A bad bill back in mix

Pittsburgh is an anthropomorphism, the chain smoker with the hacking cough and the Swiss cheese lungs who wonders how it all turned out this way. Unions helped kill steel and drive the town to the brink and it teeters there perpetually, even despite downtown renaissances that have made it one of America’s most livable cities. Yet affection for collectives abides and so trots in Sen. Arlen Specter, changing parties and positions like socks, only the senator smells fouler.
Scrambling to the legislative sludge pile for a chunk of appeasement for his new constituents, Specter declared the Employee Free Choice Act back in play. Better known as the card check, Specter would trim that irksome provision that would have had workers effectively casting union votes with unions peering over shoulders.

Now, if some workers want a union, the vote will follow within roughly a week, providing unions sufficient time to twist arms but workers likely not enough to be properly informed. In other words, it would be like a Senate bill: hand out the 300-page amendment at 3 a.m. and vote in the afternoon. Contemplation is for sissies.

Still in the bill is a requirement that a government arbitrator set a contract if the employer and the new union can’t reach a deal within three months. Another piece of the legislation gives unions free roam in the workplace even before workers vote on whether to organize. Businesses are arguing already that this version might be worse than the first.

Meanwhile, back in the Virginia gubernatorial campaign, Democratic contender R. Creigh Deeds thinks topics such as this ought to be off-limits since it’s a federal rather than a state bill. Gee, Sen. Deeds, aren’t there businesses in Virginia, which, by the by, is a right-to-work state? But of course, like Specter, who opposed the Employee Free Choice Act before deciding he’s for it in a different form, Deeds has a labor constituency to whom he must answer.

Be advised, senator, if there’s something to be modeled from Pittsburgh, it’s to be found in the vicinity of Heinz Field, where a champion football team resides (now calling Dan Snyder). Notice the workforce exodus in the City of Three Rivers and the collapse of manufacturing there. To follow the lead of Specter is to follow another already worn trail to economic abyss.

Road rage
Speaking of Deeds, there he went again Thursday in a debate with Robert F. McDonnell claiming the Republican’s plan to spend money on transportation would pull money from public schools. His tortured logic applies to all general-fund spending that doesn’t go to schools, from mental health to the janitors who clean the governor’s office. The argument is fatuous. How might Sen. Deeds get money for roads? Oh, that’s right. He still doesn’t know.