Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind by Mallory Factor Page B

private sector unions fought to extend collective bargaining over government workers, while public employee unions supported their private sector brethren in their opposition to treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s.
    Suddenly, it’s a different world. In the current tough economic times, construction workers are suffering from unemployment levels double the national rate, according to the Associated General Contractors of America. They are relearning the hard way that without a growing economy, all the labor-friendly laws and regulations in theworld won’t create new jobs for them. And many private sector workers, including union members, are starting to resent paying for government employee union members’ large paychecks and benefits.
    Democrat Stephen Sweeney, the president of the New Jersey State Senate and an ironworkers union boss, drew a sharp distinction between private sector unions and government employee unions. He could fix things, he said, “if the unions were willing to work and basically stand up and tell their members the truth like I do in the private sector.” But the government employee unions instead “keep telling their members the sun’s shining when it’s raining. Well, we got a monsoon right now and my job is to do the right things for the people of this state.” 54
    Not only are private and government union members starting to pull away from each other on issues, but also there is a growing gap between their rates of unionization. Even in heavily unionized New York, private sector union membership continues to decline whereas government sector union membership continues to rise. A recent article in
Crain’s New York Business
noted that in New York State, “Unionization in the private sector last year fell to 13.5% from 13.7% in 2010, while the rate in the public sector rose to 72.2% from 70.5%.” 55 In the hard hit construction industry, unionization rates fell from 27.5 percent to 23.7 percent in a single year, from 2010 to 2011. Of course, New York is a forced-dues state, so private sector union members are not leaving the unions voluntarily (because they can’t). But new businesses that replace failing businesses are not being unionized as quickly as previously, showing that unions are increasingly falling out of favor with private sector workers.
    When the Obama Administration first delayed building the Keystone Pipeline, a massive infrastructure project that would have employed thousands of union members, the decision was met with disbelief by the president of the Laborers International Union: “The administration chose to support environmentalists over jobs. Job-killers win, American workers lose.” Privately, union officials whose members would have gotten jobs from the project express bitterness that the government employee unions sided with the environmentalists against them, and that the Obama Administration took the government employee union/environmentalist side.
    When the Obama Administration first delayed building the Keystone Pipeline, a massive infrastructure project that would have employed thousands of union members, the decision was met with disbelief by the president of the Laborers International Union: “The administration chose to support environmentalists over jobs. Job-killers win, American workers lose.” Privately, union officials whose members would have gotten jobs from the project express bitterness that the government employee unions sided with the environmentalists against them, and that the Obama Administration took the government employee union/environmentalist side. One unnamed official told Politico abouthis outrage and his disappointment, “People are p——d. The emotions are really, really raw right now. This is a big deal.” 56 Another private sector union boss echoed the sense of betrayal felt by some private sector union members: “Unions… have kicked our members in the teeth.” 57
    Union bosses divided,