Outgoing Gov. Tim Pawlenty has a new-found love of the written word. His first book, “Courage to Stand” is scheduled to be released in a little under a month, and he has taken to a string of editorial pages as he angles to open his campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Pawlenty published his latest op-ed in Monday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal. He utilizes the platform to rail against public employees unions, a favorite target of ire among the conservative Tea Party base. The op-ed opens with Pawlenty establishing that he’s not opposed to the general concept of unionization, just the modern incarnation for government workers.

When Americans think of organized labor, they might think of images like I saw growing up in a blue-collar meatpacking town: hard hats, work boots, tough conditions and gritty jobs. While I didn’t work in the slaughterhouses, I did become a union member when I worked at a grocery store to help put myself through school. I was grateful for the paycheck and proud of the work I did.

The rise of the labor movement in the early 20th century was a triumph for America’s working class. In an era of deep economic anxiety, unions stood up for hard-working but vulnerable families, protecting them from physical and economic exploitation.

Immediately after establishing his working man bona fides — the same message found in the excerpt for his book — Pawlenty turns to railing against today’s public employees. He demonizes those who chose to work for the government as earning an unfair share off the backs of the taxpayers.

Pawlenty begins his attack on public workers by asserting that their average salary and benefits total to twice the average amount earned in the private sector. However that is a highly misleading statistic. As Media Matters points out though, public employees cannot be directly compared to the private work force one-to-one. That is because the private market contains the majority of lower-paying blue collar jobs, while the government work force is comprised of largely white collar positions as the other positions have largely be relegated to the contractor business. Instead of directly comparing all private and public employees, a more accurate description is to examine government workers in terms of their experience level.