I am a union man, born and bred and I'll die a union man.

[bhunter]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Private sector unions have to bargain with employers with the knowledge that they cannot make demands that will render the employer unprofitable. The employers obviously have to consider this as well. There is a natural (and desirable) tension between company profitability and employee pay/benefits.

With public sector unions, they're negotiating without this tension to balance profitability with employee compensation. Sitting on the other side of the table are politicians (and their surrogates) who are more than willing to buy votes. In many cases, they buy these votes with generous future benefits that are not paid out on their watch. They balance their budgets (and brag about it) while passing the costs for these concessions to future administrations.

Here's a good article on the subject from Fareed Zakaria, a very intelligent guy and hardly a conservative.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...117244,00.html

Excellent Fiin. That saved some typing.