Why "Paycheck Protection" Is Bunk
George W. Bush has been saying that he doesn't support comprehensive
campaign reform without "paycheck protection." In a Des Moines debate earlier
this month, he told John McCain:
Here's my worry with your [campaign reform] plan: It's going to
hurt the Republican party, John. The Democratic Party is really the Democratic
Party and the labor unions in America. And my worry is, is that you do nothing
about what's called "paycheck protection." We do nothing about saying to labor,
you can't take a laboring man's money and spend it in the way you see
fit.
As Bush made clearer than, perhaps, he meant to, his primary concern about
political spending by unions isn't that it rips off union members; it's that it
usually goes to Democrats. But let's assume Bush had made a principled argument
rather than a partisan one: Is it wrong for unions to spend union dues on
politics without first getting the consent of each member?
Tom Geoghegan, a labor lawyer and author of The Secret Lives of Citizens , told Chatterbox: Of
course not. "What people don't understand in this country," he explained, is
that "unions exist for political action." When workers can't get
benefits from their bosses, he said, they try to get them from Congress. Social
Security, for example, was "collectively bargained at the national level." The
irony, he pointed out, is that the vast majority of working Americans, who
aren't dues-paying union members, get a free ride whenever labor gets a
bill passed that expands government benefits for union members and non-members
alike. You might call it paycheck protection in reverse. (To read a
Slate
article by Geoghegan elaborating on this argument, click
here.)
But what if a union member happens to be a Republican, and doesn't
like seeing his dues spent to help elect Democrats or to expand government?
This question was raised in 1968 by Harry Beck, a member of the Communications
Workers of America, who sued his union because it was using his dues to help
elect Hubert Humphrey (who lost, incidentally, even though labor was a much
bigger force in American politics than it is today). In 1988, the Supreme Court
ruled that union members could demand a refund when their dues were used for
political purposes against their wishes. But the decision didn't make it easy
in any practical sense for union members to get their money back, and the
National Labor Relations Board dragged its heels for several years on the
matter. In practice, usually the only way a union member could really get his
union to stop using his dues for political purposes was by quitting the
union.
Paycheck protection became a big conservative rallying cry after the 1996
election, because labor's unexpectedly strong clout scared Republicans to
death. Now some form of paycheck protection has been adopted in five
states--Wyoming, Idaho, Washington state, Ohio (where it was later struck down
in court), and Michigan. A California ballot initiative on paycheck protection
in 1998 failed, slowing the movement's momentum; no states adopted paycheck
protection in 1999. But Oregon has a paycheck-protection measure on the ballot
in 2000.
It's instructive to examine one reason why paycheck protection failed in
California: Opponents neutralized the business community by threatening to
sponsor a similar measure requiring corporations to get
stockholders ' permission before engaging in political activities. Jose
Moreno, a spokesman for the opponents to the ballot initiative, explained to
David Corn of The Nation that "a gentleman's agreement was worked out"
with the corporate community to lie low. Conservatives, naturally, have tried
to argue that stockholders don't merit the same rights bestowed on
union members by paycheck-protection measures. (Isn't it touching how
much more conservatives care about working people than they do about Wall
Street speculators?) Here is John Fund of the Wall Street Journal 's
editorial page making the case in 1997 in the Web magazine IntellectualCapital.com:
Opponents of Paycheck Protection argue that it is not balanced unless
stockholders are also given the right to vote on whether or not a corporation
can make political expenditures. Once again, the Supreme Court has spoken
definitively on this. In First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti in
1977 it noted: "The critical distinction here is that no shareholder has been
'compelled' to contribute anything. The shareholder invests in a corporation of
his own volition and is free to withdraw his investment at any time and for any
reason." In most of the country, workers can be required to join a union or pay
union dues as a condition of employment.
But the point isn't whether people who own stocks live more comfortable and
independent lives than people who belong to unions; clearly, they do. The point
is whether the same inconvenient principles of direct democracy that are used
to inhibit labor should be used to inhibit capital. Clearly, they should--if
not by the Supreme Court, then by the legislative branch, which (rightly) has a
bit more leeway to decide how to achieve social justice.
As it happens, McCain says he supports both paycheck protection
and "stockholder protection." But Ron Nehring, director of national
campaigns for Americans
for Tax Reform, a conservative group that's pushing paycheck protection
very aggressively--and whose leader, Grover Norquist, has discussed the issue
extensively with George W. Bush--says what McCain's for isn't really paycheck
protection. Nehring says it's mainly a codification of the 1988 Supreme Court
decision, and wouldn't put much more burden on unions to prove they've got
members' permission to spend money on political causes. In 1998, Sen. Don
Nickles attached to a campaign-finance bill a paycheck-protection amendment
that purported to require unions and corporations to get members
and stockholders to sign off on political spending. But corporations
enjoyed a huge loophole: The stockholders had to do so only if they were
assessed special "dues or fees." (If the loophole hadn't been there, you can be
sure Fortune 500 companies would have been out in force lobbying against it.)
The amendment failed, as did the overall bill; and when the bill came up for a
vote again this year, no similar amendment was offered. This suggests that
paycheck protection will likely live on more as a rhetorical excuse for
Republican opponents of campaign reform than as an actual cause.
