Labor Department takes aim at unions
By
Sue Davis
Published Jul 8, 2005 10:39 PM
Part of the mission statement of the U.S.
Department of Labor is to promote workers’ “welfare” and
strengthen “free collective bargaining.” This language was wrested
out of the government in earlier periods of labor militancy.
But more and
more in recent years, the DOL has turned that topsy-turvy. It has devised a
variety of weapons—all paid for by workers’ tax dollars—to
defend the bosses, attack workers’ rights, and harass, penalize and impede
union organizing.
Since 2001 when Bush took office, the numbers of DOL
staff assigned to prosecute employer violations of laws on occupational safety,
enforce the right to organize and labor standards on such things as child labor,
minimum wage and overtime, have been significantly reduced. That sends the
bosses a clear signal: you’re free to exploit and oppress workers,
especially the lowest-paid, unorganized immigrants, women, people of color and
youth.
Meanwhile, over the same time period, the staff for the Office of
Labor-Management Standards, which investigates and audits unions’
financial records, received a 60-percent increase in its budget and added 94 new
staff positions.
“We haven’t seen anything like this
before,” said Bob Frase, executive assistant to the secretary-treasurer of
the Paper Workers (PACE), which represents 275,000 workers. (Reuters, March 8)
Last January the PACE local that represents workers at two Houston-area
refineries was audited for two weeks.
“They said it was our first
audit since 1983,” said David Taylor, secretary-treasurer of PACE Local
4-227. “My secretary’s been here 25 years and she said she had never
seen this before.” The DOL told the local to reclassify some line items,
but found no irregularities on its fishing expedition.
Though the DOL
claims its purpose is to fight corruption in unions, the AFL-CIO disputes that.
Noting that the labor federation is at the top of the DOL’s audit list,
President John J. Sweeney said, “[It’s] pure political payback for
the labor movement’s opposition to the president’s anti-worker
policies.” (New York Times, April 17) The Reuters dispatch also called it
“payback for opposing President Bush’s reelection.”
But
the aggressive auditing policy was well underway before the election. Last year
the DOL revised its revenue reporting requirements for unions, imposing
extraordinarily detailed demands “that far exceed those placed on
corporations,” wrote David Moberg in the March 8 In These Times.
The new forms are so complicated, Edward P. Wendel, general counsel of
the United Food and Commercial Workers, told the Times, that “We’ve
spent untold hours on it—hundreds, thousands of hours more [than
before].” AFL-CIO spokes person Suzanne Folkes told Reuters, “It
means diverting time from critical work to a massive amount of paperwork.”
And it also drains dues money that could otherwise have been spent providing
member services or organizing new workers into the union movement.
But
neglecting workers’ rights and aggressive audits are not the only
anti-worker weapons in the DOL’s arsenal.
Last year the Bush
administration stripped hundreds of thousands of government workers of union
representation when it reorganized dozens of offices into the Department of
Homeland Security. “Republicans plan to follow up Bush’s success
last year in curtailing overtime protection with legislation that would make
both overtime payments and the 40-hour week optional for employers,”
writes Moberg. He also notes that the Bush admini stration supports
“right-to-work laws that prohibit requiring employees in a unionized
workplace to pay dues to unions.”
And the National Labor Relations
Board, which was established as a supposedly unbiased arbiter of boss/worker
disputes, under Bush “has adopted the viewpoint of the ardently anti-union
National Right-to-work Committee,” Fred Fein stein, NLRB general counsel
under the Clinton administration, told Moberg. The Bush-appointed NLRB chair is
none other than Robert Battista, the union-busting attorney who represented the
Detroit newspapers in the 1990s.
It must be noted, however, that unions
are not the only non-profit groups harassed by the Bush administration. Last
year the NAACP and at least 60 other tax-exempt groups devoted to civil rights
and social justice were investigated by the Internal Revenue Service. No
wrongdoing was found.
But it’s not only the Republicans who are at
fault. When did the Democrats ever filibuster to defend the right of workers
shifted into Homeland Security to be represented by unions, or to protest
regressive overtime regulations?
The leaders of the union movement have
relied on the Democratic Party to be a “friend of labor,” spending
vast amounts on elections that could have been used to organize and strengthen
their base. This reliance on the other party of big business has gotten them
nothing but a further shift to the right.
The NLRB, no matter which party
has been in office, has functioned to put restraints on the working class.
Whenever the NLRB has been forced to recognize workers’ rights, it was as
a result of pressure from the struggle in the streets and on the picket
lines.
All these attacks on workers and the oppressed are part and parcel
of the war on the home front. They’re part of the drive to dismantle
Social Security, underfund Medicaid and Medicare, end subsidized housing, starve
public education and strengthen racist, sexist, anti-LGBT divisions.
What’s needed now is a strong, united insurgency of the workers and
oppressed determined to fight for what’s rightfully theirs.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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