Irony of Ironies: The WaPo Touts the 'Card Check' Bill
The WaPo Supports Unions -- Just Not At Home
By Pat Cleary Posted in Economy — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Today's WaPo had a long, rambling editorial about capitalism, or so they said. In fact, it was a weepy tribute to the anti-democracy "card check" bill, the one that will allow unions to win recognition without an election, and by using coercion. Heck, if we wanted this kind of democracy, we'd just go see Fidel Castro. Or that guy in North Korea.
.jpg){kind=link}
This is ironic in that the WaPo "Pressmen's Strike" of yore still stands as one of the greatest labor disputes of all time, with the WaPo taking a very strong stance in an effort to break the union. Today, they are known as bare-knuckle labor negotiators and they are having internal union troubles right now as they try to force their reporters to appear on their fledgling and flailing radio station. So forgive us if we tire of hearing the WaPo lecture us all about the importance of unions.
But lecture they do, pointing out all the canards from the AFL-CIO talking points (WaPo editorial page editor Fred Hiatt and AFL-CIO General Counsel John Hiatt are brothers, after all), including our favorite that, "polls suggest that between 30 and 50 percent of nonunion workers would choose union representation if they had a chance to vote for it." First, we think that's a little high and second, would the AFL allow the 30-50% of current union members who don't like their union to opt out? Of course not. As we've noted before, this is the Roach Motel -- or the Mob -- you can get in, you just can't get out.
Bottom line is we still think the card check bill is a lousy idea. We prefer democracy.
« Rethinking the Goals of a National Mortgage Bailout — Comments (45) | Backing Big Pharma — Comments (5) »
Irony of Ironies: The WaPo Touts the 'Card Check' Bill 3 Comments (0 topical, 3 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I know its your job to opine here, but I cannot for the life of me see why people get worked up over editorial pages. It's their job after all to express their opinion (no matter how incorrect it is).
Their version of events on the "news" pages bothers me alot more.
At 36.5 percent in 2005, the unionization rate for government workers was essentially unchanged from a year earlier; the rate for private industry workers, at 7.8 percent, was also flat over the year. Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 41.9 percent. This group includes several heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and fire fighters.
According to www.unionfreeamerica.com, only 2.5% of the 2 million jobs created in 2005 were union jobs.
Being a public employee with union membership correlates strongly with being a Democratic voter. Unions are clearly dying in the private sector. Is it any wonder that Dems are more interested in expanding public programs than in growing the economy thru entrepreneurship?
You are exactly right, although the internal mechanics may be 180 degrees apart. The "editor(do practicing editors actually write anymore?,)" I'm guessing has little love for his bosses.
He, as an august Journalist and a member of the fourth branch of government no less, most likely sees more action with his reporter underlings than the higher-ups in the penthouse. Throw in his, ahem, personal ties to Big Labour, and you've got yourself a writer addressing not his reader, but his publisher. i.e "Pay me and my buddies more."
Sounds like a good conspiracy theory to me. Now all I have to do is work in a good old fashioned Communist Plot.....
"Any love letter is incomplete without a Ronald Reagan quote"
--my sophomore year roommate