Unions, card check, biggest losers on Election Day

The Democrats were big losers on Election Day. But the biggest of all? Michael Barone explains in the Wall Street Journal:

But you missed seeing the guy who may have been the biggest loser of all—a man who according to recently released White House logs has been a guest in the White House 22 times since Barack Obama became president, more than any other single individual.

That man is Andy Stern, who has boasted that the Service Employees International Union, which he heads, ponied up something like $60 million for Barack Obama and other Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle. Altogether, Mr. Stern and other labor union leaders reportedly gave Democrats some $400 million last year.

This was, to borrow a word from Mr. Obama, an audacious gamble. Unions these days represent only 8% of private-sector employees (and that's counting General Motors and Chrysler as private sector) and some unions went into debt to make these contributions. Public employee unions of course are financed by taxpayers, who pay the salaries from which dues are extracted, but even so their resources are ultimately limited.

The unions have gotten a lot out of the Obama administration, including preferential treatment in the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler.

They want more.

But the union leaders have been frustrated on their No. 1 goal, the card check bill that would effectively abolish the secret ballot in unionization elections. A couple of bulky guys in varsity jackets visit your home and, um, persuade you to sign a card, and later the union—with the help of a mandatory arbitration clause—impose contracts on employees and rake in the dues money.

But Barone, and myself for that matter, don't believe the unions will get card check, which is part of the ludicrously mis-named Employee Free Choice Act.

Ever.

Hoo-ray!

Technorati tags: Congress Illinois politics Democrats liberal labor unions seiu andy stern Barack Obama unions news organized labor card check efca employee free choice act