Anti-Union Consultants Should Be Subject to Scrutiny

An aide to Secretary of Labor Ann McLaughlin confided last week that the secretary and other labor department officials “really anguished for months” over a court ruling that requires management consultants to disclose the money they get for their secret anti-union services.

McLaughlin does not think of herself as anti-union and doesn’t want to be perceived that way. But she was said to be torn by the question of whether it should be mandatory for consultants to report these payments.

However, anguished or not by the court’s pro-union ruling, McLaughlin did just what was expected of her as President Reagan’s labor secretary: She recently appealed the ruling, thereby trying to help management’s “union prevention” consultants.

Martin Levitt, who describes himself as a “recently reformed union buster,” denounced McLaughlin’s effort to upset the significant precedent-setting decision.

“After engaging in that kind of dirty business myself for 20 years, I know firsthand how important it is for union busters to keep their activities and income secret,” said Levitt, who now lives in Los Angeles.

Partly echoing the ruling issued Jan. 29 by U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene, Levitt said, “the decision at least would expose to public view the hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year for behind-the-scenes manipulations of workers by the ever-growing number of anti-union consultants.”

While McLaughlin’s appeal of Judge Greene’s ruling didn’t surprise anyone, her aide, who preferred anonymity, insisted that the labor secretary and her colleagues “did not reach that conclusion automatically, as some might have expected. They were truly torn as they debated the move among themselves.”

Nevertheless, he said, McLaughlin ended up on the side of the anti-union consultants because, for one thing, she believed that Congress was ambiguous about the issue and therefore it was up to the Department of Labor, not the courts, to decide whether to require the consultants to report their income.

The judge firmly rejected the argument that Congress couldn’t make up its mind about the management reporting requirement when it passed the Landrum-Griffin Act in 1959.

That law requires unions to report all of their expenditures for any purposes, including the salaries and expenses of all officers. It is much less stringent on management. It does not mandate similar reports from companies. But Greene held that it does require companies and their consultants to report any financial arrangement they make to fight unions.

Congress felt that public disclosure of the costs of labor-management battles would be better than having government try to regulate such expenditures.

But McLaughlin concluded that companies and their consultants do not have to report all of their costs and that her policy should not be thrown out by the courts since it was neither “arbitrary nor contrary to law, and it followed past department practices,” her aide said.

Up to that point, the department’s logic sounded plausible, if one ignores Judge Greene’s ruling. But the policy was unfair because unions and workers are entitled to know the names of the “behind-the-scenes manipulators” and how much money they are paid to fight unions.

Less plausible, however, is the contention of McLaughlin’s aide that she “tried to figure out a way to accept the premise of Judge Greene’s position without letting the courts make decisions that should be made by the Administration.”

If that was the case, McLaughlin could have issued the same disclosure requirement herself. The judge issued such a ruling only because McLaughlin did not.

That McLaughlin came down on the side of the union-busting consultants fits in perfectly with the general anti-union position of the Administration.

The lines were drawn cleanly. Trying to persuade her not to appeal Greene’s ruling were the United Auto Workers Union, which initiated the case, and the national AFL-CIO.

Those urging her to appeal Greene’s ruling included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Assn. of Manufacturers and the American Retail Federation.

Greene’s position should be upheld by the higher courts because it is a rational and equitable way to keep track of both union and management activities when they fight one another.

Those who want the Greene ruling overturned argue that the consultants are just benign management advisers who already are required to report their income if they openly get into a fight against a union. For instance, they are required to report their activities and payments when they sign their names to anti-union campaign leaflets or talk directly to workers against a union.

And opponents of Greene’s ruling say that even when consultants secretly battle unions, there is little mystery about what they are telling the anti-union companies. They insist that the consultants simply advise the companies how best to comply with the nation’s complicated labor laws.

But many of them do much more than merely give advice about the legality of company actions. They usually are hired specifically for their expertise in increasingly successful anti-union tactics.

Some of those “behind-the-scenes” tactics are now being discussed by the “former union buster” Levitt in speeches and, last week, on national television. He also is writing a book describing how “disgraceful” his conduct was and how bad he believes other union-avoidance consultants still are.

Levitt admitted that he has made some “serious personal mistakes in the past, including once writing bad checks.” Those mistakes have hurt his credibility. He says he deeply regrets those mistakes, but they have nothing to do with his view of his past profession.

Many consultants, he said, charge $1,000 a day and more, plus expenses, to break unions, “and we almost always won our battles because cost was not an object--not after we managed to get company executives obsessed with the fear of unionization.”

The book Levitt is writing, “A Dirty Business,” might be called another of those kiss-and-tell stories, and he could be exaggerating the misdeeds of the management consultants.

But surely it would be easier to evaluate his story and the consultants’ own version of their anti-union activities if Greene’s ruling is upheld and the consultants are at least required to make a public disclosure of their services to management.

Preventing Companies From Exporting Jobs

The flow of illegal aliens into the United States has not yet slowed appreciably, but that source of startlingly cheap labor can be be sharply curtailed if the new immigration law is adequately enforced by punishing employers who hire the illegals.

However, the law does nothing about American employers that move their operations to countries like Mexico, the major supplier of the cheap labor, and more employers than ever are taking advantage of that opportunity.

Honeywell Inc., one of the many firms with plants in Mexico, may soon move more of its operation in Gardena to its Tijuana facility, according to Jack Cox, head of Teamsters Local 572. The local represents about 500 workers in the Gardena plant, 90% of whom are women, mostly minorities.

Cox said the shocking fact is that Honeywell’s labor costs in Tijuana are only about $4.40 a day per employee compared to about $100 a day for union members in the Gardena plant.

A company spokesman would not compare labor costs in the two plants, but said, “We are determined to keep the Gardena plant operating. To do that, though, we must cut costs in Gardena so that we can become more competitive” in the production of heating and air conditioning controls.

The spokesman said he would not speculate on how the cost-cutting will be done, “and when we decide, we will tell the workers and their union first.”

Cox said about 100 workers in Gardena already have been laid off as the highly profitable company expands in Mexico, and obviously the workers here cannot accept the wages paid in Tijuana.

There is a tremendous employer temptation to legally and drastically cut labor costs by moving plants to Mexico or by hiring illegal aliens here, despite the prospect of severe penalties.

Congress should look for more ways to help Mexico build its own economy without at the same time letting U.S. corporations profit inordinately by moving plants across the border. Many companies use even the threat of moving to force American workers to accept lower wages so that their jobs won’t be exported to Mexico.