Vice President Kamala Harris is renowned for hiring and firing speechwriters. Politico reported that Harris hired her third head speechwriter last November and her recent remarks suggest she may want to consider a fourth.
Harris opened an August 28 White House teleconference by proclaiming, “It is good with — to be with you today to make an historic announcement.” Her historic announcement was that the Treasury Department released a report on why a chunk of their voter base is so awesome. According to Harris, “Union workers make our middle class and our entire economy more strong.” Truly epic stuff from Speechwriter #3.
Harris was joined by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other administration officials to further explain how unions constitute, “the backbone of America,” and that President Biden is leading, “the most pro-union administration in America’s history.”
There was a time when labor unions played a useful role in America. Unions did good things by arguing for improved workplace safety, reasonable working hours and better wages during the formative years of the Industrial Revolution. But 19th century steel mill furnace operators and exploited children in garment factories had slightly different concerns than web developers, engineers and people in other occupations today. It seems the necessity of unions is disintegrating.
I learned about unions as a 17-year-old card-carrying member of the Teamsters. Forced union membership was a condition of employment for doing construction work in my hometown trailer house factory, where prefabricated homes were made on an assembly line. My job was working on the ceiling jig, where I mastered the art of stapling ceiling tiles to rafters and rolling pink fiberglass insulation between them, in a couple of weeks. Bored with the ceiling jig, I asked to work at other stations along the line to learn about plumbing, electrical wiring, ventilation, roofing, and so forth.
That was my first mistake; asking to learn more. The union’s shop steward, a husky alcoholic who boasted about washing his hair with Lava soap, told me to knock it off. My second mistake was to complain during lunch one day about how the union was a soul-crushing destroyer of individual initiative bent on keeping people in their place, and all we got for our dues money was a monthly kegger following union meetings, which lasted about 10 minutes.
A few days later, a couple of guys followed me into the factory men’s room and tuned me up good and proper. After getting pummeled in the can, I was assigned to a new job cutting 4 x 8-foot slabs of sheetrock for installation on trailer house walls. But instead of scoring and snapping drywall to size, like professionals do, they forced me to cut it on a table saw, which spewed enormous, choking clouds of sheetrock dust into my face. I went to the tool crib to get a respirator but was told they were out. Go figure.
This anecdote isn’t reflective of all unions but it illustrates the totalitarian nature of them. Given the communist underpinnings of the 20th century American labor movement, this sort of coercion and violence isn’t terribly shocking. That, combined with the continually evolving nature of industry and the workplace, likely accounts for the fact that union membership in the United States has been cut in half since 1983. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just 10.1% of working Americans now belong to a union.
This explains why the Biden administration is hitting the panic button on Big Labor. Kamala Harris claims, “Union organizing creates significant economic benefits,” but the data suggest otherwise. CNBC reported in July that nine of the top 10 states “running America’s best economies,” are right-to-work states.
The Harris/Yellen event also extolled the role of unions in raising employee wages. It is true that union wages are rising, they’re just not rising as fast as non-union wages. The Atlanta law firm Wimberly, Lawson, Steckel, Schneider & Stine reported last fall that, “Wages for non-union workers rose 6%, compared to 3.4% for those in unions.”
It appears the greatest economic benefits of labor unions accrue to Democrats, who consistently receive more political contributions than Republicans, and not by a little. During the 2022 election cycle, transportation and post
The Biden administration desperately needs this money for political campaigns, but the well is going dry. When it comes to unions, there’s not a lot of daylight between the White House and the Communist Party USA, which shares this administration’s love of Big Labor. That fact alone is reason enough to relegate unions to the ash heap of history.