Posted on 02/18/2011 7:27:33 AM PST by SE Mom
My dear Mr. Steward:
As I am unable to accept your kind invitation to be present on the occasion of the Twentieth Jubilee Convention of the National Federation of Federal Employees, I am taking this method of sending greetings and a message.
Reading your letter of July 14, 1937, I was especially interested in the timeliness of your remark that the manner in which the activities of your organization have been carried on during the past two decades "has been in complete consonance with the best traditions of public employee relationships." Organizations of Government employees have a logical place in Government affairs.
The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical, but meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.
Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government." successful.
I congratulate the National Federation of Federal Employees the twentieth anniversary of its founding and trust that the convention will, in every way, be successful.
Very Sincerely Yours,
(FDR)
ping!
I interpret this as FDR saying Unions for thee, but not for me.
The only thing O is interested in is the fact that a substantial block of voters and political activists are in public employee unions. Community organizers utilize this sort of involvement.
What I read is that collective bargaining should be OFF LIMITS for public sector unions!
Right. FDR was all for collective bargaining, except for HIS employees. Makes perfect sense that he would hold that view. What? You think his was a principled view?
....All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.
...
FDR was a flaming libtard “do as I say not as I do” idiot. =.=
Hah! Of course not a principled view! He simply realized as a practical matter you can’t have what’s going on in Wisconsin...go on. It wasn’t til JFK that gov’t unions got the right to have collective bargaining.
Great catch!
I hope #Rush reads this letter on-air today.
So, they did, and he did what he said he'd do.
What you have to do is bifurcate what FDR is saying there ~ part of it is a promise to AFL-CIO (etc.) affiliates and the other part is a warning to the Commies.
The pro-American postal unions then spent a fair amount of time in the streets beating the pulp out of the Commies.
Understood- FDR was nothing if not a wheeler-dealer. My only point in even posting the letter was EVEN the leftist of all leftists- FDR -could see there was a limit.
sfl
Thanks SE Mom.
I heard Anthony Sanders from George Mason University and The Mercatus Center speaking on collective bargaining for government and why it was an extraordinarily bad idea. He asked “Why don’t we permit collective bargaining for the military? Everyone knows that essential services cannot be covered by collective bargaining. So, only the unimportant government positions are covered like teaching. Basically, teaching can be done at home or on the internet. The unionized schools are unessential babysitting camps where students are taught about Marxism. Unessential and unwanted. That is why teachers getting $400k annual pensions is so outrageous. Unessential, part-time workers getting $400k per year.”
Teachers booed him. “The truth hurts, doesn’t it?”
I heard Anthony Sanders from George Mason University and The Mercatus Center speaking on collective bargaining for government and why it was an extraordinarily bad idea. He asked “Why don’t we permit collective bargaining for the military? Everyone knows that essential services cannot be covered by collective bargaining. So, only the unimportant government positions are covered like teaching. Basically, teaching can be done at home or on the internet. The unionized schools are unessential babysitting camps where students are taught about Marxism. Unessential and unwanted. That is why teachers getting $400k annual pensions is so outrageous. Unessential, part-time workers getting $400k per year.”
Teachers booed him. “The truth hurts, doesn’t it?”
I'll sign up for that job in a heartbeat.
But that wasn't the issue ~ we were discussing Roosevelt. What he said to one group he frequently un-said to another. He was a schmoozer, an asskisser, a politician with no bounds. But he did keep his promise to the Postal unions ~ they beat down the Commies and there was not one successful Commie union inroad into the federal government.
Sometimes people get carried away with the thought that since FDR ended up fighting on the side of the Russians in The Great War that he liked Commies.
No reason why he had to like them of course, and his efforts kept them out of adult politics in this country until their recent takeover of the Democrat party.
Barry isn't up to the job. This time we'll have to depend on a Republican President to beat down the Commies AGAIN.
~snip~
Even union icons such as George Meany, the legendary former president of the AFL-CIO, dismissed the workability of public sector unions as “impossible.”
And Sherk notes that other labor leaders were also skeptical.
“You had the AFL-CIO executive council in 1959 saying that, in terms of collective bargaining, government employees have the same right as every other citizen — to petition Congress for redress of grievances, but nothing beyond that,” he said.
And in Wisconsin, even the socialist mayor of Milwaukee in the 1950s, Frank Zeidler, opposed public sector unions.
He wrote that the rise of unions for government workers made it difficult for officials to protect taxpayers, warning that public sector unions “can mean considerable loss of control over the budget, and hence over tax rates.”
~snip~
In case you haven’t read FDR’s letter on public sector unions..
I am so confused...
Even FDR Understood: No Collective Bargaining for Public Servants
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/even-fdr-understood-no-collective-bargaining-for-public-servants/?singlepage=true
Versus...
Why FDR would support the Wisconsin protests
http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2011/02/18/fdr_and_wisconsin
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