I just watched ABC News and they did a segment on how the Republican Party is the party of no and cited a few examples that made Republicans look bad. (No mention of Obama’s ballooning debt.) One point they made was that some in the GOP are going to vote against measures they once supported. The jobs bill was mentioned, but for some reason they didn’t mention big labor’s efforts to sneak card check into the legislation. (Emphasis mine.)
Las Vegas Sun: Still, those moves don’t easily lend themselves to a campaign mailer or political rhetoric. Even key parts of the economic stimulus package, such as tax credits and unemployment assistance, don’t pack the populist punch of health care or labor law reform.
“Saving jobs is invisible,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “You need an accomplishment that is clear. No matter what unions try to do, their members and the friends of their members will be demobilized.
“That’s why something like health care is so important. People will say, ‘What have you done for me?’ And the answer is, ‘Nothing or not much.’ ”
On labor law, Bill Samuel, the AFL-CIO’s legislative director, said the union would try to enlist moderate Republicans but acknowledged the difficulty of achieving a bipartisan bill. He said the federation might consider “other tactics,” meaning the card-check legislation or key parts of it could be placed into a larger jobs bill this year.
Democrat Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, suggested that was the bill’s fate. “Maybe it won’t be card check,” he said, referring to the full bill. “But there are some things we need to do to straighten out the process for (union) elections and certification and first contract.”
Amy Dean, the former head of the AFL-CIO’s Silicon Valley office who has written about reshaping the American labor movement, said labor’s current lot is in part the result of failing to learn the lessons of the early 1990s.
“In the Clinton years, the labor movement let the White House and the Democrats lead — and we got rolled,” she said. “We have to be prepared to put forward our own vision for the economy … We have to stop giving our money away and working for people who aren’t working for our needs.”
Dean said labor should use the Obama jobs bill, which could include labor law reform and taxes to discourage outsourcing, as a condition for its support in November.
So, will Democrats slip card check into the jobs bill to retain the support of unions. I wouldn’t put it past them.
No wonder so many Americans are angry at government, and believe unions weaken America. They work behind the scenes, bullying politicians to work for their needs rather than the needs of the politicians’ constituencies. So if the GOP blocks the bogus jobs bill, it will be a good thing for America. We can’t afford it anyway, and we certainly can’t afford giving the unions any more power over our lives.
H/T Ed Morrissey
Via memeorandum
Update: It’s been several hours and the ABC News report I saw still isn’t on line. If I find it I’ll change the link.
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