Labor Day is really just a Celebration of Government Workers

Ahh, Labor Day...

• Put another beer brat on the grill 
• Look forward to week 2 of College Football
• Think about what Middle Class America really means.  PB

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From Investors.com:

... a lot has changed for organized labor since Labor Day was federally recognized 120 years ago.

The then burgeoning movement has gained massive political power and influence across the century, only to see it decline precipitously to a point where today only 6.7% of the private-sector workforce belongs to labor unions.

In fact, more union members are public employees than in the private sector.

This transition of labor union membership from private sector to public employee dominated has massive implications for the future.

A public-sector oriented union's focus will naturally be on helping politicians who support expanding the size and scope of government, even at the expense of the private-sector workforce.

This conversion can be seen in Big Labor's political fealty to the Democratic Party and their bigger and bigger government mantra.

Today's Big Labor supports politicians who are committed to destroying unionized mining jobs through the EPA, scoff at the value of more than 10,000 union jobs created by building the Keystone XL pipeline, and actively push for amnesty for illegal aliens who can only drive down the cost of labor, hurting wages.

The days of a Jimmy Hoffa's Teamsters Union endorsing Richard Nixon seem far away.

Labor leaders are more interested today in creating the low-hanging fruit of public employee union jobs, rather than confronting far- left politicians who are killing private-sector unions through their policies.

While the United Mine Workers of America may have balked at endorsing President Obama in 2012 after his disastrous policies targeted much of their workforce for extinction, their former president, Richard Trumka, in his new role as head of the AFL-CIO, continues to play the role of presidential cheerleader.

Sure, he talks of being disgruntled with some of Obama's economic policies. But when push comes to shove, he'll encourage his members to pull the lever for D.

Construction unions like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) give lip service to supporting private-sector jobs through projects like building the Keystone XL pipeline.

Yet in the lead-up to the 2012 election for president, the union wrote a scathing attack on Republican nominee Mitt Romney, based on Republican governors pushing measures that reined in public-employee union power in their states.

While the piece claimed to not tell their members how to vote, it left no doubt about whom the union supported — the very same guy whose administration has thrown its collective weight against the very kind of mass construction project that gives their membership work.

And that tells the whole story...
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Link: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-on-the-right/082914-715382-labor-day-is-not-about-private-sector-union-workers-anymore.htm