Big Labor funnels big money to Democrats, but for Barack Obama's re-election chances, the alliance is a mixed blessing. Voters are catching on that public employee unions have bought themselves salaries, work conditions, job security, and retirement benefits that most in the private sector can't even dream of ever getting. And they understand that in an era when job creation is the challenge, Obama's ties to unions can be problematic.
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post's Right Turn blog makes a case that Obama has a Big Labor problem:
Democrats should re-examine the degree to which they are dependent on organized labor. It forces Democrats to align themselves with unpopular positions ( e.g. card check, support of public-employee unions over taxpayers), further alienating the great majority of voters who are not union members.There is no better example of this than the National Labor Relations Board case against Boeing. (snip)Obama, as he was in the Wisconsin fight over bargaining rights for public-employee unions, finds himself aligned with a special interest against the economic interests of a state.
Whoever the GOP nominee is, he or she should go after Obama's NLRB and its treatment of Boeing. There are 5000 workers who would be unemployed by this bureaucratic fiat, and hundreds of millions of dollars of facilities made unusable. Wisconsin is proving to be an apt test case for the benefits of getting a better deal for taxpayers from the unions. The plight of union workers forced to hand over dues which are funneled into Democrat coffers also deserbes mention int he presidential debates.
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