‘Right to Work’ Battle Heats Up in Idaho

Actor Charlton Heston was justly praised for his film portrayals of historic figures, but he isn’t doing well at all these days trying to recapture the essence of the late Samuel Gompers, founder of the American labor movement.

Heston has taken a leading role in a bitter political battle in Idaho, where the often scorned, symbiotic relationship between organized labor and the Democratic Party could help the Democrats regain control of the U.S. Senate this year--but not if Heston can prevent it.

Many political observers contend that labor’s endorsement of candidates who are friendly to union causes is a sort of political kiss of death because of labor’s perceived unpopularity.

That theory will get a significant test in Idaho on Nov. 4. Voters face a referendum on a bitterly contested, anti-union “right to work” law.

“Right to work” laws prohibit a company and a union that represents a majority of the workers from agreeing to a contract provision that requires all workers covered by the contract to join a union or pay their “fair share” of what it costs the union to get the pact.

Even though debate over such laws has been raging for nearly 100 years, it is still an emotionally charged issue, and political lines are clearly drawn.

Nationally, Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win the Senate majority, and an Idaho victory could be crucial.

A Democratic-union victory in strongly conservative Idaho would take on added significance because Idahoans gave President Reagan a thumping 72% of the vote in the last election.

Democratic Gov. John Evans, who is seeking a Senate seat, and other Democratic candidates in Idaho have lined up solidly with unions in yet another battle in labor’s seemingly endless war against laws banning union shop contracts.

Idaho Republicans, including Evans’ conservative opponent, incumbent Sen. Steven D. Symms, are supporting the “right to work” proposal.

A major radio and television advertising campaign coordinated by the National Right to Work Committee is using such luminaries as President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Heston and, misleadingly, even Gompers to help sell it to voters.

Democrats hope their unity with labor in an intense fight against both the measure and the Republicans backing it will bring out enough labor voters to put the Democrat Evans in the Senate and Democrat Cecil Andrus in the governor’s office.

Heston, one-time president of the Screen Actors Guild, is working with the Right to Work Committee in Idaho. But Heston may do more harm than good for the Republicans because, in using statements from Gompers to back his argument, he misstated that historic figure’s views on the issue.

Heston has quoted Gompers as saying that “no gain can come from compulsion. If we try to force, we tear apart that which, united, is invincible.”

Heston suggests that meant that even the father of the American labor movement was on the side of the anti-union-shop advocates and opposed to “compulsory unionism.”

But as University of Maryland Prof. Stuart Kaufman, editor of Gompers’ papers, points out, that wasn’t Gompers’ view at all.

Gompers strongly opposed any attempt by the government to force union members to work with non-union employees. (Actually, under a “right to work” law, unionists are not required to work with non-union members, but their alternative is to quit their jobs.)

In the 1920s, Gompers praised the union shop concept, insisting that all workers have a right to tell their employers that “I will not work for you unless you make a contract with the union to which I belong and agree to employ none but members of that union.”

Even though a heated argument over the views of a historical figure is playing an interesting role in the campaign, Idaho Democrats are basing their hope for victory on more than that: For instance, no “right to work” law has been passed in any state in a public referendum for 28 years.

Seventeen of the 20 mostly Southern states that now have such laws adopted them before 1955, when the National Right to Work Committee was created. That would indicate that the committee, after estimated expenditures well above $100 million, hasn’t been a roaring success during its 31-year history.

The theory of union shop provisions is based on majority rule. If a majority of workers in a company vote for union representation, the company and union must bargain in good faith to try to reach agreement on a contract.

Since, by law, all workers--union members and non-members alike--are covered by the contract and all must get the benefits of it, they all must share the union’s cost of negotiating the agreement if it contains a union shop provision.

“Right to work” advocates denounce this as “compulsory unionism.”

“Right to work” laws are usually sold as an aid to workers who don’t want to pay dues to help get a union contract. But while many workers might prefer getting the benefits of a union contract without paying dues, most of the money going into anti-union shop campaigns comes not from workers but from employers seeking to drain union treasuries of membership dues and thus weaken unions.

The debate over “right to work” laws and the value of unions themselves is, indeed, an old one. But if the arguments of Gompers, his successors and their Democratic allies prevail on Nov. 4, Idaho’s next U.S. senator, governor and other elected officials may be Democrats.

A Problem With Sex Bias

Few arguments are more likely to infuriate even non-militant feminists than the contention that the problems they have as working women are primarily of their own making and have little if anything to do with discrimination.

But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce unflinchingly made just that argument in a recent report titled, “Yes, Women Make Less Than Men. But What Does That Prove?” In sum, the chamber’s answer was “nothing.”

Martin Lefkowitz, author of the chamber’s view, concedes that women do earn about a third less than the average pay earned by men. And he says that ratio hasn’t changed much since passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, both of which outlawed sex-based discrimination in jobs and pay.

The chamber report concludes, interestingly enough, that while anti-discrimination laws have had almost no effect, we need no more because “our present laws assure that women workers are fairly treated.”

Lefkowitz sees the reasons for the differential “quite reasonable and natural” because, among other things, more women hold part-time jobs than men; men spend more of their lives on the job than women and so gain seniority that usually means higher pay; women have “inordinate representation” in jobs with flexible work schedules, and they are less “geographically mobile than men.”

“Through choice and chance, many women have been concentrated in occupations that have lower wages,” he argues.

Obviously, many of these statements are accurate, but they explain only a small part of the male-female disparity in jobs and pay. Congress enacted anti-discrimination laws because it found substantial evidence that women don’t do as well in the workplace as men because of discrimination, not because of “quite reasonable and natural” causes.

Each year, more than 2,000 cases of alleged pay discrimination are filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against employers who don’t voluntarily comply with the Equal Pay Act.

The most dramatic examples of pay discrimination are seen in studies that show that men are paid 20% more than women doing comparable jobs. Either full or partial pay-equity studies have been conducted in 26 states comparing skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions. For instance, in the state of Washington alone, the total cost of upgrading women in government jobs to pay scales comparable to men will be $106.5 million.

Most women with part-time jobs want full-time ones; they are not usually in low-paying jobs by “choice and chance” but because better-paying jobs are often not accessible to them. Women occupy most clerical, teaching, nursing and other female-dominated jobs because they are the most accessible.

Women do bear most of the responsibility for child care and housework, which cuts into their careers. But more and more corporations are trying to help solve problems that those responsibilities create by opening or paying for day-care centers, offering paid leave for both parents with guarantees of a job when they return to work, and instituting flexible work schedules. Companies providing such programs do far more to show that discrimination against women in the workplace is declining than those who continue to insist that there isn’t any.