Should we federalize Alaska’s public-safety union monopoly?

By Stan Greer
Special to the Examiner | 9/10/08 3:18 PM

Thanks to John McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, many people across the country are for the first time learning about how her state’s law authorizing union “exclusive” bargaining over public-safety and other government employees works in practice.

And it’s not a pretty picture.

The Last Frontier’s public-sector labor law, like the labor laws of many other states, hands police, firefighter and other union officials monopoly power to speak for all public-safety employees, including union members and nonmembers alike, on a wide range of workplace issues.

Such monopoly-bargaining laws, which strip individual employees of the right to bargain for themselves, are clearly harmful to taxpayers.

They are plainly beneficial, however, to bad employees like Alaska state trooper Mike Wooten.

Palin critics nationwide have been bringing up Wooten, her former brother-in-law, a lot recently, because, supposedly, the governor applied improper pressure on his boss, Walt Monegan, to fire him.

But fair-minded people who find out a little about Wooten are bound to conclude that the real scandal is why he wasn’t fired well before Palin became governor.

By the time Mrs. Palin was inaugurated in December 2006, an internal state trooper investigation had concluded he had used a Taser on his 10-year-old stepson, illegally shot a moose, drunk beer in a patrol car, and told others his father-in-law would “eat a f***ing lead bullet” if he helped his daughter get an attorney for the divorce.

Apparently because of intense public-safety union lobbying on Mr. Wooten’s behalf, instead of being fired for breaking the law and violating trooper policies, he was suspended for a grand total of 10 days in March 2006.

Even this slap on the wrist was considered excessive by the union brass, who then convinced the evidently intimidated head of the troopers to reduce the suspension to five days.

“Why,” as California lawyer/blogger Bill Dyer recently put the question, “is that miscreant still wearing a badge?”

The sad answer is, in states with public-sector monopoly-bargaining laws, government executives are not free simply to fire public employees for misconduct — even if that misconduct has been confirmed, as was the case with Wooten, by an extensive internal investigation.

Union bosses who thought even a 10-day suspension was too severe a punishment for a trooper who had, over his mother’s loud protests, Tased a child and made death threats would certainly have fought tooth and nail to keep Wooten from being fired.

And all too often in such cases, government managers decide they’d rather kowtow to union bosses than face a drawn-out public battle.
Public-safety monopoly bargaining is now Alaskans’ problem, and the problem of citizens of other states whose elected officials have foolishly passed a law granting union officials this privilege.

But soon Congress could make it the whole country’s problem.

In July 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives rubber-stamped H.R. 980, legislation that would federalize the public-safety monopoly-bargaining system that has kept Wooten on the job, even though, in addition to his confirmed offenses, he has also allegedly committed a host of others, such as driving drunk on the job and interfering with a driving under the influence investigation involving his girlfriend.
Senate companion legislation (S. 2123) that would also mandate public-safety monopoly bargaining nationwide is now supported by a majority of senators, and union lobbyists are close to nailing down the 60 votes they need to shut down right-to-work efforts to block it through a meaningful debate on the Senate floor.

McCain is on the record as opposing legislation like S. 2123/H.R. 980.

However, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, who is now leading in the polls, is a co-sponsor of S. 2123 and has publicly vowed to fight for enactment of such a measure if he is elected to the White House. But the increasingly well-known Mike Wooten story presents an excellent illustration of why Congress and the president should under no circumstances federalize Alaska’s public-safety monopoly-bargaining system.

Obama and his running mate Joseph Biden Jr. (another S. 2123 co-sponsor) should explain why they want to help Big Labor set up roadblocks to the firing of public-safety officers who break the law and violate department policies.

And it’s also time to ask every candidate running for the House and Senate this year to take a public stand in opposition to legislation like S. 2123/H.R. 980.

Mr. Greer is the senior research associate for the National Institute for Labor Relations Research in Springfield, Va. This is adapted from an essay in the August issue of Labor Watch.

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