michaelwestfall.tripod.com

By Michael Westfall

 October, 2006

Unions were created out of economic necessity and grew in strength after the great depression of the 1930’s. Since then no other force has done as much for working people. Past union leaders helped the nation and led their memberships to improved working conditions, wages and benefits. Unions created America’s middle class, which is the envy of the world. 

Unlike their  predecessors the union officials of today have become self absorbed, sidetracked and disconnected from their Judeo-Christian workforce. One only has to view the employment condition today compared to even twenty years ago to see that top union officials have been ineffectual and detached from their true purpose of protecting their workers and retirees. 

Unions were designed to have elected leaders who represented the workers best interests.  This is in contrast to today’s top union officials who have been able to twist this definition around and now use the considerable power of their dwindling union memberships to progress their own personal agendas. Workers have no recourse because these top officials have gained absolute power over their members. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

Top union officials are powerful politicians that are tightly connected to the Democratic Party. The quandary is that in teaming up with the liberal Democrats, they have been meandering into secular arenas where they don’t belong. This wastes time and resources fighting for non-labor related moral issues, labeling these moral issues as labor issues. They are forcing these potent anti-family concepts such as same sex marriage and abortion onto the backs of their Judeo-Christian workforce. They then use their substantial political power and influence to deliver their memberships votes to the feet of the Democrats who in turn work legislatively to institute these anti-family cultural changes. 

Union officials view their retirees and workers as brainless puppets who march in lockstep and vote as told. They are wrong, however, the success of organized labor officials to organize their workers and retirees to actively swing votes to liberal Democrats is one of the most overlooked and dangerous issues facing Republicans.  

With the upcoming governmental elections, America is on the slippery slope of becoming a non-Christian secular nation. 

Union officials preach that all of labor’s problems are the fault of Republicans. They are enamored with and support ultra liberal anti-Biblical issues like abortion and same sex marriage, which they say, are only “small wedge” secondary issues that are used by divisive people to divide the union.  This is false. These are huge issues, and they are, in fact, splitting the unions right down the middle as Christian retirees and workers deeply question the pitiful ultra liberal Democratic agenda that union officials champion. 

AFL-CIO and UAW officials are using union resources to organize and send mass mailings to millions of workers and retirees demonizing Conservative Republicans in order to garner votes for their Democratic buddies. To get out the Democratic vote, UAW President Ronald Gettlefinger is recruiting retirees to bash Republicans. This is the same Gettlefinger who went to court a few months ago and betrayed these very same struggling retirees by forcing them to take huge health care cuts with a stroke of his pen at Solidarity House.  

UAW retires don’t get raises and have no cost of living protection like Gettlefinger and other union representatives, so they fall further and further behind with their pensions dwindling buying power. American workers and retirees have never needed representation more then they do today as their pensions, jobs and benefits are disappearing in a cloud of smoke. 

It has been the politically sidetracked union leaders who have been derelict in their duties and caught in the headlights like confused deer, not the Republicans. Union officials, like Gettlefinger, have been blind sided, ineffectual and preoccupied with cronyism politics, as companies were allowed to under fund pensions, restructure and export away good American jobs, make profound management mistakes and manipulate the bankruptcy laws. Then they shifted their mistakes onto the blue collar and white collar backs of retirees, workers and taxpayers. With the betrayal of his own retirees, Gettlefinger started the beginning of the end of defined pension and benefit programs in America for all Americans.  

Now these self-servicing political union officials, who call themselves leaders, race out of their darkness at election time to promote and re-elect these same Democrats who were in powerful policy making positions as the job loss and gut-wrenching events for workers were occurring. Relative to the horrific costs that American industry is now paying, rather then look inwardly at UAW leadership failures, corporate leadership failures or labor’s so-called Democratic friends’ failures, they exclusively blame the Republicans. This is myopic and ridiculous. Rather then call their Democratic buddies to task on the moral issues they join them. 

Everyone knows that the liberal Democrats have always been known as the tax-and-spend party. In my state of Michigan, it was the conservative Republican Governor John Engler who reduced and capped home taxes so people could afford to keep their homes. The Democrats fought him all of the way. 

On the other hand, Michigan's present Liberal Democrat Governor, Jennifer Granholm, who is running for Governor for her second term, campaigns that she is concerned and wants to protect Michigan’s children from predators and violent videos. She says this while as a Catholic she supports abortion rights. This is in stark difference to Dick De Vos, her opponent in the Governor’s race, who supports strong family values. 

How can any civilized thinking government leader look into the face of a perfectly developed dead aborted baby, see the tiny hands and feet of these legally unborn children and not have any feeling for the child or remorse for being a major part of the process? No pro-life voter should support Granholm. 

To be in a powerful political position, such as Governor Granholm, and be able to help end such a gruesome practice but refuse, and then at election time call yourself concerned with children in order to get re-elected is political doubletalk. Granholms hypocritical and politically correct position on abortion is directly opposite from the position of her Catholic church. No pro-life Catholic should vote for Granholm. 

So what has Granholm done for Michigan’s economy? 

When Dick Armey, Chairman of Freedom Works, talks of Granholm’s appalling economic record for Michigan, he brings up Michigan’s unemployment rate of 7.1%, which is the worst in the nation and getting worse day by day. Granholm's tenure hasn't produced one new Michigan job. In fact Michigan has lost over 200,000 good paying mostly unionized jobs under Granholm's political tenure.This point doesn't phase top union officials at Michigan's powerful UAW and AFL-CIO. They remain blind Democratic party puppets blanketing Granholm and the Democrat party with 100% of their support as the faces of the members they represent disappear.

Another significant point is the particular Granholm endorsers that Michigan’s large AFL-CIO is using in their political mailers attacking Dick De Vos. One of their key sources in their Granholm material is the Triangle Foundation, which is an outrageous; controversial, highly partisan, anti-traditional family and militantly left wing homosexual lobbying group.

Under Granholm’s watch hard-pressed Michigan tax payers recently doled out $40,000 in government funds to the Triangle Foundation. 

Gary Glenn, Michigan’s American Family Association President, said this is subsidizing a homosexual activist group hostile to the values of most Michigan families. They are also a group who campaigned against protecting marriage, who defends sexual torture demonstrations and supports handing out condoms to elementary school kids. Glenn said this group viciously attacks Christians, traditional family values, the Boy Scouts and the chief of staff of this group raised money at the Detroit Bondage Club by being stripped, tied to a cross and flogged.  

This is appalling to Michigan families. The fact that Granholm promoters would welcome and use such an endorsement from such a group puts up a red flag to Michigan voters larger then the Mackinaw Bridge. Any governor that cozies up to such anti-family groups should not be re-elected…they should be recalled. 

On the national front and in all of the elections, not everyone believes the fiction that Democrats are good for working Americans and retirees. One only has to look back to when liberal President Bill Clinton was in office. 

Clinton and his wife Hillary didn’t use the Presidential power and position to help fellow Americans make gains in healthcare. In fact, it was liberal Clinton who was proposing the increase of Medicaid costs for our elderly. Because of his double-talking dicey positions, many called Clinton “slippery Bill”. Healthcare is a critical issue for American workers, yet union officials didn’t denounce Clinton but rather continued to support him. 

If you want to know where your jobs have gone, talk to the Democrats. 

During Clinton’s tenure and during a time of record corporate profits by American based multi-national companies, the huge transfer of jobs from our country was getting under way. Hundreds of thousands of well-paid American jobs were transferred to third world nations to exploited foreign workers paid shamefully low wages. They were then used as unfair competitive examples of how our Middle American workers were overpaid and under worked in an effort to reduce American jobs to the lowest common denominator. How did Clinton address this terrible dilemma? He didn’t cut corporate welfare; he firmly supported NAFTA, which eliminated untold thousands more of good US jobs. Other nations laughed at us all the way to the bank as the lives of our workers were being devastated.  If American workers gave back every benefit ever negotiated and 90% of their wages, they may starve in Detroit and Flint, but they would still be uncompetitive compared to the American based multinational companies’ exploited foreign workers in third world countries. 

In view of this, these union leaders still stood by their liberal Democrat hero, internationalist Bill Clinton. Even though the Democratic Party platform for the 1992 election didn’t bother to mention the word “union” one time, American union officials were still enamored with the liberal Democrats. 

When it comes to moral issues, when Clinton was in the White House, one can easily remember his “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military and his strong support for the slaughter of unborn Americans through abortion. One must not forget Monica and the Clinton impeachment debacle where Clinton’s true nature and Democratic family values became glaringly apparent.  

Yes, Clinton may have had the morals of an alley cat, and he did leave America totally unprotected to the international economy, which permanently damaged Middle America, but it mattered not to these top union officials. 

The truth is that none of these politicians have ever suffered along with working Americans. It was business as usual for them, and they personally saw to it that they individually have been insulated, protected and very well taken care of, unlike the victimized workers they represent. 

In conclusion, today America’s top organized labor officials are solid political comrades to the liberal Democrats now running for office. They are availing their time, prestige and resources to do all in their power to get these Democrats re-elected.Rather then take the high road and promote Godly views, they ignore the Word of God to promote anti-Biblical views and support the prominent liberal Democratic politicians that do likewise. For these officials to expect union members to choose between their anti-Biblical agenda versus God and his Bible is pathetic.

There are few rank-and-filers willing to openly take the heat and challenge these top union officials who have reputations for being successful bullies, but workers can no longer afford to be silently brain dead or comatose on these issues if they care about their families and nation.

Our country is at a climatic point in the fight to save the family, and the direction of our culture hangs in the balance. Our children have to live in this nation after we are gone. They will never forgive us if we devastate our culture for them and their future families.