Union Disenfranchises Workers in Contract Vote

by Mike Flynn 

How else to explain this photo from the Machinists’ Union recent contract election?



Unions and other leftist partisans bleat ad nauseum photo ID requirements for voting would disenfranchise voters, especially the poor and minorities. Just this past weekend, the AFL-CIO co-sponsored a march for “voting rights” in New York City. In the coalition statement announcing the march, the unionists noted:

photo ID requirements will introduce the first financial and document barrier to voting since the poll tax

The pro-labor site Unions.org was breathless in it’s report on these proposals [emphasis added]:

The right-wing billionaire Koch brothers are big proponents of these new laws. The American Legislative Exchange Council, funded heavily by them, prepares model voter-suppression legislation.

Critics call the new laws a modern-day version of the Jim Crow-era poll taxes and literacy tests — which are no longer limited to the South or African Americans.

“There is once again a quiet but systematic movement that would deny many African Americans and other American citizens the ability to vote with 21st century versions of old exclusionary practices,” said Marian Wright Edelman, the president of the Children’s Defense Fund, in an article in the Huffington Post.

“The generations ahead of us had to face Jim Crow,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton at the Nov. 8 press conference to launch the “Stand for Freedom” campaign. “We face his son, James Crow Jr., Esq.”

Of course, when union bosses are pushing workers to approve a new contract, damn straight they’re going to make sure only those eligible to vote are able to do so.
Racists.

The entire leftist argument against Voter ID laws is intellectual dishonesty at its worst. In fact, the entire argument is built on a false premise; that photo IDs are some rare, luxury good out of reach for millions of Americans.

Photo IDs are darn near ubiquitous and necessary to navigate the basic path of daily life. These days, you need one to enter most government and many private buildings. You need one to cash a check. You even need one to get emergency disaster relief food stamps.

Where are the marches protesting these requirements? Is there something weird about Election Day that causes millions of Americans to collectively lose their wallets on the way to the voting booth?

Of course, the union bosses are absolutely right to ensure that only their members can vote on a new contract. A non-union member voting on the contract would negate a paid-up union member’s vote. Just as an illegal voter negates a citizen’s vote in our political elections.

I won’t hold my breath for the ACLU lawsuit against the Machinist Union.

Big Government