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 or
all the hysterical talk about ending the corrupting influence of
"special-interest money" on politics, precious little
has been said about a particular brand of filthy lucre that has
long deformed public debate in America. We speak, of course, of
the hundreds of millions of dollars in compulsory dues Big Labor
spends every election cycle to advance its pet causes and candidates
at the expense of ordinary workers' paychecks.
At last, however,
it looks as though George W. Bush is ready to do something to stem
this tide of dirty money. And this "something," unlike
the campaign-finance legislation that seems destined to receive
his signature, is not only compatible with the First Amendment —
it actually expands free speech. Here's the rundown.
In a recent
address at an American Bar Association conference in Puerto Rico,
National Labor Relations Board Chairman Peter Hurtgen reportedly
announced that President Bush is not likely to nominate him or two
other current members, Michael Bartlett and William Cowen, for permanent
terms. All three are serving as recess appointees. The term of the
fourth member, holdover Clinton Democrat Wilma Liebman, expires
on Dec. 16.
If Hurtgen
is right, Bush will have an excellent opportunity in the coming
months to remake the NLRB and in so doing revive the stalled drive
to enforce the Supreme Court's 1988 ruling in Beck v. Communications
Workers of America, the decision that affirmed workers' right
to opt out of financially supporting union politicking.
NLRB enforcement
of Beck has been lax, to say the least. Board members have
been slow to act, making excuses to quietly whittle away worker
protections for seven years before finally issuing their first Beck-related
ruling. The NLRB also has been less than helpful in informing workers
about their legal prerogatives, letting unions bury employee Beck
notices in the fine print of their newsletters or allow workers
to exercise their rights only during short union-imposed "window
periods." As a result, according to a 1997 McLaughlin poll,
67 percent of union workers are not even aware of their Beck
rights.
A reconstituted
NLRB could balance the scale now weighted heavily against workers'
Beck rights — and even bolster legal remedies to unions'
repeated and flagrant violations of Beck. For example, the
new board could require unions to obtain annual permission from
objecting workers before spending those workers' dues on non-workplace-related
activities including political causes. This requirement — in
essence a form of paycheck protection — would relieve workers
of the intimidating task of confronting union officials to get back
their already misspent dues, a task that can expose them to union
reprisals.
De facto paycheck
protection enacted by the NLRB would be an especially welcome development
since Bush's demand for a paycheck-protection provision in any campaign-finance
legislation has fallen on deaf congressional ears.
For workers,
the NLRB cavalry can't arrive too soon. Big Labor is gearing up
to raid their wallets again to finance its 2002 campaigns. Annual
payments extracted from AFL-CIO-affiliated unions are likely to
increase by four cents per month per dues-paying member to subsidize
the unions' election mobilization effort. A four-cent increase in
the last six months of 2002 would fatten the AFL-CIO's war chest
by $3.5 million for this year, and in each succeeding year it would
generate $7 million.
At a time when
the economic downturn has taken a heavy toll on union membership
— projected to decline by some 400,000 members this year —
you would think that labor leaders could find better uses for their
members' money, such as helping pay living expenses or find new
jobs for displaced workers.
The stakes
are high. Union officials are poised to spend several hundred million
dollars in the 2002 elections, nearly all of it calculated to aid
Democrats. And most of this money will be in the form of issue-advocacy
and "soft-money" contributions that, according to the
campaign-finance "reform" diehards, is the scourge of
politics.
It's time to
strike a bold blow for the rights of union workers who have been
shamelessly exploited to advance Big Labor's political agenda for
too long. President Bush may not have gotten what he wanted in the
campaign-finance package making its way to his desk, but he has
a golden opportunity to appoint Beck-friendly NLRB members
who will help shut down a major source of special-interest money
by upholding the law of the land — a law that still protects
the freedoms of speech and political association.
— Robert
Hunter, a member of the National Labor Relations Board under President
Ronald Reagan, is director of labor policy with the Mackinac
Center for Public Policy. Paul Kersey, formerly of the National
Right-to-Work Committee, is the Mackinac Center's labor research
associate.
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