There are strong forces in America that preach the vision of scarcity, the vision of division and the vision of fear. They try to convince us that we are not a country gifted with great abundance; they try to convince us that there is not enough abundance to go around, so we had better be jealous of anyone who has more than we do. We had better try to take away from someone who has more than us and bring them down to our level of scarcity rather than trying to bring ourselves (and everyone else) up to their level.

That sounds like something that a free-marketer would right, albeit an surprisingly emotive one. After all, unions have been playing the class card for decades, asserting that our abundance is a limited pot and the wealthy need to relinquish their wealth more through taxes. Virtually all union rhetoric hinges on this idea.

As a matter of fact, it was written by United Auto Workers President Bob King in a recent op-ed. King was presumably describing conservatives who think union members are overpaid. Or something. Whatever the case, Bob King accidentally did a pretty good job describing the mixed-up world f Bob King. (Takes one to know one?)

Here’s the rub. King wrote in another op-ed just a few months ago: “But remember, some cynically want this government to fail in order to remove all restrictions on corporations and preserve tax cuts for the ultra wealthy.” Sounds like Mr. King needs figure out which side of the “out-of-step with reality” fence he’s on.

Image courtesy of L4urenZ.

The United Auto Workers on Sunday voted by an overwhelming margin to allow leadership to call a strike against Caterpillar Inc. if a new contract cannot be hammered out.

UAW members at seven locals – including Local 974 in East Peoria – voted by a 94 percent majority to authorize a strike if necessary. The union did not give vote totals.

The existing six-year contract expires March 1, and UAW and Caterpillar have been negotiating since Dec. 15. Neither side has gone public with details from the talks, which are taking place in Caterpillar’s Building CV in East Peoria and are scheduled to resume Monday.

Caterpillar is staying quiet on the issue. We’ll keep you updated at this develops.

In a strikingly candid interview today, King admitted that the UAW’s very survival depends on this campaign:

“Here’s the terrible position we’re in (with) autos,” King said. “Because we’ve fallen so far in the percent of workers represented by the UAW in autos,” the union can’t demand big increases because of non-union competitors.

“So if we go in, we dramatically raise fixed costs for Ford, General Motors or Chrysler, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot…. We don’t want to disadvantage the (Detroit 3) companies.”

Welcome to the real world, Mr. King. This is as clear an admission as you’ll ever get from a labor leader that unions drive costs up for businesses and make them less competitive. Foreign automakers have apparently acted as a check on the UAW, keeping its demands reasonable. Now the UAW wants to do away with that check.

Why? It seems the UAW is getting nostalgic:

“What we’re really committed to is creating the UAW of the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s. The UAW of those days was an activist union — members were mobilized all the time,” King said.

Just what the country needs right now: more business disruptions.

Image courtesy of TrevinC.

Employers can expect the new board to grant much broader protections to union-related activity. An Aug. 27 board decision on “bannering” highlights this point. Bannering refers to the display of large signs, often containing misleading claims, at job sites belonging to neutral parties. It is a union tactic often designed to threaten and coerce neutral businesses to avoid dealing with non-union contractors or suppliers.

Although the law expressly prohibits unions from engaging in coercive or threatening actions toward neutral businesses, the new board has ruled that bannering is protected. Under this new rule, unions can now target your business or job sites with large banners — or use giant inflatable rats signifying the presence of “scabs” — even when you have no labor dispute with that union.

The case before the NLRB began in Arizona where representatives of the Carpenters Local 1506 (consisting of non-union temp workers  being paid to play the part of “picketer”) held 16-foot-long signs outside two medical centers and a restaurant. The signs read “Shame on…(the name of the establishment)” with the words “Labor Dispute” nearby. The catch? The establishments had no conflict with the union. The dispute was with construction companies doing work for the establishments’ owners.

This should have been a no-brainer for the NLRB. The National Labor Relations Act forbids conduct found to “threaten, coerce, or restrain” secondary businesses not involved in the primary dispute. But chalk one up to the labor-stacked NLRB, i.e. Craig Becker and Co.: They found a way to rule in the union’s favor.

To what extreme’s will unions take this new rule?

Recently the [United Brotherhood of Carpenters in Salt Lake City] has taken its bannering a step further by targeting companies that don’t do business with the Contractors. The banners are the same. But the handbills reveal that the company named is a potential tenant in a building where one of the Contractors is slated to perform work. According to the Union, the company being bannered is guilty of “thinking about profiting from unfair labor practices.” By this measure, most of the population might be subject to bannering.

A “potential tenant” where a company “is slated to perform work”? How far will bannering go? Could a union pressure the company that employs the aunt of the owner of a plumbing company that services an office building that houses a paper company that sells supplies to another company with which the union has a dispute? Or perhaps just thinking about selling supplies is enough to put a company in the unions crosshairs. Thanks to Craig Becker’s NLRB, it’s certainly possible.

This video drives home the point. Despite being about NFCW, not the Carpenters, it’s the same practice of creating a deceptive union picket line.

Mr. Obama reiterated that the administration will put its weight behind it. “We are going to keep on fighting to pass the Employee Free Choice Act,” he told the 54 executive council members and others in the room. “We also know what and who is standing in the way of progress,” he said, adding that it will be “tough” to get the bill through the Senate and will take time to reverse the impact of “at least eight years in which there was a profound animosity toward the notion of unions.”

Mr. Obama also reminded the labor officials of the ways in which the administration has already supported unions, in part by wielding executive powers for actions that don’t require legislation.

“There’s a reason why we nominated people to the National Mediation Board that would ensure that folks in the rail and air” industries can organize, said Mr. Obama, referring to the board’s overhaul in May of a decades-old rule that had made it harder for airline and railway workers to unionize. He also cited the Democrats he nominated to the National Labor Relations Board to “restore some balance” to the group, which supervises union elections and referees disputes between private-sector employers and employees.