Public sector unions have become Democratic Party’s most powerful tool
OPINION:
Government exists to serve the public good. Our nation may have been founded on that principle, but today’s leaders often answer to a different master — the public sector union bosses who wield the outsized checkbook that keeps them in office.
The numbers tell the tale. A Commonwealth Foundation deep dive into the data, released last week, found the top four government employee unions collectively invested $709 million of their members’ wages in political candidates. These four unions — the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and Service Employees International Union — bankrolled Democrats 96% of the time.
Such prodigious sums are dispensed with the purpose of buying influence, often at the expense of the public good. During the COVID-19 scare, 55 million K-12 students found themselves locked out of the classroom beginning in 2020. Teachers union lobbyists pressured the recipients of their campaign largesse to keep those doors bolted as long as possible.
Republican staffers on the House Oversight Committee uncovered emails and testimony documenting how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conspired with the teachers union to craft school reopening guidance so teachers could skip coming to work as late as 2022, even though children were the least likely to be affected by the coronavirus.
Many private and public schools in red states such as Florida and Texas either stayed open or reopened swiftly. The rest, following union advice, produced an entire generation of students now suffering the consequences of the unnecessary learning disruption.
The National Bureau of Economic Research says math scores are down 14 percentage points on average, though the figure varies by state. Virginia saw a 32% decline, and lower-income and minority school districts suffered the greatest drops of all. Zoom failed as a substitute for the classroom.
That doesn’t bother public sector unions, which aren’t even looking out for the best interests of their own members. As Commonwealth Foundation researchers observed, the Tennessee Education Association sued the state’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, to block a bill offering a big pay bump to teachers. The state’s largest teachers union was furious over a provision in the bill that eliminated automatic payroll deductions for union dues, threatening the lifeblood of union power.
Those dues make it possible to field an army of lobbyists and fill campaign coffers. At the state level, the top four government unions concentrated such efforts in blue states such as California, Illinois and Minnesota where they could reasonably expect their substantial investment to be repaid in the enactment of pro-union legislation.
The unions weren’t disappointed. Illinois went so far last year as to enshrine forced labor union membership in the state constitution.
But there is hope that balance can be restored to the system. In 2018, the Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME decision freed government workers from the shackles of mandatory union membership. That was a great first step. But Americans deserve a government that is fully responsive to their needs, not the whims of union bosses.
