For all the great good that organized labor has done for America and Americans, it now has become one of Chicago’s and the nation’s great handicaps.

The unions are snuffing out jobs, denying children a decent education and bludgeoning taxpayers for more than their labors are worth, among other things, all the while justifying their selfishness in obsolete 19th century rhetoric.

In Chicago, their mercenary practices are again denying poverty stricken communities and low-income families of a chance for hundreds of jobs, a decent place to shop and neighborhood revitalization. Chicago’s organized labor cartel, repeating a scenario from a few years back, is gearing up to block a Wal-Mart “superstore” at an abandoned Ryerson Steel plant site in Chatham.

The store, backed by the local alderman, Howard Brookins (21st), is even better than the one that opened (over union objections) almost three years ago on the West Side, one that created 430 jobs, generated more than $13 million in sales taxes and has spawned fresh development nearby, including a drug store, banks, a couple of big box stores and theaters. As a “superstore,” the new South Side Wal-Mart would do as well, if not better. For years, community activists have complained about the way that the major grocery chains had abandoned the inner city; the superstore would bring back access and reasonable pricing for those same neighborhoods. Now, we’re supposed to believe that yesterday’s outrage is no longer a bad thing.

But the labor cartel here puts those benefits behind their its own selfish motives, pretending by some harebrained logic that they are doing the potential Wal-Mart employees a favor by keeping the retailer out of the city. Truth is, they are blocking the Wal-Mart because labor unions dominate other big grocery chains here, and like the despised corporate titans of the 19th century, are fighting to destroy any challenge to their fiefdom.

Mayor Richard M. Daley apparently has given up his fight for this citywide benefit, saying that the project, newly introduced into the City Council, doesn’t have the necessary votes, which is no surprise, considering the number of aldermen who take their directives from organized labor. By the way, Daley also regularly pays obeisance to labor by, for example, giving some city unions unheard-of 10-year contracts to ensure labor peace for his cherished 2016 Olympics.

To put it bluntly, organized labor’s fight for the “common man” is a thing of the past, as evidenced by its determination to strip the ordinary worker of the right to vote in secret for or against union representation. The secret ballot is one of democracy’s most cherished rights, but organized labor has no pretences about supporting that notion. In a recent Chicago Tribune op-ed column, I rebuked the cartel’s demand that a worker’s preference must be stated in the open, exposing him to pressures from all sides. All considerations about which side benefits are secondary, I said, to maintaining this fundamental right.

Organized labor, demonstrating its ability to organize, responded with the usual high-horse, we’re-for-the-common-man bunk in letters to the editor, here, here and here. They said that I, as a former union officer, should be ashamed for coming to the defense of the secret ballot because—dwell for a moment on the twisted logic here—it enables businesses to more easily intimidate workers into rejecting union representation. Yes, as a former union officer, I know of the many ways that ownership and management can intimidate workers, and I know of the historic and present importance of unions. But as a former union officer I also well know how workers can be intimidated by their peers and labor organizers into approving representation.

One letter writer said what businesses fear most from legislation that would squelch the secret ballot is “that a union will be formed under the radar.” If so, what unions fear most is that workers will use their own brains when choosing whether they want union representation.

But nothing says more about the union’s self-aggrandizement at the expense of others than the heavy clout they have applied to deny low-income and minority children the quality education that their parents believe they deserve. I refer, of course, to the Obama administration’s and congressional Democrats’ efforts to shut down Washington D.C.’s school voucher program. Despite the demonstrated success of the program that provides $7,500 vouchers to 1,700 children to attend private schools, Congress—genuflecting to the powerful teachers’ union—voted in March to phase out the program after the 2009-10 school year unless Congress and the D.C. City Council resuscitate it before then.

Education Sec. Arne Duncan, the former Chicago public schools chief who was passed off to the public as a reformer, apparently can’t wait until then to shut it down. According to the Wall Street Journal, he is preventing new scholarships from being awarded and rescinding scholarship offers that already were made to children for the next school year.

During the campaign, President Barack Obama once said that he would keep an open mind about school vouchers, but from him there is no leadership on the need to free black and minority children from the plantation that is Washington D.C. schools. Instead, Obama’s actions reveal where his heart is: his decision to send his own children to private schools. As do 44 percent of senators and 36 percent of congressmen, according to the Heritage Foundation. And yes, Duncan freely admits that his decision about where to live was dictated by where he would send his children to school, which is why he choose to live in Arlington, Va.

This would be funny, if the greed and hypocrisy of it all weren’t so blatant. This no longer is simply a case of John L. Lewis fighting the greedy barons. Organized labor has become more like the businesses they despise; not a public service, but a cartel created to serve their narrow, selfish interests. They, not I, should be ashamed.