White House Deference to Big Labor Impedes Gulf Oil Spill Cleanup Efforts

White House Deference to Big Labor Impedes Gulf Oil Spill Cleanup Efforts

(Source: July 2010 Forced-Unionism Abuses Exposed) Roughly three months after BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded, killing 11 workers and instigating the biggest offshore oil spill ever to occur during peacetime, the Obama Administration faces mounting charges that, in order to avoid offending politically powerful union officials, it has obstructed operations to clean up the spill. A wide range of critics are focusing on the White House’s refusal, in the days after oil began spewing into the Gulf of Mexico from the sunken rig, to suspend the 90-year-old Jones Act.  The Jones Act requires all shipping between U.S. ports or in U.S. coastal waters to be carried in U.S.-flagged ships that are owned and crewed by U.S. citizens. But presidential administrations can grant blanket waivers of the Jones Act during national emergencies.  In recent years, the George W. Bush Administration temporarily suspended the Jones Act to assist recovery efforts after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. However, top bosses of the AFL-CIO-affiliated Seafarers International Union (SIU), with the backing of the entire AFL-CIO hierarchy, oppose a blanket waiver.  Rather than cross Big Labor, and thus potentially risk losing some of its massive, forced dues-funded political support, the Obama Administration has required all foreign vessels that wish to participate in the cleanup and believe they may need a waiver to apply for one individually. 

$50 Billion More for Big Labor

The "hottest" idea around Washington these days is the suggestion government create a $50 billion fund to build infrastructure across the nation.   Despite the fact that the failed stimulus package included over $200 billion for "shovel-ready" projects, the president is desperate to bump employment numbers up and is calling for immediate passage of an addition $50 billion in spending. It's no surprise the President touted this idea at the AFL-CIO rally on Labor Day.  This new spending would be another handout and bailout to the labor union bosses and Michelle Malkin understands why President Obama calls his latest attempt to revive the economy a “Plan to Renew and Expand America’s Roads, Railways and Runways.” I’m calling it “The Mother of all Big Dig Boondoggles.” Like the infamous “Big Dig” highway spending project in Boston, this latest White House infrastructure spending binge guarantees only two results: Taxpayers lose; unions win. The blunt instrument used to give unions a leg up is the “project labor agreement (PLA),” which in theory sets reasonable pre-work terms and conditions — but in practice, requires contractors to hand over exclusive bargaining control; to pay inflated, above-market wages and benefits; and to fork over dues money and pension funding to corrupt, cash-starved labor organizations. These anti-competitive agreements undermine a fair bidding process on projects that locked-out, nonunion laborers are funding with their own tax dollars. And these PLAs benefit the privileged few at the expense of the vast majority: In the construction industry, 85 percent of the workforce is nonunion by choice.

Keep Bailing

Bailouts for big banks and Wall Street firms.  Bailouts for car companies and the United Auto Workers. Proposed bailouts for union pension funds.  And now this -- a massive $26 billion bailout for state government and teacher's unions.  Not only is the country on its way to bankruptcy but it appears the moral bankruptcy of this Congress has already come. The Wall Street Journal takes on the latest bailout head-on: To treat Washington's spending addiction, the November elections are the taxpayer's best chance to stage an intervention. But until then, President Obama and the Democratic Congress are determined to keep pushing strung-out state governments to take one more fix. Witness yesterday's 247-161 largely party-line House vote to approve a Senate bill shovelling another $26.1 billion out to state education and Medicaid programs. The White House has promoted the bill as emergency assistance for strained state budgets. But this unique brand of therapy drives states to spend more, not less. The "assistance" is so expensive that several governors were begging for relief even before Mr. Obama

Washington Post: State Worker Bailout Motivated by Politics

The Washington Post argues that Washington bailouts for state union workers reinforces dependency on the feds and is a political handout to their Big Labor constituency.   It's not often we agree with the Post but in this case they are right: TO GOVERN is to choose, and nothing lays bare a government's true priorities like the choices it makes about spending taxpayers' money. In that regard, the Senate's decision to spend $10 billion on education jobs this week is revealing -- and deeply discouraging. The crusade for an education jobs bill, led by the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress, has always struck us as more of an election-year favor for teachers unions than an optimal use of public resources. Billed as an effort to stimulate the economy, it's not clearly more effective than alternative uses of the cash. Yes, school budgets are tight across the country, but the teacher layoff "crisis" is exaggerated. In fact, as happens each year, many teachers who got pink slips in the spring have been notified that they'll be hired after all. Many layoffs could have been -- and indeed have been -- avoided by modest union concessions. As of last school year, the money for 5.5 percent of the 6 million K-12 jobs nationwide came from Washington through the 2009 stimulus; the new money reinforces this dangerous dependency.