Putting a Check on Unions

None too pleased with their representation.

Sanity, for now, has prevailed in Democratic Washington.  The Employee Free Choice Act, or Card Check, appears to be dead for now.  The unions pump untold millions of dollars into the D.C. machine but didn’t get it passed.  Does this show the limits of President Obama’s power?

Card Check as it is popularly known, is a union idea where, basically, when employees at a company want to form a union they will have to vote by signing a card with their name on it showing how they voted (that’s why this is also called “Card Check”).  Union bosses want to do away with the secret ballot because we all know that when people can vote anonymously they tend to vote honestly and that’s something unions can’t allow because then they might not be allowed to get into a company.

President Obama and numerous Democrats (both of whom are beholden to unions for “get out the vote” drives) came out in favor of this un-American idea.  Democrats in the Senate didn’t have the votes to get past Republican pledges to filibuster (there are 59 Democrats in the Senate and 41 Republicans and 60 votes are required to prevent the filibuster).  It is interesting to note that not all Democrats were going to vote for the bill.

The Soviet Union was supposedly a “worker’s paradise” and the proletariat was supposed to be running the show as opposed to the “capitalist pigs” we have in all modern nations that can feed themselves.  Democrats claim to be the advocate of the Blue Collar worker but many of them are elitists who look down on the “working man” because he is not in favor of gay marriage, banning firearms, and owning BMWs (or Priuses) and thinks there is too much violence and sex coming out of Hollywood.  Even President Obama is not beneath this sort of feeling:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Even then-candidate Hillary Clinton (now Secretary of State) agreed that Obama was being elitist:

“I think his comments were elitist and divisive,” she said, noting the party’s battles with the perception that it is out of touch.

“I think it’s very critical that the Democrats really focus in on this and make it clear that we are not (elitist). We are going to stand up and fight for all Americans,” Clinton said.

So what happened to the united Democratic front where they could have at least made it to 59 votes in the Senate and then blamed the Republicans for being obstructionist?

According to The Hill, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) was the first Democratic senator to oppose Card Check.  What he said is very interesting:

“I consider both the labor and the business communities to be my friends.  However, now that we need all hands on deck, including business and labor, to get our economy moving again, this issue is dividing us.”

In 2007, after the Democrats re-gained control of the Senate, he voted to move forward on a vote for the same bill (it failed when it could not get 60 votes).  Lincoln is from the state that has Walmart as its headquarters but she did vote yes in 07 so her change of heart cannot be “blamed” on them.

Unions struggle to maintain members.

But she said: “we need all hands on deck, including business and labor, to get our economy moving again.” If this is not an admission that Card Check hurts the economy I don’t know what is.  However, she also implies that while the passage of Card Check would be a drag on the economy it is only because things are slow now that it would be too much of a drag.  Were things nicely clipping along, I bet she would have voted yes because the economy could “take” this type of drag.

So unions gave millions and didn’t get their most treasured wish.  In business that’s what we call a bad investment.  Obviously if President Obama could get the largest spending bill ever through Congress he could have done something for helping Card Check to pass.  The fact that he didn’t suggests either that he is saving his political capital up for larger things such as the massive tax that is “Cap and Trade” or that he was more than happy to take labor’s cash but unwilling to go to bat for them.  That’s too bad for them because they donated over $8.1 million to Obama’s campaign.  Money well spent?

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Related posts:

1. Union Yes (or Else!)
2. When Will the Unions be Fired?