Public sector unions as a distinct category
The episodes treat public service unions as a different kind of organization from private sector unions, not merely a variant of the same thing. Bob Zadek introduces the distinction by asking what justifies devoting an entire show to public service unions, and Philip K. Howard answers that the collective bargaining power of public employee unions came in only in the late 1960s, swept in with the rights revolution because union leaders wanted more power, whereas private unions during the Progressive Era had an origin story of factories abusing child labor, endless work hours and horrible safety records. Howard says there was never any need for public employee unions and calls the difference the difference between a fish and a mammal Government by the Unions, of the Unions, for the Unions (2023).
Howard gives four differences. The incentives are completely different: in a trade union context both sides have a vested interest in the viability of the enterprise, because if they demand too much the company will move out of town or go out of business, whereas with public unions the government cannot move. In a private context the trade union is arguing about the split between capital and labor, how to divvy up profit, but in the public context, because the government cannot move and the officials are not paying for it, the taxpayers are, unions can demand anything they can get away with. There is also an ethical difference: Howard cites Franklin Roosevelt’s statement that the process of collective bargaining cannot be transferred to the public sector, because public employees have a sworn duty of loyalty to serve the public rather than to negotiate against the public interest. Finally, Howard says trade union negotiations are an honest adversarial process where collusion between management and labor would be unlawful, while public union negotiations are nothing but collusion: the unions amass power, get people elected, staff campaigns and send people in buses to knock on doors, and then the official gets elected and comes to the bargaining table, sitting on the same side rather than the other side. Zadek supplements this by noting that Howard did not mean the conduct was illegal, only cynical, and Howard agrees it would be illegal in the private sector but is not illegal in the public sector, though it is dishonest and not a good idea Government by the Unions, of the Unions, for the Unions (2023).
Ashley Varner makes a related distinction in the 2023 episode on the IRS, saying a private company has shareholders it is beholden to and customers it must provide a product they want to purchase, and even private membership organizations must prove their membership offers something worth paying for. She cites Roosevelt as loving private sector unions but opposing public sector unions because he said it was inherently unfair for union representatives to sit across the table from the politicians whose campaigns they directly support without the representation of the taxpayer who funds it all What the IRS’s Hiring Spree Means for You (2023).
The mechanism of influence
Zadek offers a historical account of how the arrangement developed. He identifies 1968 as a seminal year, when public sector local unions were given the right by statute to collectively bargain, and the 1970s, when that right was extended to state employees. Once government employees could collectively bargain, elected officials had an ally in the public sector unions because the unions could marshal bodies to help win elections. Zadek describes an unholy alliance between public sector unions and their employers, the elected officials: the unions raise dues on workers to build a war chest to help public officials win elections, and because the officials who get elected with union help give generous contracts, the union dues become ultimately paid by the employer, the states and municipalities. He calls the system unstoppable once developed, with governments run for the benefit of union members to the detriment of taxpayers who do not get a seat at the table. He notes that old-time union leaders like Samuel Gompers rejected public service unions, and that industrial union leaders in the 1930s and 1940s thought public service workers should not be in unions California Dreamin’ – About Sane Government (2013).
Varner describes the same dynamic in terms of campaign pressure, saying government sector employees are the single biggest funder of radical leftist politics in the country and have a guaranteed revenue stream because they have a huge workforce. She says the vast majority of those people have to pay union dues because they do not know they have an option, and that taxpayer dollars are paying union dues against our will, with those dues turned into politics. She quotes Biden telling union outfits on the 2020 campaign trail that he would be the most pro-union president the country has ever seen, and says unions can go to the Speaker of the House or the Majority Leader of the Senate or the President and say, remember who put you here, and if you want to keep your position you will do this and give us this new crop of dues deductions What the IRS’s Hiring Spree Means for You (2023).
Zadek frames the IRS expansion as a union story: the legislation funding roughly 87,000 new agents has a union component, and Varner says those agents are a guaranteed new crop of people who will pay into union dues campaign coffers. Zadek argues that public service unions have an advantage no other worker has, because if they want a raise they need only have the legislature enact legislation, and taxpayers have no choice What the IRS’s Hiring Spree Means for You (2023).
Janus, agency fees and compelled speech
The 2018 episode with Jonathan Tasini turns on the question of whether agency fees are compelled political speech. Zadek argues that when a union negotiates the highest wages for public service workers, it is in effect effecting a political decision, because money the state or local government or school system pays to teachers in a contract is money not paid for police protection or roads or sewers. He constructs the example of Mark Janus believing his community should allocate more money to police protection and less to education, and says that by being compelled to support a union negotiating for a bigger piece of the pie for workers, Janus supports a political position he does not endorse The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
Tasini responds that people wear different hats in life: as a citizen he has the right to vote for Bob as his legislator or governor because Bob believes the budget should be allocated a certain way, but in his life as a worker he has an obligation, and if he felt strongly he should perhaps resign his job. Tasini says you have to pay for the service, and that taking the question out of the realm of ideology about how money should be spent in the state should make sense to people. Zadek presses the point by analogy to health insurance under Obamacare, where he says he would be compelled to buy coverage for maternity or other illnesses he will never get, and argues that what Tasini describes as a benefit, higher wages to Janus, may be a detriment Janus does not want, so the free rider concept has an asterisk The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
Tasini answers that he doubts any of these people who say they do not want to pay union fees then say they do not want the wages and benefits that come with them, and that finding a single person who turns back all those wages and new health benefits is unlikely. He compares the situation to the income tax form, which has no series of boxes to check off things you want to pay for and things you do not, and gives his own example of opposing military spending while still having to pay for it. He says living in an organized society involves give and take, and some things happen that we do not want The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
Unions and the middle class
Zadek states his position that he wishes there were no public service workers’ unions such as the teachers and AFSCME and SEIU, and says he sees no collective benefit, noting that unions representing federal government workers cannot negotiate wages on their behalf and cannot strike. He asks Tasini what public good beyond the private good of higher wages justifies active and powerful public employee unions The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
Tasini answers that he starts from the belief that every single person should have a union, and that collective bargaining injects certainty in the workplace for both private and public sectors, so that supervisors and employers know what is expected of them and how to behave. He says a lot of what collective bargaining institutionalized happened in the 20th century to tamp down wildcat strikes, with millions of people out on the streets in the 1920s and 1930s largely because of the Great Depression and systemic poverty, and that collective bargaining was put in place to have some sort of labor peace. He then argues that if you took a graph of the decline of unionization over the last 30 or 40 years, it almost exactly mirrors the increase in inequality and the decline in wages, and says it is just a fact that unions have basically built the middle class. He says union wages are much higher, that individuals cannot go out and bargain for themselves and get a decent wage, and that flat wages despite low unemployment are because there are not unions in America. He contrasts the United States with prosperous countries in Western Europe with very high rates of unionization and social protections, saying in this country people do not have real healthcare, real pensions, or decent wages to pay their bills, which he attributes to the decline in unionization The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
Zadek signals his disagreement before a break, saying he is not so in agreement that unions contributed to the middle class, and that if they did it was an artificial contribution, but the excerpt ends before his rebuttal The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
Across episodes: the same argument, extended
The same question — whether public sector unions are a distinct and problematic kind of organization — is argued across the 2013, 2018, 2023 and 2023 episodes, and what changes is the occasion rather than the argument. In 2013 Zadek and Steve Greenhut treat public sector unions as the cause of California’s fiscal distortion, with Zadek offering the 1968 and 1970s statutory grants of bargaining rights as the seminal events and the prison guards as the vivid explanation. In 2018 the occasion is Janus, and the argument shifts to whether agency fees are compelled political speech, with Tasini supplying the strongest counter-argument in the excerpts, that unions built the middle class and that collective bargaining brought labor peace. In the 2023 episodes the occasion is the IRS hiring expansion, and Varner and Howard extend the same critique to the federal workforce, with Howard supplying the four-part taxonomy of differences and Varner supplying the campaign-pressure account. The later treatment is more systematic than the earlier one, but the excerpts show no resolution of the underlying disagreement between Zadek and Tasini.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the holding of Janus v. AFSCME, which amendment it turned on, or the outcome for Mark Janus. They do not give the name of the legislation funding the IRS expansion, the state in which any city mentioned is located, or the founding date of any union. The 2018 excerpt breaks off mid-sentence at the end of the section on CEO pay, and the 2023 IRS excerpt ends with Zadek asking a question that is not answered in the excerpt.