It's pretty clear whom I'll be voting for in the general election, but I have to admit I haven't been immune to the Obama-mania sweeping the land. After all, he's obviously a smart guy and a great speaker, and we even attended, in different years, the same law school -- although while he edited the Harvard Law
Review, I edited the Harvard Law
Record, the law school newspaper
. (For the non-lawyers out there, the law review is a respected academic journal; the law school newspaper is akin to the free publication you'd pick up at your local Starbucks.)
Obama talks a good bipartisan game, but his voting record indicates that his actual positions are far to the left of most Americans. That fact, along with the closeness of the Democratic primary, raises the alarming specter of unions calling a lot of the shots in any Obama administration. The influence of unions in the Obama campaign, as well as his long-standing connections to unions, have been documented by many news sources. No less than the
New York Times (which prints well-researched articles in addition to unsubstantiated innuendo) has noted that he "has long maintained ties to [the Service Employees International Union]. He sought its endorsement, and
its main Web page is filled with photos of him and videos of his speeches." To quote an official from the union, "S.E.I.U. members are waging an unprecedented effort to mobilize their co-workers and communities to elect Barack Obama. We are committed to bringing all of our resources to bear to ensure he is our next president."
Unions have done a lot of good historically to improve working conditions in this country. These days, however, most unions tend to support policies that are protectionist at best and patently racist at worst. This is evident in unions' opposition to treaties like NAFTA -- which most economists have said has been good for America.
Factcheck.org notes that Clinton made that same point herself, back in 2004, before the
tight Democratic primary forced both Democratic candidates to start pandering to the unions on issues like NAFTA.
We were at the Anaheim convention center a few weeks ago to staff a trade show booth for the small business we run on the side. We've attended this particular trade show for years, so we're used to being gouged by the local union, which, among other things, requires the use of union labor to bring materials into the convention center and then charges outrageous rates for their services. As we were setting up our booth this time, however, we were unexpectedly accosted by a union member who told us to immediately stop our set-up, since this too apparently requires the use of union labor. Let me mention that the display structure in our booth is composed of panels that you snap together; no tools are required, and it typically takes only a couple of hours to set up (and a lot of that time is spent rearranging pieces and figuring out how you want the display to look). We pointed out that we've never been required to use union labor for setup before and that many of the booths around us had been set up without union labor. We took this issue up to the floor manager, who explained that she had been "forcing union labor" on exhibitors all day and that the exhibitors who avoided the requirement had just been lucky. The union member also sheepishly noted that times are tough and guys are losing their jobs, so we should do our part to help out.
After some back and forth, we finally agreed to take one union laborer for one hour to help put up the display structure. For one hour of
unskilled labor, we were charged
$135. Hour for hour, this is considerably more than I make as an in-house lawyer here in Silicon Valley, and this is not that much less than what certain legal staffing services charge high-tech companies for
experienced attorneys. The guy tasked with helping us out was almost a caricature of a union laborer; he arrived at our booth at around 4 pm, and the first thing he said was, "Just to let you know, I have a scheduled break at 4:15." We were able to convince him to delay his break (after we went to go talk with the floor manager), but he spent most of the time trying to chat up our team members and had no experience setting up booths like ours -- he kept on talking about how easy it was to set up our display (which is exactly why we bought this system, so we could set it up ourselves). Because we were focused on erecting the booth as quickly as possible and not looking at the clock, we ended up using him for more than an hour. For that, we were charged for an extra 30 minutes at time and a half. (Afterwards, another exhibitor told us that the trick to avoiding the union labor requirement was to wait until 5 pm to start setting up, since that's when most of the union guys ended their day.)
I think back to what the first union guy said -- times are tough, so we should do our part. I completely agree with his comment. But as a small business, our part is to develop and sell useful, quality products. Money that we earn goes back into the economy through our company's expenditures, our purchases, and our team members' purchases. Our part is
not to subsidize unions engaged in anti-competitive, unproductive activities. These activities are bad for small business, bad for the economy as a whole, and ultimately bad for the union laborer, who has no incentive to retool for a more productive career.
The union members we met at the trade show all seemed reasonably smart, and no one struck me as a bad person. These are folks who want what most of us want -- honest work and a living wage -- and these are folks who, for the most part, should be able to make the transition to the new economy. But they're focused on the short term, and they seem to have a sense of entitlement about what they're owed. Obama talks about change, but if there's really going to be change, we have to open our arms wide to innovation and a global economy. At a time when we need change, the unions are trying to strap us into a straitjacket. And Obama seems more than happy to climb right in.
As I mentioned in my last post, Obama and Clinton have recently been battling it out to see who can more completely disavow any prior support for NAFTA. Despite the fact most economists (and a prior incarnation of Hillary Clinton) agree that NAFTA has had a positive impact on America (per FactCheck.org), the Democratic candidates are scrambling over each other to proclaim their willingness to withdraw from the treaty.
