T. Frank on Public Employees

excerpt from The Wrecking Crew by Tom Frank, from the chapter entitled "The Best Public Servant is the Worst One:"

In the mythology of the American right, federal rank-and-file workers are villains whose wickedness is surpassed only by that of the Soviet Communists themselves. They have just four concerns in life, sneered the journalist Don Feder in 1985: "pay, pension sick leave and throwing around their not inconsiderable weight around. No one has to teach us to detest public workers. It comes naturally, by process of observation and experience. "

Their tendency to join unions makes these public workers even more detestable. Once organized, civil servants support liberals, both with votes and campaign contributions - and these liberals, once in office, return the favor by making generous concessions to their unionized employees. Or so it seemed, anwyay, back in the seventies wen everyone from teachers to trashmen was going on strike - and winning, too. In that unhappy decade, the conservative mind began to dimly perceive a diabolical scenario unfolding, a disastrous endgame in which its two greatest enemies came together as one: government remade as a tool of its unionized employees, who would use its tax power to plunder the hardworking businessman.

The famous "Prop 13" tax revolt that swept Californaia in 1978 was inspired at least partially by this doomsday vision, with the rebellion's leader thundering, "We're not going to permit public employee unions to run this country." The issue also spawned an obligatory bout of direct-mail profiteering, with an outfit called Americans Against Union Control of Government sending out appeals for funds to help them fend off the "very real possibility of a relative handful of unions bosses seizing control of America's government."

The vivid colors of this particular catastrophe-dream have long since faded in the public mind, but Washington conservatives never forgot. Their policy toward career government personnel has always been to club them down, and by putting it into effect they have delivered massive rewards both to their political faction and to their primary constituents in the business community.