If government policies destroyed the unions, why are the public sector unions so powerful?
I think it's mainly just because politicians don't want to shit where they live.
I'm in the capital city of my country, ~50% of the jobs here are public, you can't turn around here without bumping into a government department. As slow and plodding as any public bureaucracy is, if the politicians were to start attacking the public service union, they can say goodbye to any hope of getting anything done, and they know it.
In my country, the early to mid 70's was probably the peak of the left-wing socialist ideal prevailing as the popular paradigm. This scared the hell out of conservatives (of both major parties) and they've been doing their damn best for the last 30 odd years to pull the political spectrum so far to the right that even the left-wing isn't very left-wing anymore. Curtailing the power of unions was part of their strategy. It wasn't just an unintended byproduct of ostensibly peripheral phenomena. And you know, I'd actually have a lot more respect for those guys if they just came out and said: "Yup, we don't like unions and we're trying to gut them for reasons X, Y and Z."
I'm not trying to argue the all in, pro-union line either, but lets call a spade a spade.
I think it's mainly just because politicians don't want to shit where they live.
I'm in the capital city of my country, ~50% of the jobs here are public, you can't turn around here without bumping into a government department. As slow and plodding as any public bureaucracy is, if the politicians were to start attacking the public service union, they can say goodbye to any hope of getting anything done, and they know it.
In my country, the early to mid 70's was probably the peak of the left-wing socialist ideal prevailing as the popular paradigm. This scared the hell out of conservatives (of both major parties) and they've been doing their damn best for the last 30 odd years to pull the political spectrum so far to the right that even the left-wing isn't very left-wing anymore. Curtailing the power of unions was part of their strategy. It wasn't just an unintended byproduct of ostensibly peripheral phenomena. And you know, I'd actually have a lot more respect for those guys if they just came out and said: "Yup, we don't like unions and we're trying to gut them for reasons X, Y and Z."
I'm not trying to argue the all in, pro-union line either, but lets call a spade a spade.