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The Return of Big Labor
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21902 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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7 / 1993 |
2,834 Words |
| Author
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Charles W. Baird
Charles W. Baird is professor of economics and director of the
Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies at California
State University in Hayward. |
Candidate Bill Clinton ran as a "new Democrat" who would steer his party away from the failed liberal policies of the past. By now it is clear he did not mean a word of it. President Clinton plans to relegitimize and enlarge government, and to sacrifice the interests of the majority of private-sector workers to the interests of the AFL-CIO.
While his plan "to grow" the government has been widely publicized and criticized, his equally destructive labor policy initiatives have hardly been noticed. George Stephanopoulos, Clinton's communications director, says: "The president wants to improve relations with labor and with workers throughout the country." Although 88.5 percent of private-sector workers are union-free, Clinton wants to convert the Department of Labor into the Department for Unions.
RESCISSIONS
Late in his term, President Bush issued three executive orders that displeased Big Labor. Clinton has rescinded them.
Beck rights. In 1988 the Supreme Court in the Beck case ruled that unions may not use workers' forced dues for anything other than collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment, and not for lobbying, political advocacy, or organizing unorganized workers if the workers did not want them to. The dissenting workers in Beck received a refund equal to 79 percent of the dues they had been forced to pay since 1976.
In April 1992 Bush issued an executive order to ensure that federally contracted employees know their rights under Beck. Candidate Clinton said Beck was a "fair decision." President Clinton says: "The effect of this order was distinctly antiunion as it did not require contractors to notify workers of any of their other rights protected by the NLRA [National Labor Relations Act], such as the right to organize and bargain collectively."
What a fig leaf! NLRA rights are well known by all workers, especially those already unionized, at whom Bush's order was aimed. Beck rights, however, are new. Very few workers have ever heard of them, and unions are trying to keep workers in the dark. Clinton's rescission serves the union bosses well.
In 1992 the Department of Labor changed two reporting forms unions must submit under the 1959 Landrum-Griffin Act. The changes required unions to report their expenditures
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