Tuesday’s biggest election loser was Big Labor and its pernicious card check proposal to abolish secret ballot voting by employees in workplace representation elections. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., opposed card check. Her primary opponent, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, favored card check. So Big Labor and its allies on the far left of American politics like Moveon.org, decided to make Lincoln an example to all Democrats in Congress. They flooded the Razorback state with an estimated $10 million on Halter’s behalf. They forced a runoff, but when the smoke cleared Tuesday evening, Lincoln won fairly comfortably. As an exasperated Obama White House official told Politico’s Ben Smith: “Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise.” That may be the most honest public statement heard from anybody in the Obama high command in months.
Because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats are more easily intimidated by threats from union bosses with campaign money to spend, card check has twice passed the lower chamber. But thanks to unanimous Republican opposition and recognition by a tiny minority of Senate Democrats that supporting card check could end their careers, Big Labor’s No. 1 one legislative priority can’t win in the upper chamber. Now that Lincoln has defeated Halter, expect more Senate Democrats to conclude that at least on this one issue they can safely defy the SEIU, the AFL-CIO, and the rest of the increasingly desperate labor movement’s leaders.
Their desperation is a function of two realities: First, only 7 percent of all private sector employees are union members. Fewer members means less dues revenue, which in turn reduces how much campaign cash the leaders have to give, thus slashing their political leverage. Second, labor finances are in bad shape. The SEIU, for example, owes $156 million, including $94 million to Bank of America and other corporate lenders tapped to finance its 2008 political contributions to Obama and congressional Democrats.
Thus, card check, which union leaders think would enable them to recruit new members, is critically important to labor’s future. Big Labor has spent an estimated $400 million since 2006 seeking to elect enough Democrats to assure that card check becomes law. Just last month, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ Gerald McEntee said his union would spend another $50 million trying to protect Democratic incumbents in 2010. Here’s to hoping card check opponents in every congressional district in America make ’em flush it all.
