Editorial: Union Thuggery Run Amok
Investor’s Business Daily
March 24, 2011
Big Labor: Having lost its war on economics, the SEIU has declared war on the economy. Literally. One of its top minds was caught vowing to crash the stock market to redistribute wealth. Is this a union or a subversive group?
Six years ago, after breaking from the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union was hailed as a new kind of organization, whose dynamic leader Andy Stern would make labor strong again. His union vowed to increase its “political muscle to pressure entrenched politicians who didn’t vote in the interests of their members,” wrote Matt Bai in his 2007 book, “The Argument.”
Today, it’s all over. One of the leading lights of SEIU-thought, Stephen Lerner, declared last week at Pace University: “Unions are almost dead. We cannot survive doing what we do.”
But that didn’t mean introspection, or renewed efforts to persuade the public. Union frustration, as Bai wrote, meant it was time to “blow the place up.”
Lerner has a “secret plan” scheduled for May to “destabilize” the U.S. economy to redistribute wealth.
“What does the other side fear most?” Lerner asked. “They fear disruption, they fear uncertainty.”
It was crazy talk, but with specific aims: a mass mortgage strike and student loan default to crash banks such as JPMorgan, which SEIU has been trying to unionize since at least 2007. Nevermind what a stock market crash to teach Wall Street a lesson would do to workers’ pensions.
Although Lerner was edged out of the union late last year shortly after Stern left, it wasn’t because his idea was too vile. It was because his many ideas cost too much. It’s an indicator that Lerner’s talk has been going on at that union for years and beyond.
Lerner’s had face time with high-level White House officials over the past two years, in at least two documented meetings. His close colleague Stern got even more.
And right about now, the SEIU, still furious about its failed Wisconsin strike, has begun to take on a radicalism that stands to take the rest of the economy hostage.
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