GOP sharpens knives to cut political spending by labor

The mechanism would be a simple tweak: Republicans would rewrite the National Labor Relations Act to prohibit unions from using an individual member’s dues for political activity unless that member explicitly grants permission to the union.

GOP lawmakers proposed the measure in a bill dubbed the Employee Rights Act, which was introduced during the current Congress last November. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., one of its main co-sponsors, would be in line to be the next chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee under a GOP majority.

The legislation would boost the rights of individual workers at the expense of union bosses. It includes several other provisions, such as making it illegal for a union leader to coerce or intimidate a member and requiring all workplace unionization votes to be federally monitored and have secret ballots. The measures all would strengthen the hand of workers who have disagreements with the unions that represent them.

“With Alexander as chair of the labor committee and Mitch McConnell as majority leader, it’s safe to say that reining in Obama’s Big Labor agenda will be a top priority for both of them,” said a senior Senate GOP aide.

McConnell’s aides have repeatedly declined to lay out any agenda should he become majority leader. “Measuring the drapes and all that,” said a source in his office.

Asked about the Employee Rights Act, the source did point to comments McConnell made in January promising a return to a “vigorous committee process” should Republicans regain control of the Senate, implying that chairmen such as Alexander would have a freer hand in setting the chamber’s agenda.

Any legislation rolling back union power is highly unlikely to become law while President Obama is in office. Even assuming Republicans win a majority and scrounge up enough Democratic support in the Senate to pass it over the inevitable filibuster, Obama would be certain to veto it.

But should Republicans regain control of the Senate, advocates argue they have a platform to force the first major debate on federal labor law since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act and focus the debate on the rights of individual workers.

“Obama will probably veto it. However, the more the public hears about the common-sense reforms in the ERA, such as criminalizing union threats and violence, the more pressure will be brought on Democrats if the legislation is brought back under a Republican president,” said F. Vincent Vernuccio, director of labor policy at the conservative Mackinac Center.

Republicans are looking to scale back unions’ activities because organized labor has revived politically under Obama, perhaps the most pro-labor president since Harry Truman.

Labor leaders have responded, solidifying ties with the party and the broader liberal movement. Labor groups donated $143 million to candidates in the 2012 election, up from $60 million in 1998, with 91 percent going to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. (While business groups donated much more in 2012, at $2.7 billion, contributions were more bipartisan with 41 percent going to Democrats.)

That’s not counting other support. Labor groups are the main backers behind many of the activist groups promoting liberal issues, such as a higher minimum wage and more open immigration policies.

They’re a major force in Election Day get-out-the-vote efforts. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was barely contradicted when he claimed organized labor delivered the key swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio to the Democrats in the 2012 election.

That chafes Republicans who note that exit polls in 2008 and 2012 show that about 40 percent of people covered by union contracts voted Republican. Most union-management contracts feature “security clauses” that require workers to join or at least pay dues to a union as a condition of employment.

“[T]his is a very unfair situation where they can use billions of dollars for political purposes for only one side without any consequences and without 40 percent of their members having much say in it at all. It’s just not right, and it distorts the political process,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a co-author of the bill, told the Washington Examiner earlier this year.

Conservative lobbyist Rick Berman, whose Center for Union Facts has advocated for the bill, argues it could be a “true wedge issue” because it is something Democrats cannot co-opt. He says his polling has shown 80 percent support for the legislation. “Republicans don’t have an 80 percent issue right now,” he said.

Karla Walter, associate director of the liberal Center for American Progress’ American Worker Project, said Alexander’s proposals are simply part of a broader conservative attack on union rights and institutions. “It is not just concerning for members of unions. It is concerning for nonunion members. It is also concerning for nonunion workers because the [National Labor Relations Board’s] regulations protect 77 percent of private-sector workers, not just union workers,” she said.

Workers have the right, under the Supreme Court’s 1988 decision in Communications Workers of America v. Beck, to object to their dues or fees being used for anything other than expenses directly related to collective bargaining with employers. Not giving the workers a chance to opt out of political contributions amounts to “coerced speech” and violates the First Amendment, the court’s majority ruled.

Unions are obliged to calculate their expenses for the coming year and mail the information to members. Workers can demand refunds if the money is to be spent on behalf of a candidate or cause they don’t support.

But the burden falls on the worker, and unions are notorious for putting red tape in the way. If the worker doesn’t respond or misses a deadline, the union has no obligation to return the money.

The Supreme Court’s 2012 case Knox v. SEIU illustrates the problem. The court found that the union violated its members’ rights by forcing them to pay a special assessment just before a statewide election in which the union was heavily involved.

The dissenting workers eventually got refunds but well after the election, effectively giving the union an interest-free loan. The court said the union could not do that and had to give workers a chance to opt out first.

Under the Employee Rights Act, unions would be required to obtain the explicit consent of their members first, known as an opt-in provision.

In practice, requiring unions to get permission from each member would hamper their ability to raise election-year funds, which also would hurt their Democrat allies. The opt-in is the main provision of the Employee Rights Act, which also would require unions to hold recertification votes should membership turn over more than 50 percent from the last organizing election. Most unions rarely face recertification votes even decades after they were first recognized.

The legislation also would require unions to undergo regular, independently verified audits and make the results available to members, allowing them to know where their dues money is going and to raise objections.

Finally, it would require that all workplace organizing elections be overseen by federal regulators and have employees vote by secret ballot. That is in reaction to organized labor’s push to make so-called Card Check elections the norm for workplace organizing.

Today, a secret ballot elections happen only if an employer demands that the National Labor Relations Board monitor the election. Alternatively, employers can strike a deal with union leaders and forgo federal involvement. That typically involves accepting signed cards from the workers obtained by the union —hence the phrase “Card Check election.”

After Obama’s election, union leaders pushed Congress to remove the right of employers to call for a monitored election, meaning that workplaces conceivably could be organized whenever a union says it has majority support.

Republicans and the business lobby balked, arguing that the change would eliminate the chance for workers to cast a vote in private and could prompt fraud and intimidation by union organizers. The effort died in Congress.

Republicans have other ideas, too. Alexander and McConnell introduced legislation late last month that would add one person to the National Labor Relations Board’s five-member board, with each party picking three nominees.

Republicans have complained bitterly about the NRLB, which has tilted heavily toward labor under Obama. The board’s general counsel has issued controversial unfair labor practice complaints against Boeing, Walmart and, most recently, McDonald’s.

In the last case, the general counsel said his attorneys would treat McDonald’s Corp. as a joint employer at all of its franchises, even though 80 percent of them are privately owned. It would make organizing McDonald’s workers easier by giving labor leaders a single entity to target rather than thousands of individual restaurants.

In a Sept. 16 Senate floor speech to introduce the NLRB legislation, McConnell complained that the labor board was “trying to destroy the very franchisee model that’s allowed so many Americans to own and operate their own businesses. They want to take away independence from small businessmen and women – like decisions on who to hire, how much to pay them, and how to run their business.”

Next year, he might be in a position to do something about that.