Labor unions are a good thing. They can help protect individuals from being cheated or otherwise exploited and give economic leverage to those who would otherwise be powerless. But when they repeatedly bar the public’s elected representatives from making fair and pragmatic decisions to serve the common good, it is past time to restore some balance.

Consider that recently the state’s consistently pro-public-union Labor Relations Board ruled against Warwick’s efforts to end gold-plated benefits for part-time crossing guards.

Because they have political clout, these crossing guards were given health insurance, sick days, a union pension and, with 10 years of service, lifetime health insurance! (Compare that with citizens in the private sector, often slaving away more than 40 hours a week for far less generous benefits.) Such largess made these jobs plums for politicians to hand out to supporters, at a high cost to taxpayers.

When Mayor Scott Avedisian ended that system at the conclusion of a contract, and offered people $40 a day to do the job (certainly taking less than two hours’ time), he had no lack of interested applicants. We suspect that thousands of Rhode Islanders would line up for $40-a-day crossing-guard jobs were they to come open in this economy.

Yet the Labor Relations Board ruled that Warwick cannot end the crossing-guard deal by taking the approach it did.

In another case, the Bristol-Warren School Committee, concerned about students, fired a second-grade teacher for alcohol-related issues. That teacher appealed the case to the American Arbitration Association, which, using highly dubious logic, reinstated her to the job. The other week, around 9 a.m. on a school day, she was arrested and charged with driving under the influence.

People deserve a second chance. But this was far from the first time such an issue arose. It is wrong that parents be forced to send their children to such a teacher, or taxpayers must be forced to keep her on the payroll, simply because the unions have enough political clout through state labor laws to make it so.

We are in this position because politicians have found it to their advantage to cultivate the public-employee unions at the expense of other citizens. Such special interests fill their campaign coffers and provide other assistance in elections.

Citizens are tired of the long train of abuses that they have endured, and insist that politicians rewrite labor laws to better serve the public interest. If these politicians refuse to act for the common good, voters should replace them with others who will.