Top AFL-CIO union chief Richard Trumka — President Barack Obama’s guest of honor at his speech to Congress Thursday night — urged Obama to “go to the mat” for Big Labor.
Of course, Obama hasn’t been shy about doing just that for the last three years. Trumka just wants more, more, more.
Obama’s “jobs” proposal appears to be full of it — more special deals and bailouts for the union hierarchy.
And unsurprisingly, Obama made no mention of the Boeing jobs in South Carolina the Acting General Counsel of his National Labor Relations Board is trying to destroy.
Meanwhile, Big Labor has become even more militant, as events this week demonstrate.
On Labor Day, Obama and Trumka shared the stage at a political rally where Teamster union president Jimmy Hoffa urged his “army” of union militants to “take these sons of bitches out” — threatening everyday Americans concerned about our struggling economy and growing debt.
And on Thursday, we saw a real live example of the militancy of some union extremists who really seem to think they’re in an “army” — and their enemies are job providers, independent workers, security guards and even the police.
The Associated Press (AP) reported that hundreds of Longshoreman union militants held security guards hostage for hours at a port in Longview, Washington.
Union thugs reportedly committed numerous acts of vandalism and violence including breaking windows, cutting brake lines on railroad cars, and threatening police officers with baseball bats.
Not a single arrest has been made.
The local police chief told the AP union militants warned him that Thursday’s events were “only the start.”
You might say they took a page straight out of the playbook of Richard Trumka, who climbed through the union boss ranks by encouraging militancy and even violence.
As President of the United Mineworkers (UMW) union in the 1980s and 1990s, Trumka led three violent strikes in which militancy was actively encouraged — and workers who dared to continue working to provide for their families were subjected to threats and outright violence.
In 1997, the UMW was forced to settle with the widow of a nonunion worker who was shot in the back of his head. UMW officials even financially aided and filed grievances on behalf of seven union militants who pleaded guilty to crimes during the violent strike.
And after Trumka left the UMW and became the AFL-CIO’s treasurer, he was implicated in a money-laundering scheme.
A former prosecutor at the Justice Department told ABC News in 2000, “If I were advising a candidate, I would advise him or her very strongly that [Richard Trumka is] not someone you want to embrace.”
Eleven years later, Trumka is flying in Air Force One and sitting next to the First Lady as the President speaks before a joint session of Congress.
By Ed Randazzo, News Editor, Life and Liberty News
