If you would strike at the king, said Machiavelli, kill him. The underlyinglogic here applies to democracies as well as monarchies. If you put your all intobringing down a presidential candidate and come up short, expect him to come atyou--hard. And that pretty much describes organized labor's current predicamentwith George W. Bush.
Though the percentage of unionized workers in the American labor force remainsat a post-Depression low, the political profile of organized labor has risendramatically over the past decade--particularly since the election of JohnSweeney as AFL-CIO president in 1995. After a disappointing attempt to pick off freshman Republican House members with vast advertising in 1996, labor shifted to a mixture of on-the-ground organizing, paid media, and aggressive voter-education efforts among union households. Labor pulled out several swing states for Al Gore in the 2000 election. This approach played to labor's inherent strengths in a way that the 1996 "air war" strategy never did. The techniques that the unions have subsequently refined--or actually recovered from an earlier era of labor activism--have arguably made the labor movement into the most dynamic and effective progressive force in American politics today. As one high-profile anti-union activist begrudgingly puts it, "They're left-wingers who know what they're doing."
Paradoxically, that effectiveness has become a source of extremevulnerability. With Democrats out of power in the White House and on CapitolHill, organized labor faces an avowedly hostile new administration. PresidentBush's corporate friends want to roll back the labor policy agenda, andRepublican strategists are keen to cut the institutional strength of unionsthemselves. The close ties between labor and the Democrats are hardly a secret.The AFL-CIO may have won a small victory in helping derail the nomination ofLinda Chavez to run the Labor Department, but the scope of that success was moreapparent than real. Chavez, who has subsequently announced plans to form ananti-union watchdog group, clearly had more personally invested in going afterunions than the eventual nominee, Elaine Chao. But as the rapid repeal of the newergonomic-safety standards for workers demonstrated, Chao--whatever her personalviews--seems likely to function as little more than a transmission belt, carryingout directives from superiors in the White House.
High-priority items for the right include passage of the Team Act (vetoed byBill Clinton in 1996), a bill that would allow employers to sponsorworker-manager partnerships tantamount to company unions (outlawed ever since the1935 Wagner Act). A national "paycheck protection" bill--to hobble unions'ability to use dues for political and educational purposes--will probably beintroduced as well, though that legislation may be used more as a cudgel to killcampaign finance reform. Even before moving on these major legislative goals, thenew administration has already struck down a series of federal policies congenial to unions.
On February 17, President Bush issued four executive orders: Two of theserescinded Clinton administration orders that provided a measure of job securityfor service workers employed by federal contractors and set up labor-managementcouncils in unionized federal workplaces. Bush also reinstated an executiveorder from his father's administration mandating that federal contractors postnotices of workers' right to a return of union fees that would go for politicaleducation. The fourth order banned the use of "project laboragreements"--overarching contracts that can require all contractors andsubcontractors in federally funded building projects to follow union standards.Such agreements undercut the economic advantage of hiring nonunionsubcontractors. Rules that bar the federal government from doing business withcontractors who habitually violate health, safety, and environmental regulationscould not be blocked with a new executive order, but they were "suspended"--astep of questionable legality.
The Clinton administration, in a major breakthrough for the labor movement,also issued an executive order barring the government from contracting withcompanies that have hired permanent replacements for strikers. This was donebecause a conservative Congress would not pass legislation banning replacement ofstriking workers as an unfair labor practice. This Clinton order is alsovulnerable. Bush, moreover, by enjoining a mechanics' strike at NorthwestAirlines, has signaled that he will use his executive power to delay strikes forup to 90 days. These orders, though used sparingly, tend to be wielded moreintensely by Republican presidents, and they take the wind out of strikes.
The Bush administration will probably also take a host of less conspicuoussteps to cut back on regulations and programs that collectively undergird bothworkers' rights and unions' institutional power. One obvious target will be therecently revitalized union organizing efforts. Effective organizing can easily bederailed if the Wagner Act's protection of pro-union workers against managementretaliation is not seriously enforced. In the Ronald Reagan years, workers'rights were protected with what might be called intense laxity. Much of theenforcement authority rests with the National Labor Relations Board. President Bush will likely be able to fill three of the five seats on the board and thus drastically alter the playing field on which union organizers must operate. He has signaled that he'll be generous in granting waivers that allow states more easily to privatize services that currently must be provided by public employees. He may also cut support for job-training programs in which unions serve as the contractors.
Such measures would generate less public attention than the executive ordersand high-profile legislative fights but, all together, could be even moredevastating. Political appointees in the Labor Department have discretion to actor not to act in countless small instances. They can let the faucet run freely,as it did during much of the Clinton administration, or close it tighter.
Most of the employees of the Labor Department are engaged in protection ofworkers' rights. They enforce worker safety, wage-and-hours regulations, pensionrights, child labor, and so on. While these protections affect all workers,they also strengthen organized labor by giving unions additional bargainingleverage over management lapses. Business prefers to see all of these weakened.
It's important to differentiate the policy plums favored by theadministration's business allies from those eyed by Republican politicalstrategists. The two categories are related. A stronger labor movement is astronger political force. The ideologues and party strategists around the newadministration look beyond simply whittling away at unions' prerogatives andpro-union policies. They want to go after unions directly--handicapping, if notneutralizing, them politically. In part this means subjecting unions tointensified legal scrutiny. When I asked conservative activist Grover Norquistwhat he thought the new administration's labor policy should be, he said,"Prosecute the hell out of labor union corruption."
And that's only part of the program. At the top of the antilabor agenda areefforts to stop unions from spending member dues on anything but collectivebargaining, narrowly defined. In the political sphere, Norquist himself hasplayed a key role in getting paycheck-protection initiatives on the stateballots. Such laws would force unions to get members' consent to use monies forany political purpose. Labor rightly has treated these as life-and-death battles,and it has been defeated in several high-profile cases--most notably inCalifornia's Proposition 226 in 1998.
Nonunion workers under contracts negotiated through collective bargaining arenonetheless required to pay "agency fees" (in lieu of the dues members wouldpay). But, in the 1988 case Communications Workers of America et al. v.Beck, the Supreme Court ruled that these nonunion workers were entitled to withhold whatever portion of their fees went for purposes other than collective bargaining. Late in his presidency, under fierce lobbying from conservative groups (even a prominent anti-union activist described it to me as a "nasty grass-roots effort"), the first President Bush signed an executive order mandating that all federal contractors post notices informing workers of their rights under the Beck decision. President Clinton rescinded the mandate, but the second President Bush quickly reinstated his father's order.
By themselves the Beck notices won't cause a significant drain on union coffers. But conservative activists want new executive orders and regulations to give Beck sharper teeth. The most important of these would dramatically tighten the standards for the annual financial reports that unions large and small must file with the Labor Department. "More disclosure," one prominent anti-union activist told me. "That's the best way we see to get the Beck decision enforced."
The Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 stipulates that unions must file reports onwhere they spend their money, but many of the specifics regarding just what mustbe reported are left to Labor Department regulations. Antilabor activists wouldlike to ramp up the level of detail required in these reports--preferablymodeling them on the disclosure filings that corporations must make to theSecurities and Exchange Commission and having them follow, as closely aspossible, the categories outlined in Beck. Union officials say such requirements would prove burdensome--especially to the roughly 95 percent of union locals that have no full-time professional staff. But the real goal here is to strengthen Beck. Anti-union activists plan to use these detailed disclosures in organized, well-funded efforts to get nonunion workers to withhold fees and union members to resign from their unions. "First, you have to let people know what the facts are," says Norquist. "Then the interested parties--the gun rights people, the pro-life people--can start saying, 'I'm tired of sending you my money.'"
Of course, even without allies in control of the White House or Congress,unions are not entirely defenseless. The biggest changes, like the Team Act andpaycheck protection, call for legislation. Even where the executive branch canmove unilaterally, it often takes much more than a stroke of the president's pen.Changing the reporting regulations for financial disclosure forms under theLandrum-Griffin Act would still require hearings and periods of public comment.And such efforts might at least be delayed, if not thwarted, by challenges madeby unions in the courts.
Yet if the Bush administration's various moves against organized labor arebeset by bureaucratic hurdles or stalled temporarily for political reasons, theconservative strategists who are pressing the assault can still proceed in theknowledge of an important truth: If they don't inflict major damage on unions,they achieve half their goals simply by making the attempt. The more time,money, and political clout unions put into defending their own institutionalstrength and integrity, the less will be left for organizing workers, advocatingpublic policies that support working families, or backing politicians who do thesame.
Moreover, simply going after unions shifts the trajectory of progressivepolitics; it forces Democrats to spend time and political capital defendingunions rather than having unions spend time defending Democrats. Whether this produces weakened unions, more militant unions, or unions that are simply moredependent on the Democratic Party will help determine whether Democrats regaincongressional majorities in 2002 and whether organized labor's much-heraldedresurgence will be nipped in the bud.