2.1 million new legal (mostly low-wage) workers during a time of effective 17% unemployment just isn’t enough to help the economy recover. What we really need is a coerced return to a heavily unionized labor force. Because America is crying for a return to that Jimmy Carter-era prosperity! Washington Examiner:
When labor lawyer Craig Becker’s nomination to the National Labor Relations Board was rejected by a bipartisan vote of the Senate in February, it was due to fears on both sides of the aisle that the former counsel for the AFL-CIO and SEIU would use the board’s administrative powers to implement Card Check. That’s Big Labor’s No. 1 public policy goal because it abolishes secret ballots in workplace representation elections. Workers would then be required to publicly sign a card supporting a union or decline to do so. That approach would be a clear invitation to union bullying of workers who oppose unionization. Union bosses hope Card Check will help them reverse a decades-long slump that has seen their membership drop to only 7 percent of all private-sector workers. So when the Senate rejected Becker, the union bosses — who spent $400 million to elect President Obama — pressured the chief executive to use a recess appointment to put him on the NLRB without Senate confirmation.
Becker’s appointment expires next year, so it’s no surprise that he hurried to use the NLRB case decided Tuesday to take a major step toward making Card Check the law of the land. The lack of surprise doesn’t make it any less outrageous. In the decision, involving Dana Corp., the AFL-CIO and United Auto Workers, the NLRB upheld Card Check as a legal organizing tool so long as the employer and union organizers enter into a “letter of agreement” in advance.
Thanks to this NLRB decision, expect to see many more occasions in which companies hoping to get a break on compensation agreements cave in to union demands for Card Check. The biggest losers in such deals are invariably the employees and not just because their right to a secret ballot is lost. In 2007, the SEIU provoked public outrage when it struck such a deal with California nursing home operators. The employer got major concessions — including union help lobbying the state of California for more tax-paid child care subsidies, while the SEIU got more union dues from thousands of newly unionized workers.
[…]
With the Dana decision, the NLRB thus becomes yet another illustration of Obama’s willingness to use bureaucratic edicts, this time resulting from an administrative law case, to advance something on his agenda that not even the Democratic Congress would support.
Well. How fundamentally decent that is of him.
Of course, I’m sure it’s a coincidence that union dues are often used to support Democrat candidates and a leftwing agenda — often against the wishes of the rank and file who pay those dues — but then, we can’t expect the working man to know what’s in his best interests, can we?
That’s why we have progressives. To speak for these sad, noble working-class dullards when they speak incorrectly for themselves…
Somebody stomp me if I’m wrong, but Congress can go all “HULK SMASH” on this if it really wants to, yes?
This illustrates the ridiculousness of the “good man” meme. I had hoped he’d fail in his attempts of using underhanded methods to advance the progressive agenda.
This is America, right? Are we sure? How long will stuff like this go on before we can call the whole nation a RINO (Republic In Name Only)?
I despair.
This illustrates the ridiculousness of the “good man” meme.
Not much future in playing Sméagol to the other side’s Gollum, that’s for sure.
Now the good man meme? That’s golden, that is.
Somebody stomp me if I’m wrong, but Congress can go all “HULK SMASH” on this if it really wants to, yes?
Yes. It can… but the ‘can’ is moot at any rate. It can do all manner of things if it REALLY wants to, including even things it “can’t” do. Congress does things it “can’t” do all the time, but it does them anyway. So yeah.. if they really wanted to, they could go all HULK SMASH on this too.
Whether they’ll be too busy HULK SMASHing your inadvisable dietary choices or banning random household objects to bother with this is yet to be seen.
Of course, if they don’t, they’ll say “we can’t!” and beg your understanding and forgiveness and campaign contributions.
But don’t fall for that shit.
In other news, this has to be the best book title of the year: How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming.
NLRB is another artifice of FDR’s New Deal that is no longer relevant and only cost’s the taxpayers money and acts as big labor’s fascisti government enforcer.
Time to abolish that one too…
Dude! House Dems defied the won and voted to table the tax compromise I ( http://tiny.cc/8v81z )
Is it Kabuki or utter disregard for an impending stock market Armageddon as investor’s kneejerk reaction?
One thing’s for sure, it’s an FU to Obama, the Rethugs, and the American people.
So I ask you; who’s taking hostages now?
I guess we’re going to have to really cut taxes and get all Jason Freddy Mike on the spending in order to get the economy going again after the Democrat induced double dip recession hits.
Also, it’s nice to see the Democrats’ class envy and hatred on full display. Since they can’t make all of us rich. There going to make us all poor. EQUALIITY!
Wouldn’t it be neat if organized labor got its own Tea Party movement? Imagine — a handful of bright, motivated guys promise to stop squandering dues and protecting the lazy layabouts, and instead concentrate on promoting the fair treatment of the rank-and-file.
What? A guy can dream, can’t he?
[…] “Obama uses labor board to revive Card Check” […]
Bright motivated guys concentrate on promoting the fair treatment of themselves and their co-workers without collective bargaining. They do it with individual bargaining. If they don’t like how they, or their co-workers, are treated, they complain and if neccessary quit and find another job.
That’s really what it’s all about you know. Collective bargaining. That’s the whole point of organizing. How the hell that would even work with NOT protecting the lazy layabouts, I do not know. It wouldn’t be collective then. If you bargain for everyone’s wages individually, you’re not so much a union as contracted 3rd party professional wage negotiator. Especially since you can’t get them all to strike so just 1 guy can get an extra $5 an hour and another 15 minute break. If one guy goes on strike by himself for an extra $5 an hour, that’s called quitting (or threatening to quit), the fact that he was prompted to do so by his negotiator being largely irrelevant.
I don’t know what the market is for that. I suspect if you take that and run it to it’s logical conclusion you just wind up being a head-hunter/job-finding/staffing agency, which there currently are already.