President Obama is wrong: Denying government unions the power of collective bargaining is not an assault on all unions. Previous Democratic Presidents understood this fact. No less a progressive icon than President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote in 1937: “All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. … The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress.”

The Foundry