Tags: public employee labor unions, labor unions,

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

Introduction

The April Public Forum topic deals with the topic of whether or not unions of government employee laborers have a net positive impact on the United States.

Before examining both sides of the resolution, let’s break down some basic terms.

In this context, a “union” is generally understood to be “an organization of employees formed to bargain with the employer; "you have to join the union in order to get a job”. When employees are part of unions, the union negotiates on behalf of the collective group of employees/union members and to negotiate salaries/overtime and benefits (health care, vacation time, pensions, etc).  A “pension” is essentially a salary that an employee draws for the rest of his or her life once he or she retires.

The resolution specifically refers to pubic employee labor unions. This specific reference is important because there is a large conceptual difference between a union of public employees (employees that work for a level of government – federal, state, or local) and a union of employees that work for a private company. The difference is that employees of a private company know that they can only ask for so much in wages/benefits or those will start to threaten the viability of the company. Government employees, however, can ask for almost anything that they can get, knowing that the bill will simply have to be paid by the tax payers.

The issue of public employee union wages and benefits being payed by taxpayers is what gives rise to this resolution.  A declining economy/tax base is giving rise to growing government deficits that are being compounded by large obligations on the part of governments to pay (high) government employee union wages/benefits.  This growing fiscal gap is increasing animosity toward public employee unions, and it is what likely gave rise to this topic and makes it timely.

The final important concept/phrase in the resolution is “on the United States.” This is important to highlight because it keeps the question macro/large – what is the net impact of these unions on the country as a whole, not necessarily on individual states or counties (though these collective smaller impacts are what determine the “on balance” impact “on the United States.”

Arguments Against Public Employee Unions

Since criticism of public employee unions is what gave rise to the topic and since most of the easily accessible general literature is critical of them, I’ll start with these arguments. 

High wages/benefits. There is good evidence that public employee unions have successfully pushed for wage and benefit increases that far exceed those that are available in the private sector.  The most significant area for attack is pensions – the salaries that employees essentially get for life once they have reached retirement age. More and more evidence says that public employees are retiring in their 50s with pensions that they can keep for the rest of their lives and that the pensions often pay upwards of $100,000.   Since the investments that retirement money is often put into are not very good, the taxpayer often ends up footing the bill since the pensions are guaranteed.

Deficit spending. The imbalance between pensions and wages is resulting in higher deficits and, when necessary, cuts in government services. Since most states cannot run deficits, cuts in services or tax increases become inevitable.

Higher taxes.  Government salaries and benefits are largely paid for out of taxes (with some of the costs paid for by investments). As government costs for wages and benefits increase, so will taxes.  Teams should argue that tax increases are bad – they undermine they ability for businesses to invest in new products, they discourage people from moving into particular areas, and they undermine the amount of money that is available to invest in the private economy.

Future generations. If governments do run deficits, taxes need to finance and pay down the deficit are passed on to future generations. Most consider it inequitable/unfair to force today’s expenditures on to future generations.

Corruption/Snowball. The basic argument here is that union power continues to grow because the unions give money to politicians who support unions, creating a snowball effect.  For example, many people argue that the unions gave heavily to Obama and that Obama is in turn spending stimulus money in ways that help unions. This creates a snowball effect because unions that have more money can subsequently give more to campaigns that support them.

Threats to democracy.  The democracy argument is really just the corruption argument with the added idea that having unions heavily influence elections undermines democracy.

When debating teams that argue that teacher unions are good, you do have to be careful about how you answer these arguments, particularly in front of teacher judges. When answering these arguments, you do not want to argue that teachers are overpaid and not deserving of the benefits that they receive!  Instead focus on how some teachers are incompetent and unions prevent them from being fired.

Arguments in Favor of Public Employee Unions

As stated, most of the general literature on the resolution is written from the perspective of criticizing public employee unions. Given the current economic climate, this is not surprising.

Despite this general problem, I do think there are ways for those who support public employee unions to win that they are on-balance desirable for the United States.

First, advocates must talk about specific unions.  Don’t let the debate get abstract, but instead argue that specific unions do very good things.  Since most of your judges are teachers, I’d start by arguing in favor of the teachers’ unions. There is strong evidence, for example, that these unions have increased the amount of money spent on education, that higher pay has attracted higher quality teachers, and that unions have worked to improve educational standards in schools. 

Given how important education is to the United States, you could argue that as long as you win that the net impact of unions on education is positive, you can argue that the on balance impact on the U.S. is positive.

Second, I’m sure that with a little additional research that you can find some evidence that talks about the benefits of unions in other areas – particularly police and fire unions. These workers provide safety for the public, and ensuring that governments can recruit strong workers for these jobs is critical.

Third, I’d argue that attacking public union workers, particularly firefighters, police officers, and teachers, is really a poor means to scapegoat the country’s economic problems on a set of important public servants.

For example, many people complain that the cost of health care is increasing too rapidly and that the taxpayer is forced to absorb a lot of the cost for workers in public unions. Well, the core cause of this problem is not the unions, but the escalating cost of health care. It seems to make more sense to argue for health care reform than to argue that public employee unions have a net negative impact on the United States. Similarly, many criticize the investments that have been made in public employee pensions – that some have been ridiculously risky – but this makes the case for financial services reform, not for bashing public employee unions.  And, taxes are going to increase for reasons independent of public employee unions (declining real estate prices, high unemployment, entitlement (Medicare & Medicaid) spending, and high defense spending). One cannot seriously argue that the fiscal situation in the US would be sound if it wasn’t for those over-paid public employee labor workers.

Generally, I’d argue that all of the problems that the other side argues are caused by public employee unions are caused by other factors and that it is wrong to blame teachers, police officers, and fire fighters for these ills. After all, it is these groups of individuals that protect the public safety and educate our youth. Without them, the U.S. would not be in very good shape.

Specifically when your judge is a public school teacher who may likely belong to a union, you should really emphasize how unions have improved schools and delivered the pay and benefits to teachers that they deserve. These arguments will not only be generally persuasive to teachers, but it will force your opponents to argue against teacher unions – argue that teachers are too highly paid and undeserving of the benefits that they receive!

Linkages to Other Topics and Arguments

Another way to approach affirmative and negative arguments is to find other policies that public sector unions support or oppose and argue that those policies are desirable or undesirable.  Examples:

Merit pay.  There is evidence that unions block merit pay – the focus of a previous PF topic.  You could simply argue that unions block merit pay and that it is either good or bad.

Charter schools. Teacher unions are generally opposed to charter schools/engage in significant efforts to block them. You could argue that charter schools are either good or bad.