The most recent spate of news coverage centering around unions came earlier this week in Michigan, where thousands of union members gathered outside the capitol in Lansing to protest passage of Michigan right to work laws.
Most have doubtless seen coverage from that day showing union members repeatedly tearing down an Americans For Prosperity tent, destroying a food vendor’s stand while hurling racial slurs at him, and assaulting Fox News Contributor, Steven Crowder.
Protesting legislation that merely creates for employees an option to join a union, instead of requiring that they do, is by most objective standards, a misguided protest. There is scant need to delve into the irony of a group that ostensibly “fights for the rights of the worker” while simultaneously condemning legislation that grants the Michigan worker more choices about how to pursue his employment.
However, the substance of the unions’ recent protests, while oftentimes misguided, is nothing compared to the methods being implemented to carry out these protests. These methods, I believe, are slowly but surely taking a toll on whatever benevolent public perception they might have accrued in recent years.
In recent weeks, Unions have staged a number of protests that garnered national attention, although probably not the kind of attention they would’ve liked.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) staged a massive protest that nearly ground LAX to a halt during one of the busiest times of the year. Travelers and empathetic citizens nationwide were not pleased.
Frustrated travelers were forced to park about a mile from the airport and walk in with their luggage around throngs of excited protesters.”I don’t think the protesters are making any friends,” David Britton said as he walked down Century with his rollaway luggage bag, hoping to make his flight to Dallas. “My daughter dropped us off about a mile back.”
Then, of course, there was the recent incident where members from the Cable Workers of America Union protested outside a charity event for pancreatic cancer research.
There are usually few things that the average citizen would consider crossing the line.Beating puppies, throwing rocks at a station wagon full of nuns, and purposefully attempting to disrupt a fundraiser for one of the deadliest forms of cancer would arguably rate in the top three.Yet the latter of the three is exactly what union members did recently in New York City.
The event, which raised $2 million for research of pancreatic cancer, was seen as little more than collateral damage to the union protesters.
In Michigan, union supported elected representatives are chanting that, “there will be blood,” while union members are destroying private property and violently assaulting people on the other side of the political debate.
None of this succeeds in creating any sort of public sympathy around unions or their causes, and it’s a contributing factor to why you see right to work legislation succeeding in even the most heavily unionized states.
To the unions, all I can say is this: You’re your own worst enemy.
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