Obama Administration hands the unions another gift, this time erasing 75 years of labor law

It’s fitting that our first post on Obama Watch News should be about Big Labor. After all, the unions bankrolled his campaign and there is no constituency to which Obama is more beholden.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The National Mediation Board, which oversees labor relations in the air and rail industry, this month moved to overturn 75 years of labor policy.
The board plans to stack the deck for organized labor in union elections. Under a proposed rule, unions would no longer have to get the approval of a majority of airline workers to achieve certification. Not even close. Instead, a union could win just by getting a majority of the employees who vote. Thus, if only 1,000 of 10,000 flight attendants vote in a union election, and 501 vote for certification, the other 9,499 become unionized.
This radical break with precedent is the handiwork of President Obama's appointees to the three-member board: Harry Hoglander, once president of a pilots union, and Linda Puchala, former president of the Association of Flight Attendants.
The board got a request to adopt the jerry-rigged voting standard from the AFL-CIO in September. Without a hearing or invitation for preliminary views, the Obama duo drafted the AFL-CIO demand and published it in the Federal Register. It's now subject to a 60-day comment period, after which Ms. Puchala and Mr. Hoglander will no doubt vote to inflict it on all the nation's airline and rail carriers.

In other words, it’s Card Check without the congressional approval. It’s also the latest product of Obama’s labor strategy, which has been working furiously to cut the regulatory ropes that hold unions down. (Deregulation of businesses wrecks the economy, but deregulation of shadowy labor bosses is okay, apparently.) The NMB is an independent government agency established in 1934, which is when the original certification rules were established. Obama’s appointees, at the behest of their cronies in the AFL-CIO, are the only ones since who have made such a radical change. This swings a wrecking ball at 75 years of labor regulation.

It’s no shocking development. The AFL-CIO was one of Obama’s earliest fans in 2008. A quick scan of independent expenditure donations to Obama’s campaign on Opensecrets.org reveals a campaign with coffers stuffed with union money. (Independent expenditures are made without the candidate’s coordination and aren’t privy to restrictive campaign finance laws.) The labor colossus Service Employees International Union donated close to $31 million alone. Their main claims to fame recently have been threatening legal action against a Boy Scout for cleaning up a union-controlled park and deploying hulking thugs to town hall meetings to bloody up conservative protesters.

Obama’s politics are nothing fresh and new. He’s engaging in the same political trick that’s been in play since ancient times: know who your friends are and pay them back once you’re in power. The top visitor to the White House during Obama’s tenure? Andy Stern, the president of SEIU. Big Labor created Barack Obama and now they want to be a loud voice in his ear.

You have to wonder how Amtrak Joe Biden will react to this. Then again Amtrak workers are already unionized, so ten bucks says he’ll be dancing down Pennsylvania Avenue.