iPandora

In this video, Tom Bates, President of the Bucks County AFL-IO pledges to show local Democrat candidates how politically powerful the AFL-CIO is. We’ll show the candidates of Bucks County what we can do for them, he dreams.

“And just think what they will do for us later,” he says and recites a litany of union subsidies such as Employee Free Choice, health care, and project labor agreements. “Just think what that will do for labor and working people.”

Money and volunteers may be Tom’s only draw because his presentation style… well, lacks charisma.

While Democrats want to increase the Department of Labor’s budget by nearly $1 billion, they are leaving the little agency that oversees union transparency out. The agency currently receives $47.7 million and President Bush wanted to increase the budget to $56 million. Instead, Democrats have set funding at $45.7 million.

Clearly, union bosses are calling the shots on Capital Hill.

• Example One: Only the agencies unions can use to bully employers, such as those tasked with employer accountability and worker safety, are getting the increased funds. The singular subject on which Dem’s are exercising fiscal restraint is the agency that, from 2001 to 2006, “investigated more than 2,000 criminal cases that secured some 650 indictments of union officials who had engaged in everything from embezzlement to extortionate picketing. The [agency] has also implemented a 2004 rule requiring unions to file expanded disclosure reports, obliging them for the first time to disclose how much dues money they spend on politics and union salaries.”
• Example Two: The Hill wrote yesterday, “In an op-ed e-mailed to reporters, Chao criticized Congress for being ‘all for boosting the Securities and Exchange Commission’s [SEC] budget so it can ride herd on businesses.’ In contrast, she said, Congress had singled out the one federal entity charged with protecting union members from corruption for budget cuts.”
• Example Three: Democrats are succumbing to pressure to renege on promises to keep the free trade agreements with Panama and Peru alive. Charlie Rangel has been persuaded to visit the two countries and tell them that if they want the agreements to pass (i.e., Democratic support of the agreements.) to make their labor laws more union-friendly.

Predictably, unions take a “Who? Me?” approach, raised eyebrows and all. “The statistics are cooked,” associate general counsel to the AFL-CIO, Deborah Greenfield, said to The Hill.She said DoL double-counts convictions (If one union boss is convicted of 5 different crimes, the agency counts five convictions, not one.). She told The Hill that an AFI-CIO study on union bosses says that less than four-one hundredths (4/100 or .04) of 1 percent of union officials are guilty of crimes against their unions.”

Also note: Democrats who voted for the Kline amendment were Reps. Dan Boren (Okla.), Bud Cramer (Ala.), Lincoln Davis (Tenn.), Brad Ellsworth (Ind.), Tim Mahoney (Fla.), Mike McIntyre (N.C.), Harry Mitchell (Ariz.) and Heath Shuler (N.C.). Sixteen Republicans voted against the Kline amendment, including Reps. Mark Kirk (Ill.), Ray LaHood (Ill.) and Christopher Shays (Conn.).

Read the Wall Street Journal editorial here: Congress’s Union Dues
Read The Hill’s news report here: Sec. Chao criticizes House for cutting union oversight funds

Who would believe that the father of alphabet soup, the champion of Big Labor who used big government price and spending controls to rescue the U.S. economy from the Great Depression (Actually, WWII rescued the U.S. economy from the Great Depression.) believed that public sector strikes were immoral.

Unlike today, in the 40’s and 50’s, the notion that teachers should engage in collective bargaining – much less go on strike to get districts to meet their demands – was controversial.

Resistance came even from the ranks of traditional organized labor. In 1959, AFL-CIO President George Meany declared: “It is impossible to bargain collectively with government.”

Public servants are just that: public servants. When public servants strike, they disparage their role as public servants and betray the public they serve. Sadly, the public, who often believe the rhetoric of striking public servants, pay both the injuries incurred during strikes and the increased, and sometimes unsustainable, benefits, salaries and working conditions “won” by the strike.

The AFL-CIO mentioned a new study on its blog yesterday:

Employee Free Choice Would Mean Millions More Get Health Insurance – If the Employee Free Choice Act becomes law, 3.5 million more people could receive health insurance and 2.7 million more could gain pension benefits, according to a report released yesterday by the Campaign for America’s Future.

Could it be true that this substantial number of workers will get what the AFL-CIO calls “relief”? How would it happen? Only if 3.5 million people began to pay the union dues, of which, the AFL-CIO gets a cut… and the AFL-CIO becomes free of financial limits to engaging in even more political activity.

In the new “freed” state in which workers gain health insurance and pension benefits, they will also be forced to pay dues (dues that are sometimes more than workers earn, and pay for union “benefits” (A UFCW local mandates a $5 monthly fee for a life insurance policy that pays out $2,500).

While union negotiated health benefits are good, who wants to be part of pension systems similar to those provided by airline companies (that had to be assumed by the federal government) or the Big Three automakers (who are not buying out their employees and facing bankruptcy) or even most government pensions (which are chronically overburdened and under funded like New Jersey’s).