OPINION:
Over the years, the debate over workers’ rights has mostly been about what political party or interest groups are more focused on strengthening these rights. Unfortunately, during this debate, one group of individuals has been forgotten: the workers themselves. After yesterday’s decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to move forward with its proposal to allow for “quickie” or “ambush” elections, it’s clear that it is not the NLRB that is most interested in protecting workers.
For too long, too many workers have been at the mercy of the whims of their bosses - but not the bosses who run the facilities where they work hard every day to earn a living. Rather, they’ve been at the mercy of their powerful union leaders, who are getting paid six-figure salaries to promote class warfare.
For decades, union bosses have held hostage such basic workers’ rights as a guaranteed secret ballot before a union could become the exclusive representative to negotiate issues such as salary, promotions or work schedules, or an employee’s right to control which political causes and politicians (if any) are supported with his money. Now that the NLRB finally is poised to give unions the quickie elections they’ve been pushing for, the right of workers to be fully informed before voting on unionization also will be held captive.
Make no mistake: Big Labor is not simply fighting for the desires of union workers. According to recent Opinion Research Corp. polling, 78 percent of union households think votes on union representation should be conducted by secret-ballot elections. A larger majority, 83 percent, think there should be a revote every three years. Seventy-nine percent think the union should get approval before spending an employee’s dues on political campaigns. And, despite claims of the former union lawyers at the NLRB who made Wednesday’s decision, 87 percent of union households support a proposal to require the board to wait at least 40 days after a union petition is filed before holding an election.
When you realize that less than 10 percent of current union members voted to install the union collecting their monthly dues, support for giving union members a voice and a ballot is hardly a surprise.
Of course, these ideas disrupt the left’s popular narrative. Unions and their Democratic allies in Congress want workers to believe they are being exploited by some faceless corporate overlord. But the facts tell a different story. It’s not the companies signing paychecks that are doing the exploiting but the unions that falsely claim their interests and those of individual workers are one and the same.
Unions are paying a lot of money to keep this false narrative afloat.
Private-sector unions spent$171 million to influence the 2010 elections; 93 percent of their political contributions went to support Democratic candidates. Yet 40 percent of union members voted for Republicans.
It is precisely because of this wildly disproportionate bias in campaign spending that I’m not expecting many Democrats to sign on to reform legislation that I and 20 other Republican senators have co-sponsored called the Employee Rights Act (S. 1507). But any Democrats interested in doing more than simply taking marching orders from the unions will find the public very much on their side if they support this legislation.
Since my arrival in the Senate, I’ve been part of many battles that have pitted the institutional interests of major labor unions against major corporations. In every case, the warring parties disagreed over who was wearing the white hat. There should be no confusion this time. The Employee Rights Act is not about Big Business versus Big Labor but about employee rights versus union power.
This will be a different fight altogether.
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch is a Utah Republican.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.