A blogger in Fort Wayne is belly-aching that Jon Costas put out an olive branch to some unions in Northwest Indiana and ended up being one of the few Republicans to win the support of unions. Ordinarily the ability to build bridges like this would be seen as a good thing, but apparently not in some corners of the state. Here's my reply:
Jon promised the unions absolutely nothing, and you won’t find a single article in the papers about Jon giving them anything special. All they asked for in exchange for their support was openness, honesty, and transparency in what’s going on in town. Butterfield was notorious for his closed-door policy, and several unions didn’t like that, including Butterfield’s own police and firefighters.
Jon Costas has won $20M worth of state and federal grants to improve Valparaiso, create jobs, and put local union members to work. At least a few million of that $20M went to local union members–in the form of an honest day’s wages. The city’s fire department now has one of the best ratings in the state from the insurance industry. And crime is low and falling.
It hasn’t all gone the way of the unions. One of Jon’s first acts as Mayor was to significantly strengthen the city’s ethics ordinance, which he wrote as a Councilman, with the goal of significantly strengthening the Ethics Commission and eliminating any possibility of nepotism in the Fire and Police departments, which didn’t make those Chiefs very happy since firefighting and police work are often generational in nature.
You should also consider the history of unions in Valparaiso. There was quite a dispute in Valparaiso around 1995 when Jon was serving on Council. The Teamsters were demanding to organize the city’s employees, and the City Council voted No. Jon Costas voted No. The issue has never come up again and Jon refuses to let it be raised. He made it very clear that he has no intentions of allowing city workers to organize.
Jon’s philosophy, which dates from the time he pushed boxes of food around the back room of his dad’s grocery store, is that if you treat workers well they won’t feel compelled to join a union. Costas Supermarkets and their successor stores today are still not organized.
It’s a shame our party doesn’t get more union support. Republicans are the party of free trade, which benefits unions like the Longshoremen and Teamsters. We’re the party of lower taxes, less regulation, and a day’s wages for a day’s work. It’s too bad that Jon Costas is one of the few members of our party who has succeeded at bridging the gap between Republicans and trade unions.
Update: It was actually early 1996 that the city denied the workers the right to join a union, with Costas voting against the union. Here's the news story, which is also on Costas's wikipedia profile.
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