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The Biden administration has from day one shown that it will do Big Labor's bidding.
But what is that bidding exactly? In my latest series for @capitalresearch, I examine. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-1/
But what is that bidding exactly? In my latest series for @capitalresearch, I examine. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-1/
Driving workers from industries unions have found difficult to organize; coercive powers that were taken away from Big Labor in the mid-20th century after it abused them; and tightening of the “social justice unionism” alliance of labor and the Left. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-1/
Labor’s legislation to mandate recognition of unions using “card check” failed to advance during the Obama years. An aggressive campaign to protect workers’ secret ballot—by among others former Sen. George McGovern—made card check politically radioactive. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-1/
Adopting organized labor’s view of joint employment would throw every franchise agreement and contractor relationship into jeopardy the moment such legislation takes effect. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-1/
Workers seeking jobs in franchised fields, commonly short-term or entry-level work, would be forced to pay steep union initiation fees and forced dues. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-1/
As a general rule, employees have more rights enforceable against the person signing their paycheck than a contractor, but their employers have more power over their work processes and work product. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-2/
Application-based workers often contribute their own capital (like a contractor), set their own hours (like a contractor), and work for multiple application platforms, including those in direct competition (like a contractor). https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-2/
So, Big Labor and its allies have devised a way to evade this common-law distinction: The “A-B-C test.” It was most notably enacted through California’s (now substantially revised) AB 5 law. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-2/
The upshot of the A-B-C test is that any contractor using a platform would have to be classified as an employee of the platform because at the very least the platform’s “usual course of the business” is whatever work the worker is using it to facilitate.
And once the worker is classified as an employee, he or she is subject to unionization—including by a card-check agreement—with the attendant monopoly bargaining and union dues obligation. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-2/
After AB 5’s enactment, the repercussions came swiftly: Journalism outlets that had supported AB 5’s adoption cut their California-based paid freelancers. Uber and Lyft announced that without court relief they would have to cease operating in the state.
The Biden administration and Congressional Democrats’ PRO Act would likely kill application-based work platforms nationwide, putting workers out of work, and taking options from customers. Administration-connected industries would clamor for carve-outs.
In 1946, unions empowered to compel bargaining, secure that the permanent Democratic majorities were loyal to them, and lacking any unfair labor practices enforceable against them launched the largest strike wave in American history. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-2/
The consequences were clear: A recession, always a likely consequence of demobilization, was made worse. Strikes proved so destructive that President Harry Truman—a union man and New Dealer—had to threaten railroad unions with conscription into the Army. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-2/
The public response was wrath. The GOP-backed Taft-Hartley Act limited unions’ strike objectives, established rules that violations of which would be unfair labor practices by unions, and allowed states to ban “closed shops” that required employees to pay dues to a union.
the PRO Act would override two crucial limitations on union power in the law: It would mandate closed shops and the attendant forced dues nationwide, and it would legalize “secondary boycotts,” directly authorizing 1946-style disruptions of national life. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-2/
In 27 states that have a “right to work” law that applies to the private sector, as explicitly authorized by Taft-Hartley the “closed shop” is forbidden; compensation due a union for its monopoly representation of unwilling workers is that monopoly power. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-3/
For Big Labor, the closed shop debate is a simple one: They get more money from a closed shop than an open shop. By banning right-to-work, the PRO Act would make collecting forced dues easy for the Big Labor allies of the new administration and congressional leadership.
Due to the potential for disruption to the broader economy and for labor racketeering, Congress proscribed strikes and boycotts targeting “neutrals”: customers or other unrelated employers merely doing business with the employer disputing with the union. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-3/
Labor activists are frank about why they want secondary strike powers. Before he became a reporter for the “objective” Bloomberg News, labor organizer Josh Eidelson put it succinctly for the socialist website Working In These Times: “Secondary targets make for soft targets.”
In the early 2010s, the AFL-CIO hatched a plan to reinvigorate itself: formal partnerships, possibly including full AFL-CIO membership status, for left-progressive groups outside traditional labor. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-4/
While these formal link-ups never completed, Big Labor’s institutional and alumni-network linkages with the rest of the Left propagate an ideology sometimes called “social justice unionism.”
In social justice unionism, rather than focusing advocacy on members’ economic status or even broader social-democratic welfare-state policy, the union movement aligns with full-spectrum liberalism to an even greater degree than that normally indicated by coalition politics.
With a Big Labor ascendancy in the government and conservatives debating among themselves the merits and consequences of becoming a supposed “workers’ party,” coming to terms with the organized labor agenda is crucial. https://capitalresearch.org/article/core-issues-in-labor-policy-part-4/
Knowing that the power to destroy civic life and ruin the economy would give Big Labor and its left-wing allies a chokehold on the nation, unions demand removal of important checks on their institutional power. And they are an ally of the full-spectrum “woke” Left.
Fodder here for @varadmehta @decunningham2 @RightToWork @FreedomFdtn @AkashJC @ltthompso @Inst4AW @ceidotorg
