This is

CBSI on the world. I'm John Bachelor.

January 17, 1962.

John F. Kennedy is President of the United States and he signs Executive Order 10988.

It is to grant federal employees the right to collective bargaining. Therein lies the

mystery. I welcome Professor Richard Epstein, the senior fellow at the

Hoover Institution, teaches law at NYU in the University of

Chicago, writing most recently for defining ideas about the mystery of collective bargaining

for public unions and what we've learned since

1962 about the politics of those public unions.

Richard, a very good evening to you.

You write of the Chicago Teachers Union that is up for renewal of its contract on July 1st,

2024.

What explains where we are now with an all-powerful union in Chicago? Good heavens, very

powerful. And the decision by Jack Kennedy in 62, how do those things come together? Good evening to you.

Well, Jack Kennedy made the single worst decision, I think, of his presidency when he thought

that collective bargaining would work in the public sector just the way it worked in the private sector.

Put aside the fact that it doesn't work particularly well on the private sector.

When you carry it to the public sector, the opposition to it that was voiced by Franklin

Roosevelt who was against it was you

cannot expect a state legislature which doesn't have its own money at stake and

doesn't have any strong fiduciary duties to stand up to a union.

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