3-25-09, 9:48 am
In what amounted to little more than a cowardly flip-flop, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (R), yesterday (Mar. 24) announced he would side with big banks and corporations like Citigroup and Wal-Mart against working Americans. He announced he would help Senate Republicans filibuster the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would remove barriers to unionization.
Although Specter had co-sponsored the bill when it was introduced in 2004 and voted for it in 2007, he caved to pressure from anti-worker right-wing groups that threatened to finance an expensive primary challenge against him in 2010.
Specter claimed his new-found opposition to bill lay elsewhere, however. The economic downturn makes 'this a particularly bad time to enact employee’s choice legislation,' he inexplicably claimed. Specter indicated also that he doesn't have the courage to be the lone Republican voting against a filibuster. After voting for the president's economic stimulus package in February, to the seething anger of pundits, ideologues and special interest groups around his party, Specter apparently felt too much heat to cast a second vote in favor of working families.
Specter's 'recession' excuse
But is Specter's 'economic recession' excuse for opposing legislation that would favor working families correct? In a time with sinking wages and disappearing job security, doesn't unionization seem like the best way to boost wages and compensation and keep people at work?
According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), unions have little impact on whether companies decide to close their operations. In a recent report, EPI analyst John DiNardo wrote, 'the organized business lobby has been drumming up fears that enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act would kill jobs by forcing more employers out of business. That claim is not borne out by historical data or existing credible research.' In fact, the evidence reveals that 'American employers as a group need not fear firm insolvency as a result of granting workers rights to collective bargaining.'
Indeed, history reveals the 'recession' excuse to be false. The passage of expansive workers rights in the mid-1930s – in the middle of the Great Depression – accompanied high economic growth rates in the late 1930s and the 1940s. High rates of unionization between World War II and the early 1970s – about 30 to 35 percent of all workers – coincided with the most sustained economic growth period in US history.
Only when union density began to decline in the early 1980s with the Reagan administration's harsh anti-union policies, did working Americans begin to see a divergence between high productivity and wage growth. By the 2000s, productivity continued to grow but workers' compensation actually fell for the first time in American history during a so-called recovery. The rate of unionization in the private sector stood at about eight percent – the lowest since before the Great Depression.
Stagnant wages in the recent period actually helped to worsen the current recession by ensuring that working families had little savings and few resources to fall back onto when employers cut jobs and mortgage and credit card payments came due.
The plain fact is unionization did not cause the recession we're in. Corrupt business practices by banks and financial giants like AIG and Citgroup did. While people like Arlen Specter and his right-wing friends like to blame workers for the collapse of the economy and do everything they can to protect their financial backers in the banks and the big corporations, hard-working Americans know the truth.
That is why the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act should not be left up to the Arlen Specter's of the world, the milquetoast defenders of CEOs and big business. It is a fight that continues and can still be won if labor and its allies refuse to give in.
Specter's job
On a side note, it is not clear that Specter's decision on this matter will save his job. Why would hardline Republicans back off their primary challenge in 2010? Specter has proven an unreliable tool for them. Why wouldn't they spend the resources to replace him with someone far more reliable?
For its part, because of his stance up to now in support of the Employee Free Choice Act, labor has overlooked Specter's horrible positions on other issues and lent him support. What incentive for this does labor have now? Truth be told, Specter can kiss his job goodbye in 2010. Labor should look forward to having a real ally in the Senate after the 2010 election from a state that voted heavily for President Obama and is trending Democratic more each passing day.
