Governors’ Bi-Partisan Message to Congress: Don’t Federalize Public-Safety Union Monopoly

### State Executives’ Successful 2009 Vetoes of Big Labor Power Grabs Under Attack in U.S. Capitol

Two years ago this month, the U.S. House of Representatives rubber-stamped Congressman Dale Kildee’s (D-Mich.) cynically mislabeled “Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act.†This Big Labor-backed legislation would have established a new federal mandate imposing “exclusive representation,†i.e. monopoly bargaining, over state and local police and firefighters and other public-safety employees nationwide. However, intense public opposition, mobilized primarily by the National Right to Work Committee, prevented the Kildee bill from passing the Senate during the 2007-2008 Congress.

It has long been a goal of government union officials to wield broad monopoly-bargaining power over state and local employees across the nation. Mr. Kildee’s bill, which he has reintroduced in the current Congress as H.R. 413, would be a first step towards achieving this objective.

Hundreds of thousands of firemen, policemen and paramedics who up to now have been free under state law to negotiate on their own behalf would be stripped of that freedom by H.R. 413. It may accurately be labeled as the “Police/Fire Monopoly-Bargaining Bill.†And, if the experience of states that have enacted similar public-sector monopoly-bargaining laws is any indication, H.R. 413 would lead to substantially heavier burdens for taxpayers.

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