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To: smoothsailing

I have always felt that when a public union organizes they are organizing against the taxpayer, and IMO since they are making a labor contract in which the taxpayer has no say, it must be contrary to the Constitution. Where am I going wrong?


7 posted on 06/10/2012 5:57:34 PM PDT by elpadre (AfganistaMr Obama said the goal was to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-hereQaeda" and its allies.)
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To: elpadre

I think a contract between government and union is not the same as a contract between GM and the UAW, for example. As I understand it, a government contract is an act of the legislature and can be rescinded at any time.


12 posted on 06/10/2012 6:07:18 PM PDT by Ken H (Austerity is the irresistible force. Entitlements are the immovable object.)
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To: elpadre
I dug this up for another thread earlier. It provides an example of the danger posed by public sector unions and lays out a damning case against them.

Cop Union Boss Boasts of Beating Lawmakers With Flashlights: If Soldiers Don’t Have Unions, Why Do Police and Teachers?

"We intend to walk into Lansing after the summer break and ask the Republicans who have been so eagerly screwing us, 'who's next?' If we cannot earn their respect we will do what we have always done; hit it with a flashlight until we gain compliance."

Someone needs to ask him how he deals with taxpayers who support "screwing" him the same way?
14 posted on 06/10/2012 6:10:12 PM PDT by cripplecreek (What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?)
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To: elpadre
since they are making a labor contract in which the taxpayer has no say, it must be contrary to the Constitution.

Well, the Constitution has nothing to say on the subject one way or another. Not all bad ideas are unconstitutional.

In particular, the Constitution does not and should not prohibit a state from doing something stupid.

And, of course, the taxpayers DO have a say on the subject, whenever they choose to exercise it. Which they finally did last week.

The whole public employee union issue is sort of the ultimate example of "regulatory capture," where an entity set up to control something is instead taken over by it.

As an example, consider barber licensure. The boards have public meetings, but nobody from the general public ever shows up. Why should they? Nobody cares enough to take time out of their lives.

But of course the decisions of the board are critical to barbers. So the only pressure or input the board ever gets is from barbers and their organizations. Over time, the board operates more and more in the interests of barbers and less and less in the interests of the consumer, whom it was originally set up to protect.

In the case of public employee unions, the regulatory capture was of state and local governments, which they operated in their own interests rather than in that of the citizens. Until the citizens begin to pay attention and swat them down.

15 posted on 06/10/2012 6:12:31 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: elpadre
"Where am I going wrong?"

You must realize that when someone has their hand in your pocket they don't care about your rights. Does a professional extortionist care about his victims' rights? All he cares about is his meal ticket.

It has always been a cornerstone of Western law that contracts signed under duress are unenforceable, but somehow unions, who always get their contracts through duress, are exempt from this just legal principle. It's only starting to end now because the victim is broke.

However, as we see in Wisconsin, unions are quite content to steal from the corpse. These people are vile, and deserve our utmost contempt.

25 posted on 06/10/2012 8:05:57 PM PDT by Batrachian
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