Labor's Cheap Thrill
Until John Sweeney took over
the AFL-CIO last year, Republicans for years had barely mentioned the labor
movement. They didn't have to. The rich got richer. The median wage fell. In
the third quarter of 1996, after a brief reversal, it went back to falling
again. No one has the nerve to ask for a raise. For years, labor, or what was
left of it, did nothing at all. Then last winter the AFL-CIO voted to spend $35
million for "voter education." Not contributions to candidates: i.e., hard
money. But just telling people about politicians' voting records: soft money.
And suddenly denunciation of "labor bosses" is on every Republican lip.
Now, it's a pittance, right?
$35 million? Business vastly outspends labor on political contributions--seven
to one, according to the New York Times the other day. So why does the
GOP worry? Why is $35 million, against business's hundreds of millions, such a
crisis? Why is Republican control of Congress now at stake, with such a
laughable amount? Because the GOP has big, big trouble if there's even a
whisper that:
Your real wage has
fallen.
Inequality is spreading like
a plague.
Medicare and student loans
are now "in play."
With only
$35 million, hey, word could leak out. Maybe business can outspend labor by
nine to one, or 90 to one, but it can never spend enough to cancel the message
out.
But isn't it unfair for union members to have to pay for
this, from "compulsory" dues, when many vote Republican? No, it is not unfair.
First, members can opt out, or object. Typically, members every year get cards:
"Remember, you can opt out of paying dues for extra political work."
Conservatives have sued unions over this for years. Unions must have major
audits, segregate money. There is notice, hearing, rebate procedure. (The kind
of due process liberals dream of for the poor but never get.)
Compare this machinery with
your rights as a company stockholder. Can you opt out of the company's
soft-money political spending? No. Do you even know what they're doing? No.
With millions of us in mutual funds, who has any idea what political messages
we're paying for?
But back to unions. Do
members in fact opt out, with all their legal rights to do so? No. The highest
opt-out union right now is the Communications Workers of America, which until
recently was an "open shop," meaning that many members never paid dues at all.
Out of 600,000 CWA members, there are currently about 2,000 objectors. In other
unions, the opt-out rate is much, much lower.
So if union members do vote
Republican, why don't more of them opt out of soft-money spending on ads that,
implicitly at least, criticize Republican candidates? Maybe members want to
cast their own votes, but they still like to hear what their union says.
Because of abortion or gun control or the Cold War, I may decide I want to vote
for the GOP. But don't I want to hear my union's voice on issues where the
union has some expertise? That's why labor is making fewer endorsements. Just
provide the consumer advice. On wages, Social Security, Medicare. Let people
make up their own minds.
The notion
that millions of union members are being forced against their will to help
finance this union campaign is simply a Republican fantasy.
When labor gets involved in politics, this is
not a detour from its "real" job of negotiating wages and hours. Soft money for
voter education. That is labor's real job, the very core purpose of a
union. Ever since the Supreme Court decision that required the "opt out," the
court has drawn a wobbly line: Negotiating wages? OK. Discussing politics? Oh,
that's an "extracurricular," unrelated to the union's "real" work.
But as Felix Frankfurter
wrote in dissent, this distinction is silly. After all, what is Social Security
but a job benefit? Either the union gets the pension directly at the bargaining
table ... or indirectly in Congress. Or what about Clinton's poster child,
"family leave"? Crawl off in a corner and give birth, without pay? Still, it's
something. Either labor can get it directly from the boss, or labor can get it
from the boss via Congress. What's the difference, except in the latter case
all of us benefit?
At least Frankfurter, a New
Dealer, understood--as we no longer can--what a union is supposed to do. In
Europe the labor movement often began first as a "labor party." The parliament
was the bargaining table.
But when labor defends
Medicare, isn't it still being a special interest? No. What's unique about
labor is: It's not a special interest or a single issue. Special interest? It's
not like R.J. Reynolds looking for a tax break. The AFL-CIO is never, or
rarely, looking for something that helps the AFL-CIO purely as an institution.
"Look at the last session," an AFL-CIO lawyer friend said to me recently, "What
was labor fighting for? Stop Medicare cuts. Raise minimum wage." These
"soft-money" fights mostly help ... not union chiefs, or even members, but the
nonunion masses: the private-sector 90 percent who have no union at all.
Who benefits, then? You. Me.
Aren't we nonunion types the freeloaders? Why do the 10 percent in unions have
to pay for our battles? That is the real unfairness of soft money.
Of late, business groups
have begun running "counter ads." Sure. But what can they "counter" with? "You
don't need a minimum wage"? "Let's cut back Social Security"? "Isn't your
standard of living getting too high"? No, Business can't counter the ads. It
has to change the subject. Thus: "Labor bosses!" (But what about business
bosses?)
"Union corruption!" (That's
been true, sometimes, but who pays the money to corrupt unions?)
The frightening thing about
labor soft money is that on the merits of the issues, the GOP is defenseless.
What do you say to people who want the standard of living to rise? For 20 years
the median wage has dropped, while the two parties have hauled in hundreds of
millions from business groups.
Isn't labor, with its soft
money, seeking to raise the standard of living for those of us with W-2s, the
closest thing we have now to a citizens' party?
