A half-century ago, labor unions’ prodigious political influence
might not have seemed so oversized. Nearly a third of American
workers belonged to a union when memberships peaked in 1953. Now
these organizations represent only one-eighth of the national
workforce, but they’ve kept lots of lawmaking friends —
including many Republicans.
True, most GOP officeholders oppose the Employee Free Choice Act
(EFCA), which would help unions organize reluctant workforces by
rushing or bypassing secret-ballot elections. But even if EFCA
dies — as it should — 28 states will still permit unions to
force all of a company’s workers, including nonunion ones, to pay
dues.
Resurgent Republicans would have much to gain by enacting
“right-to-work” legislation outlawing this practice. One problem
though: Many Republicans support forced unionism. Some of them
represent heavily unionized districts and fear that antagonizing
Big Labor will jeopardize their seats. They may not share the
union bosses’ partiality to socialized medicine and high taxes,
but they’re partial enough to getting re-elected.
However, supporting a policy that forces workers to pay union
dues doesn’t expand the Republican big tent; it shrinks it. You’d
think this would be obvious. Labor organizations overwhelmingly
support Democrats on a national scale. Last year, the AFL-CIO
spent $250 million encouraging swing-state residents to vote for
Barack Obama over John McCain, while other Democrats running for
county commissioner on up delightedly partook of Big Labor’s
generosity.
A few Republicans squeezed their way into unions’ pockets, but
they came out with small change. According to the Center for
Responsive Politics, union contributions to federal candidates
(almost all from political action committees) equaled nearly $75
million in 2007 and 2008. Ninety-two percent of that went to
Democrats.
Organized labor gets that money from employee dues. Forcing
unsupportive workers to pay them — what Big Labor calls “agency
shop” — inevitably means unions will collect more cash. For
Republicans, it’s a costly policy.
But don’t pro-union Republicans help their party by pacifying the
unions so the GOP can win in difficult regions? The evidence is
slim. Republicans tend to speak softly about where they stand on
agency shop, but this January, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina)
put each of his colleagues on record by introducing a National
Right To Work Act as an amendment to another bill. The amendment
was tabled 66 to 31. The Republicans who voted to table it hardly
did so out of electoral desperation.
Easy targets first: Some Republicans who voted against
right-to-work plainly didn’t have to. Republicans Mel Martinez of
Florida (who was retiring anyway), Mike Johanns of Nebraska, and
Lamar Alexander of Tennessee all voted to table, despite
representing states that already have right-to-work laws. During
their most recent electoral campaigns, none of these Republicans
got much money from Big Labor’s political action committees. All
of their Democratic opponents got more.
Right-to-work advocates found Alexander’s vote particularly
surprising because he supports Tennessee’s own right-to-work law
and, according to the National Right to Work Committee, formerly
supported a national right-to-work policy. He cited federalism as
a reason for his vote. It was a confusing explanation. Since
President Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act
(NLRA) in 1935, labor law has been mainly in the federal domain.
If the senator wanted to advance states’ rights, he’d call for
repealing the NLRA.
National Right to Work’s legislative director Greg Mourad
suggested that Alexander probably wants Tennessee to keep the
industrial competitiveness that a state right-to-work law affords
it. “He likes having that economic advantage, I guess,” Mourad
said. Maybe some of the other Republicans who voted to table had
similarly weird, subtle reasons for doing so. But on this issue,
the GOP can’t afford weirdness or subtlety.
What about Republicans from forced-unionism states who voted
against the DeMint Amendment? Some of them, like Lisa Murkowski
of Alaska and Kit Bond of Missouri, got less financial support
from union PACs than their most recent Democratic rivals did.
They didn’t need — nay, even have — Big Labor on their side.
All of the others, like Olympia Snowe of Maine and George
Voinovich of Ohio, so vastly out-raised their adversaries that
they would have come out well ahead even if they received no
labor money.
Still, there must be some Republicans in tough legislative
districts who really need union leaders’ support, right? Well,
consider the three staunchly pro-union Republicans in the House
of Representatives who are still cosponsoring EFCA. Unions likely
couldn’t have dealt any of them a mortal blow last November. New
York’s John McHugh, New Jersey’s Chris Smith, and New Jersey’s
Frank LoBiondo all won re-election handily. Each out-raised his
Democratic rival in the union-PAC category by hundreds of
thousands of dollars. But each would have strongly exceeded his
Democratic opponent in overall donations even if all the union
funds in the race went to the Democrat.
Perhaps it’s not about money, though. Maybe the labor Republicans
worry they’ll provoke a backlash among union members, costing
them needed votes. If so, they can rest their fretful heads.
Right-to-work laws almost always poll well, even among union
members.
Polling union workers exclusively is a difficult and expensive
task and is therefore done only occasionally. But a 2004 survey
conducted by Zogby International for the Michigan-based Mackinac
Center found that 63 percent of American union workers considered
it unjust to fire an employee who doesn’t pay union dues. Only 32
percent thought employers should fire workers who refuse.
“Rank-and-file union workers support right-to-work and they
oppose [EFCA],” Mourad said. “They believe in freedom.”
It might be better, then, for all Republicans to back workers’
freedom to decline to give money to organizations whose chief
political purpose is electing Democrats. The future of organized
labor depends on the support it gets from politicians: Globalism
and technological innovation have made unions almost antique;
their pension systems threaten to suck their finances dry; and
the general public opposes much of their legislative agenda.
“I think [hesitant candidates] should poll their constituents,”
Center for Union Facts Managing Director J. Justin Wilson said.
“The overwhelming number of their actual constituents is of
course going to be pro-right-to-work.” The labor movement is in
poor health. By helping to keep this dying patient alive,
pro-union Republicans put their own party at acute risk.
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