Link to article from The Federalist:
From the article:
“I
decided to find some of these families and tell their stories. What I didn’t
expect to uncover was a culture of overwhelming fear and intimidation related
to unions. This is especially true in the state’s southern coal counties, where
organized labor has a long, proud, and sometimes violent history. Some West
Virginians’ palpable fear in speaking freely is something I’ve never before
encountered in America. It is, in fact, much closer to the corruption culture
I’ve experienced in my 22 years of charity work in post-communist Romania.”
And,
“Yet
whatever one’s feelings about private-sector unions, it’s important to note the
clear distinction between a union that organizes against a corporate boss and
one that organizes against
the voting public. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt, a friend to private-sector
unions, believed that a “strike of public employees manifests nothing less than
an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their
demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government
by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable.””
And,
“It
is particularly brazen for unions to strike not merely over their members’
salaries and benefits, but over public policy issues like school choice, which
are properly left to the people’s elected representatives. Essentially, public
unions have become a political lobbying group with a superpower: the ability to
bring a crucial public service monopoly to its knees. It’s funny how many of
the same people who cried foul over the recent federal government shutdown—for
which Congress and the president were answerable—have no qualms about similar
shutdowns at the behest of unelected lobbyists.”
