Mitt Romney is out with
another anti-union web video. Once again, he features a white male business owner (this one less in the cuddly grandpa mold than the
previous one) talking plaintively about how awful it is that he as a non-union business owner has to exist in a world in which unions also exist. In this case, the specific complaint is that the Laborers' Union (LiUNA) has picketed his worksites and ... something about President Obama.
I don't actually comprehend where Obama comes into this. He's featured in the video, to be sure, in footage that's been rendered sorta grainy and threatening, saying "[scary sound effect] it's time we had a president who didn't choke saying the word union, [scary sound effect] a president who strengthens our unions by letting them do what they do best—organize our workers." As you might gather from the "it's time we had a president" bit, this quote is from 2007, and apparently the Romney campaign thinks it's the strongest piece of evidence they have that Obama is scary and uniony.
And it is really not clear how this connects to the story of Paul Munsch, owner of St. Louis Paving, even as he himself tells it. Horrors visited upon him by the Laborers include an inflatable rat and some billboards noting that St. Louis Paving is non-union—a fact its owner thinks is a good thing. He says:
Almost everything they do makes the skin crawl in anybody who hears this story and yet everything they do is legal. And I've tried to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt, on a lot of issues...it's been one union payoff after another.
Have the Laborers used any tactics made legal for the first time under Obama? Munsch doesn't indicate that, and all the things he describes are time-honored tactics. The Obama connection isn't a connection at all. It's a non sequitur. As the fact that the video hinges on footage from 2007 pretty well demonstrates.
That is the substance Mitt Romney brings to bear on the anti-union portion of his claim to care about jobs. Obama said something positive about unions and a union has employed long-legal tactics against a non-union business owner who happens to be a Romney supporter.