'Labor '96' is cause for business concern - AFL-CIO makes big push for pro-labor canditates

Nation's Business, April, 1996

Business welcomed the 1994 election of a congressional majority committed to restoring reason to the nation's fiscal and regulatory policies. Many political experts declared that the traditional Democratic Party of central-government activism was an anachronism in an era of rapidly advancing technology, global trade, and a new generation of self-confident Americans committed to economic and personal freedom.

Given that background, why is the newest member of the U.S. Senate a certified liberal who has voted against, among other things, a balanced federal budget, greater privateproperty rights, regulatory reform, tax cuts, effective welfare reform, steps to preserve Medicare, and reform of the nation's much-abused civil-justice system?

This new senator is Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, a U.S. representative until his election to the Senate seat vacated by Republican Bob Packwood. Wyden supported the business position on less than 30 percent of key votes in 1995, and 32 percent over his legislative service, as computed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in its "How They Voted" report. On the other hand, his AFL-CIO rating was 100 percent last year and is 83 percent cumulatively.

What happened between the surge of voter support for pro-business candidates in 1994 and the Senate election in Oregon? John J. Sweeney happened, for one thing.

He won the presidency of the AFL-CIO in October on a pledge of a far-more-aggressive approach to organizing and to political support of pro-labor candidates. ("Labor Comes Alive," the cover story in the February Nation's Business, details Sweeney's rise to power and his plans.)

Oregon was the first test of the new approach, and AFL-CIO organizers, staffers, and rank-and-file members were important to the Wyden campaign. Nearly 80 percent of all union members in the state voted, compared with 68 percent of voters generally. With labor as the critical element, the Oregon race saw a re-creation of the liberal coalition that also includes environmental activists and other special-interest groups.

Sweeney is now citing Oregon as the model for the AFL-CIO's political-action plan for 1996. Resources will be concentrated on 75 House seats considered winnable. (Major Democratic gains in the Senate are not a realistic goal for labor this year.)

The resources available for the House campaign will be substantial. The AFL-CIO is raising, via an assessment on members, a $35 million political war chest that will be augmented by the dollars and volunteer work of union locals.

Business needs to recognize now, in the early stage of the AFL-CIO campaign, the enormous stakes involved. Sweeney not only is mounting a political attack on designated GOP candidates but also is attempting to reverse the momentum for change that voters demanded just 17 months ago. The goals of that political revolution--a balanced federal budget, tax relief; regulatory sanity, and decentralization of power from Washington to states, localities, and individuals--would be the casualties of a return to the liberalism that caused so much economic havoc in this country while it prevailed.

What the AFL-CIO calls its "Labor '96" program is a genuine political threat. The Oregon outcome is evidence of that. Businesses that tend to dismiss organized labor's leadership in distant Washington, D.C., as irrelevant to their companies' day-to-day operations must realize that this threat is at their doors.

Grass-roots business people need to alert their fellow citizens to the potential consequences and become as politically active as the opposition is in registering to vote, conducting registration and voting drives where they will count, volunteering to help pro-business candidates withstand the labor challenge, and taking any and all other steps needed to keep the revolution of 1994 on track.