As labor unions demand restrictive scheduling regulations to ensure workers are protected from greedy employers who want to exploit them, they continue to cement their status as shameless hypocrites.

Just as unions have finagled exemptions from the paid sick leave, minimum wage and other laws they push, they want an exemption from the restrictive scheduling rules.  And in Seattle, what the union wants, the union gets.  After all, they are one of the most prolific donors to members of the Seattle City Council.

So it is no surprise that the scheduling proposal unveiled by the Seattle City Council earlier this week includes a special carve out for unionized employers.  This means union shops would not be required to follow any of the scheduling restrictions the unions claim are desperately needed to protect workers from their evil and exploitive bosses.  This of course, provides employers with a strong incentive to encourage their workers to unionize.  The more workers that unionize, the more monthly dues the union collects.

The practice has become so indefensible that even liberals and socialists are calling foul.   

Last month Seattle restaurateur Dave Meinert, a self-described “lefty” who supported the city’s paid sick leave law and was appointed by the mayor to serve as a business representative for negotiations on the city’s new minimum wage law, lashed out at Council members in a Facebook post:

“This law [scheduling] is not being written to help our workers. It's being written to make non-union labor at major international companies more expensive than union labor, with the hopes of making companies like Starbucks go union.”

And last year The Fourth International’s (the group founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938) “World Socialist Web Site” published a scathing editorial that concluded with a stinging indictment of labor unions and the elected officials who are in cahoots with them:

“After decades of betrayals, the unions are incapable of boosting membership through appeal to workers. Instead, with the backing of a host of pseudo-left supporters, the minimum wage ploy is being used to entice employers to install unions in their workplaces and funnel money from workers’ already meager paychecks into the bank accounts of the union executives.”

Those criticisms fell on deaf union ears; in fact, it appears unions are incapable of being shamed by their actions.  They continue to seek the exemptions, and they continue to defend those exemptions.

And since we’re on the subject of unions knowing no shame, here’s a gem of union shamelessness in Wisconsin.  Organized labor ran a last-minute primary election attack ad against a Democrat candidate for that state’s legislature.  In the ad, the union viciously attacks 29-year old Jimmy Anderson for not signing the 2011 petition to recall Gov. Scott Walker.

Never mind the fact that Anderson was unable to sign the petition at that time because he was recovering from being hit by a drunk driver. The accident left him paralyzed from the chest down and killed his parents and brother.  Anderson says he would have signed the petition but couldn’t hold a pen.

The offensive radio ad ends by saying: "He may claim to be strongest progressive in the race, but voters can't trust Jimmy Anderson to stand up to Scott Walker."

As one Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist put it:

“Stand up to Walker? Anderson, 29, can't stand up, period. He campaigns by going door-to-door in his electronic wheelchair, which he has used since his accident.”

The column appropriately declared it the “worst political ad this year—by far.”

Not only was the ad remarkably offensive, it was hypocritical.  The columnist notes the union that paid for the ad actually endorsed Gov. Walker in 2010 and 2014.  The union has since had a falling out with Walker.  So not only did the union not support the recall effort of Walker, the union subsequently endorsed him. 

Does the union acknowledge that hypocrisy or have any regrets for the offensive ad?  Nope.  In fact, not only did the union rep defend the ad, he said Anderson’s “excuse” of being paralyzed should “be offensive to everyone with a disability and the voters of the 47^th Assembly district."  I am not making this up.

Likely the only thing the union regrets is the fact their distasteful efforts didn’t work—Anderson won the primary election this week and since there is no Republican challenger, he will be sworn into office next year.