Voters in Indiana and any other union state ought to pay attention to this story. We have a creaky national economy that is not creating enough jobs to sustain the official employment rate. We have state governments running out of ideas and money to deal with pressing spending obligations they should never have taken on, but to a great extent were forced on them by the union-Democrat alliance. Indiana’s elected representatives have tried freeing up their state’s economy by passing a right-to-work law. That law has been credited with attracting a Subaru parts manufacturer to move to Indiana.
One of Subaru of Indiana Automotive Inc.’s suppliers has decided to move to Richmond from Canada because of Indiana’s new right-to-work law, U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said Friday morning when he stopped by the SIA plant.
“Since right-to-work, we’ve seen an increase in activity,” said Pence, who is running for governor against Democrat John Gregg and Libertarian Rupert Boneham.
Right to work legislation prohibits unions and companies from negotiating contracts which require non-members to pay for union representation. Gov. Mitch Daniels signed the measure into law in February.
Despite the fact that the law was passed and signed in accordance with the way laws are supposed to be passed and signed, Big Labor sued to stop it about five minutes after it became law.
The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 filed the lawsuit Wednesday [back in February 2012] in U.S. District Court in Hammond, said Marc Poulos, an attorney representing the union. The suit names Gov. Mitch Daniels, Attorney General Greg Zoeller and Labor Commissioner Lori Torres.
The right-to-work lawsuit is the latest filed over a wave of conservative legislation pushed through the Indiana General Assembly over the last two years. Indiana also faces lawsuits over 2011 legislation that cut Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood clinics because the group provides abortions, and the state is in court over tougher illegal immigration laws and the nation’s broadest use of school vouchers.
All of those laws are, in President Obama’s formulation, laws duly passed by strong majorities of the people’s representatives, though these laws enjoy stronger support than ObamaCare has ever had. Obama is silent as Big Labor sues to undo the expressed will of the people, though the law has already brought needed jobs to the state. But Obama was not silent when Boeing wanted to take advantage of South Carolina’s right-to-work laws; he packed the National Labor Relations Board with union hacks and unleashed them to stop Boeing. In both that case and the Indiana case, Obama and Big Labor clearly care less about creating jobs than about preserving Big Labor’s power and its ability to turn dues into money for the Democrats.
No, none of this is all that surprising given that history in South Carolina and Obama’s history with the labor movement. But it’s worth nothing whenever the subject of why Obama stirs such strong opposition come up. Racists at MSNBC and elsewhere in the liberal media blame that opposition on the president’s race, but the truth is, it’s his leftist policies that spark opposition, and his unfairness, dishonesty and obvious hypocrisy turn that opposition into outrage.
There aren’t enough facts either here or in the linked CBS report to draw any conclusions about how this plays out on the merits. There is no doubt that the legislature has the right to enact RTW legislation and such legislation is specifically contemplated by the Labor-Management Relations Act. That said, attempts to finesse the politics by making it different for different types of employees may, at least in the mind of a Democrat judge, raise some equal protection issues. Finesse never really helps in dealing with unions; they’re the ultimate kind of part of the solution or part of the problem, in for a penny, in for a pound kind of people. They hate you just as much for not giving them everything they want as they do for not giving them anything they want, so you might as well get your money’s worth and give them nothing but Hell.
Whatever else it is, it is the standard union/lefty ploy of buying time to give themselves time to buy an election. If they can get an injunction out of some judge, they get to keep their dues stream flowing and maybe can buy themselves a new legislature, new governor, new AG. In my days of doing this stuff I had a couple of truly major disputes in which I won every battle but ultimately won the war because they could outlast me. Every initiative, every pending appeal, every pending action goes on the auction block in every gubernatorial election and all too often, the unions can just buy a new governor and make all that nastiness go away.
Well, when we get rid of judicial review because the Left demonizes the Supreme Court over ObamaCare, and the Right somehow, for *some* reason, does not quite rally to the defense of the judiciary, we won’t have to worry about these types of cases.