Unions Use Tragedy For Politics

Steven Greenhut: Public employee unions have been blaming conservative reformers for a couple of tragic suicides, which is reprehensible. A Costa Mesa employee killed himself and the union official blamed layoffs and said: “You can’t do this so fast and think that there’s not going to be repercussions.” This writer essentially blamed the Wisconsin governor for a public employee’s death, as shown by this quote: “Walker’s policies are placing a heavy strain on teachers, says Steve Cupery, the director of the Lakewood UniServ Council, the teachers’ union in Watertown.”

If a private worker committed suicide over tough economic times, what would the lefties say if conservatives blamed President Obama’s economic policies? What if some poor soul killed himself after worrying about the size of the state’s pension liabilities?

Obviously, these deaths are tragic, but it’s disgusting when people use them to advance their political agenda, which is to stop reforms of the retirement system and cutbacks in governments jobs. Actually, those job losses are more the fault of the unions, which won’t allow the kind of reforms necessary to bring costs in line with revenues. I’ve become accustomed to dealing with emotionalism from the union side, which often brings up the 9/11 tragedy to justify high firefighter salaries. But this is worse than usual and a sign of desperation.

Can’t we just discuss the facts rather than use these sort of things to advance selfish political agendas?

MARCH 18