Since hundreds of millions of Americans labor each day to provide for themselves and their families, why does it seem as if the U.S. Department of Labor works only for the roughly 7 percent of private-sector workers who are union members?
That’s just one of several important questions that lawmakers should ask at this morning’s confirmation hearing for Rep. Hilda Solis, President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Labor. (The hearing is before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee at 9:30 a.m. in the Dirksen Senate Office Building).
If critics are correct, Solis will support a terrible expansion of a union agenda to slash the rights of the 93 percent of employees who work in the private sector and are not in a union (and cost 100 percent of taxpayers more money).
Solis needs to answer a few other vital queries, too:
* What changed January 6, 2007? On January 5, 2007 Solis signed a letter rightly expressing concern about the lack of secret ballots to elect leaders to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
The letter read, “Votes by secret ballot were in order but never taken. We therefore believe that we need to follow proper rules of procedure and hold a vote by secret ballot.” She continued, “It is important that the integrity of the CHC be unquestioned and above reproach.”
Yet, today Solis supports the comically misnamed Employee Free Choice Act, which would effectively kill secret ballot elections for an estimated 100 million American workers when they decide whether they want to join a union.
Two years ago Solis fought to protect the private vote for her fellow Members of Congress, but today she isn’t willing to protect the rights of working Americans.
What changed, other than union pressure to achieve Big Labor’s top political priority?
* Can our states, towns, and cities afford to have unions forced on them? No one seems to have noticed the bill that could make states and local municipalities collectively bargain with public-sector employees such as firefighters and law enforcement officers.
The result could be important to public safety and public budgets. (After all, there’s a lot at stake when towns and cities are threatened with bankruptcy.) Lawmakers should use today’s hearing to learn Solis’ stance on this policy.
Moreover, this bill poses additional concerns for politicians from unionized states, since the policy would actually allow the federal government to decide whether every state’s individual law measured up.
* Should 75 percent of men and women working in construction be excluded from working on federal infrastructure projects? President-elect Obama is seeking to pour hundreds of billions into infrastructure.
With so much at stake, lawmakers owe it to their hard-working constituents to figure out whether or not Solis supports unions’ special interest request to impose a “project labor agreement” to specially restrict those projects to only unionized contractors.
American workers deserve to know if the soon-to-be Secretary of Labor will defend other discriminatory policies like the Davis-Bacon Act “prevailing wage” requirements that drive up costs for taxpayers and keep smaller, non-union contractors out of the work.
In short, if the majority of Americans pay federal taxes, why should Capitol Hill allow only a small minority of union employees and unionized companies — a mere 25 percent of the U.S. construction industry — to work on taxpayer-funded public projects?
* Will the labor transparency train be derailed? The AFL-CIO’s stated goals for the Department of Labor include reducing, if not ending, the transparency rules that allow union members to see how their money is spent.
If the union’s agenda is met, the next Secretary of Labor should have to justify to Americans who work in the 28 states without “Right To Work” laws (and can therefore be compelled to pay the union as a condition of employment) the reason they no longer have the right to see where that hard-earned money goes.
On top of that, U.S. workers would also be owed an explanation for the unions’ proposal to make sure that DOL personnel are forcibly stopped from investigating complaints about rigged union elections. How does that serve laborers?
There may well be good answers to these questions, though it seems unlikely. It is far more likely that the tens of millions of working Americans who don’t want to pay union dues will be in for a rough four years.
Bret Jacobson is founder and president of Maverick Strategies LLC, a research and communications firm serving business and free-market think tanks.
