc out and say that it is somehow in the wrong for using the political process to promote its interests is to deny the very basics of why people vote at all. Let’s do a key poll of CEO’s and executives and see if they vote for deregulation, loose tax codes, and less rights for workers. Deriding one group among many is just plain old nonsense.
“Considering that the military, and its accompanying industrial complex, exist to provide a (Constitutionally sound) defense of the entire country, it is the nation’s interests that are served.”
If you think that businesses exist for any other reason than to make a profit I have some nice beachfront property in Kansas I’d like to show you.
Municipal Unions: The Boa Constrictor Strangling America
---------- The socialist candidate who gets the backing of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the teachers' unions (NEA and the UFT) has a lock on the Democratic Pa…