Thirty-six years after his unsuccessful run for president, George McGovern attracted attention late last year for breaking with most Democrats on legislation dubbed the Employee Free Choice Act. George Leef, director of research for the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, says McGovern deserves applause for opposing the bill. Leef discussed the issue with Donna Martinez for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)
Martinez: What in the world has George McGovern so exorcised that he’s written an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal?
Leef: There is a piece of legislation that Big Labor has been pushing for quite a few years, and [it] stands a good chance of being passed in the future, I’m afraid. What this piece of legislation does is to enshrine in law the obligation of employers to recognize and bargain with labor unions based solely on a showing by the union that a majority of workers have signed a card saying that they would like the union to be their representative. Currently, employers do not have to recognize and bargain with a union until there has been an election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board in which both sides get to make their case for and against unionization, and the workers vote in secret, having had some time to digest all the pros and cons. This would undercut, would overturn that. Employers would no longer be able to say, look, I insist, I’m not going to bargain until I have seen that most of the majority of workers in fact vote in a secret ballot action for this union.
Martinez: Sen. McGovern opposes this.
Leef: McGovern opposes this. He says it’s just rife with the prospect of coercion, dissimulation, and he thinks that workers ought to have the freedom to vote in a secret election, and [he] is unhappy with the fact that most of the members of his party are pushing this bill because it’s going to make union organizing easier, and that will mean more union workers. And that’ll mean more dues flowing to the treasury of unions, which spend a lot of that money to support the Democratic Party.
Martinez: Now George, your interest in unions is well known. You, in fact, wrote a book about the union movement. Explain a little more why you agree with Sen. McGovern that this legislation is bad for America.
Leef: Well, this is a bad piece of legislation. I actually disagree with Senator McGovern in that he thinks the status quo is okay. I think the status quo is not okay. The labor law we now have is already tilted in the direction of unions and, if anything, what we need to do is repeal all of the current labor statutes and simply go back to the time when the law of the land with regard to labor unions was the same as the law of the land with respect to other organizations – you have to respect private property, you abide by contracts, no one should be compelled to be a member of anything or negotiate with anything against his will. That was the rule back before these labor statutes were passed in the 1930s.
Martinez: Are you referring to the National Labor Relations Act?
Leef: The National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935 and it enshrined in law the very authoritarian set of rules we have today. But let’s not make things worse, and there is where I agree with Senator McGovern.
Martinez: Tell us about the union movement in this country. Is it growing? Is it declining?
Leef: Yes and no. As far as the private sector goes, unions have been in decline ever seen about 1954 when the union membership peaked out at something like 36 percent of the private sector labor force. It’s now down to under 8 percent. There is a very good reason for that. As the economy has become more and more competitive, and also as more and more employers realize it’s in their interest to keep their workers well paid and happy, there has been a decrease in interest in unionization. Now the other part of the answer though is yes, in the public sector, more and more workers are unionizing in the public sector where there is no competition, and in fact what they’re organizing against is not the employer but against the taxpayer.
Martinez: Let’s talk about North Carolina. What is the law in North Carolina?
Leef: North Carolina, of course, is subject to the National Labor Relations Act, but we have passed – going back to 1948 – a statute, a right-to-work statute, which allows workers who don’t want union representation to keep their jobs and still not pay the union dues. In states that don’t have to right-to-work laws, what the union will always do is negotiate a deal with the employer that says, if a worker doesn’t pay his dues, he must be fired. Under a right-to-work law such as we have, the worker can say, “I’m not paying my dues and I can’t be fired.”
Martinez: Is there a push in North Carolina for unionization?
Leef: Oh, yes. The labor movement is active here, and they’re trying to undercut the right-to-work statute, and if they’ve got enough friendly faces in the legislature, I’m sure they would try to repeal that statute.
Martinez: In fact, I think months ago I recall a situation in the City of Raleigh where we had a union that was pushing to try to get more members, and it ended up in a situation with the City Raleigh, and some workers came off the job and were protesting. Do you recall that? Is that an example of how they try to gain more members?
Leef: Yes. Their tactic is always to entice people into unionization with the promise that it’s going to make things so, so much better. Well, about the only opportunity they have to make things much better for workers is when they don’t have competition, as in municipal employment. Workers in most fields – given the intense competition in the global economy – most companies, there is no room for any great improvement. Workers are paid based on their productivity and they can’t be paid a whole lot more without becoming unprofitable and the company going out of business. But with municipal workers, there is no bottom line except for how much you can squeeze out of the taxpayers. So yes, that’s where unions have been growing. They keep pushing for more and more unionization amongst workers at the federal, state and local level. And if it weren’t for that growth, the union movement would be flat on its back.