Republicans claim Democrats are repaying one of their most generous blocs of supporters with legislation aimed at boosting the number of dues-paying union members across the country.
On Thursday, House Democrats pushed through a bill to allow union workers to conduct organizing votes by public ballot. The public “card check” voting has a much higher record for organizing union locals than the private ballot elections that the National Labor Relations Board has required for the past 30 years.
This week, Senate Democrats plan to vote on whether to grant collective bargaining rights to the country’s 34,000 airport baggage and passenger screeners. That effort is widely expected to prevail in the Senate.
These two provisions — along with a host of other initiatives promised by the new Democratic majority — rank among organized labor’s biggest priorities. Already this year, Democrats in both chambers approved a minimum wage increase.
Republicans say Democrats are paying back Big Labor for its political support in past years and particularly in the November elections. A spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner describes last week’s “card check” vote as a “thank you card” for labor.
A spokesman for Rep. George Miller, the California Democrat who authored the “card check” bill, said it’s no surprise that Republicans accuse Democrats of paying off big labor “because pay-to-play is the only way they know.”
“That’s their mindset,” Tom Kiley said. “It’s possible to do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing to do.”
Unions have been generous with Democrats. Since 1990, organized labor has given over $500 million in campaign contributions to Democrats, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. In the 2006 election cycle alone, labor gave more than $50 million to Democrats.
In the past 16 years, 92 percent of labor’s political contributions have gone to Democrats. Eight percent has gone to Republicans.
Union leaders have made no secret of how important these measure are to them.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney called last week’s “card check” vote in the House a “momentous turning point.” The International Brotherhood of Teamsters lists as it’s top priorities for the year the “card check” voting and raising the minimum wage.
Union leaders hope that with help from Democratic legislation, they can turn around a decades-long decline in union memberships — and the all-important dues they pay.
Since 1983, the percentage of workers paying dues to a union fell to 12 percent from 20, according to statistics kept by the Department of Labor.
