OPINION:
The majority of states now give workers the freedom to do their jobs without being forced to join a labor union. We gave public servants that ability in Wisconsin in my first term as governor. The union bosses went wild. They sent protesters to take over our state Capitol. Eventually, some 100,000 occupied the building and square.
When the big union bosses and liberal special interests lost, they tried to cancel me through a recall election on June 5, 2012. We won with a larger margin than we had in the first election. We took power out of the hands of big-government special interests and returned it to the people, and they appreciated it.
Years later, on June 27, 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the application of public sector union dues to nonmembers violated the First Amendment. The decision in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, was denounced by labor bosses and their political cronies.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called the case a “weapon against the people.” Then-Sen. Kamala Harris of California said it was an “attack on workers’ rights.”
So it should be no surprise that the Biden-Harris administration, which benefited from tens of millions of dollars from big-government unions, is doing the bidding of their donors, which want to undermine the freedom to work in the states. What is surprising is the way President Biden is doing this — through a back door that will undermine a critical service for one of the most important constituencies to his reelection: older Americans on Medicare.
This month, President Biden’s health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra, will propose to make certain businesses rebid, or reapply, to work with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. It sounds innocuous, but in a news release issued at the end of last year, Mr. Becerra made it clear the agency would require some companies that seek a contract with CMS to enter what is known as a “labor harmony agreement” with the big-government unions.
Labor harmony agreements are the favored weapon of these unions to pressure businesses into project-labor agreements even if businesses and certain employees do not wish to unionize. If history is a guide, this action will raise costs and slow down service. That’s exactly what contractors argued would happen to construction projects under similar regulations. Why take this risk with older adults who rely on Medicare?
The Professional Services Council, representing companies that often do business with CMS, pleaded with Mr. Becerra not to inject labor harmony agreements into contract requirements. They wrote that including such an agreement “would likely result in requests for employment conditions that would make it difficult for any contractor to fulfill the stated performance goals” of CMS contracts.
Translation: Businesses that provide services to CMS, and in turn people who rely on the agency for Medicare, will not be able to properly serve Medicare recipients because of unworkable labor harmony agreements that big-government unions will demand from them.
What’s worse, Mr. Becerra is attempting what amounts to a sleight-of-hand maneuver to undermine freedom-to-work laws in the states. Many businesses that work with CMS operate in these states, meaning their employees are explicitly protected from union fees if they are not members of a union. Mr. Becerra will effectively eliminate that protection by mandating labor harmony agreements with public sector unions for any business that provides a service to CMS.
Examples of a labor agreement will invariably include clauses that require employees of businesses that are party to such agreements to pay union fees or be subject to collection costs if they do not. Unions use this same tactic against the construction industry to force unionization on contractors bidding on specific projects. You can expect these clauses to be included in any labor harmony agreement attached to a contract submission for businesses that work with CMS under Mr. Becerra’s new rule, flouting freedom-to-work laws in states that seek to protect workers from these unconstitutional fees.
The political calculus behind this makes sense. Mr. Becerra is hinting at a run for governor in California, where he did the bidding of the state’s big government union bosses as attorney general. President Biden is looking to these union bosses to flood millions into his reelection campaign.
What doesn’t make sense — indeed, what is downright wrong — is that Mr. Biden and Mr. Becerra are threatening Medicare services for older Americans all in an attempt to undermine a sensible Supreme Court decision that protected the constitutional rights of millions of workers.
All Americans should be concerned by this backdoor ambush on the First Amendment and the rights of our older adults.
• Scott Walker is president of Young America’s Foundation and served as the 45th governor of Wisconsin.
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