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.

Update: Senator Harkin justifies vote saying NLRB nomineee “cannot” change the rules

As the Director of Organizing at the AFL-CIO, Stewart Acuff draws a smaller crowd than the SEIU’s Andy Stern or his boss at the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka. But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have something laughable to say.

In his poorly timed Huffington Post piece yesterday, Acuff took that opportunity to sing the praises of the Employee Free Forced Choice Act and bemoan it stalling on the Hill.  Acuff decided it would be a great idea to show big labor’s cards on the day before the Craig Becker vote.  He wrote that if the Senate “no longer” has EFCA’s 60 votes, then labor will be able to simply create new regulation through nominees to the NLRB.

Um, that’s exactly what the opposition to Craig Becker is claiming will occur, and they have Acuff to thank for confirming that publicly. From his own post:

“We are very close to the 60 votes we need. It we aren’t able to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, we will work with President Obama and Vice President Biden and their appointees to the National Labor Relations Board to change the rules governing forming a union through administrative action to once again allow workers in America access to one of the most basic freedoms in a democracy–the freedom of speech and assembly and association so that workers can build the collective power to challenge the Financial Elite and Get America Back to Work.”

Acuff may have gotten some much needed attention from his post. But if the Senate doesn’t confirm Becker now, Acuff might get some attention and credit for that too.

Image courtesy of coloradostatesman.com.

We saw this dilemma coming. Labor is frustrated with Democrats, but how should they channel their anger?  Stories about a Brave New World? Mass protests? Fist shaking?

Democratic primary challenges (or just threatening primary challenges) are sounding better and better by the day.  They’ve even got a short list.

The National Journal reports:

“It’s not one big happy family for the Democrats when it comes to some of the brothers and sisters in the house of labor. Frustrations are so great that union chiefs on the AFL-CIO’s executive committee have discussed backing primary election challenges to Democratic senators cool to their agenda. [...] The prospect of encouraging Democratic primary challenges will be raised with the Steelworkers’ executive board when it meets next month, he added. Three senators’ names will be brought up specifically, Gerard said: Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

All told, the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, United Steelworkers, CWA, SEIU, and many others are discussing primary election challenges to demonstrate their seriousness (That is, you know, beyond calling Senators terrorists).

In light of the Supreme Court ruling last week, labor leaders have been up in arms about how it opens the flood gates for corporate monies to flow unfettered into the political arena. But it is quite a bit more complex than that.

On the one hand you have Secretary-Treasurer of the SEIU, Anna Burger, saying this:

“Today the US Supreme Court lifted the floodgates and started dismantling century-old restrictions on corporate electoral activity in the name of the ‘free speech rights’ of corporations—meaning if you are a ‘corporate person’ (aka a CEO or corporate official), you are now free to hit the corporate ATM and spend whatever of your shareholders’ money it takes to elect the candidates of your choice.”

But experts have pushed back. From USA Today:

Analysts said they did not expect to see a flood of corporate spending on ads that call for the election or defeat of an individual candidate. “I don’t see the Cokes and Pepsis of this world writing checks for political campaigns in this economic environment,” said Evan Tracey, who tracks political advertising at Campaign Media Analysis Group. “They have shareholders, boards of directors and customers who come from all sides of the political spectrum.” Experts, such as campaign-finance lawyer Kenneth Gross, said the money is more likely to flow through trade associations and non-profit groups.

They are probably onto something. Even some labor leaders are beginning to muse about what benefit they themselves could gain from the ruling. From the Business Week:

“Karen Ackerman, the political director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federations of unions, said last week in a conference call with reporters that the Supreme Court’s decision would open “some avenues to spend resources in different ways than we have had in the past.” It is too soon to know how, she said.”

Given the nature of labor union officials’ disregard for the dues of their members and their already creative ways of funneling dues into elections, it is possible that after the Supreme Court ruling the only people using the employees’ ATM more readily will be union officials.

Bloomberg reports:

Union membership in the private sector declined in 2009 to a record low of 7.2 percent, as a recession eroded employment in labor-organized industries such as construction and manufacturing, a U.S. report showed.

The figure compares with 7.6 percent in 2008, according to data released today by the Labor Department. Union membership made up 12.3 percent of the total workforce, down from 12.4 percent in 2008. It increased among government workers to 37.4 percent from 36.8 percent.

While private sector union membership has dropped, public sector union membership has risen slightly in the last year. Perhaps private sector membership is slowly meeting its maker, but unions have found their rainmaker in public sector membership. It’s terribly convenient that the government can never go out of business. They make great bargaining opponents.

And my, you know you are well connected when the Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis (former board member of a union lobbying organization), immediately states that the new statistics demand the passage of EFCA. From her press release:

“When coupled with data showing that union members have access to better health care, retirement and leave benefits, these numbers make it clear that union jobs are good jobs.

“As workers across the country have seen their real and nominal wages decline as a result of the recession, these numbers show a need for Congress to pass legislation to level the playing field to enable more American workers to access the benefits of union membership.  This report makes clear why the administration supports the Employee Free Choice Act.”

It means quite the opposite. Not to toot our own horn, but Bloomberg and the New York Times reports:

“J. Justin Wilson, managing director of a group called the Center for Union Facts that opposes easier unionization, said today’s data shows that union membership is “an outdated concept” and a “relic of depression-era labor-management relations.”

“Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski? The bums will always lose!” –The Big Lebowski

Too harsh? Yes, but still.

Big Labor won’t give up the fight. They just keep losing battles, and then talking about them like victories. EFCA and health care legislation were dealt a major blow yesterday with the election of Scott Brown yesterday in Massachusetts. Health care is suddenly in very rocky, uncharted territory and EFCA, placed on the back burner for health care, may find it very difficult to come to the forefront.

On labor blogs and even in statements by the likes of Andy Stern, labor is blaming the loss on Democrats not being left enough and being too compromising on healthcare and EFCA. Only if Dems had rammed through EFCA without compromise and healthcare with serious teeth, says labor, would the true Democratic base been ignited to action….and to voting for Coakley!

Said another way: If only the Democrats had done exactly what the labor machine told them to do this year, they wouldn’t be in this mess.

So hold onto your hats in the run up to the elections this fall. Will Democrats buy into labor’s version of events? Will they be required to?

I’m sorry.  It’s quite funny, yet unsurprising, that labor leaders can look at the election last night and say they’ve won because it proves that labor’s agenda is embraced by Americans.  Mind you, if Coakley had won, the labor leaders would be talking about the election last night and taking all the credit for their union war machine of endorsements and millions of dollars spent , because it proves that labor’s agenda is embraced by Americans.

Is it possible voters recognize that the health care legislation opens up millions of Americans for unionization and saves/gains billions of dollars for unions? Is it possible that voters see the the Employee Free Choice Act actually removes alot of free choices that employers and employees currenty have? Is it possible that Coakley’s track record supporting unions at the cost of the state taxpayers angered voters? Here is one example. Could it be that that is why they lost last night?

Labor leaders say no. I say yes.

In the words of Andy Stern:

“The reason Ted Kennedy’s seat is no longer controlled by a Democrat is clear: Washington’s inability to deliver the change voters demanded in November 2008. Make no mistake, political paralysis resulted in electoral failure.“

“During the past year, Republicans refused to do anything but stand in the way of change and Democratic Senators took too long to do too little. And tonight, the Senate bears the consequences for its failure to act decisively but the American people are the ones left paying the price. If our elected officials don’t recognize that every day more working families fall victim to Washington’s failure to act, the elections next November will result in the same.”

“Today’s vote must be a wake-up call that now is the time for bold action. Time to stand up to politics as usual. Time to stand up to Republican scare and stall tactics. And time to speak up for working families.”

Maybe they should listen to the working families who voted yesterday for a change.

It appears that labor leaders and government officials have reached a compromise on excise taxes, according to the New York Times. The details are not fully clear yet, but FoxNews has reported the following:

A senior Democratic official speaking on background told Fox News that the threshold for exemption would be raised from $23,000 to $24,000 per family but would remain the same at $8,500 for singles with high-value plans. Dental and vision plans would be removed from that calculation, however. State and local workers and union members are exempted until 2017. A Democratic source with close union contacts said labor leaders are not particularly happy with the tentative deal, but are much less angry than they were at the previous plan.

The chatter in the last few days that been that unions might convince the Administration and Congressional Democratic leadership to exempt collectively-bargained health insurance plans from paying the excise tax, the majority of plans over the threshold.  It’s a deal that would increase the cost of the health care legislation.  While the compromise announced today doesn’t go as far as the one that’s has been bandied about, it will be interesting to see what its final form really is. Unions exempt until 2017? What’s to say that the exemption doesn’t get an permanent extension.

Why on earth should union insurance be exempt with state and local workers (many of whom are union), while the rest of us with expensive plans pay the price?

If indeed collectively bargained health insurance plans are exempt from the excise tax for the next 7 years, former SEIU staffer Michael Whitney who now blogs over at FireDogLake says it could be very, very bad thing for unions in the short and  medium term.  It only proves that unions are guided by “blind self interest.” And it may jeopardize the public willingness to swallow EFCA. The “deal” that FDL is talking about below, for the record, on the union excise tax exemption sans the 2017 caveat, but I’d say the principle holds.

From FireDogLake:

If unions take this “deal,” if the labor movement decides to fold and exempt themselves from the excise tax, they fulfill one of the worst of stereotypes of labor unions: blind self interest.  By abandoning the nonunion middle class and protecting only their own, the labor movement is throwing any hope of future relevancy out the window.

The ideal of unions is to organize the unorganized, to protect the unprotected.  Sure, unions should fight for their members, no question.  But in the biggest public policy and political fight of a generation, unions simply cannot exempt their members from the dangerous excise tax and call it a day. And if Rahm does come through on his end of the deal – a vote on the Employee Free Choice Act – expect unions to be very much on their own in that fight if they sell out on health care.