By John J. Sweeney
If you heard the AFL-CIO was lobbying passionately on Capitol Hill to pass the Outrageous CEO Pay Protection Act, you’d have trouble believing it.
Try this: America’s biggest corporate front groups and profit warriors are lobbying for workers’ rights.
I don’t buy it either—no one should.
Rhetoric about workers’ rights is coming from the strangest places these days: the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC); the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), whose biggest member is Wal-Mart; the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM); and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Better yet: from anti-worker Republicans in Congress, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
It’s part of their effort to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act—the most important legislation in 70 years for enabling workers to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions. These groups have formed the euphemistically titled Coalition for a Democratic Workplace in an attempt to convince Congress and the American public that the Employee Free Choice Act would harm, rather than help, working people.
But face it: These groups and individuals are just not credible when they talk about protecting workers’ rights. They oppose the Employee Free Choice Act because it would restore workers’ freedom to decide for ourselves—without management interference—whether to form unions and bargain for better living and working standards. The last thing they want is a fair deal for working men and women.
Just take a look at some of their stated policy priorities. These groups include the most adamant opponents of raising the minimum wage, regulations to protect employees from workplace injuries and prevailing wage protections. They also include the ultimate hard-core fans of the Bush administration’s worst anti-worker actions: the 2004 takeaway of overtime pay for some 6 million workers, unfettered “free trade” agreements that abuse workers here and abroad, the “you’re-on-your-own” approach to America’s health care crisis and, of course, the massive tax cuts for the rich that have shot economic inequality and national debt through the roof.
Under the cover of their nicely named coalition, these groups are setting off alarms about the Employee Free Choice Act’s provision to allow workers to form unions when a majority signs authorization cards, rather than forcing employees to endure the broken National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election process. If voting by “secret ballot” is appropriate for electing politicians in America’s democracy, they say, it should be adequate for voting on union representation.
But throughout the NLRB process—from Day One—management has all the power. Employers routinely coerce, harass, threaten and even fire workers to dissuade them from voting for a union and bargaining for a better life. The NLRB process makes a mockery of democracy—and corporations focused solely on the bottom line want to keep it just that way. No political figure in America could win an election under the one-sided NLRB process. And the fact that at the end of the process workers vote by “secret ballot” does not and cannot undo the damage caused by firings, threats, intimidation, harassment and more.
Elections in the Soviet Union were conducted by secret ballot. That does not mean they were democratic.
As working family activists heat up the fight for the Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate (the U.S. House already has passed the measure), you’re going to hear from this corporate front group coalition again and again—in radio, newspaper and television ads, opinion columns, probably even on billboards. They will flood the airwaves in districts of senators they think may be vulnerable to their considerable pressure.
When you hear the propaganda, remember the source. And let your friends, co-workers and neighbors know these groups have absolutely no credibility when it comes to workers’ rights.
