Be careful with labor and politics.

If you’re not careful, you may find your position eliminated when you turn up for work.

Just ask John Ballantyne of the Carpenters.

And now, as it turns out, ask former Newark Councilman Eddie Osborne.

Osborne was a longtime leader with the Laborers out of Newark when Team Baraka tapped him as one of their at-large council candidates.

He served until this year, when the Baraka Squad went “in another direction.”

Subsequent to Osborne resigning from the council, the Laborers resigned Osborne, doing away with his position, Ballantyning the long-serving elected official/councilman.

“Eddie has a nice pension,” a source assured. “He was close to retiring anyway.”

The Ballantyne and Osborne episodes are a little different.

In the case of the former, the Carpenters actually dissolved Ballantyne’s New Jersey-based union organization out of existence with a merger.

In the case of Osborne, the Laborers just did away with his position.

From May, 2018:

The New Jersey political world today spun on its axis over the dissolution of the powerful Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters by the larger brotherhood, a move widely interpreted as the bouncing of John Ballantyne, the union’s executive secretary-treasurer, amid Democratic Party infighting and what one source cryptically described as “philosophical differences.”

What it boiled down was Ballantyne was too close to Governor Phil Murphy, who has an acrimonious political relationship with South Jersey, the regional fulcrum of New Jersey’s Building Trades community.

“He didn’t do everything they wanted,” a source told InsiderNJ, referring to Ballantyne. “They couldn’t keep him in their back pocket.”