Radical Right Reality Check

Why are North Carolina public officials in league with the extreme right on the treatment of workers?

President Obama may yet accomplish his goal of ratcheting down the levels of partisanship and attack politics Washington, but for now it's clear that he has a lot of work to do. Rather than rallying to a position of support and loyal opposition - as one might have expected during a time of profound economic crisis - the ideological right has instead gone on a rabid, all-out assault against the President and his centrist policy agenda.

Whether it's Obama's middle-of-the-road economic stimulus package (a plan that has left many progressive advocates and analysts disappointed due to its gentle treatment of big business and the rich) or his modest efforts to pull back on some of the Bush administration's most egregious assaults against the environment or human rights, the radical right has launched low blow after low blow in recent weeks - often using extreme, apocalyptic language.

A classic case in point is the hysteria that some have been attempting to whip up around labor unions and the possibility that Congress may consider legislation that could lower some of the enormous, built-in barriers to union membership in current federal law.

You can't make this stuff up

To read and hear some of the comically over-the-top rants of the local market fundamentalists and employer groups, you'd think that North Carolina (a state with only a handful of union members in which "the right to work" is the law of the land and it is illegal for public employees to collectively bargain), was considering the abolition of capitalism.

Check out, for instance, the embarrassingly absurd "Save My Ballot Tour" recently "launched" by the group Americans for Prosperity. During the coming week, the group will hold a pair of "grassroots luncheons" headlined by a pair of corporatist lawmakers, Congressman Howard Coble and Senator Richard Burr. The objective of these events: to attack and defeat the American labor movement's modest attempt to un-tilt the playing field when it comes to how people join unions - a bill known as the Employee Free Choice Act (or EFCA).

EFCA would allow workers to have somewhat more of a say over the process that governs whether a union is recognized in a particular workplace (more on this below).  According to AFP, however, EFCA is a diabolical assault on "workers' rights" - though they never seem to mention why all of the opposition is underwritten by a network of large employers.

Not surprisingly, the Burr-Coble efforts will be coordinated with the actions of other local conservative groups. On Monday, the Locke Foundation will host one of its "Shaftesbury Society" luncheons at which the President of AFP will hold forth. The title of his presentation: "Stimulus and Card Check, the two biggest threats to our prosperity, and what the grassroots can do about it ["Card Check" is the right's talking point shorthand for the Employee Free Choice Act].

Meanwhile, Raleigh's other far right think tank, the Pope Civitas Institute, has been busy releasing anti-EFCA polling "results" in which respondents are asked "neutral" questions like: "Would you be more or less likely to re-elect a United States Senator who supports eliminating secret ballot elections for union workers?" 

These efforts come on top of the full court pressed launched by the North Carolina Chamber, which claims that "Perhaps no piece of legislation in recent history has been as big a threat to American competitiveness or jobs in our state than the card check bill."

Tax dollars supporting the far right?

While hysteria from private, far right interest groups is to be expected whenever the subject is unions, what's been particularly disturbing in the current debate is the active participation in the anti-EFCA campaign of several state and local governmental units. According to the Chamber, the group has formed a coalition that it calls "North Carolinians to Preserve Employee Choice." Among the members listed in this group are the North Carolina League of Municipalities, the North Carolina School Boards Association, and the North Carolina Sheriffs Association.

Of course, several other public and publicly funded entities have long since endorsed the Chamber's anti-union policy agenda by virtue of their participation as "cornerstone" funders of the arch-conservative business group. This list includes such public, and/or taxpayer owned or subsidized organizations as North Carolina's Electric Cooperatives, N.C. State University, the North Carolina Ports Authority, Rex Healthcare, and Western Carolina University.

The irony in all of this, of course, is that it is the far right that has for decades espoused strong opposition to the participation of publicly funded entities on one side or another in political debates. Just last year, it was the market fundamentalist groups that fought against the right of North Carolina counties to explain to voters the beneficial impact that real estate transfer taxes could have in underwriting the cost of essential services.

Now, in an act of apparently shameless hypocrisy, it is the far right that works in concert with an array of misguided government entities and other taxpayer supported institutions to lobby on an important matter public debate.   

Reality check on the Employee Free Choice Act

The object of all of this far right panic is a proposal that is as innocuous (and ought to be as non-controversial) as its title. The Employee Free Choice Act is a simple and straightforward attempt to ease somewhat the longstanding anti-union bias in federal labor relations law.

Under current law, the process under which a union is recognized in a particular workplace is, in practice, controlled by the employer. While EFCA opponents attempt to characterize the current situation as being about "free elections" and "secret ballots" - some have even had the audacity to invoke the Civil Rights movement - the truth is quite different.

In the real world, union organizing campaigns in most workplaces are met by harassment and intimidation from the word "go." Employers hire "union avoidance" specialists who help them to push and bend every rule - most of which carry minuscule fines and other slaps on the wrist for those who cross the line that can be readily dismissed as "the cost of doing business."

The objective of EFCA is to readjust this dynamic by placing the control over forming a union (i.e. an employee organization) in the hands of, of all people, the employees. It would do this in three main ways:

1. By guaranteeing that if a majority of workers wants a union, they can have one, allowing them to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation;
2. By providing mediation and arbitration for first contract disputes; and
3. By establishing stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first contract negotiations.

That's basically it - no new world order; no effort to undermine private enterprise and make America "uncompetitive"; and no repeal of "right to work" laws. All EFCA amounts to is an uncomplicated attempt to give more American workers (a huge percentage of whom say they would join a union if they could) the right to do so.

Here in North Carolina, where our unemployment is already higher and wages lower than in many northern states with much higher union membership, it's hard to understand just exactly how it is that this would be such a bad thing.

And it's also hard to understand how it is that taxpayer dollars can lawfully be funneled to oppose such an effort. Could it be that EFCA opponents are simply engaging in the same brand of "ends-justify-the-means," rule-bending attacks that so often characterize anti-union campaigns? If so, it provides conclusive evidence of the need for real and swift change - both in the American workplace and the American world of policymaking.       

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 9:26 am and is filed under Radical Right Reality Check. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.