Unions and the Public Interest By David Brody

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/speakout/david_brody.cfm

By David Brody


In a rights-conscious society like ours, the regulation of labor-management relations is bound to be defined in terms of rights. That’s how our labor law is written, and that’s how the looming debate on the Employee Free Choice Act will go. (Every member of the next Congress, pro or con, will be rising in defense of labor’s rights.) But attend more closely, and you’ll hear talk (from Republicans) about job growth and global competitiveness and (from Democrats) about the plight of the middle class. Collective bargaining, that’s what they’re talking about. The Employee Free Choice Act will mean more collective bargaining—maybe a lot more collective bargaining—and for employers, collective bargaining is not about rights, but about power or, more precisely, a surrender of power. If you’re curious about why this particular bill elicits so much fury, that’s why. But there is one big question that, however hard we listen, we’re unlikely to hear addressed: What’s at stake for America’s public life?

Conservatives have had a grand time over many years tearing down the union movement. Even good reporters routinely refer to "Big Labor." And right up there with union corruption and labor bosses is the suggestion that unions are just—to use our esteemed secretary of labor’s words—“special interest groups." Unions have members; they pay dues; and they expect results. So in that sense, yes, unions are interest groups, just like the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) or the National Rifle Association. But organized labor is a special interest with a difference. When the stakes are high, it puts the public welfare ahead of its own.

We can trace this strange behavior back a hundred years to the Progressive era when, having started out viscerally against an interventionist state—unions would be stronger, argued AFL President Samuel Gompers, if workers depended on their own collective power—the AFL grudgingly sided with middle-class reformers after they demonstrated that decent social legislation was actually achievable. In the Depression, the union movement jettisoned Gompers’s voluntarism entirely and steadfastly backed the New Deal. And when civil rights became a big issue in the 1960s, there the AFL-CIO was, in the thick of the fight.

As a special interest, labor should have been somewhere else. Why alienate racist members? Or make trouble for discriminatory affiliates? Or, more fundamentally, undercut labor’s work by fostering a parallel civil-rights enforcement system? Yet it was the AFL-CIO that pushed for Title VII (prohibiting job discrimination), and the AFL-CIO, thanks to its clout on Capitol Hill, that got the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through.

At the time, labor’s big issue was the labor law’s Section 14b authorizing the states to prohibit union-shop contracts. George Meany, the cigar-chomping AFL-CIO chief, was tight with President Johnson and secured his word that the Democrats would repeal Section 14b. But in the heat of legislative battle, as Johnson strove to put across his Great Society agenda, somehow right-to-work always came off second best. Meany got one last chance in 1966 when the Republican minority leader, Sen. Everett Dirksen, offered to trade 14b for labor’s support of his constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court’s one-man, one-vote decision. Meany, in unprintable words, said no thanks. To this day, 14b remains on the books.

In a rights-conscious society like ours, the regulation of labor-management relations is bound to be defined in terms of rights. That’s how our labor law is written, and that’s how the looming debate on the Employee Free Choice Act will go. (Every member of the next Congress, pro or con, will be rising in defense of labor’s rights.) But attend more closely, and you’ll hear talk (from Republicans) about job growth and global competitiveness and (from Democrats) about the plight of the middle class. Collective bargaining, that’s what they’re talking about. The Employee Free Choice Act will mean more collective bargaining—maybe a lot more collective bargaining—and for employers, collective bargaining is not about rights, but about power or, more precisely, a surrender of power. If you’re curious about why this particular bill elicits so much fury, that’s why. But there is one big question that, however hard we listen, we’re unlikely to hear addressed: What’s at stake for America’s public life?

Conservatives have had a grand time over many years tearing down the union movement. Even good reporters routinely refer to "Big Labor." And right up there with union corruption and labor bosses is the suggestion that unions are just—to use our esteemed secretary of labor’s words—“special interest groups." Unions have members; they pay dues; and they expect results. So in that sense, yes, unions are interest groups, just like the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) or the National Rifle Association. But organized labor is a special interest with a difference. When the stakes are high, it puts the public welfare ahead of its own.

We can trace this strange behavior back a hundred years to the Progressive era when, having started out viscerally against an interventionist state—unions would be stronger, argued AFL President Samuel Gompers, if workers depended on their own collective power—the AFL grudgingly sided with middle-class reformers after they demonstrated that decent social legislation was actually achievable. In the Depression, the union movement jettisoned Gompers’s voluntarism entirely and steadfastly backed the New Deal. And when civil rights became a big issue in the 1960s, there the AFL-CIO was, in the thick of the fight.

As a special interest, labor should have been somewhere else. Why alienate racist members? Or make trouble for discriminatory affiliates? Or, more fundamentally, undercut labor’s work by fostering a parallel civil-rights enforcement system? Yet it was the AFL-CIO that pushed for Title VII (prohibiting job discrimination), and the AFL-CIO, thanks to its clout on Capitol Hill, that got the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through.

At the time, labor’s big issue was the labor law’s Section 14b authorizing the states to prohibit union-shop contracts. George Meany, the cigar-chomping AFL-CIO chief, was tight with President Johnson and secured his word that the Democrats would repeal Section 14b. But in the heat of legislative battle, as Johnson strove to put across his Great Society agenda, somehow right-to-work always came off second best. Meany got one last chance in 1966 when the Republican minority leader, Sen. Everett Dirksen, offered to trade 14b for labor’s support of his constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court’s one-man, one-vote decision. Meany, in unprintable words, said no thanks. To this day, 14b remains on the books.

FULL story at link.