The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that despite the 3-1 strike-authorization vote by the Teamsters, Mayor Daley is vowing to keep the airports open no matter what.

“You know what? There’d be 50,000 people applying for these jobs,” Daley said. “I mean, there’s so many people out of work. If you were ever to open employment, there’d be 50,000. These are good-paying jobs. Everybody would like to not work and get two hours’ pay.

“I don’t know how they can strike,” the mayor said. “My argument is that, if there’s no work to be done and they’re getting two hours’ pay, they should be very thankful to taxpayers that they’re getting two hours’ pay.” [...] Since Dec. 15, dozens of pool drivers have been sent home when there is no snow to remove and none forecast. [...]

“In good times, they would hire the Teamsters … and pay ’em [for] eight hours” whether or not there was snow to be removed, Daley said.”But this is such an economic crisis that you can’t sit there and not do work and be paid for eight hours … You can’t plow if there’s no snow and you can’t put salt down. So, appropriately then, after two hours, you have ’em go home. Usuually, they’d be laid off for four months completely.”

With unemployment remaining at 9.7%, it’s not hard to see why Mayor Daley thinks he has the higher ground.

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.

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.

Today the Center for Union Facts expressed puzzlement and disbelief following the Washington Post report that Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern may be nominated to President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

“Putting Andy Stern on a debt reduction commission is the equivalent of putting a tax cheat in charge of the Internal Revenue Service, but crazier things have happened in Washington” said J. Justin Wilson, Managing Director of the Center for Union Facts. “Stern and his unions know a thing or two about government debt, as they do their fair share to contribute to it. The SEIU has single-handedly driven more than a few states to the edge of fiscal insolvency. We can’t let him do the same to the rest of the country.”

The rumor that Stern will sit on the budget panel should not come as a surprise, given his long history of thwarting states’ attempts to balance their budgets. Stern’s SEIU, and other unions that represent state employees, have blocked many attempts to renegotiate state employees salaries and benefits.

For instance, as California struggles to avoid bankruptcy and close a $20 billion dollar budget deficit, unions including the SEIU have fought tooth and nail against any effort by legislators to save money. California also faces $100 billion in unfunded pension liabilities in the next five years, but unions have vowed to reject any attempt to fix the pension crisis—and therefore any effort to address the state’s financial meltdown.

Equally entangled in their own budget crisis of unions’ making, New York State is working to close a $7.4 billion dollar deficit.  Last month, Governor Paterson stated that the public sector unions were “thumb[ing] their nose at the public’s face.”

“Stern’s self-serving brand of ‘deficit reduction’ would likely increase taxes on everyone to pay for the pensions and wages of a few—without regard for our nation’s fiscal future,” Wilson continued.

William Forbath, professor of law and history at the University of Texas and author of Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement, used his most recent Politico piece to call for Craig Becker’s appointment by President.  He doesn’t come right out and call the Administration (and the Hill, for that matter) cowards–but he gets pretty close.

His motivation for pushing the Democrats so hard to support labor? To quote the absent minded professor here: “Unions are on the verge of vanishing.” From Politico:

“The Becker nomination offers President Barack Obama a more important opportunity, what he likes to call a teachable moment. […]

But unions are on the verge of vanishing. If the Democrats won’t even go this far to halt the battering unions have been taking, then Democrats and the nation will be the losers. For soon, we won’t have any institutional player to do the heavy lifting, to provide the serious money the Democrats need to campaign for job creation, health care reform and financial regulation. McCain and company have demonized Becker simply because he’s a union lawyer. Obama should stand up to them.”

Did you catch that? Unions are the “institutional player” that do the “heavy lifting” and pays the bills in the house of card check.

Image courtesy of Veebl.

Imagine my slightly-surprised moment when I flipped through the most recent issue of The Economist and noticed that they doppelgangering-ly titled their Lexington article on labor unions “Labour Pains”.  They even had a petite Richard Trumka sitting on President Obama’s shoulder, whispering in his ear.

Here are some highlights:

The lead: “Barack Obama will never satisfy his union backers. Nor should he try.”

After chronicling Obama’s handouts to labor unions, and mentioning that public cash is the unions’ lifeline, the magazine moves onto impact of unions on the American job market…and why the market forces don’t apply to the public sector:

Market forces place a natural check on unionisation at private firms. [...]  Such checks do not apply in the public sector. The government cannot easily go bust. When a company pays over the odds for labour, the money comes straight out of its owners’ pockets. They usually object. But when a politician hikes public servants’ pay, he wins votes. If this year’s budget is tight, he can promise lavish pensions, secure in the knowledge that the bill will come due only in the distant future.

Unfortunately, that distant future is now, which is why so many states are in a fiscal pickle. Per hour worked, state and local government workers enjoy 34% higher wages and 70% more benefits than their private-sector counterparts, calculates Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank. [...]

And a hearty warning from the Economist about the November elections:

Organised labour is, of course, organised; and that confers political influence. But union bosses can sound jarringly out of touch. “A job is a good job because workers fight to make it one,” says Mr. Trumka. Many other Americans, however, think a job should pay well if you do it well, and grumble that this rule doesn’t seem to apply to unionised public servants. Taxpayers are angry, and itching to vote in November.

Maybe instead of trying to sit on President Obama’s shoulder, union leaders should be looking over theirs.

When it comes to whether NLRB nominee Craig Becker can “implement the Employee Free Choice Act by administrative fiat,” AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff says “yes”. Senator Harkin justified his pro-Becker vote yesterday by saying “no”.

This comes directly from Senator Tom Harkin’s prepared statement at the HELP Committee Executive Session on Pending Nominations yesterday.  Shout out to LaborUnionReport.com for calling attention to this:

“Critics have also questioned whether Mr. Becker would come to the Board with an agenda, and whether he would try to implement the Employee Free Choice Act by administrative fiat. As you are all aware, I’m a supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act, and I hope to see it passed by Congress and signed into law by the President.  But I don’t have any illusions that those important changes can somehow be accomplished administratively, and neither does Craig Becker.”

““He has clearly and consistently explained, on numerous occasions, that all three major reforms proposed in EFCA—card check, binding arbitration for first contracts, and treble backpay for illegally fired workers—cannot be accomplished without a change in the statute. And as we all know, statutes can only be amended by those of us elected to Congress, not Executive Branch appointees.”

Bottom line: If Craig Becker couldn’t do so much, the unions wouldn’t fight so hard. It’s what Sen. Harkin was referring to when he begged the HELP committee to approve Becker so he could “start his important work“.  Senator Harkin and Stewart Acuff may not be on the same page publicly, but privately, it’s a whole different story.

Image courtesy of gualtiero.