A Gargantuan Gift to the Unions

After his decisive defeat in the recent congressional elections, President Obama is now trying to portray himself as a born-again centrist, verbalizing vague sympathies for small business and lighter regulation, not to mention capitulating to the Republicans’ demands to renew the Bush tax cuts for two more years. He is even feigning admiration for President Reagan.

But Obama is one of the most artful deceivers in the history of an office well known for attracting deceivers. As I have urged before (“Obamalaise,” Liberty, May 2010), you have to look at what he does, not merely at what he says. And what he is actually doing is continuing to advance his leftist agenda.

A particularly disgusting illustration is his recent decision, almost completely ignored in the mainstream media, to allow TSA employees (the airport screeners) to unionize.

When the TSA was set up, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the TSA administrator was given the authority to choose whether to give the employees the right to collective bargaining. Until now, the TSA has not done so. But Obama’s choice to head the TSA, John Pistole, changed that policy. Now the TSA’s 40,000 airport screeners — those paragons of efficiency and decorum, so eager to guard our privacy rights — join the ranks of public employees who are already in unions. The TSA employees will vote in March between representation by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the National Treasury Employees Union.

John Gage, president of the AFGE, crowed, “Today marks the recognition of a fundamental human right for 40,000 patriotic federal employees who have been disenfranchised since the inception of the agency.” Well he might crow, since these events will add 40,000 new employees to the public employee unions, which saw a drop of about 250,000 members in 2010. They will thus add an enormous amount to union dues, which will be spent on (among other things) electing Democrats in the next election cycle. In line to get the lion’s share of those union dues will be Pistole’s boss, Obama. It is very convenient.

Pistole says that the TSA workers won’t have the right to strike or engage in work slowdowns — as if we could tell whether these people are staging a slowdown or not. He also says that the workers won’t have a say in any matter that concerns airport security.

The devil is in the details.

In any case, if Obama is reelected, you can bet that these presumed restrictions will be loosened or eliminated. In the meantime, after the TSA workers unionize, we can expect their wages and benefits to skyrocket, adding significantly to our national deficit. Worse, disciplining lazy or inefficient workers will soon become incredibly difficult, rather like trying to fire incompetent tenured teachers, with the obvious effects on our collective security.

Let us now praise moderate men.