Why government workers shouldn't be allowed to strike
Exhibit A: The "fun" striking teachers in Chicago are having after rejecting a 16 percent pay increase over four years. While these union members have a grand old time, parents of the district's 350,000 students are scrambling to keep their kids safe.
Exhibit B: This terrific op-ed by Hillsdale College professor Paul Moreno, who details why lefties in the first half of the twentieth century, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, opposed government unionism.
FDR pointed out the obvious, that the government is sovereign. If an organization can compel the government to do something, then that organization will be the real sovereign. Thus the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935 gave private-sector unions the power to compel employers to bargain, but the act excluded government workers. It declared that federal and state and local governments were not "employers" under its terms. (Emphasis added.)
