‘There Will Be Blood’

‘There Will Be Blood’
As the Michigan House debated a right-to-work measure today, a member of that august body warned of–or perhaps threatened–violence. “We’re going to pass something that will undo 100 years of labor relations and there will be blood, there will be repercussions,” WWJ-AM quotes Rep. Doug Geiss, a Detroit-area Democrat, as saying. “We will re-live the battle of the overpass.”

The station offers a refresher in labor history: “The battle of the overpass was a bloody fracas in 1937 between union organizers and Ford Motor Co. security guards. [United Auto Workers organizer] Walter Reuther was famously thrown down a flight of stairs and another union organizer was left with a broken back.”

So far this time there are no reports of violence or threats by management (unless you count Geiss, who is after all supposed to represent taxpayers, as part of “management” vis-à-vis government employees). But union leaders have echoed the violent rhetoric. WWJ quotes Terry O’Sullivan of the Labor International Union of North America, as saying at a rally, in reference to elected officials who support the right to work: “We are going to take you on and take you out.”

MLive.com, a Michigan news site, reports that union thugs “tore down a large tent maintained by American’s [sic] For Prosperity Michigan, which reserved the space to support the right-to-work legislation”:

“We had been contacted by that group that they had three or four people that were actually trapped underneath the tent,” said Lt. Mike Shaw. “Two of them were in wheelchairs and there was also a propane tank in there. So we had to send troopers out, and naturally, the crowd was not too receptive.”

Several protesters booed and heckled mounted troopers who responded to the incident, calling them scabs and refusing to allow them through the crowd.

Scott Hagerstrom, executive director of AFP-Michigan, said his group had already ceded its reserved spot on the Capitol steps when protesters began ripping out support wires holding up the tent.

“The [sic] couldn’t engage in a civil debate, and it’s very unfortunate,” Hagestrom said as he stood atop the fallen remnants.

Lori Dougovito of Flint’s WJRT-TV reports on the station’s Facebook page that a thug “told me it wouldn’t have fell [sic] if it was union made”–a quote that nicely encapsulates the protection-racket nature of contemporary organized labor.

Steven Crowder, a Fox News contributor, tweets that he “was punched in the face four times” during the attack and adds that he didn’t fight back because “the mob would have literally killed me.” Glenn Reynolds posts video of the incident and writes: “The video shows numerous union representatives engaging in violent, illegal conduct. Their faces are clearly identifiable. I hope they will be prosecuted, and sued.” Indeed.

BuzzFeed.com reports that “President Barack Obama launched an assault Monday on Michigan’s proposed ‘right to work’ legislation.” Unlike his supporters in Michigan, however, the president did not launch a literal assault. Speaking at a Daimler plant in Redford, just north of Geiss’s hometown of Taylor, Obama said: “These so-called ‘right to work’ laws, they don’t have to do with economics; they have everything to do with politics.” There is some truth to that: Coercively collected union dues are an important source of funding for Democratic candidates and causes.

Obama went on to laud Big Labor: “You only have to look to Michigan–where workers were instrumental in reviving the auto industry–to see how unions have helped build not just a stronger middle class but a stronger America.” By all means, let’s look. Here’s a report from TheTruthAboutCars.com:

Two years ago, a group of Chrysler workers were caught . . . drinking and doobing [i.e., smoking marijuana] on their lunch break. Not just that, they were caught on camera by a local TV station. The video went viral, and Chrysler was forthwith associated with quality enhanced by booze and marijuana. 13 workers were fired. Yesterday, they got their jobs back, courtesy of Chrysler’s contract with the UAW.

The workers followed a grievance procedure process outlined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement between Chrysler and the United Auto Workers. The matter went to arbitration. Two years later, an arbitrator decided in the workers’ favor, citing “insufficient conclusive evidence to uphold the dismissals.” Apparently, a video wasn’t good enough.

Chrysler was owned by Daimler until 2007.

The unions arguably brought right-to-work on themselves. Michigan’s Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican who was elected in the wave of 2010, long resisted the measure, reports Tom Walsh of the Detroit Free Press:

Too divisive, he’d say. Why go to war with unions when there was a tax code to fix and a budget to balance to begin his reinvention of Michigan?

And what did Snyder’s stance get him? Headaches, mostly. . . .

Public employee unions opposed Snyder’s moves to put more teeth into emergency manager laws that would enable swifter action to rescue cities and school districts that bungled themselves into insolvency.

In Detroit, Mayor Dave Bing and a spineless City Council were stonewalled by employee unions at every turn, slow-walking needed reforms and cost-cutting while the city burned through cash at a frightening rate.

As a result, Snyder’s patient attempt to help fix Detroit via consent agreement instead of imposing an emergency manager has failed.

To top it off, Snyder found himself having to fight off Proposal 2, the ill-advised November ballot attempt to stuff a bag of goodies for organized labor into the Michigan Constitution.

This is the third major state-level victory against Big Labor in the past two years, after Wisconsin’s triumph over greedy government unions and Indiana’s lower-profile right-to-work effort. “People always say this is a really tough battle, you can’t win,” Mark Mix of National Right to Work tells the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. “Then one morning we woke up and guess what? We found out it wasn’t nearly as strong as we thought.” The violent rhetoric looks like a sign of weakness, not strength.