The Democratic candidates and a pro-labor agenda

Here is a seven-point agenda for labor proposed by a Seattle labor attorney.

1. Enact the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The EFCA would enshrine the principle of majority signup instead of allowing employers to force an election where threats can be more successful, and increase penalties for firing pro-union employees.
2. Enact the Re-Empowerment of Skilled and Professional Employees and Construction Trade Workers (RESPECT) Act. This law would reverse some particularly egregious recent decisions by the NLRB on who are unprotected “supervisors” unprotected by labor laws.
3. Equalize union access to unorganized workers at the workplace during organizing campaigns. According to a recent study, 91 percent of employers force employees to attend anti-union meetings one-on-one with supervisors. Unions, on the other hand, have no access to unorganized workers.
4. Insist on labor standards in future trade agreements, and work to modify or alleviate the impact of existing agreements. Fixing the existing trade agreements and making sure that any new ones are both worker and environment-friendly, has to be on any labor agenda for 2008.
5. Extend collective bargaining rights to supervisors. According to the U.S. General Accounting Office, as far back as 2002, there were more than 8.6 million private-sector "first-line" supervisors, not much different from "leads" or "foremen," all of whom are currently denied the right to engage in collective bargaining.
6. Repeal section 14(b), the so-called "Right-to-Work" provision of the NLRA. Under the original terms of the NLRA, unions were permitted to require all represented employees to pay their "fair share" of the cost of that representation. This was changed in 1947, over President Truman's veto, and 22 states have since become “Right-to-Work” states by declaring such contracts unlawful. This has been a major impediment to unionization in those states.
7. Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act's ban on "secondary boycotts." A secondary boycott is an attempt by a union to convince others to stop doing business with a particular firm doing business with the employer – e.g., the California farmworkers who are not covered by the NLRA asking consumers to boycott grocery chains who are customers of the workers’ employers.

Democratic candidates basking in their newfound ability to coax big money out of not only online hoi polloi but also corporate-affiliated donors will be presented with a challenge by some of these points. Arguably, they should throw caution to the winds, endorse all of these provisions flat-out, and jeopardize the big-donor money. That would certainly gratify the Democratic base, and I would not be surprised if Edwards does this. Kos and other progressive bloggers would argue, not implausibly, that the strength of the commitment to a set of progressive values actually will appeal to many fence-sitting voters who have been turned off by the apparent weakness shown by split-the-difference "triangulation."

I suspect, however, that the front-runners, Clinton and Obama, will believe it necessary in the real world scenarios to walk a little more carefully here. How can they do it – i.e., have their cake and eat most of it, too? First, all at the philosophical level, Democrats need to stress the progressives' bible – that growing inequality is a troublesome development that not only threatens the health of our society generally, but is also a terrible drag on the long-term strength of our economy. Strengthening the ability of workers to fend for themselves by reducing union-busting (and maintaining a fair minimum wage) is important for American business, too, even if the short-sighted ones sometimes focus on the short-term benefit of keeping wages low.

As to putting flesh into this position, the EFCA is a no-brainer by now, an expected position of all Democrats that has handily passed the House. Clinton and Obama have unequivocally supported it ( I think Clinton has sponsored it.) This should not lose big-time donations from those potential wealthy cross-overs disillusioned by the disarray of the right-wing-dominated Republican Party.

As to next four points, moderate-leaning Democrats can support these while maintaining a business-friendly posture by carving out a stance of reversing the damage done by the George Bush administration, essentially taking us back to the status quo when the country was thriving.

The final two, eliminating the “right-to-work” provision and prohibition of secondary boycotts from the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, would be fundamental changes in the labor laws that have to be looked at as part of the wish list. Eliminating the so-called “right-to-work” provision would have a prayer with a period of Democrats successfully in power and a sustained PR campaign – emphasizing how unfair it is for workers to “free-ride” on the benefits obtained by a union voted in by the majority, and that its purpose really has nothing to do with protecting the First Amendment rights of dissident workers – these are taken care of by the worker’s right to speak and vote against representation, plus the right not to pay for political activity by the union – but is nothing more than a union-busting provision when coupled with the inherent advantages a company has in subtly coercing employees to stay non-union. Still, 22 states have wedded themselves to “right-to-work” laws, and it would take sustained effort to weaken the hold they have in those states.

Changing the law on secondary boycotts – what could readily be described by opponents as coercion of a particular contract settlement by the union putting pressure on other companies that are customers of the employer -- would be more problematical, and maybe less necessary with the shift in power relationships that the first six would cause.

Given the practical difficulties these last two provisions would face, I would expect the front-running candidates to be more circumspect about them: essentially saying, they would not be high on their initial priority list (with the message for the big-time donors that we need to be careful about tilting the balance of power too far), but that they would encourage active study of them for the future.