President Trump is on a roll. Hitting the ground running and causing the Democrats and left-wing interests to cower in fear or duck for cover, Trump’s executive orders are cleaning house with break-neck speed. His commitment to cutting the waste, fraud, and abuse in government, plus his larger vision to decommission entire departments, is the much-needed cleanser for what ails this country.
One concern, though: MAGA populists are beginning to pander to the unions, especially the public sector unions. Such rapprochements will cause more harm than good if Trump is not careful. Then-Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge rebuked the founder of the American Federation of Labor Samuel Gompers when the Boston police department went on strike: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for all his progressive leanings, opposed public sector unionism, as well. Trump needs to heed those warnings and think bigger. Don’t just fire a bunch of useless, overpaid workers: take out the public sector unions!
“Wouldn’t that be unfair to the workers?” some might counter. “Shouldn’t every American worker retain the right to assemble? Labor union participation isn’t a bad thing, right?” Public sector unionism was a creation of the progressive movement. Starting with the civil service reforms of the late 1800s, professional bureaucracies emerged following the end of partisanship and spoils system machinations. However, a frustrated public workforce, still unprotected from arbitrary political retaliation, chafed for representation, and they formed unions for their protection.
It was a noble idea, but it has reached an ignoble end. Public sector unions now have limited interests, ignoring taxpayers and demanding unlimited money. At the same time, every individual, family, and business has to cut costs or lay off employees to make ends meet. Power tends to corrupt, and public sector unions have grabbed unparalleled power, pushing all kinds of left-wing policy goals, including the Green New Deal, pro-Palestinian agitation, and defunding of the police. When political power becomes an end in itself, and political interests benefit an organization rather than looking out for the greater good of all, moral and financial collapse inevitably follows.
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Trump has many examples to draw on to combat public sector unionism.
Take Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Fresh off the 2010 Tea Party Wave, which washed across the United States and swept Republicans to power, wiping out all Democratic victories over the previous four years, Walker cut away at massive budget deficits. In 2011, Wisconsin lawmakers lamented that if they didn't tackle skyrocketing pension and benefits costs and institute longstanding structural reforms, Wisconsin would devolve into debt-ridden and pension-addled California. Governor Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature in Madison stood up to ruthless labor unions throughout the state—and the country!--who launched illegal strikes and other work actions. Massive protests invaded the Wisconsin State Capitol, and the labor unions even picketed outside of Walker’s parents’ home!
Despite the political maelstrom and union dramas, Walker and the Republicans enacted the Act 10 reforms, which severely curtailed collective bargaining, required increased payments from public sector unions into the pension funds, and freed up local governments to renegotiate contracts and engage in more competitive bidding for pensions and benefits. These reforms saved massive amounts of money and cured the structural deficits in the Wisconsin budget without raising taxes or laying off workers.
Since then, more states have tackled the subversive stranglehold of public sector collective bargaining. In 2017, Iowa enacted similar broad reforms, curtailing the power of these left-wing, fifth-column political interests. In 2023, Governor DeSantis of Florida signed legislation that imposed higher certification thresholds for public sector unions and enacted paycheck protections. Florida’s public sector unions now must collect the dues themselves rather than requiring the school districts to garnish their employee wages.
This year, broader reforms have broken out in the state of Utah, which has cracked down on collective bargaining for all public employees, including police officers and firefighters. This is a huge step in union reform. In contrast, Governor Walker didn't want to touch the police and fire collective bargaining units. Why? He feared their unlawful strikes would have completely crippled the state. In contrast to those previous concessions, today, even liberal-leaning Republican Governors like Spencer Cox are standing up to all public sector unions how things have changed!
Public sector unionism is a bane and a corruption that can no longer be ignored. President Trump has an incredible opportunity to break the power of these labor combinations in our federal government, too! President Trump already repealed an often-abused executive order issued by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1967. Affirmative action will no longer be a corrupting guiding principle determining which contractors get hired and which American citizen gets brought into the civil service.
There is another executive order that President Trump needs to repeal: Executive Order 10988. President John F. Kennedy signed this order allowed federal public sector workers to form collective marketing units. And Washington has never recovered. Part of the Deep State persists is due to the Deep Federal Bureaucracy protected by the collective bargaining process! It's almost impossible to fire an incompetent federal employee and, therefore, it is almost impossible to institute efficiencies and innovations in the federal government. All of this needs to be tackled, and with the stroke of a pen through another executive order, President Trump could make short work of the collective bargaining boa constrictor squeezing the life (and money) out of our constitutional republic.
Trump 2.0 cannot ignore the collective bargaining problem. Bureaucrats in the FBI, CIA, and other alphabet-soup agencies have spent their time (and our money) violating our rights rather than fulfilling their duties. Imagine how much more waste, fraud, graft, and excessive spending would be removed from Washington, DC, if federal public sector unions were put out of business and federal workers could no longer engage in abusive collective bargaining tactics to get their way at the expense of all American citizens!
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