Posted on 10/29/2010 7:16:15 AM PDT by kristinn
Big Labor is pouring money into two Democratic U.S. Senate races, attempting to secure a union pension bailout during a lame duck session of Congress.
As previously reported on HUMAN EVENTS, new Federal Accounting Standards Board rules set to take effect on Dec. 15 threaten to shake up unions and the businesses entangled in multi-employer union pension plans that have been mismanaged and underfunded well before the 2008 financial upheaval. The economic downturn has only exacerbated the problem.
Recent reports show hundreds of thousands of dollars in union cash pouring into races for Democratic Senate candidates Michael Bennet and Joe Manchin. Both have publicly backed away from their support of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), more commonly known as “card check,” which would, among other things, ban secret-ballot voting for workplace unionization.
Big Labor long ago warned it wouldn’t support any candidate who failed to toe the line. Yet the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has spent more than $1.2 million in Colorado alone attacking Bennet’s opponent Ken Buck.
Unions such as the Communications Workers of America and the United Mine Workers Union are also pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Manchin race in West Virginia.
Why the reversal?
Claims of holding on to Senate majorities for passage of the card check legislation is a ruse, according to Brett McMahon, spokesman for the Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade organization.
“EFCA is dead for the next Congress,” McMahon told HUMAN EVENTS. “Labor has blown any leverage they’ve had.”
McMahon says the Obama Administration National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is effectively poised to make card check passage less urgent for unions through several new plans they’re on the verge of putting into effect.
SNIP
These two changes at NLRB would make card-check passage much less pressing for Big Labor, whose priority is a bailout of underwater union pensions while they’re still able to afford to make payments to retirees.
As with all Ponzi schemes, they need a new influx of cash to prop up the system, and union leaders believe they have found a way to put these private union pensions on the backs of taxpayers.
The likelihood of passage of the bailout through the Senate depends largely on the outcome of the three special elections to fill the remainder of the terms of the late Sen. Robert Byrd and former Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The victors in these three races will be seated for the lame duck session.
Legislation from Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) is all geared up and ready to go. The Casey bill would put a new line item into the budget, creating a new government fund to perpetuate a permanent avenue for the bailout of private union pensions.
The Democrat-led lame duck session is slated to begin Nov. 15, namely after the elections but before the non-special election members are sworn in on Jan. 3 of next year.
If he wins the West Virginia special election, Manchin would offer a key vote favoring Big Labor in support of a Senate union pension bailout. Regardless of the election outcome in Colorado, Bennet would participate in the lame duck session.
BTW, the whole article is an imformative read.
Patty Murray is on the run out here in Washington (State, not DC...) and believe me she is a big supporter of this one.
I’m not so sure anymore that the Dhimmies will dare try and push something like this in a lame duck session. People will never stand for it, especially if lots of Dhimmies get the boot next Tuesday. I think many of them will be too busy licking their wounds, and screaming bloody murder at the Obammy Regime for getting them all fired.
We’ll see next week.
Couldn’t congress defund it?
Labor unions have become more and more aggressive about forcing members and employees to contribute to their PAC.
I have a friend who works as a secretary and she was totally intimidated into contributing even though her politics are conservative (which, by the way, she feels compelled to keep to herself.)
I thought there was a law allowing union members to opt out of having their dues used for political purposes.
Maybe I'm wrong.
“The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”
Thomas Jefferson
Notes on the State of Virginia
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This person was an employee. She knew if she didn’t want early retirement, she’d better sign up.
Yes, I think there is such a law. Ha, ha.
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