Maggie's Farm

The whole purpose of unions was to reign in abusive corporations in the early 1900s. There were legitimate reasons (child labor, worker safety) for the unions to be given power. There is a natural limit to the power a union can yield against a corporation-if salary and benefit demands become too great the company will go bankrupt (except GM and Chrysler). No such natural limits exist in the public sector. It is almost impossible to reign in excessive government once the union gains control of management (elected officials). You end up with a California situation where taxpayers have lost control of the fiscal process.
Yes, public sector unions are a conflict of interest. More than that, they are a major contributing factor to our current economic woes.
Perhaps the Ronald Reagan model of hiring non-union workers to replace Air Traffic Controllers might be appropriate. The unions wouldn't even have to go on strike. I am sure there are thousands of unemployed, skilled workers across the country that would be happy to do a simple government job for half the salary that is being paid now. Just list the jobs on Monster and let people bid for employment.
I realize that this is illegal under current regulations, and we won't see any change to the regulations with current politicians in place, but there are marketplace solutions to these issues. We just have to decide to do it.
The first step is to throw out a few politicians.