The Alaska AFL-CIO, the state’s largest largest labor organization, has endorsed outgoing Democratic Alaska state senator and lieutenant governor candidate Hollis French. Bob Williams, a teacher in Wasilla, is also running for that seat. AFL-CIO President Vince Beltrami said that although the union likes Williams, French has been supporting labor for 14 years and “we don’t turn our backs on old friends for new friends. ” Among other thing, the endorsement will now allow the AFL-CIO to write PAC checks to French. Other unions will likely follow the AFL-CIO’s lead.
Unions are not the only bastion of hard working Alaskan men and women. This tag lined continuously used by union marketing is old and disingenuous. Suggesting that if you don’t support unions, then you don’t support regular hard working men and women is a giant lie…and yet you get away with it. Frustratingly so.
No surprise here. Unions are now at the front lines of growing government. The union movement is all but dead in the private sector but in the government sector it is thriving. Mostly because of politicians like Hollis French and others who oppose right to work legislation. As long as government employees are forced to give union bosses cash just to have a job, unions will remain dominate in Alaska politics. Government employees now make 35 percent more than private sector workers with comparable jobs when you factor in salary and benefits. I have no problem with that if that’s what the public wants. But let’s quit the silly claim by union bosses that they are fighting for working families. What they are really doing is creating a ruling class.
Hollis is a great candidate and is deserving of the support of Alaska’s working men and women. Too bad he’s running with such a lame candidate. Hollis should have run for governor!