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Comment by paisawalla | Hacker News Reader

Wait until you hear about public employees unions: they literally vote in the management with whom they are negotiating for pay and benefits!

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Unions vote for union leadership, not management. Are you speaking of general elections? While some executive positions are elected rather than appointed, they are still elected by the public at large, not by union members. In fact, public sector management is generally not pro-union any more than private sector management.

Public unions are among the biggest spenders (directly and through donations) in general elections, the outcomes of which directly affect the negotiating postures of the organizations they staff.

Of course they are, and should be. They still aren't the only people that get to vote in elections, though.

Ah, you must believe then either that money has no influence on politics, or that it's right for public employees to vote themselves pay raises and benefits from the tax coffers. As a taxpayer, I find this latter situation to be an obvious and massive conflict of interest.

So just like employees with stock?

I've never heard of employees lobbying (by spending hundreds of millions of dollars) all other shareholders to vote in one of their own as a board member. Have you?

More over, a legislator has way more influence over a public agency than a board member does over a company.

Your analogy is broken, Unions don't lobby voters, they lobby politicians just like everyone else.

You know someone has no point when they have to resort to pedantry. Call it lobbying, advertising, propagandizing, or whatever you like. The effect is the same.

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