Will Unions Clean Up in 2008 Elections? (THE PATRIOT EMPLOYER ACT & repeal right to work)

[Omaha Steve]

I'm shocked a business publication was this open on the subject. But it is slanted on the company side.

http://www.americanlaundrynews.com/article.cfm?articleID=17890

Dr. Woodruff Imberman , Imberman & DeForest
Published 06/11/2008 - 8:00 a.m. CT


Editor’s Note: This story was written prior to Hillary Clinton’s decision on Saturday to suspend her campaign and throw her support behind fellow Democrat Barack Obama.

Presidential candidates are talking big on foreign policy and the Middle East; budget deficits, taxation, government spending, healthcare, global warming and free trade, but saying little about pending legislation that would upend labor laws and greatly ease union organizing efforts.


Student groups, local union members and labor supporters joined UNITE reps and ex-Cintas Corp. workers in April 2003 in protesting at four Chicago Starbucks locations that used Cintas services. (American Laundry News file photo)


The proposed laws should interest commercial laundries, uniform suppliers and drycleaners, who had 23 representation elections last year under the current system, according to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The likely candidates differ markedly on current labor laws and unions. Organized labor’s future will depend on who wins in November — the Republican (almost assuredly John McCain, R-Ariz.) or the Democrat (Barack Obama, D-Ill., or Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.). Let’s take a look at their positions on labor:

snip:

THE PATRIOT EMPLOYER ACT

Both Democratic candidates have also supported additional legislation called the Patriot Employer Act.

Less publicized than the former law, this one calls for “Patriot” employers to be neutral in any union organizing effort, which means there is no company campaigning should a union file a petition for an election, even under current laws!

Other provisions call for limiting executive pay while hiking employee pay levels, boosting company contributions to employee medical insurance, and making a minimum contribution of 5% of the total payroll to a portable pension fund for workers.

Yet another requirement is to have not been in violation of any federal regulations, including “those relating to … labor relations … or any other regulations to be specified by the Secretary of Commerce” — a rather open-ended mandate!

Patriot employers would receive a 5% tax rate reduction and preferential treatment for government contracts. “Non-patriot” companies would pay U.S. tax on profits earned at foreign subsidiaries, rather than the taxes of the host country where they were earned. Since the U.S. corporate tax rate is 35% — higher than most other countries’ — this would result in a large tax increase for what might be termed “unpatriotic” companies.

RIGHT-TO-WORK LAW TO BE RESCINDED?

Unions have a long wish list. Although little has been said publicly, union leaders are hoping to repeal section 14(b), the right-to-work provision of the 1948 Taft-Hartley Act (which amended the original Wagner Act of 1935). Perennial candidate Ralph Nader has already advocated this.

The Taft-Hartley Act allows states to outlaw the “union shop” in which employees at unionized workplaces are required to be members of the union as a condition of employment.

Over the years, 22 states have used this provision to pass right-to-work laws. An employee cannot be compelled to join or pay the equivalent of dues to a union, nor can a worker be fired if he or she chooses not to join a union.

Right-to-work laws create the so-called “free riders” — nonunion employees who benefit from collective bargaining without paying union dues. This distinction reduces the amount of dues a union collects, making it less attractive for them to organize in these 22 states.

In right-to-work states as a whole, the only nonpartisan estimate of free riders — determined by professor Russell Sobel of West Virginia University by analyzing population surveys for the years 1989 and 1991 in the then 21 right-to-work states — ranges from 11% to 20%.


FULL story at link.