Clarifications: And I'm Not Talking About Wisconsin

RW:

Does "free economic association" mean an open marketplace, as in "marketplace of ideas" or are you saying "free economic association" falls directly under the first amendment as defined by the supreme court in the same manner than humans may have freedom of social association as insinuated in the concept of free speech?

When you say "Government workers operate within a monopoly where they can use the political process to choose who sits across the negotiating table with them" does this mean there is no alternative to the people at the table other than who the government workers choose?

I mean the freedom to choose with whom one receives services from. You don't have much of a choice when it comes to who teaches your kids, polices your streets, or processes your car registration.
Government workers are blessed with a captive customer base than cannot seek services elsewhere. This would be a monopoly. When box makers strike, the customers can go elsewhere for boxes while labor and management solves its issues, which usually hurts both parties in the short term, and quite possibly the long term. As labor, I would prefer my customers not experience better service and product from another supplier, especially if that supplier may even be cheaper. The market serves as a check on excessive labor demands.
In my line of work, labor and management both know a strike will hurt them, and try not let things go that far.
Teachers, on the other hand, love to hold captive students hostage with strike threats, knowing the difficulty of taking business elsewhere.

I don't need to explain how narrow interest groups can hold excessive power over the democratic process do I? The process that picks those who negotiate with other people's money across the table from those who also have the power to reward these same negotiators with money for themselves? It becomes less of a negotiation and more of a 'let's see what we can get away with' session.

And are you saying that you want to strike down an entire class of contracts without any detailed review of what they actually SAY simply on the suspicion that all the people the govt. workers have negotiated with are in their pocket? Without having to actually prove that's the case?

I think that the topic of their integrity is a worthy discussion.

Brian:

Do you really think that because someone happens to be employed by the state, they forfeit any right to negotiate collectively for the best compensation that the labor market will bear?

Not entirely. But I think they should be governed according to a different set of assumptions than paper workers, teamsters, or any other union who must compete for a profit, as opposed to having a customer base assigned to them.
As for 'race to the bottom', in regards to teachers not having unions: in the unionized government systems, it seems that the biggest factor in teacher pay is years on the job, not skill/effectiveness as a teacher. A non-unionized, private school can put the compensation money where they need it based upon teacher effectiveness/educational needs.

Like I said somewhere else: If high salaries equaled good teaching, explain how I was taught better than I deserved by nuns who were paid meagerly by comparison?