Evidently, Franklin Delano Roosevelt believed that organized labor ought to remain outside of government. He is said to have recognized the horrible prospect that conflicts of interest would arise in such a relationship. History has born out his concern, as state governors across the country can attest to.
Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to a similar conflict of interest concerning military contractors and government. Eisenhower saw similar problems in the intellectual pool of expertise that is paid to serve the government, and, vicariously, themselves.
The “fair wage” premise for organized labor is founded on the “surplus value of labor” argument. Karl Marx took the argument, penned by the economist, Ricardo, and transmuted this analysis to suit his own static examination of capitalism, which failed to account for the rise of the so called “middle class”.
The “surplus value of labor” argument predicts no materialization of a middle class, but rather, rich (capitalists) and poor (exploited workers). The argument predicts subsistence wages and, therefore, a marginal standard of living for the average person. This socio-economic theory has been falsified. Free markets have falsified the theory.
To digress, for a paragraph, Corporatism, and the inefficiencies that Eisenhower warned us about, is regressive insofar as they grant a degree of comparative advantage to corporate entities whose profits cannot be explained by economies of scale, but whose gains can be explained by government’s preferential treatment. Their advantage is not so much market based as regulatory based, the nature of which is “inequality before the law. This is corruption, just as Eisenhower recognized. Of course, Eisenhower justified this inequality on the grounds that an unnatural consolidation of industry was necessary for Cold War Security. In an age of pinpoint accuracy, however, concerning military tactics, it is now, today, unwise for a nation to have their military infrastructure consolidated. Indeed, what with modern manufacturing techniques, the hardware end of the defense industry can be both efficient and dispersed.
Returning to the “surplus value of labor” argument, this rationale applies to the supposed expropriation, by capitalists, of the surplus value of goods and services produced by labor. Capitalists are naturally concerned with profit margins, so those capitalists, who invested their own wages, etc., in equipping their labor pool, might profit from their risk taking. There is no such dynamic in public service! This is worth repeating: there is no capitalist consideration of profit in the management of public services. Therefore, the foundational premise of organized labor – the surplus value of labor argument – does not apply to public employees. If you add to this the falsification of Ricardo’s prediction of subsistence wages, and the subsequent refutation of Marx’s economic history, turned historicism, in face of the fact of the rise of a middle class, then you have every reason to expose public sector employees to the free market, by decertifying government unions, so that the wage-price of their labor can fairly compete with the private sector, such that the public may enjoy the wage market equilibrium and, once again, pursue happiness in the most economically efficient manner, all being equal under the law.
