On Labor Day, following Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa’s declaration of war on Tea Partiers and similar “sons of bitches,” President Obama nuzzled up to Big Labor unions assembled in Detroit in a speech filled with the typical ringing defense of unions as the backbone of American prosperity. Necessarily, then, this speech required President Obama to make at least one patently absurd remark, and a few others more than a little difficult to justify.
For instance, Obama said that “unions have always been about — shared prosperity.” A few moments later, he explained:
Obama is speaking to union members from the state of Michigan, where then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm rescinded a 3% pay raise for non-unionized state employees while allowing the 3% raise scheduled for union employees to proceed:
Far from sharing the sacrifice, Michigan unions sloughed the sacrifice off onto non-unionized workers during the budget crisis. In fact, unions even opposed the idea of paying 3% of their salary into their retirement fund to offset costs. As the state budget floundered and non-union public employees took a hit, unions mounted fierce protection of their pay. And, they did so despite the fact that between 2007 and 2009 only “one group is actually becoming richer in Michigan: government employees,” as the Detroit News noted in a March 12, 2010 editorial.
That’s neither shared sacrifice nor shared prosperity.
