Big Labor's Agenda Is Bad For Workers
and the Economy

 

For several months now I have been focusing this column on major challenges to America's competitiveness, from securing a clean and affordable supply of energy to rebuilding our infrastructure to enacting a rational immigration policy. One important competitive challenge that is often overlooked is the radical agenda of today's big labor movement.

 

Despite plunging membership numbers, unions are riding a wave of momentum from what they view as a tremendous victory in the 2006 elections. They are pursuing a political and policy agenda that would turn back the clock to the 1950s, damaging U.S. competitiveness and hurting American workers.

 

Let me say right off the bat that the U.S. Chamber strongly supports the right of workers to voluntarily join unions under fair and democratic rules. We work closely with many unions on issues such as infrastructure, energy, and immigration--and will continue to do so.

 

But we will not sit by while some union leaders try to over-regulate the American workplace, re-unionize our economy, control the boardrooms of our best companies, and dominate our politics in order to promote trade protectionism, tax increases, and a government takeover of health care.

 

We will oppose their attempts to pressure Congress to pass a broad array of new workplace regulations. We will continue to lead the fight against their transparent campaign to do away with secret ballots in organizing elections. We will challenge the unions before the Securities and Exchange Commission and in court when they tap their members' pension savings and abuse the shareholder proxy process to win concessions from companies that could not be won at the bargaining table.

 

Some labor leaders have promised to spend their members' compulsory dues lavishly in the 2008 elections. The Chamber is launching an unprecedented grassroots program across the nation to educate and rally legions of small and large companies and their employees. We will meet the unions on the ground in key districts and advance a positive agenda for the American worker--improving education and training, keeping taxes down, opening new export markets, and rebuilding America's infrastructure.
 
Unions should support this agenda because it means more American jobs. Their leaders' agenda of higher taxes and more regulations will drive jobs away and hurt America's competitiveness.