Mitt Romney - Unions
Summary
Governor Romney strongly opposes the Employee Free Choice Act known as Card Check. In 2006, he wrote an op-ed about the legislation, which he vetoed while Governor of Massachusetts. The law was passed by the subsequent Governor, resulting in the unionization of a charter school. Governor Romney states that the legislation tilts the playing field in favor of unions, robs workers of a secret ballot, and deprives management of the right to express its point of view.
In the economic section of his 2012 campaign website, Governor Romney states that one item he will seek to do is eliminate he corrosive effects of union bosses on productive companies.
Governor Romney made labor policy a central facet of economic plan for the 2012 presidency. In that plan, Governor Romney is very critical of President Obama's actions relating to labor. This includes stating that President Obama has acted to repay political allies, bailouts for union favor companies, and restrictions on stimulus funds. He has been specifically critical of the people President Obama has appointed to the National Labor Relations Board and hte actions taken by that body.
While supportive of people's rights to organize, Governor Romney is critical of actions taken by the Obama administration and the NLRB to make it easier to unionize workforces that may not want that organization. Governor Romney pledges to defend the free enterprise system by strongly opposing lawsuits such as the one the NLRB is pursuing against Boeing, to guarantee workers free choice by fighting the card check legislation, appoint NLRB members that abide by the rule of law, and call for a bill from Congress to prohibit spending money on politics that was collected as mandatory union dues.
Cautionary Tale of Card Check
On March 25, 2009 Governor Romney wrote an article for the Washington Times titled "Cautionary tale of card check ." In that article, he expresses his viewpoints on the Employee Free Choice Act.
ROMNEY: Cautionary tale of card check
In 2006, my last year as governor of Massachusetts, I vetoed a card-check bill that allowed public workers to organize if a majority signed union authorization cards as opposed to casting a traditional secret ballot. The veto was a gain for the rights of employees and employers to a fair election, but the victory was short-lived.
After I left office, organized labor had another run at replacing the secret ballot with a card check. With the support of Democrats in the legislature, that same bill I had vetoed was passed again in 2007 - and my Democratic successor signed it into law. What happened next is a cautionary tale for Congress as it moves toward a vote on national card-check legislation.
With this powerful new tool, for the first time ever in Massachusetts, a charter school was unionized. One reason so many parents want their children in charter schools is precisely because they operate free of union contracts, so that when administrators want to try something new, they can implement it quickly.
For this, charter schools are fiercely resented by teachers unions as a competitor to failing public schools. Charter schools use a merit system, rewarding teachers according to results in the classroom. They don’t have complicated work rules that smother creativity, nor are they burdened with termination rules that make it almost impossible to dismiss an incompetent teacher.
The union drive started last year when the American Federation of Teachers met with a small group of teachers from the Conservatory Lab Charter School in Boston. Throughout the summer, they worked behind the scenes to sign up a majority of the 20 teachers at the school. Administrators learned of the successful organizing effort only after the decision to unionize had been made. For parents who may have liked the idea of a union-free school, there was no chance to be heard.
Not surprisingly, the chairman of the school’s trustees is worried that a collective bargaining contract will be loaded with so many workplace restrictions that it will make it harder for the school to fulfill its mission to experiment with new ideas.
Unfortunately, these kinds of underhanded power plays are what we can expect across the nation if card check becomes the law of the land.
By tilting the playing field in favor of unions, card check not only robs workers of a secret ballot, it deprives management of the right to express its point of view. It will dramatically change the workplace as we know it, just as it’s beginning to do for charter schools in Massachusetts. Small businesses will have to hire labor lawyers and follow burdensome new rules. If the parties can’t agree on a contract, mandatory arbitration follows and employers that don’t yield to union demands will have contracts foisted on them.
All of this will raise costs, leading to more unemployment. The Labor Department reported that unemployment in February rose to 8.1 percent as American employers cut another 651,000 jobs. Unions are supposed to serve the interests of working people, yet in this case more power for the unions would help destroy many thousands of jobs throughout the economy.
Conservatives like me are opposed to card check, but not to unions. At their best, labor unions have always fought for the rights of workers, and generations of Americans have been better off for it. But the card-check proposal is not an example of unions at their best - it is a case of union organizers rewriting the rules at the expense of working people.
Its advocates claim that card check is a step forward for labor, as if workers should thank them for making unions less democratic. But anyone who would deny a worker’s right to vote on unionization by secret ballot is not advancing the cause of labor. They are just expanding the power of labor bosses. No one should be forced to publicly declare their intention before their employers and co-workers.
Leaders in the Democratic Party are eager to pay back the union bosses for their campaign support, even if it means selling out the American worker. Responsible members of Congress need to make it clear that Washington will not act to virtually impose unions on businesses. It is undemocratic, and it would devastate business formation and employment, worsening the present economic crisis.
By guarding against coercion and intimidation in the workplace, we can protect our economy from great harm, and secure the rights of employers and employees alike. The working people of America should be able to unionize the way their fathers and mothers did - by free choice and secret ballot.
Believe in America Plan
On September 6, 2011 Governor Romney proposed the Believe in America Plan as part of his 2012 Presidential campaign. Labor policy is prominently featured in that plan.
Labor Policy
- Appoint experienced and even-handed arbiters to the NLRB
- Guarantee businesses the right to allocate capital as they choose
- Protect right of workers to choose whether to unionize
- End funding of union political campaigns through paycheck deductions
Whatever economic troubles the United States is currently facing, we should never lose sight of our enormous advantages. One of the most significant is the productivity of the American worker. The United States vies for the world’s top spot in labor productivity (defined as the ratio of a unit of output to each input of labor). Equally significant is the high American rate of growth of labor productivity, a key engine of overall economic growth. Over time, American workers have been growing more efficient at a rate that sharply exceeds that of other developed countries. These achievements can be explained by a number of distinctive traits of the American workforce. Foremost among them is its flexibility, which allows for the rapid assimilation of new technology into production processes and equally rapid response to changing competitive pressure from abroad.
But the flexibility of the American workforce is under fresh assault. At a moment when we are locked in fierce competition with the rest of the globe, a force within—organized labor—is pressing for measures that would undermine our key competitive advantage.
Over the years, unions have made extraordinarily important contributions to American society. Many of the protections and benefits enjoyed by workers in the 21st century are the result of sacrifices and struggles and hard-won battles fought by unions in an earlier era. But today, the effects of unionization have changed in ways that need to be recognized. Too often, unions drive up costs and introduce rigidities that harm competitiveness and frustrate innovation.
The statistics tell an unkind story. Studies conducted by non-partisan scholars have shown that labor unions reduce investment and slow job growth. Compare the economic performance of states that have embraced Right-to- Work laws, under which workers cannot be compelled to pay union dues, with states that have retained more union-friendly policies. Over the past ten years, Right-to-Work states have added more than three million jobs, while the others have lost nearly a million. Or look at the fate of the manufacturing sector. It is commonly believed that American manufacturing jobs are disappearing, but the country actually has as many non-union manufacturing jobs as 35 years ago. Over the same time period, union manufacturing jobs declined by 75 percent. Perhaps it is numbers like these that explain why a majority of Americans say that labor unions “mostly hurt” the American economy. It could also explain why union membership in the private sector has declined from 36 percent in the 1950s to less than 7 percent today.
It is that membership decline that organized labor is struggling mightily to reverse. But the irony is that with workers now resisting unionization, labor bosses seeking to retain their power fight the very workers whom they purport to serve.
The Obama Approach: Bigger Labor
In the midst of an economic crisis, with 25 million people needing work, policies that strengthen the hand of labor unions at the expense of both businesses and workers are probably the last thing the country has needed. But President Obama, in political debt to labor leaders who have funneled union funds to the coffers of the Democratic Party and who are vital to his reelection bid, is willing and eager to press forward with Big Labor’s agenda. “We’re ready to play offense for organized labor” is what he proclaimed on the campaign trail in 2008. “It’s time we had a president who didn’t choke saying the word ‘union.’ A president who strengthens our unions by letting them do what they do best: organize our workers.”
REPAYING POLITICAL ALLIES
President Obama has been true to his word. The political alliance in which he is tied—and from which he received several hundred million dollars of support during his campaign—explains the panoply of destructive initiatives that his administration has backed.
Eliminating the Secret Ballot
“Card Check” was the top item on the union wish list, which is unsurprising, since it goes right to the heart of current union woes about declining membership. This change, strongly supported by President Obama, would have replaced the long-standing tradition of secret-ballot union elections with the public signing of a card—sometimes in the presence of a union agent, usually in the presence of union supporters. By compelling workers to make their choice in public, it opens the door for coercion and intimidation of those who do not see the advantages of paying union dues. The result would be more unionization, with all its attendant costs, at workplaces where a majority of employees might not actually want the involvement of a union.
Bailouts for Political Allies
In using borrowed funds and taxpayer money to bail out General Motors and Chrysler, the Obama administration dispensed special favors to organized labor. Part of this entailed preferential treatment of the United Auto Workers (UAW), at the expense of other stakeholders and creditors—incredibly, the UAW was given a majority ownership stake in Chrysler. And part of it entailed bestowing extraordinarily generous benefits on the autoworkers at a time when all other Americans were being asked to sacrifice. As the Washington Post noted at the time, the “concessions” that the Obama administration obtained from the UAW were not really concessions at all:
... union concessions were “painful” only by the peculiar standards of Big Three labor relations: At a time when some American workers are facing stiff pay cuts, UAW workers gave up their customary paid holiday on Easter Monday and their right to overtime pay after less than 40 hours per week. They still get health benefits that are far better than those received by many American families upon whose tax money GM jobs now depend. Ditto for UAW hourly wages ... . Cumbersome UAW work rules have only been tweaked.
An interest group was rewarded, but the long-term health of automakers was needlessly imperiled, and other business owners and investors were left to wonder whether they might face similar caprice at the hands of government.
Stimulus Funds Restricted
The list of administration favors for organized labor is long, with many of them granted behind the scenes. Two weeks before signing the $787 billion stimulus bill, President Obama issued an executive order “encouraging” all government agencies to use so-called Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) in construction contracting.
These PLAs would require any workers engaged on a project to become associated with a union. The effective result was to freeze out non-union workers—more than 80 percent of the construction workforce—from participation in many stimulus funded projects. It also guaranteed that projects would be more expensive and less efficient. At a time when the White House was purportedly seeking to unleash maximum resources to stimulate employment growth, this action put it at cross purposes with its professed commitment to creating the largest possible number of jobs. In the collision between President Obama’s narrow political interests and the interests of American workers, the latter lost.
A LABOR BOARD WITH AN AGENDA
President Obama also placed union-friendly lawyers in charge of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the agency responsible for enforcing labor laws. This in turn enabled the NLRB to intervene on behalf of unions in a variety of unprecedented and destructive ways.
Punishment for Job Creators
In April 2011 the NLRB joined with the International Association of Machinists to file suit against the aircraft manufacturer Boeing, America’s largest exporter, to prevent it from opening a new manufacturing facility in South Carolina, a Right-to-Work state. If the suit is successful, Boeing’s billion dollar investment in the state would be lost along with more than 1,000 new jobs. Whatever the disposition of the case, the threat of such litigation already serves as a powerful disincentive to investment in Right-to-Work states and blocks the free movement of capital to where it is most productive. Congress has proposed legislation to stop the NLRB from misapplying the law in this manner, but the White House has declared its opposition to the bill. The willingness of the Obama administration to manipulate the law in a manner without precedent heightens uncertainty for all investments.
Changing the Rules of the Game
The NLRB is also pressing for “snap” election rules that would tilt the balance decisively in favor of unions and against employers. Allowing for snap elections would give employers as little as ten days in which to organize a counter-campaign after union organizers formally filed a petition to vote. What this means in practice is that unions could spend a year or more campaigning before a formal petition was filed. With the ground thus prepared, the election would be called and employers would have virtually no time to explain to their workforce the downsides of unionization. Those downsides can be significant. As the labor union track record of recent decades shows, they can include the loss of one’s job when firms, saddled with high costs and restrictive work rules, begin to suffer losses, are unable to compete in the global economy, and ultimately fail.
OOO
President Obama’s labor policies have the cumulative effect of giving more power to union leaders in a way that is adverse not only to management but also to the very workers whom unions ostensibly exist to represent. At a moment of severe economic distress, they also amount to a formula for destroying jobs. It is not an accident that union membership has declined so sharply over recent decades. Indeed, that is itself an ironic by-product of Big Labor’s “victories” in collective bargaining. American job loss to global competition has been most intense precisely in those manufacturing industries where unions drove up costs and reduced flexibility, making American firms uncompetitive. Far from contributing to economic recovery, the Obama administration’s highly politicized labor policies have instead dampened business investment and made the employment climate worse. Overall, it is a familiar story from the annals of American politics: favors were given and favors were repaid, and the American people lost out in the transaction.
Mitt Romney’s Plan: Free Enterprise, Free Choice, and Free Speech
Mitt Romney, with his extensive experience in both business and government, has a keen understanding of labor relations. He recognizes, as he himself has written, that “[a]t their best, labor unions have always fought for the rights of workers, and generations of Americans have been better off for it.” But he also recognizes that the interests of union management can diverge from those of the very workers they purport to serve.
Defend the Free-Enterprise System
As president, Mitt Romney’s first step in improving labor policy will be to ensure that our labor laws create a stable and level playing field on which businesses can operate. This means he will appoint to the NLRB experienced individuals with a respect for the law and an even-handed approach to labor relations. Unlike President Obama’s appointees, they would not be former union officials with personal interests in promoting the agenda of their former employers. As they hire, businesses should not have to worry that a politicized federal agency will rewrite the rules of the employment game without warning and without regard for the law. Romney strongly opposes the NLRB’s decision to sue Boeing. It represents one of the worst federal intrusions into the marketplace in recent memory. Even General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, the chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, has sharply criticized the agency’s action, saying: “You’ve got a world-class, high-tech, job-creating force that’s coming into South Carolina. I just can’t think of one reason why we’d want to slow that down, not one.” As president, Romney will ensure that unaccountable government bureaucrats do not interfere in the job-creating investment decisions of the private sector—by making responsible appointments in the first place, and by supporting legislation to prevent any improper decisions an unaccountable agency might issue. At stake is the essence of the free-enterprise system.
Guarantee Workers Free Choice
At stake also are some of our basic freedoms. Mitt Romney believes in the right of workers to join a union or to not join a union. To exercise that right freely, workers must have access to all the relevant facts they need to make an informed decision. This means hearing from both the union about the potential benefits and from management about potential costs. This also means being able to act on that decision in the privacy of the ballot booth. It is for these reasons that Romney opposes measures such as “Card Check” and “snap” elections, which deprive workers of the basic democratic institutions of decision and control such as the secret ballot. By guarding against coercion and intimidation in the workplace, we can secure the rights of employers and employees alike and protect our economy from harm.
To that end, as president, Romney will submit to Congress legislation, similar to the Secret Ballot Protection Act, that would require the use of the secret ballot in all union elections regardless of the preference of the union, employees, or employer. A Romney administration’s NLRB appointees will repeal any rule implemented by the NLRB that distorted the law to accelerate the union election process. And a President Romney will support legislation mandating that all preelection campaigns last at least one month. Finally, Romney believes that Right to- Work legislation is the appropriate course for states, and he will use the bully pulpit of the presidency to encourage more states to move in that direction.
Protect Free Speech
Another basic freedom implicated by labor policy is freedom of speech. As matters currently stand, unions can take money directly from the paychecks of American workers and spend it on politicking—each election cycle, unions spend hundreds of millions of dollars. In non-Right-to-Work states, employees have little choice but to watch their money go toward such expenditures, even if they do not support the union and its political agenda. The result is the creation of an enormously powerful interest group whose influence is disproportionate to its actual support and whose priorities are fundamentally misaligned with those of businesses and workers—and thus with the needs of the economy.
As president, Mitt Romney will send Congress a bill prohibiting the use of mandatory union dues for political purposes. The practice is fundamentally inconsistent with democratic principles; there is no legitimate reason for employees to face automatic paycheck deductions for political expenditures that they may not support. The law should treat all potential collectors of political donations the same way: donations should always be freely and voluntarily given.
Respect the Rule of Law
In seeking to undo the damage wrought by the politically motivated decisions of the Obama administration, Mitt Romney will be keen not to mirror his predecessor’s mistakes. His appointees to the NLRB will be chosen for their willingness to apply the law as it is actually written, not as they wish it to be. He will reverse the harmful executive orders issued by President Obama, such as the order strongly encouraging the use of union labor on government projects. But he will not seek to impose his own vision for the future of labor law via executive fiat and bureaucratic subterfuge. Down that road lies only more instability in the law and uncertainty for businesses and workers. As president, Romney will take the conservative approach and work with Congress to amend the outdated portions of the existing statutory framework, setting it on a stronger footing appropriate to contemporary conditions.
OOO
Unlike President Obama, Mitt Romney believes in protecting the rights and freedoms of American workers. The primary objective of his labor policy is to empower workers and businesses so that they can get the economy growing again and put America’s millions of unemployed back to work.
Palmetto Freedom Forum
In August of 2011, Governor Romney participated in the Palmetto Freedom Forum. He was asked about unions and stated that he would support a national right to work law.
DEMINT: Mitt, thanks for being here. Let's start talking about unions. For me it's becoming one of the biggest issues that we're dealing with on the federal level because there's such an insidious relationship between unions and the Democrat Party.
The president and the Democrats are trying to expand government unions at the state and the federal level because of the political support that comes back and we seeing the difficulty at the state level to make the reforms and cut back because of the resistance of government unions.
Where are you on unions? And I'll put it in this context, there's a federal law right now that requires an American to join a union if their work place is unionized. It's only if your state opts out of that law that your people are free not to join a union.
And there are 22 states that have opted out, but there's still a federal law that requires Americans to join unions and we have legislation at the federal level to repeal that with a federal right to work law.
I understand that you've said that's a state issue and the federal government shouldn't be involved. But the federal government is involved because they have the law that requires that.
Where are you on the federal right to work? And what is your opinion about government unions at the federal and state level?
ROMNEY: First of all, what I said was if a right to work piece of legislation reached my desk at the federal level I would sign it.
DEMINT: OK.
ROMNEY: And the right course I believe politically at this stage is to have states carry out their own right to work legislation. And as you know, right to work states, those 22 have created three million jobs over the last 10 years. The union states have lost about half a million jobs. So right to work is the way to go if you want good jobs. That's number one.
Government unions -- and unions play an important role in our country and can be -- the Carpenter's union, for instance, trains their people in ways to provide good services when people want to compare in a fair basis, that's great.
When the government has people in unions, it presents a particular problem and there are a couple of ways it presents a problem in my view. When unions are allowed to collect money from members, and then one person, the chief executive of that union could give that to whichever candidate they want, that's simply a violation of the personal rights of that individual, and that shouldn't be allowed.
And number two, I really have the problem with the idea that one person is able to collect money from all their members and then give it to a party or an individual who that person made them be the one that decided on matters of legislation directing that union.
It's almost like a form of corruption. I've got all this money I'm going to elect the person to give me what I want. So the power of unions in influence elections is a real problem and the place I would address it is with legislation saying that individual union members may not have money taken out of their paycheck to go into funds, which can then be directed by an individual in a way that might be different than what they would have preferred themselves. That should not be allowed.
TEA Party Debate
In September of 2011, Governor Romney participated in the TEA party Presidential debate. He speaks briefly about his support for right-to-work laws and his opposition to the NLRB actions related to Boeing.
BLITZER: Governor Romney, you know Governor Perry as governor of Texas created more jobs in Texas than any other state.
ROMNEY: Terrific state, no question about that. Some wonderful things that Texas has going for it that the nation could learn from. zero income tax. That's a pretty good thing. Right to work state. Republican legislature, Republican supreme court.
By the way, a lot of oil as well.
We're an energy rich nation. We're living like an energy poor nation.
I spent my life in the private sector. I've competed with companies around the world. I've learned something about how it is that economies grow. It's not just simple wave a wand and everything gets better. No, you have to make some structural changes. The world has changed.
What's happened over the last 20, 30 years is we've gone from a pay phone world to a smartphone world and President Obama keeps jamming quarters into the pay phone thinking things are going to get better. It's not connected, Mr. President.
And if we're going to get this economy going, we've got seven, one, make our tax code competitive with the world. Two, get regulations to work to encourage enterprise. Three, to make sure we have trade policies that work for us not just for the other guys. Four is to have energy security in this country by developing our energy resources. Five so execute the rule of law, which is to stop the Boeing decision that the NLRB put in place. Six is to make sure that we have institutions that create fantastic human capital. And finally number seven is to balance the budget. People won't invest here unless they have confidence here. And that's what I'll do.
2012 Campaign Website Statements
ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS
Make America the most attractive place in the world to do business Today, more than ever, new businesses can choose where to form and existing ones can choose where to invest and hire. America has long been the most dynamic economy in the world, and we must not let our government change that. As President, Mitt Romney will:
- Lower taxes on businesses to keep America competitive in the global economy
- Slash bureaucratic red tape and place a hard cap on the impact that federal regulations can have on the economy
- Limit the corrosive influence of union bosses on productive businesses