ex•tor•tion [ik-stawr-shuh n] –noun
1. An act or instance of extorting.
2. The crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one’s office or authority.
3. Oppressive or illegal exaction, as of excessive price or interest: the extortions of usurers.
4. Anything extorted.

Early in our industrial infancy, the cheapest labor was often recent immigrants, indentured for their trip from the old world. Like many nubies, they were mocked as unsophisticated or slow witted by some in pop culture for their low socio-economic standing and lack of understanding of local norms. They were employed at a slower rate than assimilated workers. Unscrupulous business owners, and I might add, political parties, took unfair advantage of their ignorance. Workers were hired under misleading arrangements specifically worded to entice these workers into unfair contracts. The workers did what all workers in a free market do when treated dishonestly, the walked out. This wiped the gotcha-smile right off the bosses faces. The bosses could not infringe upon one’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One of the principles essential to the right to pursue happiness is the ability to keep the fruits of one’s pursuits, the protection of private property. The bosses wanted to get the production from the worker, and keep much of the remuneration as well.

To infringe upon this right required collusion with government.

Fraudulent employers got bigger, helped elect business friendly politicians who then enacted laws allowing employment contract skippers to be arrested and to allow local police to enforce the terms of the contracts. Railroads, coal mines, steel, were industries notorious for taking advantage of workers, enforced with the help of local and state police. They paid in script only accepted at the over priced company store. This is the part of the story we have all heard. The employees banded together and stopped working. Without production, the bosses could not buy the government they needed to keep the employees working. Such collusion only works to the advantage of the privileged few. We elect our government and the majority of Americans do not appreciate fraud and corruption, even now. Once the lights were turned on, the roaches scurried.

For most of the rest of our country’s history, unions could strike and business owners could fold. Pay and benefits were negotiated somewhere in the middle. All agreements were subject to either party simply walking away, at least temporarily. If the business folded, no amount of picketing would create money from thin air. If the employees walked, no amount of retained profit would produce. Soon equilibrium was reached whereby the employees felt favorably compensated, the business owner had labor he could count on and little changed year to year. Employees questioned the relevancy of the unions and hesitated to pay the dues for no change year to year. But politicians, as they are prone to do, followed the politically expedient source of money and grew to be on the “side” of unions, for a price. The unions used the means at their disposal to enact favorable legislation of their own. So was born the closed shop. If you wanted a job in a union shop, you had to join the union, often before applying for the job. Anyone who was not pro-union would not be allowed to join and therefore could not get the job. Friends and family were the only ones allowed to join and dissention in union matters was scarce. Even with this arrangement, employees were less and less interested in joining unions and paying the extorted dues. Non-union shops could pay less and charge less and fire people more easily, at the same time, they hired more easily and sometimes the take home pay was higher as no one was supporting a union infrastructure. This was especially true for other countries. Soon, a new generation of workers grew up only hearing stories of the labor movement. Their union loyalty faded as the union looked less and less like the savior of mistreated employees, and more and more like the bloated bureaucracies that had enslaved their grandfathers. Unions needed a better way of growing members in order to survive.

One option, the hard way, was to insist on minimum standards for members for training, ethics, dependability, etc. They could insist on eliminating poor performers from their ranks. This would give unions a reputation for the best employees for the money and guarantee a steady supply of employees wanting to join and a steady supply of employers wanting to hire them. The downside, the dues would have to be really low to keep newly employed members from leaving once they got the job. And, there is the downside of having to produce something in return for the dues after years of getting closed shop dues for relatively little. But if they could find another option, a new steel industry or a new coal industry, where the businesses hardly had any competition for employees, it would be much easier. Such a business would be staffed by employees with little choice but to work for the union. What would be even better is if they could do so in an industry with considerable profit margin from which to negotiate. The search was on for an industry with unlimited funds, relatively high tolerance of favoritism and nepotism, and a favorable political climate.

The perfect industry exists. However it was illegal to organize until the late 1950’s. Then a New York City mayor wanted to secure a few city worker votes and the public sector union was born. Democrat politicians across the country rushed to add public sector union members to their roster of campaign contributors. The unions could push the entitlement form of pay and benefits, and get the government to pull their closed shop union dues straight from the employee’s paychecks. The union could then use those dues to help elect pro-union politicians with which to negotiate those entitlements. The position normally held by the business that could go out of business was now filled by the tax payer. The tax paying public can not cease to exist due to unprofitable employment arrangements. Moreover, the union employee gets to vote for their representative on the government side of the table, same as any other tax payer. They then also get to send a second negotiator on the union side. The first places to adopt such laws were those states where a large portion of the state’s employees worked for big, heavy industries which were already union supporters. The rust belt fell first along with steel and dockworkers heavy states. More would follow as right-to-work states had uprisings to get the “right” to extort higher pay from their taxpayers as well. All went as planned, at first.

The arrangement in Wisconsin threatens the golden egg laying goose for two simple reasons: Greed and incompetence. Pay is peanuts; the big money is in pensions. A public sector worker can work for 30 years as a teacher, from 25 to 55 years old, retire with a pension, live to be 85 years old, and draw more in pension in those 30 years than they were paid to actually work 30 years. Each time a teacher in Wisconsin retires, the cost of their replacement is double, one for the replacement, one for the pensioner. In a private sector business, where pensions have long gone the way of the dinosaur, the money for the pension would be set aside each year the teacher worked. The cost would be obvious as the $52,000 teacher also had $52,000 set aside for her pension in hopes that she only lived 30 years following retirement. Retired teachers who live to be 90 could see 5 years when the cost is triple. The number of retirees, who do so, increases every generation, as does the base pay, all of which is renegotiated each year. The public sector union employee in Wisconsin grew up seeing their parents get this pension, without paying into it themselves, and now expect the same. They see it as a right. They feel entitled. Public sector pay and benefits outweigh the private sector employee packages from which the public sector pensions are paid, and the private sector employee also paid for a significant portion of their own retirement. Private sector pensions are all but nonexistent because no one can predict how long a new 25 year old employee will live after retirement. No business decision can be made 30 years in advance with any security. Private sector employees must live off of the retirement they helped pay for as well as continuing to pay for the public sector pension for a retiree who did not. The cost of a public sector union employee far exceeds that of the private sector employee’s pay and benefits. Which would be OK, if the electorate feels they are getting their money’s worth. The downside of favoritism and nepotism in an environment of employees motivated by belief in entitlement to the job, is that performance will always be lackluster at best, and never approach the performance where continued employment and promotion require it. Indeed, the union can be counted on to talk higher performers into slowing down or performing less to prevent bringing undue attention to the overall lackluster performance. But the internet allows parents to realize that their students are more likely than other similar students to perform poorly, despite spending much more per capita on education. As teacher pay increased, public school student performance decreased. We understand child learning better now than in previous generations, we have computers and other teaching tools available to us like never before, and a large portion of Wisconsin public school 8th graders cannot read proficiently.

But the death knell for the public sector unions in Wisconsin and the rest of the U. S. sounded when they took a stand on the ability to renegotiate their position, on the promise of accepting pay and benefit cuts now. They got the nation’s attention when they stated flatly, that cutting pay and benefits for union members instead of raising taxes on everyone was solving a money mismanagement problem on the backs of the unions.

Really? The collective scowl from the country was palpable.

Although they were correct about the mismanagement, it was at the hands of the union-elected miss-managers. Taxes had already been raised 60% to pay for the existing packages as businesses left the state. Fewer students to educate could not be accepted as a sound reason to lay off unneeded teachers. The teacher’s union wants everyone to pay even higher taxes, following an election upset run and won on the promise of cutting spending and taxes,  The union promises that union members will take a small hit now, so long as they get the opportunity to negotiate themselves raises and increases in the future, (when they can get more union friendly politicians elected). What I heard was, “We will keep the roaches out of the kitchen so long as the light is on.” Such negotiations in the past have often been accompanied with back pay for those cut years. In other words, “Write us an IOU for the “pay cuts” we are borrowing from the next generation of workers we are under-educating, or we will shut down the underperforming school system we took an oath not to abandon. Really, we promise.” To put it in terms some of you might appreciate, they said, “Nice school system you have here. Be a shame if something bad were to happen to it. A threat?!! Heavens no, it is illegal for teachers in Wisconsin to strike! I’m just sayin’ if something were to happen, organically without our community organizers community-organizing it . . .”

We are at a crossroads in this country on so many levels, but this is ground zero for the entitlement culture war. (Wisconsin is also seen by many as the beginning, ground zero, for union solidarity of past unions. I find this ironic, but perhaps fitting that the attempt to skew the political processes in favor of the privileged few, on the backs of the many, would be exposed there and defeated there.) If Wisconsin folds, so folds the country.

I call for the formation of a new union, one representing the over 80% of all workers who are not currently represented. I suggest that membership be open to all taxpayers not belonging to a union and that membership can be begun and ended year by year, with a prorated refund of dues anytime a politician you don’t want to support is supported. I suggest that we vote ourselves the “right” to bargain and the “right” to have union members pay OUR retirement and healthcare. In fairness, the unions will likely loose the ability to negotiate pension and healthcare soon either way. Perhaps we should only reserve the one right we truly do have; the right to the pursuit of happiness; the right to keep our property. I suggest we organize a taxpayers union and strike to end the extortion of our property on the threat of public employee sickouts. I want the right to strike and put the golden egg laying goose out of the egg laying business. I want to strike to end the practice of borrowing from our children without their informed consent, to send from balanced-budget/right-to-work states like Virginia, to states like Wisconsin.

We can survive without public sector unions. They cannot survive without us.

Eventually, the unions put up candidates of their own for government positions and the practice of government enforcement of unfair labor practices was replaced with regulatory protections against them. However, just as business used this influence to their advantage, unions worked to enact legislation favorable to themselves through their elected officials. Eventually, all truly unfair business/employment practices were eliminated by legislation. Unions were no longer relevant in matters of fairness. To remain relevant, they negotiated from a position of solidarity for better than fair pay and benefits. Pay to union employees rose above non-union pay and unions could not persist. Businesses resisted hiring union employees, knowing pay and benefits would be extorted above market price. In some areas of the country, unions were influential enough to successfully support a sufficient number of elected officials to make it legal to force businesses of a certain size to only hire union employees. The concept of a closed shop was born. Join the union, or don’t bother applying for a job. Favoritism and nepotism replaced merit and production.

Businesses that could not survive the new burdens of employee strikes and unfair legislation, did not survive. They either moved to more business friendly environments following the paths of looms past, or businesses formed by others in such friendlier locals put them out of business. This cycle of business start up, unionization of the successful ones, and their eventual demise continued until all but the large industrial employers with factories and plants too large to move easily were gone. Now, a business opens in a union state and makes a profit long enough to get the attention of a union. The union convinces the employees that they deserve a larger portion of the difference between their current pay, and the profit retained by the owner, real or imagined. This is an easy sell in union states as it is common knowledge in such states that union jobs can pay several times what non-union work pays. The owner is told that the union will supply well trained employees and the increased pay will be an advantage as the unions will not tolerate non-union shops which might open to compete with the union shop. This is an easy sell as well, since the owners often grew up in the union rich society of the union state. The owner tolerates the union and can sometimes negotiate help from the union elected government officials in the form of competition limiting regulation in return for better pay and benefits for the employees. Over time, the negotiated arrangement is re-visited and changes in favor of the employees creep in. Rarely does an economically weak company gain relief with newly negotiated employee contracts, as the union continually attempts to get as much of the profits for employees and the union as is possible, while threatening to interfere with commerce if any reduction is requested. Often, concessions in good economic periods render the business unprofitable in another. High labor costs in high skill, labor intensive fields encourage automation in competitors where such automation would prove too costly without the union bolstered pay scales. Eventually, unionized industries fail more often in union states and less often in non-union states or countries. Unions fail and disappear in direct relation to the death of the host organism they helped starve. As profits shrink in favor of high pay, even the large industrial employers are replaced by foreign competitors. Unions could have educated and trained their members to be more competitive than non-union workers, instead they worked for conditions where they would not have to compete.

There is one industry however, which can never be outsourced. There is one industry which has almost no connection between the existence of the employer and the financial feasibility of the employee pay package. There is one industry where competition for survival has no connection to the production of the workers. This industry is government. Union organized public employees can pay dues to support the election of union compliant officials, and then “negotiate” a “fair” pay and benefits package with those same officials. Since unfair business practices or unfair pay and benefits are no longer left to fight, the union must fabricate such in order to remain relevant. This is exactly what happened in Wisconsin. The “union busting” legislation proposed in the Wisconsin legislature, if passed, would only make Wisconsin state teachers’ bargaining abilities equal to those for unionized Federal employees. The proposed legislation would not however bring the teacher’s union employee’s pension or health insurance contributions in line with either non-union Wisconsin residents or in many cases, other union employees. So why would the unions and their members take an extremely hard stance on an incremental loss in abilities which are out of line with most other employees’ abilities? They are not fighting for safe working conditions. They are fighting to be able to re-negotiate when the electoral pendulum swings back in their favor and they once again choose the government negotiator. They are fighting to continue to negotiate from both sides of the table. They are trying to make the voters, their employers, regret challenging the status quo.

The unions have drawn the line in the sand. The risk is that voters will not regret challenging the unions, but regret allowing them to exist at all. If the proposed Wisconsin legislation passes, I believe this will be the first time that public sector employee unions have lost any significant gains for their employees. There have been some temporary decreases in benefits, or temporary freezes on pay raises, or temporary freezes in hiring. I assert that this is the first permanent setback in the slow progression of pay and benefit improvements. I assert that this is the first setback that will not be re-negotiated with the elected official of their construction. If this legislation passes, the unions will have to negotiate in the open venue of public elections directly with their employer, the voters, instead of behind closed doors with someone who owes them for their job. They will have to stand in the public square and convince them that union members are entitled to pay raises when everyone else is taking cuts. They will have to convince the public that higher union pay will lead to better educated students, . . . this time. They will have to convince the voting public that tax increases best balance a bloated education budget, coincident with rising teacher pay. If the proposed legislation passes it could indicate a realization by the public that unions are obsolete, to be replaced by automation or at least, lower paid labor. I first suspected they recognize this too when I noticed the unprecedented pressure being brought to bare on Madison Wisconsin by the union friendly, union elected power players outside of Wisconsin. The unions are calling in their chips and the union elected officials are doing what they promised to do, knowing this will not go unnoticed by the voting public. President Obama publically put his support behind the unions. I assert that he does this as a knee jerk reaction resulting from his coming through the union rich political machinery of Chicago somewhat oblivious that his actions caused most of the rest of the country to pause at their own jobs and look up to see what he has done. The DNC sent their chairman, Tim Kaine to help with organizing protests, knowing(?) the people in the right to work state of Virginia will not understand his support for a union fight against negotiating directly with the tax payer over tax payer supplied pensions, and may not vote him into office again. President Obama put his left-over campaign resources into the fight via his campaign organization, Organizing for America. Solidarity. President Obama’s oath is to the Constitution. He is an employee of the very tax payers he has sided against. It seems lost on him that the fact he cannot represent “US” and “THEM” at the same time and that he chose to move to this side of the table. It seems lost on him that the fact the taxpayers have realized this is the very basis for the November upset in Wisconsin, and the new support for union restraint there. Is it more likely that such support for a union is because teachers are barely being fairly compensated in union negotiated contracts, or that the union contracts are so lucrative that the union members will pay dearly to keep them?

Consider this: If the school system took bids for teaching jobs, union and otherwise, would the low bids from out of work teachers be the same as the current teacher pay? Or, could current teachers be replaced from the free market for a price much lower?

So long as there are out of work teachers, the pay is too high. We expect the highest moral character in our teachers. We want them to be attracted to teaching because of a heartfelt desire to be in the profession. We want teachers driven with a desire to encourage such character in our children through example. What I see in Madison are teachers apparently attracted to teaching by a strong union, lying to their employers the taxpayers, saying they are sick and cannot work. I see them doing so in public, in front of their students, in front of an electorate not stupid enough to believe them. I see them doing so, knowing that no one believes the obvious lie, yet they persist. I see doctors lying on camera, writing notes to the very teachers who would not accept a bogus doctor’s note from their students. I see the kind of lying and cheating that money buys. I see teachers claiming that an education is a right while interfering with said education. I see them causing a stop to education activities and claiming without the union, education of the children will cease. I see teachers willing to teach children that lying for money is acceptable. I see teachers deliberately confusing the difference between rights and privileges, for their personal monetary gain. I see teachers using school yard bully tactics against legitimately elected officials with whom they disagree, for the purpose of interfering with the sworn duties of teacher and Congressman alike. I am not alone when I plainly see what an entrenched union will do when challenged.

What the union members do not realize is that much of the country is watching. Most of us did not grow up believing that such poor behavior is acceptable in the protection of the union interest. What they do not realize is how disgusted I am with the thought of my personal friends who are teachers, being forced to support and pay dues to such an organization as a condition of their being allowed to teach my children. I find it particularly unsavory that one of my teacher friends would be required to pay to support the election of a particular candidate as a condition of employment. I am not alone. The line has been drawn. Tremendous force is being applied in Madison in the protection of the unions. I find it a little ironic that their “fight for the freedom to negotiate” as unions could lead to Wisconsin’s freedom from them. All that stands between union survival and union oblivion is freedom to work without paying the union for the privilege. Simply allowing a teacher to work as a non-union teacher for the same pay as a union teacher will mark the end of teacher’s unions. The teacher’s union could have simply allowed this proposed bill to pass, quietly, then wait a couple of years and have the union supported Congress that would one day return, “fix it,” and get back to negotiating ever increasing benefits. Instead, they want to end challenges to public employee unions by their employers, and punish those who dare to do so. I wholeheartedly hope they succeed in doing just that. I hope that freedom ends this debate once and for all. What a fitting place for the progressive movement to have gained an early foothold, and ultimately the place where it shot itself in the foot, marking the end of the belief in the long term sustainability of socialist tenants. What a fitting end to public sector union conflict-of-interest, at the hands of voter solidarity.

“There are 100 senators here and I don’t know that there’s a senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that isn’t important to them,” Reid said. “If they don’t have something in it important to them then it doesn’t speak well of them. That’s what legislation’s all about,” Reid said of the compromises. “It’s the art of compromise.” – Harry Reid.

His excuse, like I often get from my 7 year old, is a permutation of the he-started-it defense. It is similar to my 7 year old defending making a mess by pointing out that my 5 year old made one the day before. Reid would have us swallow that grabbing tax dollars for votes is OK because they are all doing it, if not, . . . well . . . sucks to be them, that is their loss. He says health legislation is about the payments we taxpayers will have to pay to hire Senators to vote to end debate, not about representing Americans by voting like they would vote for themselves. Ben Nelson, the Senator from Nebraska successfully arranged to exempt his state from the Medicare expansions . . . forever. If it is such a good idea, why would Nebraska want to be exempt? If this is such a good bill, why do we need to bribe Senators to vote for it?

Do not try to convince me that paying a state an estimated $100 million in concessions before their Congressman will vote for something is anything other than a bribe. Shame on Nebraska, and I hope that the Governor sticks to his principles and agrees to drop this provision.

They passed cloture on debate of the health care amendments some 36 hours after it was shown to the Senate. They voted to stop debate on a healthcare scheme that does not apply to them, will not start helping anyone until 2014 even though the massive taxes start immediately, and contains numerous payoffs for those who represent us. They voted to stop debating a bill hardly any have seen, because they were paid to do so, without having to live with it themselves, hours after it became public, in the middle of the night.

We could afford to buy insurance for everyone who is uninsured ten times over and still have some left over to subsidize the trial lawyers with the $1.2 Trillion this health care would cost. My question is this, if the price of a vote is $100 million or so, and we have 100 Senators, can we simply pay them the $10 billion to vote to go home?

How many bosses can say that sending their employees home, with pay, can save the bosses a thousand times the employee’s salary?