LABOR PAINS

Walter Russell Mead argues that public employee unions are not facing assault simply from Republican politicians and their Tea Party supporters, but are in even more danger from the budget cutting axes being swung by Democrats in deep blue states. He gives some compelling examples, and his case fits the common sense test. What common sense is that? The proposition that majorities can no longer be found, in Red or Blue states, for significant tax increases. Without significant tax increases, or any more bailout money from Washington, the states can only get their fiscal houses in order by cutting expenses, and the fastest way to do that is to cut down your personnel costs, as all of us in the private sector have learned only too well over the last few years.

Kevin D. Williamson argues that the fight between GOP governors and the public employee unions is not simply a matter of balancing budgets, but a contest to determine whether or not those unions can maintain their political power.

Bob McManus writes that the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan saw the current crisis coming because he believed labor intensive services, like health care and much of what is done by public sector employees, would increase in cost without gaining much in productivity.

Robert J. Samuelson writes that what we are witnessing in Wisconsin and elsewhere is really the death knell of Big Labor as we have know it as a political and economic force in the United States for the last 75 years.

The labor movement is, indeed, on the wane. For private sector unions it was a competitive labor dynamic that put relatively high cost American workers into direct competition with lower wage workers, both overseas due to a globalized economy, and here at home due to higher levels of immigration (legal and illegal). For public sector unions it is the fact that there is a limit to the overall tax burden. The same principle, of course, applies. You can only raise prices so high on a product before people can either no longer afford it, or they find a cheaper alternative. For the private sector, cheaper alternatives were available. For the public sector, voters can choose representatives who will refuse to charge them more for their public services. In the end, I agree with those who believe unionization as we have know it is coming to an end.