The Volcker Rule, Card Check, and the UAW

Volcker Rule

The Financial Stability Oversight Council yesterday recommended that regulators implement the Volcker Rule, which limits how banks can risk their capital by trading.

Director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs John Berlau explains why the Volcker rule is costly, unnecessary, and may even add risk to the financial system.

“The Volcker rule is based on the faulty premise that a financial institution making a loan — any loan — is somehow inherently more dangerous than investing or trading. It was that premise that led to the enactment of Glass-Steagall in the Depression that separated ‘commercial’ from investment banking. […] Due to unnecessary restriction and uncertainty that will still linger, Congress should repeal the misguided Volcker rule and move on to the Dodd-Frank ‘financial reforms’ glaring omission — the behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were at the center of the crisis.”

Card Check

The National Labor Relations Board is suing several states whose constitutions forbid card check.

Research Associate Trey Kovacs says the case is an example of Big Labor’s overreach.

“Unions do not believe employees should have free choice. Unions demand access to employees and that management revoke the right of who they employ and private property rights. They believe it is discrimination if employers choose to let non-profit groups, American Red Cross or Girl Scouts, on to their property and not union officials whose goal is to defame and damage the company. Card check is a process which takes away freedoms of American workers and they have voted against it, now we should let that vote count.”

UAW

The United Auto Workers union is going to attack companies that don’t facilitate their organizing efforts by labeling those companies “human rights violators.”

Policy Analyst Ivan Osorio points out that to unionize transnational companies, the UAW will have to reach out to international bodies and foreign governments.

“[UAW President Bob King] recently acknowledged that the UAW is in trouble. Speaking to an audience of 1,000 union members at a Washington political action conference, he said, ‘If we don’t organize these transnationals, I don’t think there’s a long term future for the UAW — I really don’t.’ With those kind of stakes, it would be surprising for the UAW not to take some drastic action. The upshot of all this is that we could end up seeing the UAW ask international bodies composed of foreign governments — including some undemocratic ones — for help in unionizing American workers. Stranger things have happened.”