With labor reforms sweeping the country, Big Labor is digging in its heels and preparing for the fight of their life to stay relevant. Union bosses certainly aren’t going down without a fight. With the recent passage of a right-to-work law in Indiana, Gov. Mitch Daniels sent a strong message to union bosses that the status quo is no longer acceptable and that labor reform is coming.
During CPAC’s panel ‘The Return of Big Labor’, experts from the field spoke about the union resurgence and the drastic measures they are taking to protect mandatory membership dues and collective bargaining rights.
Teri Scanlon, president of the Capitol Research Center (CRC) moderated the panel. CRC works hard to track where money is coming and going for groups like AARP and ACORN, and distributes a monthly Labor Watch newsletter that investigates union political strategies and what we can lean from them.
Vinnie Vernuccio of the Competitive Enterprise Institute gave the most compelling argument for why unions are concerned over labor reform.
“How do I know that we are winning? The other side is ramping up the rhetoric,” Vernuccio said. “Employee choice and taxpayer freedom are working.”
It’s no surprise that Big Labor isn’t happy.
Steve Malanga, Executive Editor of City Journal noted that during times of great economic prosperity, public sector unions have built up benefits and focused on passing laws that make reforms very difficult.
One aspect of the current system that allows unions to maintain their strangle hold on employees is the mandatory payment of dues and the access to employee paychecks. Research shows that when states enact legislation that denies unions direct access to employee paychecks, union activity decreases by nearly 50 percent.
According to Kevin Mooney of the Pelican Institute, this is the first time in decades that public sector membership has surged past private sector membership. One of the primary reasons for this is that union members don’t feel that their unions are well represented.
Unions have also focused intensely on supporting politicians that will protect their strangle hold on employees – collecting mandatory dues and maintaining their revenue stream. While exit polling shows that 40-50 percent of union members vote Republican, only 3 percent on union political contributions go to GOP candidates.
While Conservatives can all hear the union war drums beating in the distance, the panel fell short in telling activists what they can do to fight back. Other than mentioning need for better messaging, the playbook offered was fairly sparse.
About Michael Moroney
In the US, an initially very mlintait industrial union movement (trade unions, in the narrower sense of the word, have often been more conservative) attained a degree of legislative recognition with the Wagner Act in 1935. Post-war, there was a considerable backlash embodied in the Taft-Hartley Act of 1948, and the CIO was absorbed by the AFL, and unions subjected to McCarthyite purges.Mark, am I to infer you don’t give much credence to the old idea that Taft/Hartley was a major impediment to American unionisation, that the problems they faced were in existence before that law was passed?As for the CIO, yes, they were separate from the AFL for the pivitol years of ’35 to ’55, but I don’t think their industrial labourism’ can really be considered a separate ideological movement. More like a separate faction. And one reason for their reuniting with the AFL was that they had been quite vigorous in purging communist leaders in their ranks. Not making a judgement on that, just pointing out that they as the Left of the US labour movement weren’t that Leftwing, at least according to non-American standards.The heyday of private sector uni1ff8onism in the US was a form of e2809cbusiness unionisme2809d e28093 entrenching union recognition in large manufacturing companies in exchange for labour quiescence, and for job security, pension rights and health care benefits. Many unions were corrupted, and others became quite conservative political formations.Yes, post-New Deal labour turned in on itself to a certain extent, what historians have labelled a great stagnation’, where unions that were already strong remained strong and those that weren’t didn’t progress much.But your overall analysis ignores two very big landmark union stories of postwar America The Teamsters and the United Auto Workers.Jimmy Hoffa was something, the Reuthers were something, their work was quite impressive, even if it wasn’t the basis for the kind of mass movement Australian labour was (and the Australian unions had the arbitration system to support its growth, government intervention of a much, much higher degree that what the NRLB could provide). Hoffa’s organisation was strong in even the so-called Right To Work states (union busting states). Even then the fact the US unions reached over 30% of the workforce at its peak must be judged as being, ahem, somewhat of a succes story when compared to our own workforce today (though obviously not as great a success story as Australia’s own peak of more than 50% union membership rates in the fifties).I’m not seeing any reason to crow about Australian grassroots history & outcomes being superior to American grassroots history & outcomes, Mark. Not when you take the institutionalised redistributionism of the IR Club and the subsequent Hawke/Kelty reforms out of the equation. And the French never had union membership rates in excess of what America had!So we could have the AFL-CIO in 1972 under George Meany effectively supporting Richard Nixon.So did the mlintait and corrupt (but certainly not conservative’) Hoffa! Anyway, the AFL-CIO endorsing Nixon was at least as much a sign of George McGovern’s incompetence as a national political figure as it was that it (American labour) was led by rats’. The fact Nixon wasn’t anywhere close to the anti-union policies later adopted by Reagan was also important.