Opinion

Labor’s latest loss

Here we go again. Less than a year after losing their epic battle with the GOP in Wisconsin over much-needed public-sector union reforms, Democrats and their thug allies in the labor movement have opened up a new front in neighboring Michigan. For all their shouting, chanting and punching, though, the result is likely to be the same.

On Tuesday, the GOP-dominated state Legislature passed, and Republican Gov. Rick Snyder immediately signed, “right to work” laws that make membership in public and private unions optional and let union members opt out of mandatory dues — thus threatening a cozy little racket that sees dues money promptly cycled back to the union bosses’ Democratic Party protectors and enablers in the form of campaign “contributions.”

Meanwhile, a mob descended on Lansing, tore down a hospitality tent erected by Americans for Prosperity and assaulted Steven Crowder, a Fox News contributor who grew up in Detroit.

It was all foreshadowed: During the debate in the Legislature, Democratic stooges had warned direly of repercussions. “We’re going to pass something that will undo a hundred years of labor relations,” intoned state Rep. Douglas Geiss, invoking the auto industry’s storied, often violent, union battles. “There will be blood.”

Even President Obama got into the act, telling workers at a Michigan rally against the legislation a few days ago that “what they’re really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money.” Right-to-work laws, said Obama, “don’t have to do with economics — they have everything to do with politics.”

He got that last part right, at least, which is why emotions are again running high in the Midwest. (Asked to comment on the trouble — especially in light of the president’s call for greater civility after the January 2011 Gabby Giffords shooting in Arizona — Press Secretary Jay Carney pointedly declined.)

Democrats also grumbled that the controversial legislation was rammed through in a lame-duck session, in which Republicans held strong majorities in both houses, instead of waiting until next month, when a combination of Democratic gains and GOP defectors (10 voted against the right-to-work bills) might have torpedoed the legislation.

Yet they have only themselves to blame. Initially, Snyder didn’t want any part of a fight with the unions; he’s trying to turn the state around and fix the dying city of Detroit’s parlous finances.

But the bosses proved so intransigent that he was left with no choice but to break their political power. They stymied his efforts to save Detroit and other failing local governments, then last month tried (and failed) to write a host of new union privileges into the state Constitution via ballot measure.

(Anyway, who can forget how the unpopular ObamaCare law was rammed through Congress via parliamentary trickery and absent a single Republican vote?)

The Michigan mess is a sad commentary on the present state of unions, both public and private, in these economic hard times. The Depression-era glory days are long gone, with results evident for all to see: Once-magnificent Detroit, which featured the finest residential architecture in the country, has gone from the fourth-largest US city — and the richest per capita — to a pathetic, crime-ridden basket case, hemorrhaging population.

The fact is that America can’t afford its unions any more. Employers are about to be clobbered with onerous new taxes courtesy of ObamaCare, and new regulations will incentivize them to cut, not add, jobs.

Further, the days of fat-cat employers — so successfully demonized by the Democrats in the recent election — squaring off against downtrodden proles exist only in memory, even in union-stronghold Michigan. The once-mighty auto industry is a shell of its former self, while union leaders have grown beefy feeding on its emaciated body.

To say nothing of the public-sector unions, whose appetite at the public trough is insatiable, and who are perfectly willing to send municipalities spiraling into bankruptcy as long as their unsustainable wages, benefits and pensions continue.

In short, there’s a day of reckoning coming for both the unions and the Democrats. The November elections were a disaster for the GOP at the national level, but at the state level the Republicans are stronger than ever. Expect more of this to come.