1/10/01 8:45 a.m.
Sacrificial Lamb
The AFL-CIO will oppose any Labor nominee unwilling to take dictation from John Sweeny.

By Jim Boulet Jr., executive director, English First

f the Bush transition team had any doubts, they can now be certain that the AFL-CIO will oppose any Secretary of Labor nominee unwilling to take dictation from John Sweeny. Any nominee they send up in the wake of Linda Chavez’s withdrawal can count on a bruising confirmation battle or worse — just ask former Reagan Labor Secretary Ray Donovan.

John Sweeny’s ferocity on Capitol Hill is a product of his looming impotency nationwide. Proof of the continued decline of organized labor can be found in, of all places, The Nation, in the magazine’s January 1st issue.

“Simply to maintain the status quo,” wrote Janice Fine, “the labor movement must organize 500,000 new workers a year.” Fine notes that this break-even number was surpassed just once from 1997-1999, and “early estimates [for 2000] fall well below that threshold.”

These numbers provide some context as to why the AFL-CIO will insist on a compliant Secretary of Labor. These same numbers also suggest why the AFL-CIO undertook what it admits was “a historic policy shift on immigration.”

On February 16, 2000, the AFL-CIO’s executive council announced the labor federation now supported amnesty for illegal aliens. In fact, the AFL-CIO’s official policy is now that illegal aliens should receive “protected immigration status” merely by joining union organizing drives or “cooperat[ing] with federal agencies during investigations of employment, labor and discrimination violations.”

It doesn’t take much imagination to see where this is heading: sign a union card and get a green card in the bargain. That will sure drive those union membership figures up in no time. And more union members mean additional income from union dues, money which is “a major source of funding for the Democratic Party,” in the words of former National Labor Relations Board chairman William Gould, a Clinton appointee.

And it is precisely because of the AFL-CIO’s outreach effort to immigrants that the nomination of Linda Chavez as Labor Secretary must really have stuck in John Sweeny’s craw.

You see, the AFL-CIO has its own Linda Chavez, Linda Chavez-Thompson, the organization’s executive vice president. Chavez-Thompson had sufficient personal reason to oppose Linda Chavez, simply on the basis of misaddressed mail and misdirected telephone calls (“I’m calling for Linda Chavez, you know, the Secretary of Labor. Oh, that’s the other one. Do you have her telephone number?”)

Linda Chavez-Thompson and her boss also had good organizational reason to oppose Linda Chavez — the name recognition they have carefully built up for Executive Vice President Chavez-Thompson would have benefited Secretary of Labor Chavez.

It was no accident that the Federation issued a press release from Chavez-Thompson questioning Chavez’s explanation of her Guatemalan houseguest. Chavez-Thompson is the public face of big labor’s campaign to unionize illegal aliens.

Her name, not Sweeny’s, was featured on the February 16th press release announcing the Federation’s new immigration policy. Chavez-Thompson also keynoted an “Immigrant Worker Rights Forum” in Los Angeles on June 8th. (The press announcement is one of the few on the AFL-CIO web site available in both Spanish and English).

When the INS agreed to allow seven out of eight illegal aliens to remain in the country last April because they were fired for union organizing, once again the AFL-CIO’s victory press release bore the name of Chavez-Thompson, rather than Sweeny.

The truly curious thing about the campaign to keep Linda Chavez out of the Bush Cabinet is this: Chavez was pilloried for giving accidental sanctuary to one illegal alien by some the same people who urged Clinton to shut down the government last month in order to win amnesty for at least a million illegal aliens.

One suspects that had Chavez told her houseguest to join a union and registered her to vote, the AFL-CIO might well have supported her nomination.

Team Bush needs to understand that his opponents weren’t really after Linda Chavez. Chavez’s sterling reputation was a casualty of a far larger battle, like the aspirin factory in the Sudan bombed by Clinton during his impeachment.

In fact, Joan Vennochi’s column in the January 9th Boston Globe should be distributed to every member of the Bush Transition Team. Vennochi suggests that “a spirited opposition, rooted in liberal principles, can lay the groundwork for the next critical battlegrounds, including the U.S. Supreme Court.” Conservative causes too could benefit from “spirited opposition.”

Liberals know anything worth winning must be fought for. Team Bush, take note. Bush’s next choice for Secretary of Labor should be either Reed Larson of the National Right to Work Committee or anti-quota activist Ward Connerly.