“Business leaders” give in to union extortion
October 6th, 2008 | by Brian Schwartz |Last week’s Rocky Mountain News reports:
Colorado labor and business leaders announced a joint effort to defeat three contentious anti-union measures on November’s ballot, ending weeks of intense negotiations toward forging an unprecedented alliance.
In return for the business community’s pledge to help fight a “right-to-work” measure and two other amendments targeting unions, the organized labor community agreed to pull from the ballot four initiatives [including an employer mandate on health insurance] that businesses had feared would harm the state’s economy. …
Business leaders have promised to raise $3 million for the campaigns against the so-called “right-to-work amendment” (Amendment 47) as well as Amendments 49 and 54. Unions have already raised at least $12 million in campaign money.
Mark Hillman explains the implications:
tags: colorado amendment 56, Colorado health care, employer mandate, unionsIt is understandable that business leaders didn’t want to risk passage of even one of these four destructive initiatives. But the peace they have purchased is only temporary. …
Nothing prevents labor bosses from trotting out these same anti-business initiatives at any time in the future to extract another payoff from business.
Business leaders just purchased the ammunition for their own execution. Labor bosses and Democrat activists — like shrewd negotiator Ted Trimpa who helped engineer this deal and just happens to be an advisor to Democrat financier Tim Gill — will be laughing all the way to the ballot box.
Labor union leaders understand strength and toughness. Unfortunately, many Colorado’s self-proclaimed business leaders have responded with weakness and timidity. In so doing, they have thrown to the wolves the handful of gutsy business leaders who truly understand labor’s political strategy and therefore backed Amendments 47 and 49.
Labor will continue its racket of extortion and intimidation until business executives grow tired of being beaten with their own hammer or until so few of them remain that their opinion doesn’t matter.
