Civil Rights ... Even at Work
Democrats &
Workers' Rights
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| Rights in the workplace? For most Democrats, the
issue is poison. Photo ©Michael Kaufman |
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For almost all Democrats, the issue of workers’ rights is poison.
Because Democrats continue to get significant support from organized
labor, they really don’t want to stand up and say they’re not for expanding
workers’ rights. On the other hand, they take in even more money from corporate
types, who get apoplectic at the mere suggestion of leveling the labor-management playing
field.
Democrats demonstrate their true attitude about workers’ rights by
failing in droves to sponsor and push through any legislation that would protect
workers’ rights to organize and strike (let alone have broader civil rights in the
workplace). There are some exceptions — Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone has sponsored a
labor law reform bill. Vermont Rep. Bernie Sanders has a comprehensive one. But then,
he’s not a Democrat.
Whenever there’s either a Republican president or a Republican
Congress in power, Democrats have a handy excuse for not supporting labor law reform:
"It’s just not politically feasible," they say to anyone who dares to bring
it up.
Things get stickier when Democrats control both Congress and the
Presidency, as they have twice in the past several decades. In the first few years of the
Carter administration,
Democrats did introduce a labor law reform bill. It was stopped by a
filibuster in the Senate. Carter quickly threw up his hands in resignation, relieved to be
off the hook.
The second time Democrats had to come face-to-face with the poisonous
issue was 1992-94, when Clinton was in office and Democrats again controlled Congress.
Clinton was even sneakier than Carter: He created a special commission to study the issue
of labor law reform, effectively tabling the whole ugly mess. The Dunlop Commission, named
for its chair, former Labor Secretary John Dunlop, listened to testimony from business and
labor people and much later, after everyone’s attention had drifted away, came out
with a set of recommendations that no one acted on. And it’s just as well: The
commission called for a variety of changes in the law to foster greater labor-management
cooperation — but almost nothing that would strengthen workers’ hand.
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