roanoke.com Real Politics / Preston Bryant

Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

It’s Labor Day 2003. It’s a day when we all reflect on the work we do by not working at all.

Take our own Gov. Mark Warner. He certainly works hard. He’s taking the Labor Day weekend off, foregoing the usual holiday parades and such in Buena Vista and Covington and elsewhere. Instead, he’s spending the weekend with his family. Good for him. He and his family deserve some time together.

Warner figures he can duck out of paying homage to Big Labor this weekend since he’s done so much of it in weeks past. In mid-August, you may recall, he traveled to Tysons Corner to attend the Virginia AFL-CIO annual convention. He took the opportunity to shore up his own union support by bashing President Bush and dissing the president’s tax cuts.

The Democratic governor also pleaded for the union bosses and their rank-and-file to help him toss out incumbent Republicans in November’s General Assembly elections by electing more Democrats. Given his audience, one can assume the governor wants more labor union-oriented Democrats.

Everyone knows that the national AFL-CIO and its state affiliates are little more than extensions of the Democratic Party. At that same Northern Virginia labor union gala, Virginia’s AFL-CIO president, Daniel G. LeBlanc, handed over $10,000 checks to the Virginia Democratic Party and the Virginia Democratic Senate Caucus to bolster their campaign efforts.

Incidentally, lest there be somebody out there who doesn’t know it, LeBlanc and his sidekick, state AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer James R. Leaman, both serve on the Virginia Democratic Party’s state central committee and its steering committee. To boot, LeBlanc is a Virginia representative on the Democratic National Committee.

This closely-knit relationship between state labor leaders and state Democrats served Warner well when he ran for governor in 2001. LeBlanc & Co. pulled out all the stops to get Warner elected. The newly elected governor then rewarded them by tapping a few labor officials for plum jobs in his administration, including at the Virginia Employment Commission. Warner also went to bat for the union bosses when the General Assembly -- facing a $2 billion budget shortfall -- cut state funding from the Virginia Labor Studies Center, a so-called academic center at Virginia Commonwealth University. Many other academic and research centers in lots of other disciplines at other universities also saw their funding cut, but Warner put up little fight at all for them. Despite the governor’s labor center push, however, the legislature politely declined to restore its money.

So now that we know the union bug has bitten the Warner administration, just what is it that Virginians would get if the state AFL-CIO and the governor succeed in having more pro-union legislators elected to the General Assembly?

Well, Virginia has long reaped the rewards of being the Eastern seaboard's northernmost right-to-work state. This has allowed the Old Dominion to welcome many companies large and small seeking a safe haven from the perils of overly aggressive union activity. Many northeastern-based companies have moved to Virginia, bringing good-paying jobs with them. The state AFL-CIO would like to see our right-to-work laws eviscerated. Would Warner?

LeBlanc and his Big Labor friends also would like to see state and local government employees given the right to unionize. Virginia law currently prohibits government unions. If state and municipal employees were able to unionize, we might well see Detroit-like teacher strikes, NYC-like bus strikes, and Toronto-like garbage strikes. Is this something that Virginians would like for their kids and communities? Would Warner?

State labor leaders also pledge their allegiance to the International Labour Organization -- a United Nations entity, no less -- and want its principles adopted here in sovereign Virginia. We all know how friendly the United Nations is to Americans these days. Is requiring a UN-affiliated body’s stamp of approval on Virginia workplace practices really something most Virginians would want? Would Warner?

The modern union movement came about in a day -- about a century ago -- when railroads ran over their workers and coal miners were given the shaft. Workers nobly banded together for survival’s sake. But the workers’ hard-earned successes soon turned into a cash cow for labor bosses. Then years of well-known corruption set in, and the movement’s downward spiral began.

Today, labor unions are still facing declining union membership. Twenty years ago, unionized workers made up about 20 percent of the U.S. workforce. It’s about 12 percent now. That’s why they’re pushing for expanded organizing rights, like for state and municipal government employees. Right-thinking Virginians don’t seem to be buying it. And they shouldn’t.

Fortunately, it’s a Republican-controlled General Assembly -- committed to right-to-work principles -- that’s standing against a movement whose agenda’s “success” would be tantamount to increased costs resulting in fewer jobs that’d give us decreased productivity.

The Virginia AFL-CIO boasts having “a satellite legislative office on the Capitol grounds” to keep an eye things. Funny thing is, nobody seems to know where this “Capitol grounds” office is.

Unless, of course, they’re talking about the governor’s office.

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