Arkansas’ Senate seat is just one battle ground against moderate Democrats who have not lived up to Big Labor’s EFCA expectations. Lt. Gov. Bill Halter released a press statement detailing more than $500,000 in campaign contributions by labor groups to Blanche Lincoln.

The same release calls Blanche’s accusations that Halter’s debt has been paid off to be “lies.” This was in retaliation for Lincoln’s statements that Halter’s previous campaign debt had been retired by the unions.

According to the AP in December:

“The Service Employees International Union said it is soliciting contributions to retire the debt along with the help of other labor unions. Halter reported in October that his campaign still owed him more than $444,000 that he had loaned it. SEIU has met with Bill Halter, and finds him to be a great voice for working families with an extremely bright political future,” said Jon Youngdahl, the union’s national political director. “That’s why we’ve solicited contributions to retire his campaign debt and support his re-election campaign.”"

The amount retired by the SEIU is nowhere near $444,000 thanks to a legal cap of $6,000, according to blogger Tolbert Report, but their “solicitation” of more aid hasn’t hurt at all.

In fact, maybe Halter has a “bright political future” because “Several unions and the liberal grassroots group MoveOn.org this week have pledged more than $3 million to Halter’s campaign, greatly boosting his ability to compete with Lincoln, who had $5 million in campaign cash at the end of December,” according to the Arkansas News.

Three million is well more that $444,000….and more than Blanche’s $500,0oo. I find amusing that union backing is being used as a weapon on both sides.

Anyway, labor’s promise to get very involved in Democratic primaries is proving to be very amusing. As I am sure will be the next two months in Arkansas leading up to the May 18th primary vote.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski of Oregon has nominated Multnomah County Chairman Ted Wheeler to the position of State Treasurer, following the death of Ben Westlund on Sunday.

Want to know why Wheeler, and not another state representative Greg Macpherson, got the nod? According to The Oregonian:

“Kulongoski acknowledged that “part of it” was the opposition that Macpherson would face among the state’s public employee unions. Macpherson worked with Kulongoski on a 2003 bill aimed at reducing the costs of the Public Employees Retirement System that angered many public employees.

When Macpherson ran for attorney general in 2008, Service Employees International Union, the largest of the state employee unions, gave more than $300,000 to his Democratic primary opponent, John Kroger. The unprecedented union contribution to an attorney general’s race helped power Kroger to victory over Macpherson.

But see, it wouldn’t be classy to say that unions didn’t like MacPherson (who is actually a friend of the governor) because he wanted to reform the pension system. The reason that SEIU local gives for the reason that Kroger (see image) was so flagrantly funded and MacPherson so not? The Oregonian explains in another article:

Arthur Towers, political director for the SEIU local in Salem, wasn’t making any big pronouncements about his union spending heavily against Macpherson if he got in the treasurer’s race.  He  insisted that a big reason the union gave so much in the attorney general’s  race is that the “members fell in love with Kroger,” and that candidates don’t come along like that often.

That’s right. Far from some political agenda, it was love.

But hey, Oregon is a unique place. In January, at the behest of their public sector unions, Oregon voted to increase their taxes for the first time since 1931. During the lead up to the tax bill’s passage, it is interesting to note that the leading anti-tax politician was indicted by none other than John Kroger.

From ABCNews:

The Oregon Department of Justice said Monday that Sizemore and his wife, Cindy Sizemore, are each charged with three counts of evading Oregon personal income taxes. Each count carries a maximum punishment of five years and a $125,000 fine. [...] Bill Sizemore called the charges a “political attack” by public employee unions and state Attorney General John Kroger, a Democrat who had union support.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

The battle over EFCA has become less a battle about EFCA, and more a proxy battle in a larger conflict about political sway, public opinion, and economic ideology.

In the Huffington Post on Friday, third-generation union organizer Mike Elk asked “If EFCA is DOA, Why is the Chamber Still Lobbying Against It?”  He wrote:

“For months now in Washington, it has been known that the Employee Free Choice Act won’t ever see a vote. However, this hasn’t stopped the Chamber of Commerce to continue flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists against a dead bill.

He continues by goading the them:

“[I]t’s important that we not give up the Employee Free Choice Act. If we don’t keep fighting, Big Business will just start pushing more aggressive assaults on labor and weaken the political position of labor. Remember the best defense is always a strong offense.”

I find it a wee bit ironic that while he is crying fowl about the Chamber not laying down their swords. Even after EFCA died, labor leaders are continuing to harp on EFCA weekly, acting as if indeed EFCA were not DOA.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker and Director of Organizing at the AFL-CIO, Stewart Acuff have called for its passage, among others. Even Vice President Biden is calling for EFCA. And everyone has certainly been calling for Craig Becker to be approved to the National Labor Relations Board, a man whose position could make him the very personification of card check legislation.

Bottom line: EFCA is now a beleaguered placeholder in the middle of a proxy war.  Is it also a shorthand way of showing one’s hand–hence Blanche Lincoln’s trouble in Arkansas.

Roger Smith, the CEO of American Income Life Insurance Company, that’s who.

Then again, insurance CEOs aren’t usually on anyone’s top-ten lists these days, that is, except for unions’.

Every time the unions need a CEO to embarrass other CEOs, they trot out Roger Smith.

• Need someone to shill for the Employee Free Choice Act? There’s a CEO for that.

• Need someone to shill for health care reform? There’s a CEO for that.

• Need someone to shill for just about any union-backed cause because he insures more than 9 million union members (and stands to gain many more after they are forced into the union and have to buy insurance from him)? There’s a CEO for that, too.

• Need someone who touts their business as being “All-Union, Wall-to-Wall,” but then hires independent contractors, who report working 80 hour work weeks without so much as a health insurance “allowance”

So I guess it is no surprise that the unions’ favorite CEO didn’t make President Obama’s cut.

Do you know who did make Obama’s list of most admired CEOs? It’s a different Smith, FedEx’s Fred Smith, who has been battling UPS and the Teamster’s attempts to unionize his company by bringing it under the auspices of the National Labor Relations Act.

The New York Times spared few punches in their piece “Still with Obama, But Worried”:

“Because unions have been so crucial to the Democrats election after election, political experts say labor’s ambivalence, or worse, toward the Democrats could greatly deepen that party’s woes this fall.

“Labor is very disappointed, whether it’s about card check or the effort to tax Cadillac health plans,” said Charles E. Cook Jr., publisher of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, referring to a bill that would have made it easier to unionize and to tax high-cost health plans that many union members have. “They’re really disillusioned. I think one by one unions will start getting engaged and helping out the Democrats, but it could be half-hearted.” [...]

“We’ve seen a decline in support among union members for both Obama and the Democrats,” Terry Madonna, director of the college’s Center for Politics and Public Affairs, said. “Part of it is that unemployment brings low job performance ratings, no matter what the party. And less enthusiasm means that union members are less likely to vote.”"

And my favorite line comes from AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka:

“It’s totally unfair to say that the president hasn’t done this or done that,” Mr. Trumka added. “He’s tried on the stimulus bill. He faces tremendous Republican opposition. On health care, I give him the highest marks for tenacity.”

Saying that someone gets “high marks for tenacity” is like telling your friend that their significant other  “has a great personality”.

This morning, i.e. the day that institutions bury news, the White House released the “Annual Report of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class“, which had some nice things to say about EFCA. Among the pro-labor policies touted in the report on the “Middle Class,” starting on page 23 is a page plus on the importance of EFCA and the values it embodies. The report calling for EFCA does not mean it’s less dead, it’s just that the Administration has a responsibility to stay positive on the party line.

What’s funny is whose cited in the report.  The EFCA section of the White House report cites the Economic Policies Institute, a union-founded and funded group. According to the New York Post, it is a “creature of the national AFL-CIO.” What’s even more ridiculous is that it cites a report from EPI by none other than Jared Berstein and friends, entitled “The State of Working America 2008/2009.”

So who is Jared Bernstein? Why today he’s the Chief Economist and Economist Policy Advisor for Vice President Biden, who just happened to release this enlightening report. He says elsewhere he is the Executive Director of the task force. Yes my friends….Bernstein quotes himself.

Hallmarks of the middle class that raised millions into the middle class over the last 50 years were basically ignored.  “Unions” or “unionization were mentioned 34 times, by my count. By contrast,”small business(es)” were mentioned just 8 times. The word “entrepreneur” is never even mentioned in the report. Heck, even the Great Depression got mentioned twice.

What’s that old Chinese proverb?

“There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.”

No matter whether the Administration does it through a jobs bill, by reanimating a very dead EFCA, by NLRB rule changes, or executive orders, they have to find a way to give something to their loyal big labor constituants.  The Administration is currently considering something known at the “High Road Procurement Policy.” And for your information, it doesn’t take the proverbial “high road” on it’s way to handouts for big labor–and it gets labor unions exactly what they want.

From the New York Times:

The Obama administration is planning to use the government’s enormous buying power to prod private companies to improve wages and benefits for millions of workers, according to White House officials and several interest groups briefed on the plan. [...]

Although the details are still being worked out, the outline of the plan is drawing fierce opposition from business groups and Republican lawmakers. They see it as a gift to organized labor and say it would drive up costs for the government in the face of a $1.3 trillion budget deficit. [...]

The Daily Caller, a conservative Web site, reported Feb. 4 that the plan would “heavily favor government contractors that implement policies designed by organized labor.”

From the AP:

Documents obtained by The Associated Press show the plan under consideration would examine the wages and benefits — such as health insurance, retirement benefits and paid leave — a company pays its employees as a factor in the contract award process.

Image courtesy of Jakob Montrasio.

Sometime there’s just a great sentence that comes along and captures the essence of what you are trying to say. From Daniel Griswold at CATO in the Washington Times:

“Unions are rapidly becoming an economic anachronism. In recent decades, barriers to international trade and investment have fallen, and domestic markets, including transportation, energy and telecommunications, have been largely deregulated. U.S. industries, on the whole, have accepted and even embraced the more competitive environment. Sectors such as steel, textiles and sugar continue to demand protection from foreign competitors, but they are now the exceptions and not the rule. But leaders of organized labor, on the whole, do not accept the new, more competitive environment.

A return to the era of more closed and regulated markets should be strongly resisted. Although it may be seen by labor leaders as a golden era, it extracted a heavy price on Americans in the form of lost consumer welfare, product innovation and freedom. The preferable policy alternative is to allow competition to work in labor markets just as it has been allowed to work more fully in product markets.”

Out of place, out of good ideas, and out of time, unions are indeed as anachronistic as they come.  At times it seems that unions are the Luddites at the tech convention, imploring everyone to replace their iPhones with a union made CB radios and their iPads with clipboards.

Image courtesy of Kenn Wilson.