I am constantly amazed but never surprised by the double-speak and double-standards of Big Labor. An article in the WSJ today is a case in point. Anna Burger, of the Change To Win labor federation, wrote that financial services firms and their trade group should “immediately cease all lobbying and advocacy” against “card check” [the Employee Free Choice Act]. The letter was directed to the head of the Financial Services Roundtable, a banking and financial industry lobby, with copies sent to Congressmen who are overseeing the bank bailout.
Burger’s supposed reasoning is that the government typically restricts the use of federal funds to directly lobby Congress. She is attempting to extent this concept to any organization that secures funding from the government, which in the case of banks includes recent capital injections used to bolster their balance sheets.
As usual, she is talking out of both sides of her mouth. Unions receive plenty of government money for the running of job training and other programs. As the WSJ article points out, many employees of companies that have received bailout cash (auto industry for example) use some of their wages to pay union dues, which are then used to heavily influence political affairs (how about $450 million during the last election cycle).
Once again – Big Labor wants to selectively use the rules of the land in their favor, without having to obey them themselves.
