Politics

Reid can’t keep labor bureaucracies straight

Matthew Boyle Investigative Reporter
Font Size:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told National Public Radio listeners Tuesday that the recent Federal Aviation Administration shutdown can be blamed on Delta Airlines’ opposition to new labor union rules.

Reid mistakenly said on NPR that Delta won’t give in to new rules that the National Labor Relations Board passed under the Obama administration. Those new rules make it easier for labor unions to organize workers.

Actually, the labor board that oversees airline workers’ unionization is the National Mediation Board. Reid’s error is leading some Big Labor critics to question his ability to fully understand union politics and policy.

Airline workers fall under the Railway Labor Act, a specialized labor law that applies to certain industries with multiple interdependent locations. Most workers in other industries fall under the National Labor Relations Act, which the NLRB oversees.

“The House has tried to make this a battle over essential air service,” Reid said on NPR’s “All Things Considered” program. “It’s not a battle over essential air service. It’s a battle over Delta Airlines, who refuses to allow votes under the new rules that have been passed by the NLRB.”

BigJournalism.com editor and radio talker Dana Loesch told The Daily Caller that if a conservative like Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann or former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — or one of their family members — made the gaffe Reid did, NPR and other mainstream media outlets would cover it thoroughly. With Reid, though, Loesch said it’s a different story. (RELATED: Democrats accuse Republicans of ‘hostage-taking’ in FAA shutdown)

“NPR made sure to cover every angle of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, but can’t bring themselves to ask Reid why he’s shutting down parts of government to win subsidies for a couple of small airports — one of which lies in his state and services only a few hundred people at the cost of over $3k per passenger,” Loesch said in an email. “Instead, NPR allows Reid to incorrectly spin this into a union issue by misplacing blame from the NMB [National Mediation Board], while targeting a business at a time when we need jobs.”

Loesch isn’t the only one ripping Reid for his misstep. Labor policy critics question Reid’s ability to fully grasp the ever-expanding pro-union reach coming from agencies and boards in the Obama administration.

“We understand Sen. Reid’s confusion,” Fred Wszolek of the Workforce Fairness Institute told The Daily Caller. “We have a hard time keeping track of all the job-killing union boss paybacks too.”

U.S. Chamber of Commerce labor policy specialist Glenn Spencer said Reid also appears to have ignored the fact that Delta workers rejected unionization several times already.

“What Sen. Reid seems unaware of is that Delta’s workers have voted numerous times under the newly rigged election rules — and the unions have still lost every time, with margins as big as 70–30 against unionization,” Spencer said. “Whatever might be at play in the FAA bill, the fact is that when workers say ‘no’ the unions refuse to listen.”

Delta Airlines, along with a majority of its workers, opposes unionization. Even so, the Obama administration’s National Mediation Board has changed unionization election rules to make it easier for union bosses to organize the airline’s workers.

A spokesman for Reid did not immediately return TheDC’s request for comment on his boss’s flub. NPR did not correct Reid’s error, and it appears that the publicly funded radio network failed to notice it.

The FAA has been partially shut down since July 22. Four thousand workers are furloughed.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel