A camera focuses on an official of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), California's largest public employees' union, sitting in a legislative chamber and speaking into a microphone. "We helped to get you into office, and we got a good memory," she says to the elected officials outside the shot. "Come November, if you don't back our program, we'll get you out of office."
The video has become a sensation among California taxpayer groups for its vivid depiction of the audacious power that public-sector unions wield in their state. The unions' political triumphs have molded a California in which government workers thrive.
The state's public school teachers are the highest-paid in the nation. Its prison guards can easily earn six-figure salaries. State workers can retire at 55 with pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life.
Meanwhile, what was once the most prosperous state now suffers from an unemployment rate far steeper than the nation's and a flood of firms and jobs fleeing high taxes and stifling regulations. This toxic combination--high public-sector employee costs and sagging economic fortunes--has produced recurring budget crises in Sacramento and in virtually every municipality in the state.
How public employees became members of the elite class in a declining California offers a cautionary tale to the rest of the country. And the rise in California of SEIU, the nation's fastest growing union, illustrates how modern labor's victories take place in courts and in back rooms, not on picket lines.More from The Washington Examiner
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2 comments:
The unions don't care about workers.
For cryin' out loud - wake up Americans. Big Labor is Big Management. Just another elite group who pretends to care about we "little people"
The reality is that the majority of the union members do not have the ability to think for themselves. They are sheep and blindly follow the directions of the union leaders without understanding that the union is only concerned about growing the union. SEIU's executives make huge salaries and the money comes directly from the dues that the members pay. It is really sad.
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