For example, Chicago’s ailing pension system, only 33 percent funded, is the back-story behind the city’s teacher strike last fall, its struggle with a surge in the murder rate in 2012, and the closure of dozens of schools. In New York City, pension, health, and other fringe benefits for city employees constituted 15 percent of the city budget in 2002, but by 2014 those items gobbled up 34 percent of the budget. New York now employs fewer cops, firefighters, and sanitation workers than it did in 2002.
As public employee unions defend the pay, benefits, and perks they have accumulated, Democrats are pressured to defend the status quo, a hard thing for a “progressive” party to do. Likewise, it becomes more difficult for Democrats to talk about the good things government can do to advance the interests of the broader middle class.
Hence Democrats are factionalized. On one side are centrists such as Rahm Emmanuel in Chicago, Gina Raimondo in Rhode Island, and Andrew Cuomo in New York, who have locked horns with the unions. On the other side are liberals such as Dannell Malloy in Connecticut, Bill de Blasio in New York City, and Ras Baraka in Newark, who have catered to union interests.
Public unions have also created conflict with racial minorities, another core Democratic Party constituency.
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