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Pro Case

Resolved: On balance, government employee labor unions have a positive impact in the United States.

This month’s debate is centered not around unions themselves – but rather around government employee labor unions such as firefighters’ or teachers’ groups. These groups together account for just over fifty percent of the American labor union pool, and their effects are a matter of controversy. Since the resolution questions their effects on balance, the question is not whether there exist potential positive or negative impacts, but whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. We argue that this is the case.

1) Government Employee Unions have superior access to critical information.
It is our contention that this information’s value to society exceeds the supposed costs of the higher wages for which labor unions are able to lobby – the reasoning for this parallels any other justification for taxation. Just as taxes support services essential to a functioning society such as police and fire coverage, social costs for the support of our safety and enjoyment are acceptable. There are two supporting warrants for this assertion.

1. The employees experience the civic duties firsthand. In a non-unionized environment, the information provided by employees must move vertically: up through official channels at the discretion of managers who may or may not fully appreciate the importance of information brought to them. Unions allow information to move laterally instead. This means that a union helps those serving the public to share information with those serving the public, as well as to more quickly bring up matters of concern such as inefficient resource allocation or improper training of incoming employees. This is important, and the public should value the ability of a union to make everybody more efficient.

2. Unions are excellent aggregators of information. Aside from the lateral movement itself, the nature of unions to look out for their own members motivates such groups to conduct surveys and to gather information more quickly than public management would on its own. This aggregation of information also allows the aforementioned laterally dispersed knowledge to come from a single advocate: when one firefighter learns that his or her community is hazardous, they speak with one voice. A union standing behind said firefighter can bring a wide catchment of resources to bear and effectively lobby the public with such information, making our everyday citizens more informed about the government which serves them.

2) Government Employee labor unions improve the well-being of members throughout the community. Both employee and citizen are better off under unionization as the employee retains critical job security and the citizen is more effectively cared for by intelligent and concerned members of government. This warrant is also supported by two further sub-points.

1. The employees themselves need protection. It’s easy to look at the anti-union literature which complains of supposed cronyism and to assume that unions are, in fact, greedy. As always, perspective matters when evaluating the merit of labor unions. These groups are made up of a substantial number of real citizens, and they deserve their own interests to be represented as well – given that they are subject to the whims of political figures promising enormous slashes to the budget, a union balances the populist rage which threatens their very job security.

2. The employee unions incentivize civic participation. A simple principle of economics is the rule of supply and demand. In a nutshell, a part of the rule explains that the higher price offered to those that would supply a good or service, the more that people will choose to provide that good or service. Thus, when the public sector labor union “raises the price of labor” within government, it has the effect of drawing a larger talent pool to work in government. Absent unions, bureaucracy pays little and understandably, can’t draw top talent. Unions, by protecting the wages of those who run our cities, give more reason for our top innovators to enter into the public service.

It is often easier to measure the direct effects of labor unions in terms of dollar prices, but the value they generate for our community is vastly greater once a good depth of consideration is granted them. Despite the media controversy that would paint a labor union as selfish and self-serving, it is anything but. Please let your ballot reflect the noble goals of these groups – and support their aim by recognizing their right to exist.

Con Case

Resolved: On balance, government employee labor unions have a positive impact in the United States.

This month’s debate is centered not around unions themselves – but rather around government employee labor unions such as firefighters’ or teachers’ groups. These groups together account for just over fifty percent of the American labor union pool, and their effects are a matter of controversy. Since the resolution questions their effects on balance, the question is not whether there exist potential positive or negative impacts, but whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. We argue that this is not the case.

1) Government Employee Labor Unions improperly allocate resources. This sole contention of the negative is centered around the assumption that the purpose of government is the redistribution of resources in a manner which best serves the public good. In order to best serve the public good, the efficiency of the government office is paramount. Labor unions add unnecessary costs which impact to fewer items available on the budget and higher costs to the taxpayer.

1. Labor Unions increase the cost of public services. The reason for the existence of labor unions is that the employees within them believe that they can collect more resources together than alone – the people from whom a union collects resources are taxpayers. In other words, public services which ought to spend taxpayer money on taxpayer services instead allocate funding to an anti-competitive collusion by workers who deliberately sidestep voter authority to raise their own wages.

2. Labor Unions in Government are not checked by the profit motive. Simply put, when a private company is unionized, negotiations with union members is always limited to profit concerns. When Boeing negotiates with its members, the bottom line is an important matter for both sides, as union members don’t want to demand so much that the organization fails. In government, deficits are possible and the profit motive isn’t a check on union demands. The only check is political viability, but the labor union’s ability to lobby in political campaigns makes it difficult to keep spending fully in check.

3. Labor Unions are existentially opposed to efficiency. This is not to say that labor unions have not been supportive of minor tweaks such as inventory reorganizing – however, since a labor union wants to protect the jobs of its members, such a union is naturally at odds with the restructuring of an organization. The nature of a labor union is to support leadership which protects its members, and the result is that bureaucracy is protected above its goals. Even worse is the immeasurable lack of investment in public management alternatives, since the power of labor unions is sufficient to deter even a serious attempt at organizational restructuring.

4. Labor Unions create a political cost to what should be a nonpolitical action. It really isn’t a novel idea to suggest that the public resources should go to the public. Even if labor unions could hypothetically justify the increase in wages for their own members, adding a political dimension to the public sector by creating a voting block and holding public services ransom with threats such as a general strike politicizes the most important of services, tying up resources in legal battles and using taxpayer funds to lobby for an increase in funding from taxpayers. This political conflict is not justifiable – government is already too political.

In conclusion, we the con recognize that labor unions may have some positive effect – but the effect is reserved largely for the members of the unions themselves and at the cost of the general public’s well-being. This is no justification for the vast costs imposed upon us, and thus warrants your ballot’s consideration today.

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