If you want a good measure of how deeply the collective bargaining bill in Wisconsin has disrupted public sector unions, there is no better example than the Wisconsins Education Association Council (WEAC).
Last month WEAC announced that it was laying off 40% of its staff. With little over which to collectively bargain, and with dues no longer withheld from paychecks, the need for and sustainability of a union bureaucracy could not be justified.
Now WEAC is being boycotted by National Staff Organization (NSO), a union representing educational union employees.
Isn’t that great, education union employees have their own union? Is there a union for employees of education union employee unions?
This is beyond awesome. Could they picket the picket lines of the WEAC if they went on strike? If you crossed their picket line to picket, would you be considered a scab? Or can the NSO picket the silly protests WEAC members are conducting across Wisconsin, and thereby prevent the protests?
Look For The Union Label -- It Will Be Screaming An Obscenity
The article is a day old, but I wonder what would have happened if Tea Party members ever behaved like this...
Earlier this morning500 or so members of the AFL-CIO stormed a port in Washington, vandalized the facility, reportedly cut the brake lines of train cars, and held six guards hostage. Shockingly, no one was arrested. Earlier that week a judge issued a restraining order against this same group after they clashed with police while brandishing bats and issuing death threats. Nineteen people were arrested for misdemeanors.
While all of this was going on, the group’s head, Richard Trumka, was invited as a guest of the President to tonight’s jobs address.
Wait, it gets better. Here's a proud member of the longshoreman's union speaking with reporters today...
What a cuddly guy. But if it makes you feel better, John Hinderaker over at Powerline notes that the average longshoreman on the West Coast makes a piddling $136,000 per year, with some foreman making more than $200,000 per year. And that's before the benefits. Hope those foreman are married -- if they're single, Obama considers them rich.
And to think, on the Simpsons, Mr. Burns was offended when he learned the union was getting its members a green cookie on St. Paddy's Day.
Jimmy Hoffa Takes The Early Lead For Douchbag of the Week
The award noted in the headline does not exist yet, but Hoffa really deserves it. I'm going to have some thoughts, but let's start with the story itself...
Warming up the crowd before President Obama’s speech in Detroit this afternoon, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. had some choice words for the Tea Party.
Hoffa warned the largely union crowd that there was a “war on workers” and urged organized labor to take to the ballot box to fight lawmakers that oppose the president’s agenda.
“We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war,” Hoffa told thousands of workers gathered for the annual Labor Day rally.
“President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march… Everybody here’s got a vote…Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong,” he concluded.
See, it's stuff like that which makes me a sad panda. But let's break this down with a few random thoughts...
1. Jimmy Hoffa advocating violence. There are so many different threads here that I'm going to tiptoe around it as a matter of taste.
2. Greg Gutfeld made the point on "The Five" earlier today, but it's worth noting that since the left made such a big show of screaming about civility following the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, they're now getting called on their own bullshit. The language is inexcusable by any standard of civil discourse, but everyone used to let it go for the left because (rightly, in my view) politics is rough and tumble, and words don't break bones. But Hoffa's assertions are a call to violence, and the standard established following the Giffords shooting means Dems should be scrambling to condemn this crap. An yet... silence. But now the silence is being noticed.
3. Ann Althouse's point here is a terrific one -- Hoffa's calling for war on behalf of unions, but he's claiming that it's on behalf of working people. The two are not one and the same. Perhaps they once were, but as Allapundit noted, Hoffa makes north of 300k per year. The hypocricy of union leaders would be galling, if anyone wanted to notice.
4. Homer Simpson is far superior to Jimmy Hoffa as a union leader.
5. I'd expect Barack Obama to dress down Hoffa for this rhetoric at about the same time he comes up with a credible econoimc recovery plan. But it would be nice to be surprised once in awhile, huh?
The Latest Reason Why Unions Continue To Become Less Popular
Watching this report pisses me off to no end.
Forced unionization of child-care providers via the state legislature -- this is exactly the type of stuff that leaves people thinking their politicians are corrupt to the core and working solely for special interests. To be perfectly fair, the child care providers are receiving taxpayer subsidies, so it's within the government's right to restrict how much money they should receive. But handing that taxpayer money to a union doesn't exactly strike me as something taxpayers want -- at least the subsidies for low-income taxpayers to get child care services might be something the majority supports. Having a portion of those subsidies directly sent to a union strikes me as something even a majority of union members would oppose. And yet Michigan's government does it.
Oh, well it's not like Michigan has any examples of industries that might have been adversely impacted by unions.
