Statistically speaking, organized labor has made itself irrelevant in this country.
Once again last year, the total number of U.S. workers belonging to a union dropped, this time to a woeful 6 percent of the private-sector workforce.
Fortunately for unions, representing the workplace concerns of the rank and file was long ago eclipsed by the much more important objective of wielding political power.
And in this respect, unfortunately for the rest of us, Big Labor is doing yeoman’s work. (RELATED: SUZANNE DOWNING: One Of America’s Greatest Role Models Snubbed By Woke School District)
In California, for example, Gov. Gavin Newsom two years ago signed a bill obligating the state’s taxpayers to cover the cost of government union member dues to the tune of $400 million. This year, the presidential hopeful’s backing a bill that would empower unions to block the “… passing of any statute or ordinance that interferes with, negates or diminishes the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively over their wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment and workplace safety.”
Meanwhile in Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s new collective bargaining agreement with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) gifts its 35,000 members a nearly 20 percent pay raise over four years — including a 4 percent raise this year — which adds up to a 61 percent better deal than they got during their last round of negotiations.
Not to be outdone, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro this month signed a new pact with AFSCME in his state calling for a 22.1 percent salary hike over four years.
That’s a total annual hit to Pennsylvania taxpayers of $1.9 billion in 2026-27 for a workforce that last month consisted of 55,556 workers.
At the end of the past fiscal year, thanks to re-opening the commonwealth and buckets full of federal dollars it didn’t actually need, Pennsylvania sat on cash reserves in excess of $14 billion. And rather than refunding it to the taxpayers from whom the surplus was confiscated, Shapiro wants to hand it to the state’s powerful unions in hopes much of it will be returned in the form of campaign contributions.
If the strategy sounds sickeningly familiar, it should.
Three years ago, then-candidate Joe Biden promised leaders of the AFL-CIO he would be the most “pro-union president you’re ever seen.” (RELATED: JOHN STOSSEL: College Is A Scam)
Biden kept his word, championing countless measures intended to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of his union benefactors.
See the pattern?
Newsom and Pritzker clearly have designs on succeeding Biden in the White House, and last week Shapiro announced he would appear at a Democrat Party gathering in New Hampshire during September.
Mind you, at this point Biden still claims he’ll run for re-election in 2024, but that doesn’t preclude opportunists like Josh Shapiro chumming the waters with billions of dollars in giveaways to organized labor in hopes of riding its coattails the way Sleepy Joe did last time.
Nor does it prevent the unions from shopping around for an even bigger payoff than Biden delivered.
So much for loyalty.
In the backrooms where such deals are cut, buying a politician’s favor is called “influence peddling,” and President Biden, for all his seeming cognitive lapses, has been playing the game with ruthless aplomb for decades. Now he may be handing the baton to a younger, faster competitor.
Recent history has shown the presidency itself can be bought if you control a big enough infusion of someone else’s dues dollars — and the promise to pay it all back with interest from the public treasury.
The model works, and Josh Shapiro wasted little time upping the ante in hopes of using someone else’s chips to bluff his competition out of the game, too.
Hunter Tower is the East Coast Director of the Freedom Foundation. www.FreedomFoundation.com
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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