The Deceivers Are Back
Paycheck deception again rears its ugly head as labor's enemies — emboldened by the November elections — seize their chance to weaken your union.
By Clyde Weiss
Your First Amendment right to express your political views through your union are under assault. Big Business, joined by right-wingers and their advocates in the halls of Congress and in statehouses nationwide, want to silence your collective voice and thereby weaken your strength to influence decisions that affect every working man and woman.
The threat is real and immediate, but it approaches stealthily. Its sponsors have given their proposal an appealing label: "paycheck protection." Make no mistake, however: Far from "protection," it’s a deception.
The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly rejected "paycheck deception" by a 69-31 margin as this story was going to press in late March. But its proponents may bring it up again in the Senate and, later, in the House of Representatives as debate continues on campaign finance reform legislation. Pres. George W. Bush has indicated that the anti-union provision will need to be in any final version he signs.
Meanwhile, paycheck deception was about to become law in Utah, and is already law in various forms in several other states.
The method of this nationwide campaign is to force unions to obtain, each year and in advance, your permission to use a portion of dues collected to lobby for laws and regulations, such as those intended to prevent repetitive-stress injuries in the workplace. "Paycheck protection" would even require AFSCME to get your written approval to spend dues to communicate with members about legislative threats to privatize their jobs, or provide them with voting records of their representatives in Congress.
It gets worse. Fearful of organized labor’s success in helping to elect union-friendly lawmakers, these "paycheck protection" advocates would stop unions from spending dues to support candidates and increase voter participation in national and local elections — unless you okayed it in advance.
In a way, that sounds innocent and logical. Why shouldn’t AFSCME have to get your permission to use a portion of your dues to lobby for better wages, benefits, pensions or workplace safety, or to support political candidates that advance those causes? The answer is that lobbying and related activities are integral purposes of the union.
LABOR-CRUSHING CRUSADE. "The people behind ‘paycheck protection’ have never been your friends," says AFSCME International Pres. Gerald W. McEntee. "They are the people that have tried to take away — by law — your benefits, and now they are trying to take away your voice."
"Paycheck protection" fanatics like Grover Norquist, founder and president of the ultra-conservative group, Americans for Tax Reform, insist they have only your interests at heart. On its Web site, ATR says: "Paycheck protection would make labor leaders more accountable to their members."
Union members, of course, want their leaders to be accountable, and through the democratic process of elections, they already are. But that really is beside the point for those pushing paycheck deception. Norquist explains the real point in a February 1997 interview with Reason, an anti-labor magazine:
"It would crush labor unions as a political entity" if they had to ask permission of their members before using dues money for political purposes. "You would reduce the cash flow to unions by maybe $8 billion. Like that!
"Average dues are around $500 a year, so as soon as somebody figured out that they could get $400 back, everybody would want [it] back."
That’s preposterous. Far from the 80 percent refund Norquist suggests, AFSCME’s highest political rebate rate for members was only 29 percent, based on political expenses for the 1996 Presidential election year. And average union dues are lower than the number he throws around.
Norquist’s crusade to "crush labor" reached its zenith in 1998 when Proposition 226, a "paycheck protection" measure, was placed on the ballot in California. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Right to Work Committee, Christian Coalition and similar anti-union groups joined ATR in attempting to fool the electorate by publicly declaring that all they really cared about was union members’ rights.
The voters were not fooled. They recognized Prop 226 for what it really was — an effort to destroy labor by silencing its voice — and defeated it by 54 to 46 percent. Union members, supposedly beneficiaries of the measure, saw its fallacies most clearly. They voted no by a 71 percent margin.
MYTH OF COMPASSION. Beaten but not deterred, Norquist vowed to take the campaign nationwide. Among paycheck deception’s storm troopers was John Shanahan, director of public policy for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which opposes a higher minimum wage, protection from workplace injuries and comparable-worth legislation.
Despite ALEC’s anti-worker record, Shanahan had the audacity to claim that his organization supported "paycheck protection" laws because it cared about workers’ rights. "We believe that forcing union members to contribute to political parties and causes that they may personally oppose is a violation of their rights under the Constitution," he said in 1998.
In private, opponents were frank about their true motives. In an internal memo, for example, the California Restaurant Association justified to its members why it spent $125,000 (matched dollar for dollar by the parent group) to support Prop 226. This is what it said:
"The Association took this action because restaurant owners and operators have been under attack for years by labor union officials, most notably when unions sponsored Proposition 210 that added $1.50 to the minimum wage. ... Union officials are also sponsoring ... increased unemployment compensation, increased workers’ compensation benefits, mandatory benefits for part-time employees and imposition of the eight-hour overtime rule, among others."
No deception there: Labor had to be defeated because it posed too grave a threat to the profits of Big Business. "Paycheck protection" was their big weapon.
In Congress, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and his right-wing allies also saw paycheck deception as a way to destroy labor and its heavy arsenal of manpower and money, which had kept anti-union bills buried in a legislative scrap heap. In March 1998, the GOP offered its "paycheck protection" bill. It was defeated, 246-166. Only three Democrats voted for the bill.
RECOGNIZING THE THREAT. Although the first shots across labor’s bow had missed, the battle had just begun. That August, at AFSCME’s 33rd Biennial Convention, McEntee defined the threat in plain terms: "What [conservatives] want to do is prohibit unions from spending one red cent on anything that can fall under the broad headline of ‘political action or education.’ ... You know and I know that silencing unions is not campaign finance reform — it is payback."
Payback for what? For helping to re-elect President Clinton in 1996 and challenging the radical right through the AFL-CIO’s $35 million war chest, which McEntee said nearly turned Gingrich and his Contract on America "into a footnote in the history books."
Today, Gingrich himself is a footnote. But the threat is greater than ever. After a bruising national election last year, the Republicans occupy the White House, control the U.S. House of Representatives and (just barely) rule the Senate — the "perfect storm," if you will, and labor is the ship about to be crushed under waves of anti-union sentiment on Capitol Hill.
Whether you are a Democrat, Republican, member of another political party or member of none, you belong to a union — and this effort to silence labor’s strength is aimed at you. That is especially true if you are a public employee, whose wages, hours and working conditions are set by government. They are your bosses.
"A guy making what we make here doesn’t have the opportunity to give much to a political campaign," says Rob Fanti, a counselor at the Sheridan (Ill.) Correctional Center and president of AFSCME Local 472 (Council 31). "Through the union, however, we have a voice in the political arena."
Lawrence Mishel, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute and author of the book, The State of Working America, thoroughly agrees. "Had it not been for the mobilization of the labor movement, reactionary policies sought by the GOP majority in 1994 would have prevailed. One of the few things that stand between a complete rewriting of our protections on the job, the tax code and spending priorities is the organized power of workers as expressed through their unions."
UNION OF MANY VIEWS. AFSCME’s 1.3 million members don’t all share the same views, and some might prefer that the union get their consent before spending dues money for political purposes.
Consent is paycheck deception’s main argument. Everyone would rather "consent" before his or her hard-earned money is spent on anything, whether it’s union causes or building a bridge. But securing every member’s prior, written approval — year after year — would be an extremely difficult task.
"By the time we got everyone’s permission, it would be too late," says Elaine Broomfield, a cook at the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and president of Local 878 (Council 31).
Corporations, which spend much more on political causes, would be free of this "paycheck protection" burden. They would not have to ask permission of their shareholders to appropriate money to defeat union-friendly candidates and causes, like ergonomics rules. The disparity in the treatment of unions and Big Business is crystal clear.
UNFAIR ADVANTAGE. Corporations "would be ahead of the game if this gets passed," says Marge Snopek, president of Local 3126 (Council 87) and an employee of the Scranton (Pa.) State School for the Deaf. "I, for one, would be totally against that because they have enough clout now."
Business influence in national elections is enormous compared to labor. Business spending to support federal candidates directly — through political action committees — amounted to $156 million in the 2000 election. That dwarfed labor’s $52 million.
But there is another type of political spending that Big Business dominates even more: "soft money" contributions to political parties (which cannot be given to federal candidates). Such corporate contributions in the 2000 election totaled $370 million, a 12-1 advantage over labor’s $30 million, which comes from union dues.
Yet Big Business and right-wing lawmakers want an even greater edge — they want to make it nearly impossible for unions to play on the same field by forcing them to seek each member’s permission to use dues for political purposes. Corporations, on the other hand, don’t want to play by the rules they would impose on unions. That is, they don’t want to oblige themselves to get shareholders’ advance, written permission before corporate dollars can be spent for pet political causes.
But even if corporations were required to get stockholder approval, that would be far easier to do because a small number of people or institutions hold a great many shares. For example, an individual or mutual fund that owns only 3 percent of a corporation with $500 million in sales can "consent" to the corporation spending $15 million on politics. AFSCME, on the other hand, would need 500,000 members to sign consent forms to equal the money raised by that single shareholder.
Aside from the mechanics of getting approval, there is another dissimilarity that makes paycheck deception unfair even if applied to Big Business: Corporations, unlike unions, are not democratic institutions. While a corporation’s board of directors is elected, their operating officers are not; nor are they held to the same standard of accountability as union officers.
In addition, many corporations are privately owned by a family or small group of individuals. Applying paycheck deception rules to them would be essentially meaningless. Consequently, if paycheck deception became federal law, Big Business could go on a political soft-money spending spree, while labor watched from the sidelines. "They won’t be satisfied," says McEntee, "until we are out of the picture."
GAME PLAN. At least some powerful proponents of paycheck deception have precisely that in mind. Don’t take our word for it. Take Grover Norquist’s. In 1996, he made this statement in a debate sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute’s magazine: The American Enterprise.
"Here is how Republicans are going to win: Deny the opponent external sources of income. We are going to defund the official Washington establishment and the Democratic Party by cutting off their use of taxpayer money and compulsory union dues to fund the Democratic political machine. When we face them again in two years, they will be smaller. When we face them again in four years, they will be smaller and less well-funded yet."
If you’re a Democrat — and a union member — the threat is obvious. But perhaps you’re a Republican. You know that nearly 94 percent of all labor contributions to federal candidates and political parties during the 2000 campaign went to Democrats. You say, I don’t want my money helping them.
Neither do the Republicans. "There better be paycheck protection," said George Bush during a debate in December 1999. "Otherwise, our Republican Party and our conservative values don’t have a shot."
Well, just what are those values? Party affiliation aside, do they really represent your values as a union member? Consider this: Shortly after Bush entered office last January, he approved four anti-union rules, including one banning labor/management partnerships. Bush also nominated a vehemently anti-union secretary of labor (who had to withdraw her name after embarrassing disclosures about her household help).
The Republican-controlled Congress also moved quickly against unions after taking office in January. Most painful for working men and women everywhere was the vote in the House in early March to repeal labor’s hard-won 10-year battle for ergonomics regulations that were aimed at preventing repetitive stress injuries in the workplace. Big Business, trumpeting the cost of compliance (while ignoring the larger cost of non-compliance), lobbied hard for the repeal and got it.
Of the 223 lawmakers who voted to repeal the ergonomics rules, 206 were Republicans; 123 of the 223 lawmakers who voted for repeal also voted for the paycheck deception bill in 1998, and all but two of them were Republicans.
Is it any wonder, therefore, that AFSCME endorsed Democratic Vice Pres. Al Gore for President? Or that Democrats received the lion’s share of labor’s money? Even if you’re a Republican, it shouldn’t surprise you that labor backs candidates who support labor-friendly issues.
That doesn’t mean AFSCME never supports Republicans. "We back the candidates who will protect our rights," says Local 472’s Fanti. "We have endorsed several Republicans. A lot depends on their voting record. If a Republican stands behind us and our positions, that’s who we endorse — whoever has our best interests at heart."
RIGHT TO REFUSE. Despite what paycheck deception advocates would have you believe, you are not required to contribute to political causes with which you disagree. First of all, AFSCME members are not required to contribute to PEOPLE, the union’s hard-money PAC, and no member dues are contributed to candidates for federal office.
Also, AFSCME members who object to their dues funding political activities of the union have the right, once a year, to receive a rebate thanks to a 1974 amendment to AFSCME’s Constitution. As a result, 147,145 rebates were made between 1985 and 1999 (a period in which data are available), totaling more than $2.18 million.
Non-members who are covered by a union contract and pay agency fees also are not required to support AFSCME’s political activities. Those who object are charged a reduced rate.
ALEC’s Shanahan argues, "No one should be forced to make a political contribution as a condition of employment, but that’s what unions require all the time."
Obviously, AFSCME doesn’t.
MORE DECEPTIONS. Another deceit spread by "paycheck protection" advocates such as ATR is that "millions of dollars are forced from workers and funneled into the political system by union officials who are rarely held accountable for how they disperse such funds."
No accountability? "Labor unions are democratic institutions," responds Kirsten Spalding, professor of law at the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California at Berkeley. "Members do have a voice. When membership’s really unhappy with what their leaders are doing, they do vote them out."
Union members also elect representatives who decide how to spend their dues. "We hear from members on issues and factor that into the decision-making," says McEntee. "Ultimately, if they don’t like the way union leaders are making decisions, they’ll vote out the leadership."
Paycheck deception advocates ignore such realities, preferring to pretend that union members lack freedom to influence their leaders’ decisions. They want you to believe that, too.
As a union member, you cannot afford to ignore the fact that paycheck deception promoters want to rein in your power. As McEntee has said, "For the future of the union and its political effectiveness, we cannot let them do it."
Combat at the State Level
Like firefighters putting out a series of brush fires, labor activists and their allies have been forced to dash from legislature to legislature to combat paycheck deception efforts at the state level. The results are harder to assess there because of the numerous guises the legislation has taken.
To hear the proponents tell it, they have enacted wide-ranging "paycheck protection" in five states. In fact, it has materialized in what might be called pure form in only one: Utah. Four others have passed anywhere from one to a few elements of paycheck deception, while defeating or simply ignoring additional elements dear to the hearts of paycheck deceivers.
In a major court test of paycheck deception, in 1998, a Nevada judge declared the measure unconstitutional and ordered that it not be placed on the ballot as an initiative. Ohio’s law is suspended while under court review.
