Collective bargaining gives government employees the power to tell voters how to spend their tax dollars instead of the other way around. That is why early labor leaders rejected it as undemocratic. As recently as 1959 the AFL-CIO Executive Council stated that “government workers have no right [to collectively bargain] beyond the authority to petition Congress—a right available to every citizen,” Cf. Leo Kramer, Labor’s Paradox: The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO (New York, NY: Wiley, 1962) p. 41.