[csusbpeace] Republicans want working-class voters — without actually supporting workers

From: "raccoon" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ("bigraccoon1")
To: "CSUSBPEACE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <CSUSBPEACE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 06:48:06 -0700

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/25/republicans-working-class-voter-unions-worker-protections-organize?utm_term=6357c8bcf677460d08b8116d22e5f490&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUS_email

Republicans want working-class voters — without actually supporting workers

An Amazon Labor Union organizer greets workers outside Amazon’s LDJ5
sortation center, in Staten Island, New York City, 25 April 2022. Photograph:
Brendan McDermid/Reuters

After years of struggle, America’s labor unions enjoy greater public approval
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/30/americans-support-labor-unions-highest-60-years>
than at any time in more than 50 years. Yet even as the Republican party
seeks to rebrand
<https://www.npr.org/2021/04/13/986549868/top-republicans-work-to-rebrand-gop-as-party-of-working-class>
itself as the party of the working class
<https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/gop-memo-bearhugs-trump-in-bid-for-working-class-voters>,
its lawmakers, by and large, remain as hostile as ever toward organized
labor. It doesn’t look like that situation is about to change.

With the midterm elections approaching, and many polls indicating that the
Republicans will win control of the House, nearly all Republican lawmakers in
Congress oppose proposals that would make it easier to unionize. One hundred
and eleven Republican House members and 21 senators are co-sponsoring a bill
that would weaken unions by letting workers in all 50 states opt out
<https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1275/cosponsors?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22National+Right+to+Work+Act%22%2C%22National%22%2C%22Right%22%2C%22to%22%2C%22Work%22%2C%22Act%22%5D%7D&r=1&s=1>
of paying any fees to the unions that represent them. And at a time when
many young workers – among them, Starbucks workers, Apple store workers,
museum workers, grad students – are flocking into unions, Republican
lawmakers often deride unions as woke, leftwing and obsolete.

Congressional Democrats – seeing the surge in unionization drives along with
the aggressive anti-union campaigns by Starbucks, Amazon and other companies
– say there is increased urgency to enact the Protecting the Right to
Organize Act
<https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/842/actions>(PRO
Act), which would make it easier for workers to unionize. The PRO Act passed
the House last year
<https://www.npr.org/2021/03/09/975259434/house-democrats-pass-bill-that-would-protect-worker-organizing-efforts>
– with 205 Republicans voting against and five in favor
<https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202170> – but it faces an uphill battle in the
Senate, largely because of a GOP filibuster, and will almost certainly fail
to pass if Republicans gain Senate seats in the midterms.

The PRO Act remains the Democrats’ overwhelming legislative priority for
helping unions – it would, among other things, ban employers’ captive
audience meetings and create substantial penalties for corporations that
break the law when fighting unionization. Republicans denounce the
legislation, vigorously opposing a provision that would override the
right-to-work laws enacted in 27 states, laws that allow workers to opt out
of paying union dues. The Senate Republicans’ policy committee has slammed
the PRO Act
<https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/the-pro-act-bad-for-workers-bad-for-businesses>,
saying it would undermine worker freedom, “heavily tilt the scales in favor
of labor” and “curb workers’ choices, threaten jobs, and increase costs on
employers.”

It wasn’t always this way. Two decades ago, there were 30 union-friendly
Republicans in the House, but that number has dwindled to a handful, partly
because many of the party’s billionaire and corporate donors frown on
pro-union Republicans. These donors see unions as bothersome institutions
that favor Democrats and reduce corporate profits. Indeed, many Republican
lawmakers treat unions and their leaders as enemies.

Virginia Foxx, the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor
Committee, scoffed at the idea that there is a union resurgence and said
Democrats “are in the pocket of Big Labor.” “Unions are hitting the panic
button and praying that Democrats can gin up a PR campaign to cover up the
declining numbers and lack of interest in union membership,” Foxx told the
Guardian, noting that union membership has sunk to just 6% of the
private-sector workforce. Foxx, who often serves as Congress’ chief
spokesperson on labor matters, belittled unions’ recent gains, saying that
only a tiny percentage of Starbucks
<https://www.theguardian.com/business/starbucks> and Apple stores have been
unionized.

Foxx, a nine-term House member from North Carolina, said: “If Democrats
genuinely believe that union popularity is soaring and that union campaigns
and strikes are resonating with American workers, then they truly have a
tortured relationship with both math and reality.”

Even as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reported a 53% jump over
the past year in the number of workplace petitions for union elections, Foxx
and many other Republicans are backing bills that would make it harder to
unionize. With corporations prohibiting union organizers from setting foot on
company property to speak with workers, unions rely on NLRB rules requiring
employers to give them workers’ home addresses, phone numbers and email
addresses so they can communicate with them. But the Employee Privacy
Protection Act, a Republican-sponsored bill re-introduced last March, shortly
after the recent union surge began, would limit unions to obtaining just one
of those three ways to contact workers. Foxx said workers should “never have
to hand over their personal contact information” to “a union to which they
object.”

Bill Samuel, legislative director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main union
federation, said he has seen no sign of Republicans warming up to unions
despite their increased popularity – 71% of Americans approve of unions
<https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-highest-point-1965.aspx>.
“I haven’t seen any change” among Republicans, Samuel said. “There’s been no
outreach. We haven’t been getting calls from Republicans asking, How can we
help workers organize?”

Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the House education and
labor committee, agreed, adding: “Republicans are pretty much as hostile as
ever toward unions – pretty much down the line.”

Scott said Democrats should rush to enact the PRO Act in light of the many
daunting obstacles that workers face in seeking to unionize at Starbucks,
Amazon <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/amazon> and other companies
due to intense corporate opposition and a flurry of alleged illegalities by
management. In Scott’s view, especially important is a provision that would
for the first time allow the NLRB to impose substantial fines against
companies that violate the law when battling union drives. “The biggest
improvement we need is to have some meaningful sanctions for unfair labor
practices,” Scott said. “Right now, there is no meaningful deterrent.”

Oren Cass, executive director of American Compass, a thinktank for
conservative economics, said that many Republicans have grown more interested
in worker issues. Cass acknowledged, however, that most Republican lawmakers
remain hostile to organized labor because “unions are predominantly financing
mechanisms for the Democratic party.”

He said some Republicans are open to the idea of increasing worker power, but
only if it’s done largely outside the framework of traditional unions.
Nevertheless, whether with or without unions, hardly any Republicans are
pushing to expand worker power – an idea that would irk corporate
Republicans. Many GOP lawmakers instead emphasize worker choice and worker
freedom – part of their decades-long effort to enact state right-to-work laws
that allow workers to opt out of paying any dues or fees to the unions that
represent them.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Representative Joe Wilson
<https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/dr-rand-paul-reintroduces-national-right-work-act>
of South Carolina are co-sponsoring the National Right to Work Act <>, which
would let workers in all 50 states opt out of union dues. Wilson told the
Guardian that the bill would “eliminate forced-dues clauses” and “allow
workers to choose for themselves”. He said Joe Biden and the Democrats were
on “a mission to force unionization” on “workers by eliminating employee
choice”. Senator Paul said their bill would “put bargaining power where it
belongs <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYxai0Tt7XY>, in the hands of
American workers”. Unions assert, however, that workers have far more
bargaining power by bargaining collectively, rather than as individuals.

Cass, who worked in Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, supports steps
to give workers more power and said it’s a good time for Republicans to push
to increase worker power. Their “constituents are significantly and
increasingly working class”, Cass noted, adding that Republicans might be
more willing to distance themselves from corporations now that more business
executives “are on the other side”, having endorsed Democrats.

For years, most Republicans lawmakers have opposed any increase in the NLRB’s
budget; that agency oversees private-sector union elections and cracks down
on employers that break the law in fighting unions. The labor board’s budget
hasn’t increased since 2014, a budget freeze that has angered union leaders
because they say it hampers the board’s ability to move quickly against
law-breaking, anti-union employers.

“The NLRB has been flat-funded for a long time,” said Scott, chair of the
House labor committee. “With the popularity of unions increasing, the work of
the NLRB has increased. In order to get their work done, the board needs
significant increases in funding.”

But Foxx called increasing NLRB funding “an inherently stupid idea”
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/17/us-labor-agency-union-activity>,
asserting that the labor board tilts in favor of unions, just as Democrats
asserted that President Trump’s labor board was far too anti-union.

The AFL-CIO’s Samuel voiced dismay that many Republicans seem implacably
opposed to anything that would help unions expand. “All this,” Samuel said,
“illustrates their hostility to make it easier for workers to enjoy what is
supposed to be their basic right under the law: to come together to form a
union.”

[csusbpeace] Republicans want working-class voters — without actually supporting workers

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