Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind

by Mallory Factor

  The SEIU is perhaps Obama’s closest labor union connection—and no wonder, since, according to Andy Stern, the SEIU sent out one hundred thousand “volunteers” to help Obama during the campaign in 2008 and spent $60 million toward getting Obama elected.3 Several SEIU state councils were among the first labor unions to endorse Senator Obama for President in January 2008, when both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were still strong contenders.4 And Stern has no complaints. “We get heard,” he confirmed.5 Stern celebrated Obama’s first hundred days in office with a video message to SEIU members, during which he said, “SEIU is in the field, it’s in the White House, it’s in the administration!”6

  Union Man on the Inside

  Obama’s relationships with the entire union movement go deep. As one who had worked inside the labor movement himself, Obama was able to make powerful pitches to the unions to work for his election. When Obama addressed the AFL-CIO, the federation of labor unions, in 2008, he promised his full support for the federation’s agenda: “I know the AFL-CIO is tired of playing defense,” he said. “We’re ready to play some offense… We’re ready to play offense for organized labor. It’s time we had a President who didn’t choke saying the word union.”7 President Obama certainly doesn’t choke on the word union. In fact, his administration is more likely to choke those who choke on the word union.

  When Obama addressed the AFL-CIO, the federation of labor unions, in 2008, he promised his full support for the federation’s agenda: “I know the AFL-CIO is tired of playing defense,” he said. “We’re ready to play some offense… We’re ready to play offense for organized labor. It’s time we had a President who didn’t choke saying the word union.”

  The AFL-CIO federation bought the pitch—along with the presidents of all fifty-six unions in the federation. The AFL-CIO sent out 250,000 volunteers to help his campaign and pledged to spend $50 million toward his election. Obama had, after all, voted with the AFL-CIO agenda 98 percent of the time during his brief service in the Senate. The AFL-CIO said its top issues were health care, retirement, jobs, “economic equality,” and card check.8 Obama proceeded to work on all these issues for them.

  When he’s talking to his union friends, Obama is surely speaking the truth. He promised to give the unions exactly what they need to bolster the movement and increase their membership. That’s exactly what he is delivering. With our President representing the unions’ interests, who is representing you, the taxpayer?

  The National Education Association (NEA) spent $50 million on Obama’s election campaign in 2008.9 When Obama spoke to the NEA in 2008, he emphasized that he would be able to deliver more dues revenue to the teachers union: “In the coming weeks, I’ll be laying out the specific details of my plan to invest billions of new dollars into the teaching profession and recruit an army of well-trained, well-qualified teachers who are willing to stand at the front of any classroom and give every student the chance to succeed.” Of course, more teachers may or may not be the fix that our failing education system needs. But we do know that by recruiting an army of teachers, Obama channels additional union dues right to the teachers unions. And that sounded good to the teachers unions in 2008, so they agreed to heavily support Obama’s campaign.

  Obama’s Magic Formula for Socialism

  Obama displayed his true vision for America most clearly when he addressed the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) well before his election as President. In a speech to the AFSCME national convention, Obama first rewrote the history of AFSCME in glowing terms. He talked of the AFSCME sanitation strike of 1968, described it as an effort devoted to civil rights, a great victory for the workers (not true, as we’ve seen in our discussion of the sanitation workers strike in chapter 2).10 Of course, he connected the strike with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and he described the strike as culminating “in the union contract that the workers had sought for so long,” although as we have seen in chapter 2, it is debatable whether or not the workers themselves won great concessions from the city in the strike.

  After retelling the great mythical history of AFSCME—and ignoring its baggage—Obama continued, “This is the legacy you inherit today. It’s a legacy of courage, a legacy of action, a legacy of achieving the greatest triumphs amidst the greatest odds.”11 Just the triumphant message that the AFSCME union bosses themselves wanted to convey to members at their convention.

  But then Obama went on—and here we see where Obama’s own philosophy and that of the government employee unions mesh perfectly:

  At the very moment that globalization is changing the rules of the game on the American worker—making it harder to compete with cheaper, highly skilled workers all over the world—the people running Washington are responding with a philosophy that says government has no role in solving these problems; that the services you all provide every day are better left to the whims of the private sector.

  This is Obama’s philosophy in a nutshell. Government can solve all your problems. And globalization is bad for the economy and bad for American workers, since American workers are inherently uncompetitive. Following from this, unions are needed to protect American workers, especially obsolete government workers from privatization of their services. This is Obama’s essential ideology: wrap up unionism, bailouts, and bigger government in one well-articulated package, and bring European-style socialism to the United States as the end result. Nanny state, cradle-to-grave care, and wealth redistribution, here we come!

  Obama continued:

  They’re telling us we’re better off if we dismantle government—if we divvy it up into individual tax breaks, hand ’em out, and encourage everyone to go buy your own health care, your own retirement security, your own child care, their own schools, your own private security force, your own roads, their own levees… It’s called the Ownership Society in Washington. But in our past there has been another term for it—Social Darwinism—every man or woman for him-or herself.12

  Obama encourages the union members in the audience to fear the free market, which he suggests will crush them. He uses this fear to push them to embrace the all-encompassing nanny state, complete with unions to represent them in making demands on their government employers. Obama was able to alarm these government employee union members and their bosses into fearing that Republicans would leave them to die at the hands of cruel market forces. And this is the same type of class warfare argument Obama continues to make today.

  For this kind of protection against free market forces, AFSCME has pledged to spend $100 million reelecting Obama in 2012.13 In Obama’s first Presidential campaign in 2008, AFSCME joined up with the radical-left organization MoveOn.org to put up more than $500,000 for a commercial against John McCain. In the ad, a woman sits on a couch holding a baby. She talks about how she loves her baby. Then she looks into the camera and says, “So, John McCain, when you said you would stay in Iraq for a hundred years, were you counting on Alex? Because if you were; you can’t have him.” What a labor union had to do with the war in Iraq was anyone’s guess.14 But just like Obama’s comments at the AFSCME convention, the ad promotes a visceral fear of Republican leadership—the idea that your survival is somehow at stake. And we don’t have to guess at the true agenda of the unions in running ads like this: putting a true partner of the unions in the White House.

  PARTYING AT THE WHITE HOUSE

  Think that those cash expenditures by the government employee unions don’t buy access? Think again. Since his election, President Obama’s favorite White House guests have been his union buddies. Either he loves them for their sparkling conversation, or for their bags of cash. We’ll guess it’s the bags of cash.

  This is a pattern going back to the Clinton Administration, when Bill and Hillary were said to have offered nights in the Lincoln Bedroom and dinner seats at major state dinners to raise campaign cash. Gerald McEntee, president of AFSCME, secured a seat for himself at a state dinner given by the Clintons in 1997 f
or the president of Chile. It may have helped that he spent millions in forced union dues on Democrat congressional candidates during the 1996 election cycle. McEntee, of course, denied the connection: “We’ve supported the Democratic Party and we’ve supported Republican candidates, and for anybody to think that we were invited tonight—when all of this is going on—because we gave a contribution would be absurd.”15 No connection at all.

  Fast-forward a decade. The same union bosses are swarming the White House again. Same deal, different president—and much more access than ever before. Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO, bragged that he visited the White House two or three times a week and talked with a member of the White House staff every single day—including weekends.16 Trumka not only attended Obama’s first state dinner but also sat in the First Lady’s box for the President’s September 2011 address to Congress.17

  At Obama’s first state dinner, honoring the Indian prime minister, not only was Richard Trumka welcomed but also the SEIU’s then president, Andy Stern, and its then secretary-treasurer, Anna Burger (both since retired).18 James Hoffa, Teamsters president, got his invitation to the state dinner in 2011 honoring German Chancellor Angela Merkel.19 And Randi Weingarten, of the American Federation of Teachers, got her turn in March 2012 at a state dinner for UK Prime Minister David Cameron.20

  Although it’s a close battle with Richard Trumka, Andy Stern may have won the award for “most frequent Shadowboss visitor” to the White House during the early days of the Obama Administration. He visited the White House at least twenty-two times, meeting with the President personally at least six times—all in the first six months of President Obama’s administration.21

  Union Stimulus

  Government employee union dollars have flowed into electing and working on reelecting President Obama, and taxpayer dollars are now flowing in the other direction from the Obama Administration to these same unions. The money cycle began with the first Obama cash giveaway: the misnamed, $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed into law by President Obama in February 2009, also known as the first round of “stimulus” spending.

  A bunch of stimulus spending just happened to flow to the very same unions that supported Obama’s election the previous year. For example, the U.S. Department of Labor sent $7.4 million in “green jobs training grants” to SEIU Local 32BJ and to a partnership between SEIU’s health-care unions and major employers.

  What exactly are these grants for—other than paying back the SEIU for its support? The goal of the grant was the creation of 5,200 jobs, but it is not really clear how this spending was supposed to lead directly to new jobs. The first $2.8 million was dedicated to a New York City program, “One Year, One Thousand Supers,” that trains superintendents and other workers in New York City buildings to become “energy efficient building operators.”22 The president of an SEIU building services local union said, “With nearly 80 percent of New York’s greenhouse gas emissions produced by buildings it’s imperative for owners, workers, environmental groups and the federal government to jointly tackle this environmental challenge.”23 Can you read the coded language here? Jobs will be created by training people to comply with regulations, and then they can help work with the government to create more regulations, which will require more training and so on. The cycle of government jobs goes on and on! And the only green anybody sees is the cash that flows into union pockets.

  As if that grant weren’t useless enough, this program is just one tiny part of $500 million in stimulus funding to fund “workforce development projects” that promote green jobs.24 One of these projects is paid for with another $4.6 million grant to SEIU to create “a new career ladder for 3,000 entry-level environmental service workers.” An SEIU press release notes that SEIU locals “will serve as its lead partner to train and place workers in the health care field, and workers in environmental services (often called housekeepers) will learn methods for tracking and reducing the use of energy, water and waste.”25 Since when have housekeepers been known as “workers in environmental services”26 anyway? And is this training anything more than how to sort trash into the various types of recycling bins?

  Participants also receive “training in non-polluting cleaning technologies” and even get to “prepare academically for entry into more advanced and certified green occupations that are currently in development by their employers.” “Currently in development” seems to mean that there aren’t many actual “green jobs” of this type available yet, but that the government is working real hard to create some in the future—regardless of what the market requires.

  The stimulus goodies went on and on for government employee unions, especially in the area of these phantom green jobs. When you can spend real green to create fake green jobs “currently in development,” why stop there? In February 2010, another SEIU local won another $1.2 million in funding for yet more green jobs training. While green jobs remain hard to find, apparently running training centers for potential green job holders is a very lucrative side business for the unions.

  Green jobs funding, said Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, is “an investment that will help American workers succeed while doing good.” What was all this “good” that they’d be doing? They’ll complete a curriculum “focusing on recycling, waste reduction, reducing water use, energy efficiency, and worker health and safety.” How many “recycling and waste reduction” specialists do businesses need, anyway? To create actual jobs for all the people trained in green job technologies, the government would need to mandate that each workplace have its own “green czar” to oversee recycling, waste reduction, and the like.27 These are exactly the types of regulations we should expect during a second term of the Obama Administration.

  It’s not even clear exactly what “green jobs” really are. As former real green jobs czar Van Jones admitted, “We still don’t have a unified definition [for green jobs], and that’s not unusual in a democracy. It takes a while for all the states and the federal government to come to some agreement. But the Department of Labor is working on it very diligently.”28 Word to the wise: when you need an entire department to define a term, and they haven’t done it after a period of years, the term isn’t real—like green jobs themselves, the term is “currently in development.” And, by the way, Jones eventually resigned when he was accused of signing a petition questioning whether the George W. Bush Administration had used the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as a pretext for entering into the Iraq and Afghanistan military campaigns and possibly blaming the United States for these terrorist attacks.29

  Another stimulus program gave the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute just under $1 million. The Working for America Institute is dedicated to creating “relationships in which workers obtain higher skills and better pay, employers become more successful and communities become better places in which to live and work.” We all want that, don’t we? What does the Institute actually do for a million dollars in stimulus? It will “provide technical assistance and support to labor leaders.”30 In other words, it’s a big slush fund for the AFL-CIO. Another AFL-CIO related union that received extensive stimulus funds was the Communications Workers of America. This union received nearly $4 million to “provide training to individuals in the automotive and auto-related communities across Ohio which have been impacted by recent automotive related restructurings.”31 This sounds great until you realize that it was unions like those affiliated with the AFL-CIO that bankrupted the automobile companies in the first place.

  Project Labor Agreements: Only Union Members Need Apply

  The stimulus package and phantom green jobs programs were just the beginning of a strong Obama-union alliance during Obama’s first term. Obama gave the unions another enormous payback when he recommended that major government projects use unionized labor.

  The stimulus package and phantom green jobs programs were just the beginning of a strong Obama-union alliance during Obama’s first term. Obama gave the unions another
enormous payback when he recommended that major government projects use unionized labor.

  As the Wall Street Journal noted, “There’s almost a direct correlation these days between the Obama Administration’s complaints about ‘special interests’ and its own fealty to such interests. Consider its latest decree that federal contractors must be union shops.”32 The Journal was referencing Executive Order No. 13,502, which President Obama issued during his first weeks as President. The Order encourages federal agencies to enter into Project Labor Agreements, or PLAs, with labor unions on projects of more than $25 million. As the Journal noted, “Only 15% of the nation’s construction workers are unionized, so from now on the other 85% will have to forgo federal work for having exercised their right to not join a union.” In contrast, the Bush Administration had preserved open competition for work on federal construction projects by expressly prohibiting PLAs.33

  By favoring unionized workers, PLAs restrict competition and drive up the costs of construction projects about 10 to 20 percent—great for unions, but terrible for taxpayers.34 And even though one of the major arguments in favor of PLAs is that they prevent work stoppages and strikes, studies have shown that PLAs don’t prevent these costly events.35 Even though their contracts forbid them to engage in work stoppages and strikes, some workers engaged under PLAs still do use these practices as a bargaining tool in negotiations for new contracts. In fact, construction on several of the new World Trade Center buildings and other New York City building projects has been delayed by unionized construction workers engaged under a PLA using work stoppages to bargain for new agreements.36 President Obama, however, recently confirmed his support for PLAs for federal projects and we can expect him to mandate greater use of PLAs by the federal government during a second term.37