Will Govt Unions Go Bust?

After the 2010 Tea Party elections, American politics was consumed with disputes over public sector labor relations. To balance their budgets, governors across the country demanded that public employees accept salary freezes, furlough days, and less generous pension and healthcare benefits. Republican Chris Christie of New Jersey and Democrats Jerry Brown of California and Andrew Cuomo of New York wrestled with government workers' unions over wage and benefit concessions that would close budget deficits without raising taxes. Other governors, such as Republicans Scott Walker in Wisconsin and John Kasich in Ohio, sought to go further and enact structural reforms eliminating collective bargaining with most state workers' unions, halting government collection of union dues, and giving agency managers greater workplace discretion.