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Today, with union membership in the private sector at record lows, the labor movement has almost entirely abandoned any sense of duty to employers or union members. Organized labor is now, first and foremost, a political movement.
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| Back in the halcyon days of the American labor movement, the protection of a union job brought with it a responsibility to one’s employers and the consumers they served. In fact, the operating mantra of the labor shop was “better products at lower prices.” Regardless of how true that promise ever was, at least it represented a recognition that any occupation, at its core, is supposed to function as a form of service to one’s fellow man.
That notion seems positively quaint by today’s standards. As hulking, union-driven institutions in the private sector have repeatedly proven unable to keep pace with leaner competitors, sluggish and irresponsive public sector unions have also systematically impeded even the basic functions of government and driven many states to the precipice of bankruptcy.
Yet when the inevitable pushback in public opinion arrived, any notion of public responsibility on behalf of the unions evaporated. Heavily unionized firms like General Motors were only too happy to see taxpayers foot the bill for their corporate failures through government bailouts. At the same time, unionized employees in the public sector threatened violence and spoke of an entirely fictive “social contract” the second that responsible lawmakers targeted unsustainable pay and pensions.
What explains the about-face? Only one cause can ever lead to long-term disregard for the wishes of both your customers and your employers: government interference. Ignore those who provide your commercial sustenance in a free market and you’ll soon find yourself fired or your company closing its doors. But with the government (read: the taxpayer) picking up the slack, inefficiency and indolence can go on virtually forever.
Today, with union membership in the private sector at record lows, the labor movement has almost entirely abandoned any sense of duty to employers or union members. Organized labor is now, first and foremost, a political movement. And – lucky for them – they have a direct line into the White House, courtesy of the huge sums of money they gave to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential bid (the Service Employees International Union alone contributed more than $60 million to the Obama campaign).
Because the apex of the unions’ political power has coincided with the nadir of their public approval, however, legislative victories have been hard to come by. Even a liberal president with Democratic supermajorities in Congress couldn’t manage passage of the Orwellianly-monikered Employee Free Choice Act, removing the right of a secret ballot in union elections – that essential measure intended to reduce the intimidation and coercion that have all too often accompanied past votes.
Having failed in the legislative branch, the Obama Administration is now taking it upon itself to find even more insidious ways to crush resistance to the unions’ agenda. The man doing the crushing is Lafe Solomon, the litigious general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board.
Earlier this week, Solomon announced that he is bringing suit against Arizona and South Dakota, two of the four states that passed constitutional amendments preventing the “card check” tactics embraced by the Employee Free Choice Act. His rationale is that the states have no authority to weigh in on what is essentially a national manner – a dubious claim of federal preemption.
This came only days after Solomon announced that he was pursuing legal action against Boeing for attempting to move some of the production for its 787 Dreamliner from a unionized facility in Washington state (one that has been subject to disruptive strikes in the past) to the right-to-work state of South Carolina. By Solomon’s lights, this constitutes an illegal retribution by Boeing against the Washington state employees.
In both cases, the Obama Administration looks set to gut the power of the states – in one case by directly attacking their constitutional prerogatives, in the other by functionally destroying their ability to compete with each other on economic terms – in order to satisfy the demands of its labor cronies.
The stakes were high enough when union struggles only put taxpayer money on the line. But now federalism faces the risk of being sacrificed on the altar of labor favoritism. Not exactly service to one’s fellow man.
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