Pro-Union Bills Are Veto Bait for Bush

Labor legislation that is a priority for Democrats has become the definition of "veto bait" for the White House.

Five of the 24 veto threats President Bush has issued since Democrats took control of Congress target bills with provisions that benefit unions and their members.

Measures passed by either the House or Senate making it easier for unions to organize workplaces, stiffening penalties for union busting or establishing more collective bargaining rights for federal employees are among those under veto threats. Often they're tucked into the fine print provisions and not the major subject of the bill itself.

"There's really a lot of examples where he's looked at legislation, it seems, from the perspective of, 'Will this help workers?''Will this help workers win representation?' And if the answer is yes, he finds a reason to veto it," said William Samuel, the AFL-CIO's chief lobbyist.

Unions spent more than $66 million in the midterm election cycle, most of that money going to Democratic candidates. Republicans grouse that Democratic leaders now in charge of the House and Senate are simply repaying their benefactors.

"What we see going on is directly related to the partisanship of a political party winning power and paying back the union bosses for their support for all these years," said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas.

The bills are "in fact sort of an earmark to Big Labor interests and a payback to Big Labor," said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla.

Democrats reject the insinuation that they're paying back labor for help in the election, saying that is more the way Republicans ran Congress.

"That is why you lost your leadership, because they were paying back their supporters," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee and has a 99 percent pro-labor voting record.

Dear Editor,

As Frederick “Rick” Dubinsky, the hard-driving former chairman of United’s pilots union, once said: “We don’t want to kill the golden goose. We just want to choke it by the neck until it gives us every last egg,” the relationship between unions and the companies they work for is “What can you do for me now.”

Unfortunately, years of union benefits piling on union benefits have made many of the companies they work for unviable. For instance, if Ford wants to lay off union workers, they still must 90% of their salaries and benefits for years. To unplug a computer in the Philadelphia Convention Center requires that a union electrician does the work (the actual unplugging). SEPTA union employees pay not one dime in co-pays or deductibles for their medical benefits and are willing to shut down the entire mass transit system in Philadelphia, indefinitely, to keep it that way.

When companies can not make a profit or compete because they are being squeezed for every golden egg, they have two options. Either go out of business or go to areas where unions are not as strong. This used to mean going to the mostly nonunionized Southern United States, where for the last 20 years every major automobile manufacturer has chosen to build new manufacturing plants, but now means to go overseas in search of the most competitive place to do business.

Management is not innocent, they have created this mess. They have made many unwise decisions of putting short term profits over the long term health of their companies. In the same vein, they have also agreed to outrageous union contracts because the bills and heartburn for them would come due on some else’s watch in the future.

Now the bills are coming due. And all the union iron clad contracts mean nothing if the company they work for goes out of business. Just ask the workers of steel and airline companies. And ask their retirees. All wish that the company they work for or retired from was a healthy and profitable company.

Unions need to focus on how they can make the companies they work for as strong as possible. This is the only way to keep union jobs, pay and benefits around for the long run. And that doesn’t mean massive pay cuts. Flexibly in work rules, retraining for new jobs when technology changes the old jobs, plugging in and using membership brains/experiences to make the company more profitable are all foreign concepts in many union shops. Their company’s future is their future. For instance, when union workers in Japan go on strike, they wear arm bands that proclaim “On Strike” as they continue to work. They understand that to cause unneeded financial damage to the company they work for, in these days of global competition, is one way to lose their jobs forever.

Unions also need to get out of politics. All of the major unions are strong supporters (both in money from mandatory union dues and “forced” volunteers) of the most liberal of democrat candidates. They have publicly taken positions of being pro-abortion, anti-gun and anti-tax cut (among a plethora of other social issues). None of these issues has anything remotely to do with how a union operates. But it serves to isolate unions from over half the population of America who want nothing to do with them just based on their political stands on these controversial issues. Many people actively avoid buying union made products because they feel they are financing their political enemies.

The union’s heritage is of the craftsman guilds. When you hired a craftsman, you knew you were getting value – someone who was trained, knew what they were doing and did the job right. Today, hiring a union person to do a job is synonymous for expensive, inflexible, sloppy work and belligerence. That is the image that needs to be changed for unions to flourish – what can we do to provide value.

Regards,

2banana

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