Important release from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees!
As part of an ongoing effort to build the alliance of Ohioans opposing the bill that would strip public service workers of their bargaining rights, AFSCME members are holding a series of eight press events around the state in conjunction with a group of small businesses who are part of Proud Ohio Workers.
Sounds bad for Senate Bill 5, small businesses rallying to the unionized government employees’ cause and all. Until you read the sales pitch at the Proud Ohio Workers site:
The Proud Ohio Worker program was created to allow merchants across the state to show that they recognize public employee support for their shops. We are asking merchants to show their support in return for public employees by affixing our sticker to a window in the front of their store.
Union bosses: your operation is already a racket by any reasonable definition. Hounding businesses to display your colors – with the unspoken threat to boycott or demonize owners who don’t comply – may not be the best way to win believers to your cause.
Then again, I’m sure AFSCME honchos have considered how this looks and think it’s a winning proposition. After all, they pay themselves handsomely for theatrics like this, and are masters at portraying blackmail as “solidarity.”
Proud Ohio Workers wants to ensure that small shops all across Ohio will remain open. If public employee wages are reduced and jobs are cut, local businesses will suffer. Supporting the creation and retention of good paying middle class jobs is good for local economies.
The broken window fallacy again?! Stossel, give these numbskulls an economics lesson:
Public employee salaries don’t just appear, and dollars don’t grow more valuable each time the government forcibly relocates ‘em. Before public employees can spend their pay at “small shops across Ohio,” it must be extracted from Ohio taxpayers. The vital difference is that unionized public employees spend their pay after the union has taken its cut.
Like union members themselves, business owners are props in a farce that enriches professional agitators and kicks taxpayer money back to Democrats. Senate Bill 5 will return some power to taxpaying Ohioans… and that’s an indignity the unions will not tolerate.
AFSCME Recap
These poor, downtrodden AFSCME leaders did ok for themselves (with member dues) in fiscal 2009:
- Joseph Rugola, OAPSE Executive Director: $216,939
- Gary Martin, OAPSE Associate Director: $200,163
- Charles Roginski, OAPSE Regional Director: $164,239
- John Lyall, AFSCME Council 8 President: $155,482
- Andy Douglas, OCSEA Executive Director: $151,392
They also gave boatloads of member dues to their political party of choice. Guess which one that is!
- AFSCME Local 4 spent $2,848,216.25 on Democrats from 2001-2010 (while giving $250.00, or 0.009% of the Democrat contributions, to the GOP)
- AFSCME Local 11 spent $1,054,561.42 on Democrats from 2001-2010 (while giving $41,000.00, or 3.89% of the Democrat contributions, to the GOP)
- AFSCME Council 8 spent $625,591.20 on Democrats from 2001-2010 (while giving $250.00, or 0.04% of the Democrat contributions, to the GOP)
Whatever good is done by the AFSCME happens at the local level; AFSCME leadership is flagrantly partisan, representing leftist interests regardless of members’ political leanings.
The Ohio Education Association’s spending and talking points tell the same story.
Cross-posted at that hero and Columbus Tea Party.