(The article below, which I wrote with the gifted Michelle Malkin,
appears in the issue of The Weekly Standard with "Ya Gotta Believe" on
the cover.
Also: The date of my scheduled appearance on ABC's "This Week"
program is Sunday, April 1 -- not March 31, as I mistakenly wrote
earlier. Incidentally, this is the weekend the clock springs forward an
hour.)
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ONE CHEER FOR PAYCHECK PROTECTION
It won't stop unions from political mischief.
By Jeff Jacoby and Michelle Malkin
The Weekly Standard
March 26, 2001
Beck is back, and so is new talk of "paycheck protection." On
February 17, President Bush signed an executive order that will help draw
attention to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Communication
Workers of America v. Beck. That 1988 case held that employees who
choose not to join a union but are forced nonetheless to pay dues as a
condition of employment have a right to withhold the portion of their
payment used for anything unrelated to collective bargaining -- most
notably, Democratic politics.
Bush's order -- one of four dealing with workplace issues that were
signed on the same day -- doesn't actually put teeth in the Beck ruling. It
merely requires federal contractors to post signs notifying employees of
their rights. But that was enough for AFL-CIO head John Sweeney to
blast Bush's action as "mean-spirited" and "anti-worker" and to accuse
the president of indulging in "pure retribution" for union support of
Democratic candidates in the last elections.
Sweeney knows something about retribution. In the 13 years since the
high court's ruling, unions have intimidated nad harassed workers
asserting their Beck rights, often saddling them with huge legal bills. The
posting of workplace notices will not, by itself, do much to protect
workers who are brave enough to buck the union. But at least they will
help publicize a fact that employees in union shops often don't know: No
employee can be forced to join a union and pay full dues as a condition of
employment, and no non-member can be forced to subsidize a union's
political or ideological activities. Bush deserves credit for taking his first
small step toward protecting voters' paychecks from the grasp of union
bosses.
To prove that he is as good as his word, however, the president will
need to go considerably farther. During the presidential campaign, Bush
repeatedly called for a federal paycheck-protection law that would
prohibit labor unions from spending any part of a member's dues on
political activities unless that member first consents in writing. He
promised to veto any campaign-finance bill -- such as the one co-authored
by his primary opponent, Sen. John McCain -- unless it were rewritten
to include such a provision.
On its face, paycheck-protection would seem to dramatically
strengthen the rights of political minorities in unionized workplaces.
Unlike Beck, which only empowers employees who do not join (or who
quit) the union, paycheck-protection would apply to everyone who pays
dues. And while Beck makes the dissenting employee go through an
elaborate ordeal in order to get his union fees reduced,
paycheck-protection would put the burden on the union, by requiring it
to get written authorization before spending an employee's money on
politics.
Several states have enacted paycheck-protection laws of their own.
Under a law just passed by the Utah legislature, unions would no longer
be allowed to pay for political activities with union dues. Instead, they
would have to create a separate, segregated political fund, to which
members could donate via payroll deductions. But in asking members to
support the fund, the union would be obliged to disclose "in clear and
unambiguous language ... that contributions are voluntary." Public-sector
unions would be barred outright from using payroll deductions for
political purposes. (Unionized government workers wishing to donate to
a union's political fund would, of course, be free to write a check.)
Governor Mike Leavitt is expected to sign the bill into law.
The case for paycheck protection is easily stated: No union should be
allowed to spend an employee's earnings to promote political causes that
that employee may well oppose. In the last election cycle, unions
funneled an estimated $800 million into campaign activities ranging from
phone banks and literature drops to soft-money contributions and attack
ads. Virtually every cent of that $800 million came out of employees'
pockets -- and virtually every cent went to the aid of Democrats and
Democratic priorities. Considering that 40 percent of union members
vote Republican, that is a strikingly unfair arrangement.
Paycheck-protection is grounded in the proposition that Thomas
Jefferson articulated in 1779: "To compel a man to furnish contributions
of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and
abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
Alas, paycheck-protection laws are no panacea.
Experiences in Washington State and California show that laws
intended to stop unions from spending forced dues on politics have been
vastly oversold. They have done little to reduce massive union
expenditures of mandatory dues on left-wing lobbying, Democratic
party-building, and soft-money "issues" ads designed to hurt
Republicans. Worst of all, they do nothing to curb the power of unions
to extract dues from dissenting members in the first place.
Washington. In 1992, voters approved Initiative 134, the nation's
first campaign-reform measure forbidding unions from automatically
deducting money from members in order to fund political action
committees. It also specified that paycheck deductions for political
purposes had to be renewed annually with an employee's written
authorization.
Conservative strategists routinely cite the dramatic impact that I-134
had on the teachers union in the Evergreen State. Before paycheck
protection was enacted, the Washington Education Association had been
billing 48,000 members $1 per month in order to support the union PAC.
After I-134 became law, however, the number of donors plummeted to
just 8,000. Remarkable, no?
Well, actually -- no. There was indeed a precipitous drop in the
number of public school employees who were willing to contribute to the
WEA's PAC once they had the option of refusing. But the rest of the
story demonstrates the limits of paycheck protection. Tell a union it
may not spend workers' money on political activity without written
permission and you merely invite it to recast those activities as
nonpolitical. The WEA rechristened its political action committee a
"Community Outreach Program" and -- poof! -- its I-134 problem was
gone. Between 1994 and 1996, the new program, which, like the former
PAC, was funded through a mandatory $1 payroll deduction, raked in
more than $1.2 million.
This diversionary tactic was eventually declared illegal, but only after a
costly legal battle by a group of courageous teachers willing to face down
their union. The union admitted laundering at least $319,000 of
"outreach" money into political operations. In a toothless settlement,
Washington state attorney general Christine Gregoire required the WEA
to pay $430,000 in fines, court costs, and a one-time rebate to members.
Incredibly, the settlement allowed the union to keep spending money on
politics as long as its "primary" purpose was not political.
California. Despite the emasculation of I-134 in Washington State,
paycheck protection advocates in California pushed a similar ballot
measure in 1998. On Election Day, a savage media campaign spearheaded
by the California Teachers Association paid off: 53 percent of the voters
rejected Proposition 226. But even if the ballot measure had won, little
would have changed. As in Washington state, the unions would have
found a loophole and continued their political operations as usual.
That's not an assumption. Proof emerged a few weeks after the election
when researcher Mike Antonucci, whose Education Intelligence Agency
covers the doings of teachers unions nationwide, dug up the 1998-99
budget of the California Teachers Association. Or rather, the two '98-'99
budgets -- the union had prepared one with the designation "226 wins"
and a second marked "226 loses."
The CTA had attacked Proposition 226 ferociously during the
campaign, describing paycheck-protection as "the biggest threat to
teachers and public education by far." But behind the scenes, the union
was far more sanguine. The amount it budgeted for the new fiscal year if
Proposition 226 failed was $97,394,400. The amount it planned to spend
if Proposition 226 passed was . . . $97,394,400. A difference of exactly
zero dollars and zero cents. The two budgets varied in only one respect.
The "226 fails" version allotted $7.1 million to the union's Initiative Fund
and political action committee. The "226 passes" budget shifted that $7.1
million into a new line item, the "Public Policy Center."
Taking a cue from their union brethren in Washington, the CTA was
planning to simply redefine its political activities as non-political
"outreach." The Public Policy Center's purpose would have been to
"engage in the development of public policies" -- i.e., politics -- and to
conduct "organizational outreach to other interested groups with common
goals and objectives to obtain visibility and coordinated advocacy."
Instead of giving money directly to left-wing candidates and campaigns,
that is, the CTA was planning to channel its members' money to other
liberal groups so that *they* could make the political contributions.
In short, Proposition 226 wouldn't have changed a thing. And neither,
we fear, would most paycheck-protection schemes -- including the new
measure in Utah. If history is any guide, Utahans will discover, eight or
nine months down the road, that union dues are still being siphoned off to
fund Big Labor's favorite political causes -- paycheck-protection
notwithstanding.
Paycheck-protection schemes are well-intentioned but, like Beck, do
nothing to address the fundamental injustice of the union shop -- the fact
that federal law allows unions to coerce dues out of nonmembers (or
unwilling members) in the first place. With hundreds of millions of
dollars and vast amounts of political clout at stake, unions will always be
able to find a way to divert workers' money into politics.
To meet President Bush's demand that paycheck protection be
included in any campaign-finance bill sent to him, the McCain-Feingold
proposal now includes language purporting to enforce the Beck rule.
(Identical language appears in the House bill sponsored by
Represenatives Chris Shays and Martin Meehan.) But according to labor
law experts who have analyzed it, the new language actually undermines
Beck. For one thing, it would vest the sole power to enforce Beck rights
in the National Labor Relations Board, which has a long record of
hostility to workers trying to reduce the fees they are forced to pay to
unions. For another, it would sharply restrict the meaning of "political
activities." Unions would be barred from using nonmembers' compulsory
dues to support candidates in an election, but they would be perfectly
free to use those dues to lobby for judicial and executive branch
appointments, to campaign for and against ballot measures, and to
proselytize on a host of political and ideological issues.
In short, more regulation will simply make things worse -- which is
usually what usually happens with campaign finance "reforms."
Real paycheck protection is not about permission slips and the
definition of "political." It's about ending compulsory unionism and
preventing labor bosses from raiding workers' paychecks in the first
place. Employees who wish to join unions should always be free to do
so, but no one should have to tithe to a union -- or any other organization
-- as a condition of keeping his job. President Bush ought to follow up
his modest executive order with something much more substantial: a
serious push for a national right-to-work law that would make union
membership voluntary for every worker in America. At the end of the
day, that is the only way to guarantee that no employee will ever have to
subsidize union politics against his will. Until such a guarantee is the law
of the land, Americans' paychecks will remain unprotected.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe. Michelle Malkin's
column is distributed nationally through Creator's Syndicate.)
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