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March 2, 2010

Is the party just about over for unions?

Ed Morrissey writes:

While the union bosses party, and while the White House names their leadership to a deficit spending panel (edit - Michelle Malkin calls this the biggest sign that the White House deficit panel is a joke), the truth is that the union position is eroding - and the unions know it. The Workforce Fairness Institute has a new video out today using the occasion of an annual conference to skewer the wishful thinking of the labor movement these days, but the WFI may have buried the real lede a bit. They mention the problem of underfunded pension plans almost in passing, but that's key to the rising desperation in the union hierarchy

Ed goes on to point out that the union pensions are similar in many ways to the Social Security and Medicare entitlement disasters looming for the US.

[...] Unions have repeatedly raided pension funds on the assumption that growth in membership would allow them to eventually cover all of the commitments to its beneficiaries. They need Card Check as a means to force millions of workers to start contributing to their Ponzi-scheme structures to stave off utter collapse. (Emphasis added)

[...] If one wants to understand the desperation of Andy Stern and his allies in the Democratic Party to push Card Check "and to eliminate the secret ballot for workers in organizing elections" one need only look at the multitude of pension funds in critical condition. That also applies to union efforts to expand the federal government, which would mean a greater demand for workers paying dues to unions like SEIU and AFSCME (the latter of which doesn't appear to have these kind of pension issues). It's also no great surprise that the White House has been pushing to favor union-shop bids in federal contracting, for the same reasons.

In other words, it's safe to say that our president is in the pocket of unions and doing everything he can to push the union agenda - even at the expense of small businesses and jobs. And just how deep in, say for example - SEIU's pocket, is Barack Obama? As SEIU's president, Andy Stern, has proudly proclaimed - $60.7 million deep - the amount the SEIU spent on Barack Obama's campaign - and that's not including SEIU's having "knocked on 1.87 million doors, made 4.4 million phone calls and sent more than 2.5 million pieces of mail" in support of Obama.

And let's not forget that, as Michelle Malkin has pointed out, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C. is probing the SEIU for possible violations of the Lobbying Disclosure Act for Stern's frequent visits to the White House and with members of Congress in 2009. If this isn't a case of the fox guarding the hen house - with the hen's overwhelming support and cooperation, what is?

Just another shinning example of what Barack Obama meant when he promised "Hope and Change."

Posted by Richard at March 2, 2010 1:06 PM

• Is the party just about over for unions? - Mar 02, 2010