Biden’s “Blackshirts?” In Wisconsin, They Work for the Unions.

[Geee]

Commentary Magazine:

You don’t need to read the polls to know that Democrats are worried about Scott Walker. In recent days, the Obama administration has been concentrating their fire on the governor of Wisconsin with the sort of fervor that is usually reserved for their chief congressional tormentors. Walker signed a right-to-work bill passed by the Wisconsin legislature and both President Obama and Vice President Biden denounced him and the law. But the attention given this event wasn’t primarily motivated by Walker’s current status as a frontrunner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. The Wisconsin law scares the Democrats because it’s yet another blow to the ability of the unions to coerce workers into providing them with the funds to pay for their political campaigns. That’s why their rhetoric against Walker and the law was so extreme. Yet when Biden claimed Republicans were seeking to use “blackshirts” to break unions, that line might better have been applied to his own side in the argument.

 

The Democrats’ line of attack against Walker is that he is doing the bidding of big business and seeking to oppress workers. But the debate over right-to-work laws isn’t about protecting the freedom to organize a union; it’s about safeguarding workers against coercion exercised by those who claim to speak in their name. And nowhere is that more true than in Wisconsin.

The essence of the fight about right-to-work legislation is that in states without these provisions unions exercise power disproportionate to their actual membership because they are able to tax non-members to fund their activities. They defend this practice by saying that when unions negotiate contracts with employers, all those who work there benefit from the results. But the problem is that labor unions have a broader agenda than collective bargaining. They also provide political and economic muscle for their Democratic Party allies.