Corporations and the Right Wing Target Unions' Political-Finance Machinery

LaborTalk: 19 States Target Unions
By Harry Kelber

With a "war chest" now amounting to $150 million, the nation's
major corporations have teamed up with some of the most aggressive
rightwing groups  to prevent unions from using their dues money for any
kind of political activity. They have introduced bills  and Initiatives in
19
States which are remarkably similar, despite some differences in
language, and they plan to do the same in the other 31 States.
Like the Worker Paycheck Protection Act (H.R. 1625), a bill
sponsored by 111 anti-union Republicans in Congress, they all have a
common aim: to eliminate the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions as an
important factor in national and local politics.
The Business Roundtable, the elite organization of top-ranking
corporate executives, has contributed at least $20 million to the national
effort to silence unions. The National Association of Manufacturers is
spending $18.75 million, a kitty raised through a special assessment of
its members. The president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Thomas
Donahue, in a speech last November, declared:  "You're going to see us
everywhere. . . . We will energetically oppose union-led  programs to
hijack the American political system."
Spearheading the political attack on unions is the Americans for Tax
Reform, which has produced a strategy guide for introducing state ballot
initiatives and legislation. Rightwing foundations have contributed more
than $70 million, plus $20 million from Americans for Job Security and at
least $10.5 million from the notorious  anti-union Right to Work
Committee.
A major test of the  nationally-coordinated campaign to throttle
labor's voice in politics will come on June 2, when Californians will vote
on an Initiative that would prohibit unions from using any portion of a
member's  dues for political purposes without written authorization from
the member.  The referendum is sponsored by a so-called Campaign Reform
Initiative and has the strong support of Republican Governor Pete Wilson,
who is its chairman.
Although both the Democratic and Republican parties have engaged in
scandalous and legally questionable fund-raising, American labor has
become the current target for "campaign financing reform." Despite the
fact that Big Business outspent organized labor by a margin of 11 to 1 in
the 1996 elections,  the corporate-rightwing coalition is determined  to
put a choke on fund-raising by unions and enmesh them in a nightmarish
tangle of bookkeeping, administrative and legal problems.
With an enfeebled labor movement, the Big Business bloc in Congress
would have a free hand to tamper with the overtime provisions of the
wage-hour law, wipe out federal prevailing wage regulations, reduce
workers' compensation benefits, cut down on workplace safety
inspections, squeeze Medicare and Medicaid and turn over Social Security
to the Wall Street crowd.
If H.R. 1625 and the various state bills and initiatives are enacted,
it would set the stage for the biggest windfall ever for Corporate
America, amounting to billions of dollars annually--at the expense of
working families.  That's what the corporate-rightwing alliance is really
after behind their hypocritical concern and cynical bait about the dues of
union members.