The Unions & Executive Ownership

Churchill: “Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?”
Socialite: “My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course… “
Churchill: “Would you sleep with me for five pounds?”
Socialite: “Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!”
Churchill: “Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.”

GM's unions had a price; Obama paid it. Is there something nefarious hereabouts? Does a one-legged goose swim in a circle?

It’s well know that the unions and trial lawyers together own the Dem party. Let’s look at the unions.

Background: Today almost half of union members work for some level of government. Why would any independent, hard working American want to be union? Ninety-two percent of private industry workers don’t. And those that do, including their public sector brethren, are not your father’s labor movement types in hard hats. As Linda Chavez explains, “The labor movement used to be strongly pro-American, pro-defense, and very conservative on social issues. Today's union bosses have more in common with Michael Moore than George Meany.”

The media virtually ignores the corrupt relationship between the unions and the Democratic party, rarely looking at illegal campaign violations. OK, forget the crooks, just the power: For example, the two national teachers’ unions — the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — contributed more than $70 million to campaigns during the 2007–2008 season, with 95 percent of contributions going to Democrats and left-leaning causes. When these types ask the left to jump, they ask, ‘How high?”. (worn phrase)

Specifics: Obama just announced a plan to “Renew and Expand America’s Roads, Railways and Runways.” The plan would add $50 billion more to the nearly $230 billion already allocated in the original trillion-dollar stimulus plan, for infrastructure.

Why the great urgency to pile on more $? Something to do with the midterm elections?

The president says he wants to “put people back to work” through a new “up front investment” in surface transportation, airports, and the air-traffic-control system. But guess what? Not all people, just some people. From Michelle Malkin: “The key is E.O. 13502, a union-friendly executive order signed by Obama in his first weeks in office, which essentially forces contractors who bid on large-scale public-construction projects worth $25 million or more to submit to union representation for their employees.”

Obama’s “project labor agreement” forces contractors to hand over exclusive bargaining control, pay inflated wages and benefits and fork over dues-money and pension funding to corrupt labor organizations. These agreements undermine a fair bidding process on projects which locked-out, nonunion laborers fund with their own tax dollars! Too much! (Keep in mind dear readers that in the construction industry, 85% of the workers are non-union by choice.)

The result? Well, Boston’s notorious Big Dig was a union-only construction project thanks to a Massachusetts government-mandated PLA. The original $2.8 billion price tag for the project shot to $22 billion in state and federal taxpayer subsidies thanks in large part to ballooning labor costs. Oh, that.

BO’s connection at the hip to unions costs all of us plenty. It’s a scheme that raises the cost of doing business and bars ten of thousands of skilled, non union workers from securing work.

Oh sure, BO’s concerned with our highways and byways, concerned with America, sure he is.


Robert Craven