RCP:
“The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, “I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place” in the public sector. “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government.”
And if you’re the kind of guy who capitalizes “government,” woe betide such obstructionists.
Roosevelt wasn’t alone. It was orthodoxy among Democrats through the ’50s that unions didn’t belong in government work. Things began changing when, in 1959, Wisconsin’s then-Gov. Gaylord Nelson signed collective bargaining into law for state workers. Other states followed, and gradually, municipal workers and teachers were unionized, too.
Even as that happened, the future was visible. Frank Zeidler, Milwaukee’s mayor in the 1950s and the last card-carrying Socialist to head a major U.S. city, supported labor. But in 1969, the progressive icon wrote that rise of unions in government work put a competing power in charge of public business next to elected officials. Government unions “can mean considerable loss of control over the budget, and hence over tax rates,” he warned.
There was “a revolutionary principle rather quietly at work in American government,” he wrote.
The principle was working at about 100 decibels in Wisconsin’s Capitol last week, once the union drum-beaters got going. What worked them up was the money they’d concede, they said, but even more that Walker would make their unions surrender the control they’d gained over every government budget.
Walker, like other Republicans, was long accused of hating government. For eight years as chief executive of heavily Democrat Milwaukee County, he would not raise taxes, which opponents said showed his contempt for government.
Yet all this past week, he praised public employees and he said the work government does is so necessary, taxpayers should get as much of it for their money as possible. Meanwhile, thousands of schoolteachers on the Capitol lawn manifested their intent to obstruct Government and their belief that the tots back at Roosevelt Elementary could darn well spend a day or three watching Nickelodeon at home.
And, to beat all, the president who now professes to be the new Reagan weighed in to say Walker was being unduly mean to unions. President Obama gave no audible word on whether unions were being unduly mean in shutting down schools.
Socialism vs. capitalism.
Who will win?
link
[…] Protein Wisdom has an insightful piece on why FDR did not plan public sector unions to be collective… and Memorandum has a great thread going on all aspects of the Wisconsin protests – look for What’s at Stake in Wisconsin’s Budget Battle. […]
I’ve got a brother that calls himself a socialistic capitalist. Or is it a capitalistic socialist? So, he’s got both bases covered, I figure. Of course, he’s an idiot, so there’s that. I tried telling my neighbor, whose daughter is in a public service union, that even Roosevelt, the god of modern statism, didn’t believe in public sector unions and that they negotiate against the tax payer and not the revenues of a corporation. She wasn’t impressed. A momma protecting her baby, I guess.
[…] From Protein Wisdom quoting Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, “I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place” in the public sector. “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government.” […]
Ultimately socialism will fail. The issue is who will win this battle and how much pain and harm we will endure.
Wow…
Catholics have to accept the wisdom of the Pope in matter’s spiritual, and these generally either state the Church’s doctrine or cover matters of the kind of personal conduct one should exhibit as well as the administration of the Church heirarchy. Simply put, they are considered to be the last word, among the faithful, regarding any issue that may have been in contention or subject to multiple interpretation.
Which is why it’s interesting to me that the actual words of FDR on this subject, a man who can easily be considered as a one of the popes of progressivism, and who by-and-large began the transformation of the US into a socialist-lite welfare state, are today so easily ignored by the left.
FDR was to modern Progressivism as King Solomon is to modern Catholicism — if, that is, King Solomon had been reduced to an icon and his actual deeds and contributions sent down le hole de memorie.
OI,
You mean like the Chinese?
You’re Tom Friedman’s brother? Whoa!
;^)
“Socialism vs. capitalism.
Who will win?”
Reality. It always comes out on top of the bloody heap.
“As sure as water will wet us
As sure as fire will burn
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
With terror and slaughter return.”