The lead editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal observes that Big Labor is attempting to gag opposition to their card check power grab, which just yesterday was introduced in Congress:

Big Labor’s drive to eliminate secret ballots for union elections has united American business in opposition, so labor chiefs are putting on the brass knuckles: The new strategy is to threaten companies with government retaliation if they don’t stop lobbying against turning U.S. labor markets into Europe.

We wrote on February 13 about the letter from the labor consortium Change to Win to the Financial Services Roundtable, demanding that banks receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program money keep quiet about union "card check." To its credit, the banking lobby hasn’t backed down. Now Big Labor is escalating, demanding in a February 23 letter to Secretary Timothy Geithner that Treasury muzzle the companies if they won’t muzzle themselves.

[…]

The double standard here is remarkable. Every year, unions collect millions of dollars in grants from government agencies they lobby. In 2002 and 2003, the Service Employees International Union — the main driver behind Ms. Burger’s consortium — lobbied the Department of Health and Human Services while receiving between $563,226 and $938,388 per year in grants. Imagine if Tom DeLay had ever said that labor unions or AARP couldn’t speak up about Medicare because they or their affiliates had accepted federal grants. The headlines would have read: "Republican Gag Rule."

Labor chiefs are desperate to pass their easy-organizing agenda this year, because they know liberal majorities on Capitol Hill won’t last. They also know they haven’t been able to organize workers with a level playing field, so they want to rewrite the rules so their organizers can see which individual workers are voting no and apply peer and other pressure. Most workers can see how unions have contributed to the destruction of Detroit, U.S. steel makers and so many other industries. That’s why unions need government-sanctioned coercion to prevail both against business and with workers.

The editorial is of course right about the glaring double standard, but even it understates the scope of this union hypocrisy, which goes far beyond simply the millions of dollars in direct taxpayer dollars that flow into union coffers.

Of course, Big Labor’s massive power depends entirely on its government-granted privilege to force workers to accept its "representation"and then (in states without Right to Work laws) force workers to pay dues to union bosses or be fired.

For a full list of Big Labor’s government-granted special powers, see this list.