Pittsburgh City Council’s unwavering determination to make doing business in Pittsburgh more burdensome — see prevailing wage law, nonprofit baiting and even price controls for towing services – was front and center in today’s Council meeting.

At issue was the decision of Aramark – the company contracted to provide concessions at the Mellon Arena – to have its current employees reapply for work as it moves operations across the street to the new Consol Energy Center.

The employees were understandably unhappy with having to reapply for their jobs and so their unions created a public relations nightmare for the Penguins and Aramark and evidently put pressure on City Council to intervene. Well, City Council intervened today with a letter – written by Bruce Kraus and reprinted at City Paper’s Slag Heap – that reads like a Leftist’s guide to overreaching a local government’s authority and meddling in business decisions to score political points.

Truly, the entire letter is worth reading as an exemplar of neo-Soviet prose. But the best part is the ending: “the Pittsburgh City Council will not stand-by and allow ARAMARK, or others, to put hardworking citizens out of work or create jobs that do not pay prevailing wages and meet area union standards.”

The assertion that the City Council has a role in the hiring and firing practices of a private corporation is silly and arrogant but its underlying assumption – that local government has the right to centrally plan this city’s economy – is absolutely dangerous. Simply put, central planning doesn’t work and it leads to the concentration of power in the hands of government officials who use that power to curtail the freedom and liberty of individual citizens.

Central planning aside, City Council should also realize that the state is at about 9 percent unemployment and no worker is guaranteed a job when there are others willing to take his or her place for less money. It’s called competition and it’s not exactly heartwarming during a recession but who is City Council to deny the unemployed a chance to compete for these jobs in the Consol Energy Center?

Whatever union standards the Democratic machine hews to and whatever it considers to be a prevailing wage has little relevance during a recession when there’s competition for jobs.

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