As we mentioned not long ago, long-time lefty columnist and blogger Mickey Kaus is running against Barbara Boxer for the Senate in California. In one of those cases of politics making strange bedfellows, Kaus has taken a position that we here at the blog heartily support. He stands against the corrupting influence of public employees unions. Kaus is an otherwise standard lefty, but on public employees unions we find common cause with him. Certainly we here at the blog would rather see Chick Devore take that Senate seat, but if we have to choose between Mickey Kaus and Barbara Boxer, we proudly support Kaus.

Here is a great piece that Kaus recently published in the Los Angeles Times…

-By Robert “Mickey” Kaus

This piece originally appeared in the Unions have benefited the country, but changes in the economy have made mainstream unionism itself an impediment to growth.

Do you have to love labor unions to be a good Democrat? That was the question raised last year by the unpopular bailouts of unionized Detroit automakers. It’s been raised again this year by California’s budget crisis, created at least in part by generous pensions for unionized public employees. I think the answer is no. It’s time for Democrats, even liberal Democrats, to start looking at unions and unionism with deep skepticism.

I don’t mean we should embrace the right-wing view that unions are always wrong. Unions have done a lot for this country; they were especially important when giant employers tried to take advantage of a harsh economy in the last century, not only to keep down wages but to speed up assembly lines and, worse, force workers to risk their lives and health. If you think about it, unions have been the opposite of selfish. By modern standards they’ve been stunningly altruistic, lobbying for job safety rules and portable pensions and Social Security and all sorts of government services that, if they were really selfish, they might have opposed, because if the government will guarantee that your workplace is safe and your retirement is secure, well, then you don’t need a union so much, do you?

At the same time unions were winning government protections, changes in the economy were making mainstream unionism itself an impediment to growth. We are no longer living in a World War II world in which big, slow-moving bureaucratic organizations are the engines of prosperity. Only fast-moving, flexible organizations prosper today. Technology changes too rapidly. Firms have to be able to make snap decisions: expand here, contract there, change the way they work every day. That was the lesson of Japan — how 1,000 little improvements in productivity can add up to a big advantage.

But our union system is stuck in 1950, when it was considered a glorious achievement to generate thick books full of work rules that restricted what could be changed. At some automobile plants, every position on the assembly line was considered a distinct job classification. You wouldn’t want an “Installer Level II” to have to do the job of an “Installer Level I,” would you? Then came the competition from Japanese factories, where employees spent their time building cars instead of work rules, and there was only one job classification: “production.” If something needed doing, you did it. Is it any wonder the Japanese cleaned Detroit’s clock for two decades?

Keep in mind that Detroit’s union, the United Auto Workers, is one of our best. It’s democratic. It’s not corrupt. Its leadership has often been visionary. Yet working within our archaic union system, it still helped bring our greatest industry to its knees. And the taxpayers were stuck with the bill for bailing it out, while UAW members didn’t even take a cut of $1 an hour in their $28-an-hour basic pay. How many Californians would like $27-an-hour manufacturing jobs? Actually, there was a good auto factory in California, the NUMMI plant in Fremont. It got sucked under when GM went broke. Those 4,500 jobs are gone.

Yet the answer of most union leaders to the failure of 1950s unionism has been more 1950s unionism. This isn’t how we’re going to get prosperity back. But it’s the official Democratic Party dogma. No dissent allowed.

… read the rest at the Los Angeles Times, it is well worth the time.

Robert “Mickey” Kaus, a blogger and the author of the End of Equality, is a candidate for U.S. senator in the Democratic primary. http://kausforsenate.com/

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