FedSoc Blog

This morning at FedSoc's Annual Faculty Conference, Professor John McGinnis offered his criticisms of public sector unions. Pointing to the opposition to public sector unions from Franklin D. Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia, McGinnis claimed that it was an axiom of Progressive politics that, while private sector unions serve a beneficial purpose, public sector unions do not.  McGinnis agreed with that view and argued that for structural reasons, public sector unions exacerbate what is an inherent problem of politics: the diffuse lose out to the concentrated.  Public sector unions bargain against politicians, who are already responsible to taxpayers. McGinnis sees two main costs of public sector unions: 1) Greater compensation and job security for the employees, along with larger pensions (which politicians like because they are less transparent exactions, the effects of which are often not felt for years); and, more important, 2) Public sector unions degrade the quality of public goods, particularly services that help the less well off members of society.  Public sector unions prevent the experimentation and innovation that would ultimately improve the delivery of public goods.  This, he explained, was at the root of the Progressive opposition to public sector unions.