Public Sector Unions Quotes

Gov. Scott Walker, a Tea Party-tinged Republican, is the advance guard of a new GOP push to dismantle public-sector unions as an electoral force.

Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill. The first step is we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer.

Private sector unionization is down to practically seven percent. Meanwhile the public sector unions have kind of sustained themselves [even] under attack, but in the last few years, there's been a sharp [increase in the] attack on public sector unions, which Barack Obama has participated in, in fact. When you freeze salaries of federal workers, that's equivalent to taxing public sector people.

Public unions are the country's foremost advocates for increased taxes at all levels of government.

We've discussed the public sector union people. We are messing with their bread and butter. They have their hands in the treasuries of all states in which they operate and the US Treasury. They have their hands there. That's how they live. Now, we're broke and the states are broke for a multitude of reasons. What they're being paid is among them.

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.

Obama's Democrats have become the part of no. Real cuts to federal budget? No. Entitlement reform? No. Tax reform? No. Breaking the corrupt and fiscally unsustainable symbiosis between public-sector unions and state governments? Hell no.

While it may be difficult to understand why cities and even entire states would doom themselves to insolvency by undertaking these obligations, the answer is simple: Democratic politicians, who have near-total political control of California and of America's biggest cities, support this massive transfer of wealth to public employees.

Millions of public workers have become a kind of privileged new class - a new elite, who live better than their private sector counterparts. Public servants have become the public's masters. No wonder the public is upset.

Those public employee union bosses think they already control the legislators, they already control everyone up there in Sacramento, and now, because they have the money, they want to control all of you, .. They want to raise your taxes. It's all going in that direction -- raising your taxes. But I'm here as your warrior, remember that. I want to protect you.

Just as members of American teachers unions often send their own children to private schools, so unionized workers at government-run hospitals in Britain have insurance that allows them to go to private hospitals. In both cases, those on the inside realize how bad these institutions are, regardless of what they say to those on the outside.

They said it was impossible to touch the third rail of politics, to take on public-sector unions and to reform a pension and health benefits system that was headed to bankruptcy. But with bipartisan leadership, we saved taxpayers $132 billion dollars over 30 years and saved retirees their pensions. We did it.

I think public sector workers, our teachers, our firefighters, our home health workers who work for states, they do God's work. They are some of our most important employees.