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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
The Associated Press posted a story lamenting that Big Labor has failed so far to get Obama to heel by their commands. Big Labor has said “jump” and Obama has but skipped. The article is correct, though, that Big Labor has failed in its two biggest goals: socialist healthcare and card check. At least, they’ve failed so far.
A third failure has also been forced upon Big Labor. As a result of newly seated Republican Senator Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts, Big Labor was not able to install Craig Becker as the head of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Becker was Big Labor’s back up plan in case Congress didn’t pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), or the card check bill. Being a former Big Labor lawyer and activist, labor groups expected that if installed as NLRB chief Becker would change rules, alter processes, and invent systems that would implement card check through the back door instead of through actual legislation.
But Becker has had his nomination stymied so far with even some Democrats finding his past activism a bad fit for a job that is supposed to be held by a fair arbiter between the business community and labor, setting federal rules for both to abide by.
As the AP reports all these brick walls that Big Labor has suddenly found itself blocked by is a hard pill to swallow after they’d spent over $400 million to get Obama elected.
Of course, the story also mentions that unions have been steadily losing members for decades and commands a far, far smaller number of voters than it ever did. This is another reason that, for all its money spent on politicians, Big Labor is losing influence in Washington. After all, a politician might be beholden to the tall cash that unions give them for campaigns, but the less actual votes that unions can deliver undercuts that financial influence.
But this story does show several things that are important to remember where it concerns unions.
#1- Big Labor has no respect for the legislative process
#2- Big Labor has no respect for the voter’s will
#3- Big Labor thinks that they can buy a government
These are important points to remember to put Big Labor’s arrogance and essential un-American philosophy in perspective. Big Labor is a pernicious influence in American life.
President Obama has today appointed Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern to the federal deficit-reduction commission. And I say, why not? After all union thugs like Stern are one of the root causes of federal deficits so he should know all about them.
Unfortunately, though, Stern only knows how to make deficits worse and knows precisely nothing about cutting them.
Obama also appointed several other big, big campaign donors to this so-called deficit cutting commission, Ann Fudge (over $36,000 donated) and Alice Rivlin (over $47,000).
Of course this is a joke. But the joke is on all of us. As this poseur of a president sits stroking his chin and telling America “let me be clear,” and “make no mistake” that he’s all about fixing things, he hands out plum after plum to his pals on the extreme left.
So the question becomes this: how can a guy whose only goal is to make government more costly, union contracts more enriched, and spending ever greater be qualified to sit on a deficit reduction commission?
Well, he can’t of course.
Like I said, this is just another joke on the country.
-By Bret Jacobson
You remember the iconic call by American labor to “look for the union label” (and ignore the price tag)? Well, U.S. union officials have turned to a new slogan, calling for “Buy American” provisions of bailout and stimulus legislation.
In fact, the AFL-CIO labor federation is highlighting its new website, which it says “gives workers, people who have lost their jobs and activists a chance to take action, share their stories, find resources and, most importantly, be part of a grassroots movement to help the nation climb out of its 10-million jobs hole created by the recession.”
But what if those people lost their jobs to Canada? Perhaps it would be best if union bosses stopped being hosers and checked their own Internet host, where the IP address resolves to our brothers in the Great White North (Oh Canada!). We ran this trace from Washington, D.C. to the AFL-CIO’s website:
For hypocrisy, this ranks right up there with outsourcing union pickets to the homeless.
Look: There’s nothing wrong with finding an efficient, cost-effective provider wherever they may be, but this has to be embarrassing to union bosses.
(Cross posted at BigGovernment.com)
-By Bret Jacobson
(click here for more polls on union officials)
One hates to surmise, but it seems probable such a shift comes from such little things as crippling the Big 3, pushing card check on working Americans, cutting disgusting deals to exempt their members from a new tax on healthcare plans, pimping ACORN, and just being all-around-un-swell guys.
One also hates to draw a correlation/causation line, but didn’t something interesting happen in 2008 that would have raised the profile of union bosses to a point where more people would see their antics? Yes, there was something in 08 …
(Originally posted at BigGovernment.com)
The news has it today that young Mr. James O’Keefe and Andrew Breitbart have laid low ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN is dissolved, they say.
Don’t believe a word of it. Yes, it is obvious that ACORN was materially hurt by the expose showing its propensity towards criminality. But the organization is not dead. It it merely rebranding.
Tucked into the Politico story, for instance, was the admission that nothing is really changing but the name.
According to a snitch from ACORN, Politico posted the following as an update to its story of ACORNs “demise.”
“As far as the work in the communities and policy campaigns, no one will notice the difference,” the source said. “It’s people who still believe in their basic mission of fighting for poor people.”
So, nothing much is changing. These people are still stealing millions from the federal government, they are still in a position to continue their campaign of vote fraud in order to elect left-wing extremists, and they are still the shock troops of the Democrat Party.
ACORN is not dead, it just has a new branch.
Mark Tapscot echoes our current theme here on the blog by reporting that California is once again in a disastrous budget shortfall and one of the biggest reason that this is so is the undue power of the recalcitrant public employees unions. Tapscot says that California cannot get out of its mess because, “the unions refuse to consider relaxing their death grip on California’s rapidly shrinking legion of tax payers.”
Tapscot thinks that California is coming to realize that the unions are going to have to be confronted in order to solve the spiraling budget woes, but I am doubtful. Looking at the mess from the outside would certainly cause one to draw such a conclusion, but inside the legislature at Sacramento one sees no hint that the unions are becoming the bad guys as they should be.
Still, I hope that Tapscot is right and the California can finally lead the country in a good thing by breaking the public employees unions and, hope of hopes, eliminating them.
And why are these unions so dangerous? Tapscot’s conclusion is a refrain we’ve been touting for years.
It’s not only that public sector unions are driving many state and local governments into fiscal insolvency by forcing them to accept contracts providing compensation benefits that far exceed those in the private sector for comparable work and that cannot be paid for without crippling tax increases.
We agree, of course.
Add this report to the mounting number of individuals coming to the same conclusion we came to here on the blog.
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston