Business Week Online, November 10, 2006, Friday

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Business Week Online

November 10, 2006 Friday

SECTION: TOP NEWS

HEADLINE: The Return of Workers' Rights?;
With Democrats now running the congressional show, labor groups who turned out the vote are primed for payback. How much will they get?

BYLINE: Moira Herbst

BODY:
This was the election that got Eileen Fonesca fired up. A clerk at a supermarket in Broomall, Pa., and a member of the United Food & Commercial Workers 1776, Fonesca knocked on doors, called voters, and carried signs supporting Democratic candidates.
Her motivation? "I'm doing this for others who are living on the minimum wage, my children, and for myself," said Fonesca, 55, who considers the future of Social Security at risk. "I find it hard to believe; I know too many people who are struggling. The government is endorsing tax breaks for the wealthy and sending jobs overseas. That is wrong."

Dividends for Foot Soldiers

Among U.S. workers, Fonesca is hardly alone in that view. This week, when a restive electorate snatched control of Congress from the GOP, hundreds of thousands of union members helped fuel the Democrats' turnout engine. Exit polls show that the nonunion vote was an even split for Democrats and Republicans, while 64% of union voters backed Democrats. Union membership may be declining, but come election time, their members are the Democrats' foot soldiers, just as evangelical Christians have long been loyal to Republicans. Given their efforts, organized labor will be looking for political payback from the Democrats they helped send to Washington.
However, just as unions have been burned before by their political friends -- think Bill Clinton's spirited push for NAFTA -- it's unclear what kind of dividend they can expect from the Congress that will convene next year. The agendas of the two umbrella labor groups -- the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition, representing more than 15 million workers -- involve increasing the federal minimum wage, reforming health care and Social Security, and stopping the hemorrhage of jobs to cheaper overseas labor markets [see BusinessWeek.com, 1/30/06, "The Future of Outsourcing"]. Yet the question remains: How beholden will Democrats be to Big Labor's agenda if union members seem to back them no matter what?
Not very, some experts contend. "Unions have had to reassess the likely benefits of even successful political action," says Cletus Daniel, a professor at Cornell University's Industrial & Labor Relations School. "A lot of people they've helped elect are not staunch advocates of workers' rights or trade unionism, or willing to take important political risks on their behalf."

Keeping Tabs

At the very least, labor leaders say, unions will be able to vacate the political desert of the last four years with a Republican-controlled White House and Congress. The Bush years, a friendly time for business, have included passage of CAFTA [the Central American Free Trade Agreement] and decisions by a hostile National Labor Relations Board, including a ruling that supervisory workers couldn't join unions.
"The victory for Democrats is certainly a victory for working Americans," says Greg Tarpinian, executive director of the Change to Win coalition, which represents 6 million workers in unions such as the SEIU and the Teamsters.
Still, he said, unions won't automatically throw their get-out-the-vote efforts behind Democrats in future elections. "Change to Win won't be rewarding those who push any basic policy anathema to workers," he said. "We'll be keeping tabs on who's with us and who's against us."

Labor Agenda

In the coming days, both Change to Win and the AFL-CIO will publicly roll out their agendas for the new legislative session. Both groups are pushing for a higher minimum wage -- which the likely next Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, vows to push. State voters also supported that idea, with higher minimum wages passed this week in all six states that had such a measure on the ballot.
Another item high on labor's wish list: the Employee Free Choice Act, which requires employers to recognize a union when a majority of workers sign authorization cards. Also known as "card check recognition," the organizing tool allows unions to forgo the election process, which gives employers more time to fight back or appeal the outcome.
Organized labor will also be looking to protect workers from the vicissitudes of globalization, which many blame for the loss of manufacturing and textile jobs across America. The trend toward exported manufacturing jobs and the rise of lower-paying service-sector jobs is unlikely to reverse, but union leaders hope they can slow it by preventing passage of free trade agreements with Peru and Vietnam and of presidential fast-track authority. Some in Congress also have plans to examine the corporate tax structure, which many labor leaders castigate as providing incentives to move jobs abroad [see BusinessWeek.com, 11/7/06, "What the Election Means for Business"].
But if the Democrats don't deliver on organized labor's wish list, where might workers turn? Unions and Republicans have had philosophical differences and frosty relations for decades, so for more influence, the unions are likely to keep building alliances among community and religious groups. But for now, union members are savoring the prospect of friendlier times for their ranks. Says Fonesca: "I'm ecstatic at the results." Democrats will hope she and other union members stay that way in the legislative battles to come.

URL: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/nov2006/db20061110_831393.htm