Illinois’ woes show why we can’t afford public unions

• Reprints

Updated: March 1, 2012 8:21AM

To see the problem with government employee collective bargaining, look at Illinois. What’s happening here is happening to varying degrees in most states.

One year ago, Illinois lawmakers raised the state’s corporate tax an astonishing 46 percent and the personal income tax a more astonishing 67 percent.

The result? Earlier this month, the Moody’s rating agency downgraded the state’s credit rating, giving Illinois the lowest credit rating in the nation.

Two days before the Moody’s downgrade, state budget director David Vaught told the Associated Press, “Our revenue growth is not enough to keep up with pensions and Medicaid. It creates a squeeze for everything else.”

Illinois state government has gained virtually nothing from these huge tax increases because soaring government pension costs — costs vehemently defended by the state’s unionized government employees — are consuming much of the extra money.

California, New Jersey, New York and other states with large numbers of unionized government workers also are experiencing stressed budgets and heavy tax burdens to fund the collectively bargained pay and perks of government workers.

Government employee unions vigorously defend these benefits. Government workers incited a huge backlash against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican; Indiana legislators; Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, and other officials who have tried to rein in collective bargaining.

They have their defenders in the media as well. In a recent column in the Los Angeles Times, Joseph A. McMartin noted that President John F. Kennedy issued an order in 1962 giving federal workers the right to collectively bargain, which prompted state and local governments to follow suit.

“For 20 years after Kennedy’s order, public sector union rights were not controversial,” McMartin writes. “To the contrary, they enjoyed bipartisan support — even from conservatism’s leading light, Ronald Reagan. Reagan, as governor of California, presided over the extension of collective bargaining rights to state and local workers in 1968.”

Since then, McMartin writes, “bipartisan support for public sector bargaining has eroded,” a fact the Georgetown University history teacher seems at a loss to understand.

But for the vast majority of taxpayers, there’s plenty of reason for it. We’ve learned that police, firefighters, teachers and other government workers who get to retire in their early to mid-50s with guaranteed pensions effectively retire as millionaires, because that’s the value of the pensions they can expect to collect. Many of them also pay little or nothing for health insurance in retirement.

Although less than 7 percent of the private-sector work force belongs to unions, more than 36 percent of government workers do. They’ve become a powerful force for ever-expanding government because it requires larger government payrolls.

Government officials have used the public purse to buy worker peace by making lavish promises for future benefits. Decades later, the costs of these benefits are coming due, resulting in squeezed government budgets and higher taxes and debts.

No president did more for collective bargaining than Franklin D. Roosevelt. Yet even he opposed government collective bargaining.

Most Americans are seeing the problems Roosevelt foresaw when he warned against government collective bargaining.

This is the reason for the bipartisan erosion of support for government collective bargaining . Protecting their politically connected interests is the reason for the government-worker backlash against citizens and leaders who want to end the problems Roosevelt predicted.

Steve Stanek is a research fellow at the Heartland Institute in Chicago.