KINDER'S COMMENTARY: COLLECTIVE BARGAINING FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYEES: A HILL TO DIE FOR

A battle royal is shaping up in the General Assembly over whether to hand over your state government, lock, stock and barrel, to the union bosses. With Missouri one of only six states in which Democrats control both the Legislature and the governor's mansion, and the Carnahan administration starting its seventh year, those bosses are getting restive and demanding their due. The bill: Pass a collective bargaining bill in 1999.

It will be a close-run thing in both the closely divided House (86 Democrats, 75 Republicans and one Independent) and an even closer Senate (18 Democrats, 16 Republicans).

U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, the eloquent chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, recently reminded senators during the impeachment trial that there must be some issues we public officials feel so strongly about that we are willing to lose our seats rather than cave. For this writer, among several other issues, public-employee collective bargaining -- effectively unionizing state government -- is such an issue.

Along with all opponents of collective bargaining for public employees, this writer strongly supports the rights of collective bargaining in the private sector. Free trade unions in the private sector, subject to the disciplining magic of the marketplace, are part of the glory of America. (It is no accident that among the first acts of totalitarian rulers, right and left, is to extinguish free trade unions.) Things are fundamentally different in the public sector, where because of the absence of market discipline there is no effective cost control.

Last year, despite growth in absolute numbers of union members, as a percentage of the private-sector work force, union membership fell below 14 percent. (As recently as 1955, the figure was in the mid-30s). The sole source of today's union membership growth is in the public sector. Query: What exactly does a Chrysler UAW worker at the Fenton plant have in common with a unionized public-sector worker? Other than common union membership, their interests are antithetical. The auto worker wants the same low taxes and smaller government that other private-sector taxpayers vote for time and again. The unionized rolls of public sector workers are a constant lobby, growing in potency, for larger government, adding to benefits and increasing its cost.

Five years ago this winter, pulling duty on the Senate Labor Committee, this writer was in the middle of the same fight. During a lengthy February 1994 hearing, we reviewed the bill's fiscal note (a staff analysis of a bill's projected cost to government at state and local levels). Most fiscal notes are one to three pages long. "This one," I noted in this space back then, "goes on for 20 pages."

The fiscal note for the 1994 bill recounted, I wrote, that "it would cost Missouri's local school districts $3.7 annually, the community colleges $500,000 and up, the state colleges and universities $21 million, the Office of Administration $61 million, and so depressingly on through the various departments of state government." You can readjust each of these figures upward for five years' passage of time.

After a four-year hiatus, I am back on the Labor Committee. Any week now we will be hearing this bill again. The governor made passage of it a key priority in his State of the State message earlier this month. Whereas five years ago supporters could count only about 14 votes in the 34-member Senate, this year we're not so sure. If Democrats are intent on making it their permanent legacy, they'll find this writer in the last ditch.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.