If the word “union” conjures up an image of a man in a hard hat reporting for duty to an assembly line, your understanding of how organized labor has evolved over the past 50 years is a little out of date.
The typical union worker today, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is a woman between the ages of 45 and 54 working for a local government, most likely the local school board. Of the 14 million union members in the United States, half of them work for the government, not the private sector.
The National Education Association alone has 2.8 million members, while the American Federation of Teachers has 1.8 million members. That means a full third of all union members in the U.S. belong to the nation’s two largest teachers unions.
And these unions of Karens are a political force at the local and national level.
Just look at Fairfax County, Virginia, which until recently was a well-run jurisdiction with annual surpluses, including a $240 million surplus in fiscal 2024. Now, thanks entirely to government unions, Fairfax County is facing a $300 million deficit this year.
The problem stems from a 2020 law passed by the Democrat-controlled legislature and signed by the Democratic governor granting government unions the power to collectively bargain. The county signed a new contract with the Fairfax Education Unions agreeing to an across-the-board 7% pay raise. Meanwhile, county revenues only grew 1.8%.
Democrats used to understand the danger to taxpayers posed by government unions. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, government workers were specifically excluded from the legislation’s protections.
“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote.
“It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management,” he continued. “The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations.”
But the siren’s call of easy union campaign cash was too great for Democrats to pass up. New York became the first state to allow government union collective bargaining in 1967. California followed suit in 1968. As a result, today 30% of all union members in the country live in California and New York despite those two states only having 15% of the nation’s population.
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As parents, and taxpayers, learned during COVID, teachers unions care nothing about students and their education and everything about the pay and preferences of their members.
Until collective bargaining for government unions is repealed, expect the Karenification of organized labor to continue.