Will Big Labor Congress Prime the Pump For More State and Local Tax Hikes?

### Federally Mandated Union Monopoly Over Public-Safety Employees Dangerous For Taxpayers

Union-label Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is expected soon to bring to the U.S. House floor legislation that would federally mandate union monopoly bargaining over state and local public-safety employees across the country. H.R. 413, the Police/Fire Monopoly-Bargaining Bill, was introduced in January by Congressman Dale Kildee (D-Mich.). Mr. Kildee’s cynically misleading label for the measure is the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act of 2009.

H.R. 413 would rewrite the public-sector labor laws of the vast majority of the 50 states to make them more supportive of so-called “exclusive” union bargaining in the public sector.

In states that don’t currently authorize public-safety monopoly bargaining, H.R. 413 would impose it, denying localities the option to refuse to grant a single union the power to speak for all front-line employees, including those who don’t want to join. And in most states that already authorize public-safety union monopoly bargaining, H.R. 413 would widen its scope.

For example, under current Massachusetts law, state police and other state government union officials wield monopoly power to negotiate employees’ pay with state agencies, but do not have any control over employees’ health insurance plans. But H.R. 413 would force Massachusetts legislators either to rewrite state law to grant government union officials monopoly-bargaining power over the health plans of all public-safety workers employed at the state level, or allow federal bureaucrats to do the same thing for them.

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