Unions: Not Working So Far

Last Friday Tim Jones wrote to you about Republican Congressman Jim Jordan’s new proposal to cut the budget deficit by $2.5 trillion over the next ten years, far beyond any cutting proposal Americans have seen so far in the new Congress. This week Jed Babbin writing at The American Spectator has reported that Democratic Congressman Chris Van Hollen has called the cutting proposals “radical.” Well, radical is exactly what the country needs when it comes to deficit cutting.

In the same report Babbin writes that governors, including Govs. Bob McDonnell (VA) and Haley Barbour (MS), among others, are planning to work with the new Congress to find ways of removing the federal government from state level operations for which it has no constitutional mandate. This is the culmination of the 10^th amendment movement, being legitimized by some of the most powerful governors in the nation. After being scoffed at by the media, and impeded by liberals in government, the 10^th amendment movement is taking hold due to the perseverance of its conservative advocates nationwide.

One of the Jordan bill’s highlights is a repeal of the tax-dollar-destroying Davis-Bacon Act. Davis-Bacon requires federal contractors to pay the prevailing union wage to their employees, even if those employees are non-union, and even if they work in Right to Work states. The act is an obvious price control (for labor) more associated with Marxism than capitalism. The act’s designed purpose is to protect unions from competition. The Jordan bill would save taxpayers a billion dollars a year by repealing the Davis-Bacon act.

Anyone still looking for evidence of the job killing nature of forced unionism need look no farther than Detroit’s Big-Three automakers. The Big-Three have been run through the ringer for decades now, and the United Autoworkers Union (UAW) is largely to blame (though not completely as the poor vehicle designs of the 1980s are evidence of).

The UAW has sucked the automakers dry, and it made out bigger than it deserved to when the Obama administration took control of the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies (read: bailouts). Now the UAW is looking to take on the foreign car companies with factories in the U.S. Curb your enthusiasm though, the UAW is not looking to out-compete the U.S. factories of Honda and Toyota. No, rather than putting forth its best efforts at Ford, GM and Chrysler plants to build better cars for cheaper prices, the UAW would rather do what it does best, destroy Honda and Toyota from inside.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the UAW’s top priority this year is to unionize a foreign owned auto plant here in the United States. That will surely be a good thing for Ford, GM and Chrysler, but American consumers will see higher car prices. There are 88,000 non-union autoworkers in the U.S. working for foreign companies. These men and women will soon come under a torrent of pressure from the UAW to signup. They should ask the UAW what good it would do them. The union hasn’t protected its members from massive layoffs and pay cuts in Detroit. In fact the inefficiencies caused by UAW collective bargaining helped put the Big Three on their backs in the first place. No, autoworkers in foreign owned companies ought to think twice about signing a deal with the UAW. It has only turned out bad for members so far.