White House gives public-safety unions clout to intimidate
By: Mark Mix
OpEd Contributor
July 6, 2009
Miami mayor Manny Diaz, outgoing president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM), has accused the White House of "setting a very dangerous precedent" during the organization's 2009 annual meeting in Providence, Rhode Island. Vice President Joe Biden, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, and Cabinet members Shaun Donavan, Arne Duncan, and Gary Locke had all been slated to attend.
Not one showed up.
Why would Obama and his Cabinet do such a thing to their close political friends? Because International Association of Firefighters (IAFF/AFL-CIO) union President Harold Schaitberger told them to.
As the national recession and exploding government deficits are forcing mayors across the country to make difficult decisions to keep their cities from going bankrupt, Schaitberger is leading a crusade to intimidate local and state elected officials. Specifically, he and his lieutenants are trying to deter local and state politicians from reforming the outrageous public-safety union pension systems that are driving cities like Providence into insolvency. The Obama White House is apparently eager to go along.
Not long before the mayors' meeting, Schaitberger and the bosses of IAFF Local 799 in Providence announced that they would be setting up a picket line outside the conference. The White House then vowed that no one from the Obama administration would defy the union brass by attending. In a June 5 IAFF union press release, Schaitberger was quoted gloating about the Obama administration's "unqualified support" for "organized labor."
Big-city mayors, regardless of party affiliation, have learned an important lesson about Obama's team: If local officials try to stand up for taxpayers and fiscal sanity by resisting government-union bosses, they can be sure this White House will side with the union bosses.
Many on Capitol Hill are poised to back pending federal legislation that would hand Harold Schaitberger and other union bullies monopoly-bargaining power over public-safety employees in all 50 states.
H.R.413, the federal monopoly-bargaining mandate, would rewrite the public-sector labor laws of the vast majority of the 50 states to make them more favorable to forced unionizing. In states that don't currently authorize public-safety monopoly bargaining, H.R.413 would impose it, denying localities the option to refuse to grant a single union the power to speak for all front-line employees, including those who don't want to join. And in most states that already authorize public-safety union monopoly bargaining, this bill would widen its scope.
When virtually identical legislation was rubber-stamped by the House in 2007, nearly every Democrat and dozens of Republicans, including many who purport to oppose compulsory unionism, voted for it.
Self-styled forced-unionism foes who have voted for measures like H.R.413 in the past have tried to justify their votes by suggesting that public-safety union bosses, unlike other union bosses, do not abuse their power. But Schaitberger's White House-abetted intimidation of mayors of budget-strapped cities is the perfect example of an abuse of power.
Of course, this is only one recent example of public-safety union bosses using their political clout to browbeat elected officials at all levels of government. Schaitberger is no more deserving of compulsory-unionism power than anyone else. If congressmen are serious about the right to work, they should avoiding allowing union bosses to run over it - regardless of what kind of union it is.
Mark Mix is President of the National Right to Work Committee, based in Springfield, Virginia.
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