Jerry Pournelle hits upon a fundamental problem of state employment.

It is essentially the way the classical political philosophers would have predicted that democracy would go. It’s not so much that the voters vote themselves largess from the public treasury, although that certainly happens; it is that those with a particular interest, such as civil servant including teachers and prison guards unions will always organize effectively while those who are affected less directly won’t, and the result will go in one direction. We’re certainly getting an illustration of that in California.

By employing a large segment of the citizenry you create incentive for those employees to politically organize so that they can protect their positions. As a result this large group of state employees are able to wield considerable power in securing their jobs even when the state faces an economic downturn. On the whole this makes government less elastic and as a result much less capable of adapting. I would full support structural changes forbiding state employees from organizing into a political entity.

The justification given for why employees must unionize is not applicable to employees of the state. Unions justify their existence as an organizational structure that protects workers from the whims of management. The idea being that since the state will not interfere with how management deals with its employees, unions force management to treat its workers fairly. However, in the case of state employees, management is in fact the citizenry. Thus, state employees already have a way of protecting themselves from the whims of management. Its called voting. If employees feel as if they are not being treated fairly by the management they can always go to the people of that government and persuade them to vote for policies that treat them better.

Since their is no reasonable justification for public unions they should be banned by law. This should give the state more control over managing its budget. However, more importantly, it will help stop the gradual process of the state becoming the primary employer of the citizenry. By making it more difficult to secure state employment indefinitely, it allows overall state employment to ebb and flow to match the times. Which diffs significantly with the current setup in which once the state acquires employees it becomes difficult to shed those jobs.

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