The Obama administration's poor relationship with Labor

From the Washington Post

by Ezra Klein

I don't know why administration officials even say things like this:

Vice President Joe Biden told the AFL-CIO that the Obama administration will still be able to push through a controversial union organizing bill that has been stalled for the past year and looked all but dead once Democrats lost their 60-seat super-majority in the Senate.

At the Buena Vista Palace Hotel in Orlando, Fla., where the labor federation is holding its annual winter meeting, Biden asked for continued support from union leaders despite the administration’s inability to push through two big items on labor’s wish list: the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to organize new members, and a pro-union nominee to the National Labor Relations Board.

“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but we’ve come a long way in 12 months,” Biden told several hundred union officials. “In terms of the NLRB, we’re going to get it done. In the fight for EFCA, we’ve got to sit down and figure out where we go from here. … I think we’re going to get it done.”

This just isn't credible. They're not going to get card check done. They don't have the votes, and they'll be even further from having the votes come January. For Biden to say otherwise insults the intelligence of his audience.

In terms of NLRB, the White House decided against a recess appointment for Craig Becker, who got 52 votes but was blocked by a filibuster. Compare that to George W. Bush, whose first NLRB appointment was an anti-labor industry type who'd been held up by a filibuster and was seated through a recess appointment.

The White House has demanded a lot of compromise from organized labor (most notably on the excise tax) and offered very little in return, save for the occasional speech assuring unions that the administration would eventually fight for some element of their agenda. Not only is that not enough, but it's not smart in the long run: Democrats need a strong labor movement, yes, but so too do American workers. Without Labor, workers have no organized lobby advocating (however imperfectly) for their political interests and no countervailing force against the corporate sector. It's not a total accident that the decline of Labor tracked stagnation in the median wage (nor, to be sure, is it a full explanation).

The White House obviously can't pick all its fights at once, but as of yet, it hasn't picked any fights on Labor's behalf, or even shown a bare interest in doing so in the future. Some probably take that as Obama being usefully dismissive of a special interest, but in the long-run, letting Labor continue to decline is bad politics for Democrats and bad policy for workers.

By Ezra Klein  |  March 2, 2010; 3:33 PM ET