Unionization for Thee, Not For Me Pt. 2

EFCA keeps popping up in the news now and again (WSJ for subscribers, Politico, Google News search). A little reading will give you the guts of the topic but its most contentious point is the use of signed cards instead of secret ballots under certain circumstances to recognize a union.

Once in my life I was a scab. I worked for one summer for my family's distribution company on a delivery truck when the drivers struck. Their jobs, sweaty and difficult, required a high school diploma, no nights, no weekends, no meetings and paid between $65,000 and $120,000/year + health insurance and pensions (in 1989). I don't recall their specific demands but I imagine they wanted, in the words of Samuel Gompers, "more." Well, their union said strike so they struck. I don't remember all the when's and how's but I do know none of them ever came back to work again.

Before you start thinking my fat-cat family just waited out the working stiffs, lounging by a pool, know that the business peaked about ten years before the strike and was sold for about 1/2 its peak value a couple years after the strike. The peak value was a nice number but was hardly enough to endow the founder's great-grandchildren with a life of Paris Hilton ease. Even if it was, the business belonged to my stepfather's family so I was never destined to hang pantyless with Paris and Britney. While the strike by itself didn't kill the business, partnership with changing tastes and bad decisions eventually did.

The job was fun, exhausting and paid pretty well. Only five people knew who I was: my stepfather, his father, the general manager, the warehouse manager and me. We had some bad ass security guards on the trucks with us and in case I was ever outed, the baddest bad ass security guard was assigned to my truck. He was an off-duty CPD beat cop named Acky who told me, and I believed him then and now, if anyone hassled me he would fire a few warning shots into the perp's leg.

Though a non-teabagging, free market trader, I have nothing particularly against unions. Unions serve as a necessary check against egregious employers. I believe workers have every right to organize and companies with bad union relationships deserve what they get. Unions, however, also have a documented history of malfeasance and corruption, so they're no angels themselves. Unions were dominant in a period of extraordinary American economic hegemony. Without unionization workers would have gotten the shaft. But when there's not enough to go around their legalized stranglehold on labor supply can help destroy a business. To see the havoc public sector employee unions can wreak, when conspiring with elected officials they organize to elect, dig into either San Diego or New York.

What's this got to do with EFCA? Only this: if secret ballots are so damn important in Mexico, why aren't they in the United States? Could it be. . . .wait for it. . . .politics?

The New Piracy

Congratulations to the Navy Seals and their skilled snipers for doing what should always be done to dangerous terrorists.

We are incredibly fortunate that the strength and courage of the American military is still a force for good in the world, even at a time when the Obama Administration is hell bent on shrinking America’s global stature.

I can’t imagine the backache Barack Hussein will have after the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. By my count, there will be 33 heads of state before whom to bow later this week.

While I applaud Obama’s apparent zero-tolerance policy regarding brazen Somali Pirates, here at home we’re no less under siege. We have entered the age of The New Piracy We Can’t Believe In.

The traditional definition of piracy is an act committed by a non-state actor but the Somalis have made that obsolete, as no one believes they are true pirates, acting alone or without training. Here in the U.S., there are multitudes of state actors littering the looting and pillaging landscape:

Tax pirates on Capitol Hill and inside the White House.

Salary/bonus pirates on Congressional subcommittees.

Free-market pirates, most of them holed up in Larry Summers’ office at the White House.

Education pirates, a.k.a., lawmakers who’d rather stay cozy with teachers’ unions than open doors to educational opportunities in abysmal urban school systems.

First Amendment pirates, led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed, who still think folks don’t get the twisted irony of something called “The Fairness Doctrine” that targets Conservative talk radio.

Family pirates, judges mostly, popping up in state after state, zealously targeting the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman with bench rulings that legalize gay unions. The pirates are still nursing rum hangovers in Iowa and Vermont.

Peace pirates, empowered by the President, who apparently believes that a little love sent Iran’s way will pay big diplomatic dividends down the road. Where’s the harm in a little unabashed uranium enrichment by Iranian “technicians”?

(Iran’s a small nation, like North Korea, remember? The junior Senator from Illinois said so last year when seeking the Piracy, ah, Presidency. They’re just a bunch of happy-go-lucky Johnny Depps, charming the ladies and dabbling in petty crimes).

Finally, we learned just today about the Freedom Pirates lurking inside the Department of Homeland Security. Seems they’ve issued an “assessment” that warns “rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.”

The report compares present trends to a climate that spawned the various anti-government military militias of the 1990s (translation: during the last reign by a liberal Democrat President). There is no mention of what if any activities these extremists were suspected of in the past decade, as if there were no hidden factions that loathed George Bush. They existed, but they would mainly fall under the heading, “leftwing extremists”, and would thus have been of little concern to the DHS and beyond the scope, as they say, of this report.

The DHS further advises that, while there are righties who are “hate-oriented” (the militia types), the feds are also keeping an eye on “those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.” Imagine that? A failure to embrace big, smothering government control of … um … well … everything.

Let us not misunderstand the underlying message of this “assessment” (which is being discussed across the land tonight) and the intent of its publication. American citizens who are not pro-Obama are members of society who pose a “threat”. The DHS knows this because of its analysis of “rightwing extremist chatter on the Internet”. (Such as the post you are reading here).

You are not a Conservative if you oppose Obama’s radical vision, his Socialist agenda, or his apologies for America when he stands on foreign soil. You are not a Patriot if you believe in the Constitution as our enduring foundation, or if you would fight to preserve the First and Second Amendments.

What are you? You are a Rightwing Extremist Threat. It says so in the DHS “assessment”. It says “the historic election of an African American president and the prospect of policy changes” are stirring the right. It says our chatter focuses on “the perceived loss of U.S. jobs” (yes, it actually says “perceived”). It says the winds of extremism are blowing because you are “antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of (social) issues.”

Oh, and this. You are on the DHS radar because your “rightwing extremist views bemoan the decline of U.S. stature.” Shall we assume that a leftwing extremist bemoans the expansion of U.S. stature?

I think we know the answer. We hear it every time the White House teleprompter rolls.

Monday is Patriots’ Day. But at the DHS, every day since Jan. 20, 2009, has been Rightwing Extremist Alert Day. Get used to it.

Unionization for Thee, Not For Me

NYT Editorial
December 28, 2008

The measure (EFCA) is vital legislation and should not be postponed. Even modest increases in the share of the unionized labor force push wages upward, because nonunion workplaces must keep up with unionized ones that collectively bargain for increases. By giving employees a bigger say in compensation issues, unions also help to establish corporate norms, the absence of which has contributed to unjustifiable disparities between executive pay and rank-and-file pay.

Times threatens to shut down Boston Globe
April 4, 2009

The New York Times Co. has threatened to shut down The Boston Globe unless the newspaper's unions agree to $20 million in concessions, the Globe reported on its Web site. Executives from the Times Co. and Globe met Thursday with union leaders to demand pay cuts, the end of pension contributions by the company and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees for some veteran employees, the Globe reported, citing union leaders.

Commentary unnecessary. . . .