Government Employee Unions

The 1972 Law that allowed government employees to join unions should be repealed. Because unions are allowed to contribute billions of dollars to political campaigns, they are now able to co-opt the legislative process to ensure that they will have never-ending increases in funding for their groups. I’m sure the Congress and Senate who passed the 1972 Law were bought and paid for by the unions they “paid back” with the 1972 Law. California continues to be bankrupt with no solution in sight because of this interdependence between unions and politicians. Politicians work for the union government employees; they do not work for the registered voters in their city, county, district or state. There are several solutions to this dilemma.
1. Campaign contributions should be restricted to registered voters in the candidates’ city, county, district or state. Special interest groups can pay for their own ads to get their point across and exercise their “free speech”.
2. The 1972 Law that allows government employees to join unions should be repealed. These are civil service jobs that already had their own procedures, the only reason for allowing them to join unions was to create this conflict of interest. These employees elect the same politicians who approve their ever-increasing budgets.
3. Government should follow the same rules we citizens follow. Government borrowing should be limited to 3 times their revenue and be able to afford to pay off the principle and interest on their debt up to 28% of their total income. If we did this, the permanent National Debt Ceiling would be $7.3 trillion with no hope to increase it. Government would have to live with it; we do.
4. Government employees should have the same retirement plans we private sector folks have. That would require terminating all government employee defined benefit pension plans and converting them to defined contribution age-weighted and 401k plans.