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EDITORIAL: More evidence of the pitfalls of collective bargaining in the public sector

Public-sector collective bargaining has long been exposed as a loser for the taxpayers. The “bargaining” process puts government on both sides of the negotiating table, with nobody representing the ones who actually pay those salaries and benefits.

But two recent studies, one in law enforcement and one in public education, reveal that collective bargaining does damage well beyond inflating costs. Both studies were noted in a recent Reason.com piece by Jonathan H. Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University.

Mr. Adler first pointed to the Dec. 31 report “The Effect of Collective Bargaining Rights on Law Enforcement: Evidence from Florida” by a trio of University of Chicago law professors. The study dissected the effects of a 2003 Florida Supreme Court decision extending collective bargaining rights to county deputy sheriffs. The results point to less accountability in the form of more misconduct, as noted in the abstract:

“Our primary result is that collective bargaining rights lead to about a 27 percent increase in complaints of officer misconduct for the typical sheriff’s office. This result is robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls. The time pattern of the estimated effect, along with an analysis using agency-specific trends, suggests that it is not attributable to pre-existing trends.”

In other words, the misconduct trend is directly attributable to the enactment of collective bargaining.

On the education front, Mr. Adler noted the Jan. 6 annual meeting of the American Economic Association, which included one session on how teacher unions affect student achievement. Several papers were presented at the session, including one titled “The Long Run Effects of Teacher Collective Bargaining.” That report, by two Cornell researchers, sought “to identify how exposure to teacher collective bargaining affects the long-run outcomes of students.”

They found that “teacher collective bargaining worsens the future labor market outcomes of students: living in a state that has a duty-to-bargain law for all 12 grade-school years reduces earnings by $800 (or 2 percent) per year and decreases hours worked by 0.50 hours per week.”

This represents an earnings reduction of nearly $200 billion annually in the United States. Further, the authors noted evidence of lower employment rates because of lower labor force participation, among other issues, and that men and nonwhites bear the brunt of the negative effects. As the authors succinctly stated, “Our results suggest laws that support collective bargaining for teachers have adverse long-term labor market consequences for students.”

These studies indicate that in both law enforcement and public education, collective bargaining leads to a lack of accountability and shields poor performers to the detriment of students and taxpayers. That’s not a combination that serves the public well, further demonstrating that collective bargaining should have no place in the public sector.

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