Obama’s First Gift to Unions

– By Warner Todd Huston

Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of Labor is his first gift to labor unions. Hilda Solis is quite a union extremist and has already promised to push the misleadingly named employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) once she takes over her new role in the Obama administration.

A recent Wall Street Journal report reveals that Solis, a California Congressman, has been in the back pocket of unions since she first ran for Congress.

Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of Labor — Hilda Solis — brings impeccable big labor credentials. The California Congresswoman first rode to power with labor backing against a fellow Democrat, has voted with the AFL-CIO 97% of the time, and got three-quarters of her campaign contributions from unions.

But the WS Journal rightfully worries that Solis will also try to gut the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS). In recent years the OLMS has tightened financial disclosure rules on the unions, an effort that is responsible in just one case for catching hundreds of thousands of dollars being illicitly spent by Tyrone Freeman, the head of the California office of the Service Employee International Union.

Union watchdogs fear that Solis will reverse these stricter reporting rules allowing unions to more easily get away with criminal misallocation of funds. And this gutting of the OLMS is precisely what unions have been pushing for. Obama owes the unions for their multi-million support campaign they waged for him during the past elections, so it would seem a natural payback for his administration to acquiesce to these union demands.

So, the man that claimed to want to clean up Washington and bring “change” will be the one responsible for giving criminal unions the cover they so desperately need to indulge in all the criminal behavior they want to indulge in.

That’s some kind of change.

____________
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, Human Events Magazine, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston

Fair Use: This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of political, human rights, economic, democracy, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research, educational, or satirical purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site/blog for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.


Copyright Publius Forum 2001