Organizing Government Employees; C. Carson

712 itors, both domestic and foreign, in the making and sale of most products. Even if every current pro ducer in an industry is organized within the United States, there would still be the problem of foreign competition. Moreover, if union de mands go beyond a certain point there is nothing to keep others from going into business with nonunion workers. True, a new business might itself be organized, but that could be a never-ending process. There is the problem, too, of the elasticity of de mand for most goods, which means that if the good in one industry is priced very high because of labor costs customers will shift to other goods. For example, if coal gets too expensive, people may shift to gas, kerosene,- electricity, or wood for heating. Much of this actually hapORGANIZING GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES 713 pened after World War II when the United Mine Workers drove the price of coal so high.

A Prime Target Public utilities represent nearly as good a target for unionization as does government. They usually have a monopoly for providing their par ticular services in an area. But there are still economic and political re straints on what they can pay. The demand for most goods and services provided by public utilities is not in elastic. Substitutions can be and are made. For example, when the price of electricity rose precipitately a few years ago, many people shifted to gas and other fuels for heating. Most people do consider some residual amount of electricity a necessity, so that at some point far below current use the demand for electricity may be very nearly inelastic. There is yet another economic restraint. Public utilities are generally privately owned and operated in the hope of profit. That places some restraint on what unions can effectively de mand. On top of this, government controls prices that can be charged, placing limits, at any particular time, on what can be paid to labor.

Thus, public utilities approach the ideal for unionization but fall short of it. By contrast, there is very little economic restraint upon govern ment which would hinder unions in attaining their goals. As one book puts it: Governm.ent is a growth industry that receives little competition from other industries; in fact, it is usually the sole dispenser of the goods and ~ervices it offers the public. Therefore, govern ment is not faced with the market com petition that characterizes the private sector of the economy. Consumers have no choice in the purchase of most gov ernment products. Usually they are re quired by law to pay for government services through taxes, regardless of whether they use the services. Price in creases are passed along in the form of higher taxes, without fear of losing cus tomers. 1 Even when government offers ser vices similar to those which are of fered privately it rarely, if ever, com petes on equal terms. The monopoly power is waiting in the wings, and the tax base is there to backstop its efforts. A good example is govern ment activity in providing educa tional services. While use of the public schools is voluntary, .school attendance is compulsory for chil dren. But a private school has to compete on highly disadvantageous terms. Schools run by governments do not charge tuition but are fi nanced with tax monies. Parents who do not send children to public school still have to pay the taxes, plus whatever it may cost to send them to private schools. Private col leges are usually at a great disad vantage in what they must charge 714 THE FREEMAN December compared with state subsidized col leges. The tendency of government is to extend its monopoly character to whatever enterprise it enters.

Monopoly Leverage The union thrust to organization of government employees is a move to get leverage over a tax-based mo nopoly. It is a move to control the labor supply to government and thus to achieve union ends restrained only by political power and the limits of productivity within a nation. The political activities of unions sug gest, also, that they work to remove what restraint to their goals there is in political power. It may well be that labor unions in moving to organize government employees are sawing off the limb on which they sit. There should be no doubt they have moved into dan gerous territory when they set the stage for power contests with gov ernment, a point which will be elab orated later. They have already re moved much of their ideological cover by organizing government em ployees. Union ideology was abstracted largely from nineteenth century· so cialist theory. It borrowed from so cialist theory not only the notion that laborers could not get their just reward in the market but also the class struggle thesis. This thesis is essential to the classic position of labor unions. That is, unions claim to be acting for «labor," or, in other words, the working class. On this thesis, labor is engaged in a strug gle with capita1.2 Virtually, all the general public sympathy for unions as well as their intellectual justifi cation depends on the acceptance of this thesis. Remove it, and labor unions are exposed for what they are: organizations of some workers to exclude other workers, organiza tions seeking to benefit at the ex pense of others, and organized to use coercion to achieve their ends.

A Roundabout Way to the Class Struggle Concept It is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to read the class strug gle thesis into the organization of government employees. After all, government is not ((capital." It is not a profit making organization, and it can hardly benefit financially by taking from the workers their (share" of the proceeds. To my knowledge, there is no economic theory, or even pseudo-economic theory, such as that of Karl Marx, which attempts to demonstrate that government profits by «(exploiting" labor. As for such .notions as the alienation of the worker from the product of his labor by government, there is hardly any way of conceiv ing what could be meant. Is the postman being ((alienated" from the product of his labor when he deliv ers the mail? That will not compute, 1980 ORGANIZING GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES 715 as a space program robot used to say. or course, the class struggle the sis has long since been muted in the labor union vernacular. Most labor union leaders do not avow an ex plicit socialism, and, while they can not slough off the class conflict en tirely, they can and do smother it in euphemisms, such as collective bar gaining, democracy, private sector, and public sector. They have kept the term ((labor,"but the adversary has become ((management."

This last development was partic ularly important to unions in their move to organize government em ployees. Government is not ((capi tal," or even analogous to capital, but it does have something analo gous to management in private in dustr~ That is, governments do have heads of departments, bureaus, agencies, and so on. These do direct the employment of personnel in a fashion similar to which managers in business do. While there are dif ferences between the president of a company, say, and a superintendent of education, they are analogous at least in that they are in some fash ion in charge of personnel. They are alike, too, in that they may become the focus of grievances which may arise from the people over whom they exercise control. In any case, a major thrust to the unionization of government employ ees got under way in the 1960s. There had been considerable orga nization already, but ((During the 1960s the number of public employ ees who belonged to unions and as sociations more than doubled, in creasing from a little over 1 million in 1960 to 2.2 million in 1968."3The most dramatic increase occurred in the organization of teachers. Prior to 1960 very few teachers had be longed to unions. While many teach ers belonged to professional associ ations these were not union-like at that time. As trade unions began to gain inroads in the teaching fields, the character of the older teacher associations began to change. All this is reflected in the great increase in teachers covered by collective bargaining agreements in the 1960s.

ttWhile virtually no teachers were covered by collective bargaining agreements as of the 1961-1962 school year, a survey by the Na tional Education Association ... during the 1966-67 school year found 1,531 separate collective bargaining agreements covering 609,034 teach ers. By the 1970-1971 school year these figures had increased to 3,522 collective bargaining agreements covering 1,337,146 teachers .... "4 The thrust to unionization of gov ernment employees continued apace into the 1970s. Increased unionization of public employees was accompanied by the use of union tactics, particularly the strike, against government. For ex716 THE FREEMAN December ample, one writer describes city em ployee strikes in 1966 this way: It was prophetic that the strike of 35,000 transit workers which paralyzed New York City twelve days began on New Year's Day, 1966. It marked the be ginning of a year in which many strikes by public employees occurred across the nation. There were strikes by policemen in-Detroit, firefighters in Atlanta, and teachers in New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Newark. Elsewhere, other city em ployees who worked on golf courses, in tax and public works departments, in sewer disposal plants, on ferry boats, and in public zoos went on strike. 5 Government Empowers Unions Three developments in govern ment preceded and accompanied the unionization of government employ ees and set the stage for it.

Chronologically, the first major development was the government empowerment of labor unions. The United States government empow ered unions to organize and use var ious tactics on private employers in the 1930s. The central piece of leg islation by which this was accom plished was the Wagner or National Labor Relations Act passed in 1935. Thereafter, it became incumbent on employers in the private realm to recognize and treat with unions who had the support of a majority of their workers. Collective bargaining was made mandatory to the extent that it was an unfair labor practice not to bargain in ~~good faith" with such a union. In short, the federal gov ernment imposed labor unions on many employers. In and of itself this development gave no necessary opening for the unionization of government employ ees. Of course, unionists might have argued that what was sauce for the goose was also sauce for the gander, but the government gander was having none of this at the time. The distinction between government and private business had been well es tablished. Moreover, as already pointed out, union ideology provided only a justification (or argument) for contesting with private capital.

The second development did pro vide an opening, however, within the framework of government empower ment of and encouragement to unionization. What happened re suIted in the blurring of the distinc tion between private and public. (Indeed, the government empower ment of unions was a step in that direction.) It was a single develop ment with at least two dimensions. One dimension was a rapid and sus tained increase of government em ployees. The other was government provision of many services that had hitherto been provided privately or involved large governments much less directly. Government employment has ex panded greatly in the past half cen tury. As one writer put it, ~~Govern ment employment has been rising 1980 ORGANIZING GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES 717 in absolute terms and as a percent age of the total civilian labor force. Between 1940 and 1967 the number of government employees has more than tripled .... " In 1940, govern ment employees constituted 6.5 per cent of the total employed. By 1968, the figure had risen to 15.6 per cent. 6 Equally as or more important, governments were performing more and more services, many of which were similar in kind and character to those provided by private busi ness. Probably subway, street rail way, and city bus systems afford the most striking example of this devel opment. Since World War II more and more of the public transporta tion systems have been taken over by city governments. In many in stances, workers on these systems were already unionized. The unions would have to be suppressed or rec ognized.

At the Federal level, the Tennes see Valley Authority shows the character of the problem. The TVA was almost from its inception en gaged in producing and distributing electricity. In the course of time, it was using the various means of gen eration, and, in so doing, its employ ees were performing functions in distinguishable from those in the private power industry. State governments, too, engage in undertakings which are similar to those of private industry. A goodly number of states own and operate liquor stores. All states have a hand in the operation of school systems. The following are examples of other sorts of state activities: The state of New York has long main tained a system of barge canals 525 miles in length, which it operates at public expense .... Harbor facilities at ocean ports-wharves, docks, ware houses and the like-are usually owned by state governments. At New Orleans a State Board of Port Commissioners ... operates grain elevators, coffee ter minals, banana conveyors, cranes, der ricks, a belt-line railway, a canal, and a free trade zone. . . . Multipurpose proj ects including the generation and sale of hydroelectric power have been con structed by state governments in Ne braska, Oklahoma, Texas, and South Carolina. The people of Nebraska are served exclusively by public-owned electrical utilities."7 As one writer puts it, ttMore ex tensive examination of the various types of government activity would multiply the examples of the man ner in which the functions which public employees perform parallel, supplement or compete with the ac tivities of private undertakings."8 A History of Resistance to Unionization Even so, governments resisted unionization for many years; in deed, some of them still resist it in certain of its aspects. President Roo sevelt, who presided over the pro motion of unionization of employees 718 THE FREEMAN December in private industry, opposed its ex pansion into government. So did most states well into the 1960s.

Aside from the fact that government is not capital, there is a well defined rationale for not permitting govern ment employees to unionize or, at least, to use many of the union tac tics. It has been stated this way: When an American accepts employ ment on a public payroll he knowingly or unknowingly accepts certain special conditions which have been judged ne cesary by a combination of legislative, executive, and judicial decisions. Al though the nature of his task, the con tent of his workday, and the extent of his responsibility may vary little or not at all from that of an employee in the private sector, the mere fact that his employment is public alters his working conditions. He is afforded certain spe cial benefits or protections-civil ser vice, tenure, assurance against arbi trary dismissal, nondiscriminatory selection in hiring, promoting and re ceiving training-and he must accept certain obligations and restrictions rigid pay schedules, fixed qualification standards, employment investigations, security and classification limitations, and, in some cases, prohibitions against political activity and restrictions on his freedom to deny his service. 9 The above was not written as an argument against the unionization of government employees, but it does state clearly the special status of those who work for government. It provided a basis, too, for opposition to unionization.

Major Change of Policy The third major development was a major shift in government policy toward unionization. From opposi tion to it, the federal government moved toward active approval. In 1962, President John R Kennedy is sued an executive order which de clared that it was the right of Fed eral employees to join unions. 10 In 1968, the United States Court ofAp peals for the Seventh Circuit held that it was the right of individuals under the First Amendment to form and join unions. 11 This and subse quent court rulings have generally taken .from state and local govern ments the authority to prevent the unionization of employees. Some union tactics are still pro scribed by governments. For exam ple, the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 ttprohibits strikes, outlaws any form of union security other than the voluntary checkoff of union dues, and requires fact-finding and, ifnec essary, binding arbitration of collec tive bargaining impasses."12 Most states prohibit their employees to strike, but a few permit it for cer tain categories of workers. 13 This is the background, then, to the thrust to organization by gov ernment employees. Although there are other questions that could be asked, some of them important, I would like to restrict my discussion largely to attempting to answer two questions. First, who are govern1980 ORGANIZING GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES 719 ment employees organized against?

Second, what does the unionization of government employees portend? OrganizedAgainstthe People On the surface, government em ployees who organize into unions are organized against the management within government. Or, to state it more bluntly, it could be held that such unions are organized against governments. One difficulty with this conception is that governments in the United States do not have an independent existence. They are agents or representatives of the peo ple. Thus to be organized against government is to be organized against the people. So far as it goes, this way·of conceiving the matter is valid. But it. is more complex than that. When unions succeed in getting an agreement they actually align the government with themselves, and both .are in some measure pitted against others in the .population. When the government is resisting union demands, it is performing its role of representing the whole pop ulace. It is when the agreement has been reached that government is thereafter aligned with the union against the rest of the populace.

The e~planation of these state ments depends mainly on grasping that in certain .essential features unions of government employees are like unions of private employees. Most opponents of the unionization of government employees have fo cused upon differences between gov ernment and busin~ss as employers. There are differences, some of which have been noted and a most crucial one which will be taken up below, but most of the differences are of de gree rather than of kind. Unions are unions whether they are composed of government or pri vate employees. Moreover, the im pact of union tactics reaches out to affect the population generally in both cases. If unions receive higher wages from private employers, they are generally paid by consumers. (However, unless private businesses have a monopoly, or all are orga nized, there may be some ameliora tion for the consumer.) If unions receive higher .wages from gov ernment, the difference is paid by taxpayers or consumers, or both.

The central point I wish to make, however, is this. Unions of private employees are not simply or most basically organized against employ ers. They are organized to exclude from employment those who would work for lower wages or other bene fits. They are most basically orga nized against other would-be work ers. Beyond that, they are organized against competing providers of ser vices or· goods, and consumers gen erally. When an employer enters into an agreement with a union, he tac itly, and, on some matters, explicitly, 720 THE FREEMAN December agrees to act with the union against all the others. This is true whether the employer is private or govern mental. A Contest for Power Most of the fears about the union ization of government employees have focused on what happens when government resists union demands. Indeed, it is a fearful prospect. What would happen when union coercive tactics are pitted against govern ment power? It could easily become civil war on some scale. Or, govern ment might be unable to perform its most essential functions, such as providing police and maintaining order. Governments also generally perform numerous· other services, such as garbage collection, whose interruption would cause great in convenience and dangers. There is the specter, too, of the dangers in herent in any organized challenge to governmental authority.

When governments moved to rec ognize unions of their employees, they also generally acted to allay these fears. They have placed re strictions on the activities of unions. The most general restriction has been the prohibition against strikes of public employees. The ineffective ness of such prohibitions is now no torious. As one writer put it, it does no good ((merely to outlaw strikes of government employees by legisla tion or to impose harsh penalties which management may find diffi cult to invoke.... "14 This should not have come as any great surprise. Unions have long re lied upon the strike as their major means of getting what they want. As Jack Barbash said some years ago: uThe strike is the union's major sanction in bargaining with employ ers. Approximate bargaining equal ity can be achieved only if the union is in a position to exercise an effec tive choice between working or not working, and the strike is thecollec tive act of refusing to work."15 Jimmy Hoffa stated the case for the necessity of the strike in less el egant terms in discussions with an other union leader: U (You know how it is in the trade union movement, Sid,' he said, ~unless you can show the boss you have the strength to knock his brains in he won't yield.' "16 The union man to whom these words were addressed said himself that ~~in the final analysis the issue was settled by power whether the union had the muscle to close down the operation and keep it closed, or whether the company could take a long strike without pain."17While these latter remarks were made vis a vis strikes versus private employers, the evidence thus far suggests that unionists are in tent on applying the practices to government as employer as well.

Rather than outlawing strikes, one student of the subject suggests 1980 ORGANIZING GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES 721 that ~~such unfavorable .working con ditions as might provoke strike ac tion must be avoided and· adequate machinery must be created to pre vent and remove employment prob lems at their source."18 The most basic objection to this approach lies in what might well be involved ulti matelyif government set out to ccre move employment problems at their source." The ultimate source of em ployment problems is that work is onerous, inconvenient, and time consuming. There is the problem, ,too, that compensation is never ad equate to meet one's ·wants. It is quite doubtful, then, that any gov ernment would attempt to remove the employment problems at their source or that employees would press quite that far. (They do press in that direction by pushing for shorter hours and earlier retirement.) Even so, there are objections to be raised to the proposals. It seems to me that the author is suggesting that the government anticipate the demands and satisfy them· in advance of any action. If it did so, it would, in the ory, remove the occasion for the union, a move hardly calculated to please union leaders. More impor tant, however, such solicitude for employees would make government servile to its employees.

More important still, it would make the populace in general ser vile to the requirements of govern ment employees. This brings us to the second point, namely, that once government enters into an agree ment with a union, it is aligned with the union against the rest of the populace. It is aligned with the union by agreement to pay certain wages which will be collected either through taxation or monopoly charges. It is aligned with the union by conferring benefits which are a charge to the public purse. It is aligned with the union in denying access to jobs except under condi tions which the union has approved. In short, during the term of the agreement, the union and the gov ernment have entered into a pact with one another at the expense of the general public. A Possibility of Union Control of Government What lies at the end of this trail is union control of government to its own ends. This is not a prediction of what will one day happen. Rather, it is a live possibility which can be surmised from what we do know.

There are contingencies which might deflect unionism from this course, but they are contingencies only. Union goals and union tactics bend unionism strongly toward control of government policy. Despite the claims of many union ists over the years that they believe in ~~pure and simple unionism," i.e., unionism with exclusively economic goals within the system that exists, 722 Dilution of Sovereignty THE FREEMAN December THE full, supreme, and undiluted power to govern denoted by the term sovereignty is at least as vital to the existence of secure and ordered society today as it has ever been. There is no incompatibility between governmental sovereignty and pluralism; on the contrary, pluralism prop erly understood as meaning a proliferation of active voluntary associa tions could no more survive· dilution of governmental sovereignty than the personal freedom and security of single persons could. Not pluralism, then, but feudalism and anarchy are incompatible with governmental sovereignty. No sovereign government can survive the introduction of private associations endowed with similar powers of· compulsion and coercion. Still less can Sovereigngovernment survive the internal dissi pation of its power to govern which occurs when a competing private association, armed with coercive power, draws to itself from the duly authorized government the loyalties of the very persons through whom that government must perforce perform its socially delegated functions.

SYLVESTER PETRO, Sovereignty and Compulsory Public-Sector Bargaining union leaders have a long history of involvement in political affairs. They have lobbied, taken public positions on issues, sought to secure legisla tion and to influence elections. Nor have they restricted themselves to what are thought of as primary union concerns: they have ranged over the· field from foreign policy to social legislation. We have become accustomed to that much union involvement in politics. But what portends with the organization of government employ ees belongs in a different dimension. Union tactics provide the means of bringing government to its knees when the crucial employees have been organized. If the police and military·forces were organized, they would be in position to extract from those who governed what they their leaders or a substantial num ber of their members-wanted. The threat alone of a strike, the estab lishment of picket lines, the refusal either to obey their superiors or to allow replacements to be hired, would ordinarily be sufficient to get much of what they wanted. It is to be remembered that when unions contend it is a contest of strength 1980 ORGANIZING GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES 723 with their adversaries. The strength of the government would be largely taken away in advance when the po lice struck.

A Transfer of Loyalties Unionism as an ideology and a movement aims to wrest the loyalty of the employees away from the em ployers and vest it in the collective. It tends also to invoke obedience to the union leaders. This is so whether the union is composed of employees in private industry or in govern ment. So far 8IS the unions succeed in this effort they are apt to be dis ruptive in private industry but sub versive of government. After all, government is entrusted with great power, power which it can only wield responsively and limitedly because of the loyalty of the employees. The reality in the United States has usually been limited loyalty of most union members to the union and divided loyalties. It is this, fi nally, that restrains union leaders. The limited loyalty to unions that has existed has been, in part at least, due to conditions that prevailed be fore governments aligned them selves with unions. Government limited the compulsive power of unions; it gave to the union member a measure of independence. That condition still prevails to consider able extent. But it is threatened by the organization of government em ployees. i -FOOTNOTESIMichael H. Moskow, J. Joseph Loewen berg, and Edward C. Koziana, Collective Bar gaining in Public Employment (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 15.

2See Clarence B. Carson, c<.An Ideology for Unions," The Freeman (February, 1980), pp. 115-18. 3Lee C. Shaw, CCThe Development of State and Federal Laws," Public Workers and Pub lic Unions (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1972), p. 20. 4Frederick R. Livingston, UCollective Bar gaining and the School Board" in ibid., p. 63. 5Robert E. Walsh, uThe Question," Sorry ... No Government Today: Unions versus City Hall, Robert E. Walsh, ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 1. 6Moskow,et. aI., op. cit., p. 10. 7Clair Wilcox, Public Policies Toward B usi ness (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, 1960), pp.805-07. 8Sterling D. Spero, Government as Em ployer (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1948, 1972, New Preface), p.7. 9John W. Macy, Jr., uThe Role of Bargaining in the Public Service," Public Workers and Public Unions, op. cit., p. 7. lOHarvey L. Friedman, uThe Role of the AFL-CIO in the Growth of Public Sector Em ployee Collective Bargaining," Walsh, op. cit., p.28.

llShaw,op. cit., p. 21. 12Ibid.,pp. 24-25. 13See ibid., pp. 33-34. 14William B. Vosloo, Collective Bargaining in the United States Federal Civil Service (Chicago: Public Personnel Association, 1966), p.35. 15Jack Barbash, The Practice of Unionism (New York: Harper & Bros., 1956), p. 213. 16Sidney Lens, Unrepentant Radical (Bos ton: Beacon Press, 1980), p. 148. 17Ibid.,p. 207. 18Vosloo,op. cit., p. 35.