Unions Gone Wild

By: R.J. Moeller

In the 2008 election cycle, labor and teacher unions gave some $400 million to Democrats. If they gave $4 to Republicans, I'd eat my hat.

But why should they give anything to Republicans? The Right opposes ideas such as paying people for being old and bad at their job. The Right believes teachers should be paid based on merit, like, you know, the rest of the economy operates?

The Obama White House is the most union-dominated and funded administration in American history. The most frequent visitor to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave thus far has been Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). President Obama supports the "card check" law that liberals are attempting to ram through congress before they get steam-rolled in November's mid-term elections.

Michael Barone, writing at National Review Online, points out some of the most glaring problems with the Obama administration's "cozy" relationship to the unions:

Many of Obama’s executive orders have encouraged unionization by employees of government contractors and the seniority-based promotion practices preferred by union leaders. Obama has granted a 35 percent tariff on Chinese tires sought by the United Steelworkers and, in contravention of the North American Free Trade Agreement, has blocked Mexican trucks from U.S. roads as demanded by the Teamsters Union.

The Democrats’ stimulus package includes Davis-Bacon requirements that union wages be paid on construction jobs, which means that the government will pay more or get less production than it would if contractors were free to pay market wages. The complex Davis-Bacon process also means huge delays in getting supposedly shovel-ready projects underway.

And Obama Democrats are trying to force FedEx to become unionized by subjecting it to the same law as unionized UPS.

Meanwhile, one-third of the stimulus money went to state and local governments, with the effect of propping up the pay and saving the jobs of public-employee union members. As a result, while 8 million private-sector jobs have disappeared, the number of public-sector jobs has barely budged.

He continues:

The cynical will see these measures as a political payoff and might venture that the unions have gotten something like a hundredfold payout for the $400 million they gave to Obama and his co-partisans.

Those who insist on looking for purer motives, in contrast, might see something potentially more sinister. They might see a former community organizer acting out of a sincere conviction that America would be better off with a much, much larger unionized private sector.

Unions stifle economic growth and ultimately hurt the overall workforce at the expense of benefiting select workers (and most of all, the union bosses). If you have any doubts about this assessment, take a trip to Detroit.