Acting Labor Secretary Seth D. Harris addressed the Annual Legislative Conference of the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) on Monday. As part of a scathing attack on attempts to reform public employee labor unions, Harris told a joke that he said was “making the rounds a few years ago”:
Ironically, of course, since the IAFF is a public employee labor union, there are no CEOs. Rather, the firefighters work for the taxpayers, hardly the greedy CEOs caricatured in Harris’s joke.
Harris’s assault did not end with the joke. He further accused those attempting to reform public union labor practices as wanting
Harris took a further swipe at “pundits and professional political hatchetmen,” suggesting that they blamed firefighters and their fellow public union members for the 2008 financial crisis:
Congress (Republicans in particular) did not escape Harris’s broadside either. He laid the blame for the sequestration at the GOP’s doorstep:
[O]ne side in Congress is choosing to further undermine public safety and economic security… because they don’t want to close tax loopholes that contribute nothing to growth, because they don’t want to ask millionaires and billionaires and the largest and wealthiest corporations to pay a little more.
Harris encouraged IAFF members visiting Capitol Hill on Wednesday to tell members on Congress that the GOP’s way is the “wrong path” for the middle class, the economy, and the nation.
