If it wasn’t clear enough with the auto bailouts, the health care battle, the effort to effectively eliminate secret-ballot elections on unionization, as well as the provocatively pro-union actions of the agencies governing labor-management relations (the NLRB and NMB), the Battle of Wisconsin should make it crystal clear: The Democratic Party has become America’s de facto Labor Party.
When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s plan to limit (not eliminate) public-sector unions’ ability to keep their hands firmly on Wisconsin taxpayers’ throats become the rallying cry for unions, the Democrat National Committee’s Organizing for America immediately jumped into the fray. Since then, Nancy Pelosi has begun fundraising for the union cause, Sherrod Brown [D-OH] has taken to comparing those opposed to unions to Hitler and Stalin, while Charlie Rangel says that abolishing bargaining rights is akin to slavery. Accuracy? No. Lunacy? Absolutely.
Now, with Maryland Governor Marty “Muscles” O’Malley joining the union fight as a commander, Democrats are wholly and openly coordinating the fight with, and on behalf of, union bosses:
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is building a Democratic offensive to Republican governors’ union-busting proposals, according to O’Malley spokesman Shaun Adamec.
O’Malley is meeting in Washington on Wednesday with top executives of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor union.
“He will discuss the political power grabs that many Republican governors are attempting, and what Democratic governors can do to work with public employees’ labor unions and the business community to create jobs,” Adamec told The Washington Examiner. The morning meeting will be held at the AFL-CIO headquarters.
One might find the unions’ singular ownership of a political party strange given that unions only represent 12% of the entire American workforce. However, Democrats know that, without the unions’ money and the boots on the ground at election time, they are finished as a party. However, the problem for the American taxpayer is inextricably linked to this perverted political process.
While government workers have the absolute right to unionize, there is no “right” to collective bargaining with a government entity. In fact, the Wisconsin fight, as union leaders have acknowledged, is not even over wages or benefits. It is, however, about union power. It is about unions maintaining their ability to use the money derived from union members’ paychecks to elect union-friendly politicians, who then reward their union patrons, unions alone are placed in the ability game the system. This was recognized as far back as the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt wrote:
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations.
As the Wall Street Journal noted:
When union leaders negotiate with a politician, they’re negotiating with someone they can hire and fire. Public unions have numbers and money, and politicians need both. And politicians fear strikes because the public hates them. When governors negotiate with unions, it’s not collective bargaining, it’s more like collusion. Someone said last week the taxpayers aren’t at the table. The taxpayers aren’t even in the room.
In large measure, unions have become wholly dependent on the Democratic Party and big government largesse and, similarly, Democrats have become wholly dependent on unions. For taxpayers, who are stuck with the trillions of unfunded liabilities, the Democratic Party’s allegiance to union bosses has become a match made in hell.
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