What "Rights" Do (Monopoly) Public Employees Have?

Patrick gets to the heart of it and provides a very provocative link, too!!

Unions and their allies complain that [Walker] secretly hates unions and that allowing only some collective bargaining will destroy unions. They have so far failed to provide any rational support for this.

Public-employee unions were created by the Legislature (and Governor) of Wisconsin. There is nothing which prevents the same bodies from UN-creating them.

There is, as Patrick (and FDR) allowed, a 'right' to organize. That is exactly what the Catholic Church teaches. That 'right' is most compelling if (and only if) the workers are not treated with dignity and respect.

But the Church and FDR also stipulate that unions may NOT interfere with the common good; and in the case at hand, it is clear that the State's financial survival is contingent on serious changes in union-members' privileges.

But the question is a bit larger. Is "the common good" at stake when monopoly-services are involved?

Patrick also linked to an article whose author raises, arguably, the most important point:

...The very nature of many public services — such as policing the streets and putting out fires — gives government a monopoly or near monopoly; striking public employees could therefore hold the public hostage. As long-time New York Times labor reporter A. H. Raskin wrote in 1968: "The community cannot tolerate the notion that it is defenseless at the hands of organized workers to whom it has entrusted responsibility for essential services."

The "Big 3" were an oligopoly through most of the '50's and '60's--and even THEY could not sustain labor's demands into the 21st Century.

The only reason that Public Employee Unions have succeeded to this point is that they are able to collect their wages, benefits, and privileges at the point of a gun. That's what 'taxation' is, folks.

So we have a monopoly Government with a monopoly Union; the Government provides armed support for the demands of its union employees.

Sheriff of Nottingham, you have a call holding on Line One.