GOP Retaliates in Battle With Organized Labor

When freshman Republican Rep. Brian P. Bilbray walked into his San Diego house one recent weekend, he was greeted in the kitchen by his two small children. He was greeted in the family room by a television attack ad, courtesy of organized labor.

The advertisement flashed a toll-free telephone number inviting constituents to give the congressman a jingle about a recent vote he had cast. The ad was just one in a series fired off by organized labor in its escalating brawl with the Republican congressional majority it hopes to dethrone.

Bilbray was not amused. “They are, as we say in California, freaked out because they can’t get their supply of power,” he said of the union leaders who masterminded the spots. “They’re like heroin addicts. They need their power fix.” Now Bilbray and his fellow Republicans are about to get their turn.

Working simultaneously in both the House and Senate, GOP lawmakers are launching a coordinated legislative assault on labor unlike anything seen in decades.

The fireworks will be on full display this week when the Senate returns from its Fourth of July recess to consider a 90-cent hike in the minimum wage. Attached to the measure is a package of provisions that critics say would gut the National Labor Relations Act and roll back six decades of labor law.

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Two House committees, meanwhile, are set to investigate organized labor’s alleged ties to organized crime. And House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) is publicly blaming unions for most of the ills that have befallen him and the GOP’s “contract with America.”

“Republicans have felt their noses tweaked by organized labor, and they have decided to tweak the noses of labor leaders in return,” said Kenneth Weinstein, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.

On Tuesday, the Senate is scheduled to consider an array of union-disarming proposals as part of the debate on raising the minimum wage. They include provisions that would allow employers to pay sub-minimum wages to new hires for six months, permit union members to decline to pay dues, and let special worker-management teams negotiate wages, hours and working conditions outside of union contracts.

“These are blatantly anti-worker proposals to advance the agenda of the Republican right wing,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chief sponsor of the minimum-wage bill. “Most Americans didn’t intend to support these harsh and extreme Republican priorities in 1994, and they won’t vote for them in 1996.”

The rancor is attributable in part to the AFL-CIO’s $35-million advertising campaign aimed at unseating Republican freshmen this fall. Radio and television spots spearing lawmakers for their votes on the balanced budget, the minimum wage and Medicare cuts are running in selected areas across the country. The ads have proven far more effective than the benign newsletter missives traditionally used by labor.

The AFL-CIO has also mobilized workers to knock on doors in 76 congressional districts.

Labor’s message seems to be gaining a hearing in a time marked by corporate layoffs and early retirements. Some analysts say the drive is harming Republicans in close races, making it one of the more effective efforts in years by a labor movement severely weakened by shrinking membership.

“The ads have clearly hurt. The question is whether this [labor] campaign can be countered effectively, whether the agenda the union leaders are pushing can be exposed,” Weinstein said. “The rank and file is sympathetic to raising the minimum wage, but they are not sympathetic to partial-birth abortions, gay rights and a lot of other issues being advanced by the same folks who want to increase the minimum wage.”

Whatever the outcome in November, the advertising blitz, financed by a special assessment of union members, has clearly raised the hackles of GOP leaders.

Gingrich, noting that about 40% of union workers are Republicans, called the assessment “un-American” because it forces some union members to finance political attacks on their own party. AFL-CIO officials say individual union members can have the special assessment refunded to them if they wish but that few members have done so.

Nonetheless, many Republican leaders have been strenuous in their denunciation of the plan. “It is probably the most blatant power grab by any special interest in the history of Congress,” complained Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles (R-Okla.). “Organized labor is really trying to buy back Congress.”

Nickles is one of several lawmakers with simmering anti-union sentiments who have risen to positions of influence in the GOP. For the first time in 40 years, Republicans have the power to bring anti-union legislation to the floor. But by most accounts, they still lack the votes to pass it as moderates from industrial Northeastern states cross party lines to please their union-strong districts.

And any anti-labor legislation that does pass is probably headed for a presidential veto.

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For now, it appears that pro- and anti-labor factions have battled to a standoff. The Senate is expected to pass a minimum-wage bill to raise the hourly rate for the first time since 1989, from $4.25 per hour to $5.15. But it probably will include a Republican proposal to provide offsetting tax breaks to small businesses. Similar legislation has passed the House.

An amendment that would delay the effective date of the wage increase for six months and allow employers to pay new hires the current minimum wage for the first 180 days of employment is of considerable concern to Democrats, who fear it too may pass.

But the more far-reaching labor law rollbacks--such as a “right to work” measure that would exempt workers who are forced to join a union from paying dues--are expected to be defeated.

Even so, labor leaders are taking no chances.

“Strange things happen up there [on Capitol Hill],” said Steve Rosenthal, AFL-CIO political director. “A couple of months ago, we didn’t think a minimum-wage increase had a snowball’s chance in hell of passing the House. We are not taking anything for granted.”