An article published this morning on The Hill's "Blog Briefing Room" quotes Jim DeMint as saying that "I really don't think that collective bargaining has any place in representative government". These types of arguments have become standard rightwing talking points, of course, and should never be taken seriously, but I found myself pondering this on my walk to work this morning.
Putting aside the obvious political motivations of the argument (which, to his credit, DeMint actually spelled out), what about the logical implications of this. What is wrong with "collective bargaining"? The obvious argument is that, as politically organised voters, unions are able to exert undue influence on the government, and thus unjustly feast on taxpayer money. So, if Republicans were not hypocrites, what would their arguments really mean?
The obvious starting point is that unions don't negotiate for unearned largess at the expense of taxpayers - public employees are just that, employees, and they are payed for the work they do (and, it has been shown, paid less than comparable people in the private sector). Nonetheless, since they elect the people who pay their salaries, they have some leverage that private sector employees do not.
Fair enough. But that's true regardless of whether there are unions.
That said, of course, the unions have added political leverage because they donate to political campaigns and run issue ads. So, presumably, that's the problem. Right? So who else does this kind of thing? Where else do we have organised groups of people who "collectively" negotiate with the government for employment? Oh, yeah...corporations. So logically, if Republicans believe that public workers should not engage in collective bargaining with government, then surely they believe that government contractors should not organise into "corporations", right? After all, corporations gave more money to government than did unions, especially post-Citizens United. So no more Boeing. Let the workers negotiate individually with the government.
Now, of course, if this applies to people who are actually being paid for a service, imagine how much more it must apply to people who aren't being paid. All these people who organise for simple handouts - like tax breaks, or infrastructure, or any of these things. If unions are bad, then lobbyists are the devil.
I take it that Republicans in general, and Jim DeMint in particular, have ended all association with lobbyists, right? Surely these honourable men would never approach this issue with unclean hands...?