A funny thing happened a couple of months ago: labor leaders finally awoke from their coma and realized that Obamacare was not only bad for unions, but for working families in general.<\/p>\n
Once the biggest salespeople of the bill’s passage, union leaders are suddenly full of rage and “shock” at the realities of Obamacare.<\/p>\n
The first sign of brain activity happened in July, when a trio of national labor leaders sent a letter to President Obama<\/a>, saying that “[Obamacare] will shatter not only our [unions] hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”<\/p>\n Perhaps they should have read the bill first? Instead of trying to convince their members and the rest of the country how great it was.<\/p>\n But labor leaders aren’t accepting blame for their role in selling snake oil to the American public.\u00a0Instead they are blaming the “implementation” of Obamacare, not its essence.\u00a0For example, the recent AFL-CIO convention ended with a resolution that critiqued Obamacare’s<\/a> implementation, saying that the bill “doesn’t live up to its promises.\u201d<\/p>\n But the AFL-CIO knows better.\u00a0Many writers \u2013 including this one \u2013 sounded the alarm bells about Obamacare four years ago<\/a>, but as the bill’s passage seemed precarious \u2013 since many working people hated it \u2013 organized labor doubled down for Obamacare, since they had “their” President to re-elect in 2012. Obamacare eventually passed \u2013 thanks to organized labor \u2013 and unions vigorously celebrated their own undoing.<\/p>\n Unions pressed ahead with Obamacare even after the Congressional Budget Office predicted that as many as 20 million people could be victimized by having their employer-based health care dropped, since these people would now be “mandated” to buy health care as individuals.<\/p>\n Of course, if companies were incentivized by Obamacare to save money on labor costs, they were going to do it.<\/p>\n