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"Paycheck Protection": A Phony Excuse for Opposing a Soft Money Ban
This year Congress will debate the McCain-Feingold (Senate) and Shays-Meehan (House) campaign finance reform bills, which would ban unlimited "soft money" contributions to political parties from corporations, unions and wealthy donors. However, certain swing Republican members of Congress who oppose reform argue that a ban on soft money ban (which mostly comes from corporations and where Republicans have usually had a modest edge) must be accompanied by curbs on the use of labor union dues for political purposes. Otherwise, Republican opponents say, their candidates will be swamped by partisan (overwhelmingly Democratic) communications and voter registration/get-out-the-vote campaigns directed mainly toward 16 million union members and their families.
These opponents of reform are calling for "paycheck protection" (we prefer to call it the "worker gag rule") requiring each union member to authorize the use of union dues for political purposes. Here is why it is a phony excuse for propping up the corrupt campaign finance system:
- "Paycheck protection for union workers is simply a "poison pill" designed to derail reform. It is a one-sided proposal intended to "poison" the McCain-Feingold bill for reform-minded Senate Democrats, causing them to abandon the legislation. Everyone realizes that the addition of a "paycheck protection" provision -- which was decisively defeated in the House in the 1998 debate on campaign finance reform by a coalition of Democrats and Northeastern Republicans -- would be fatal to the reform effort.
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It is discriminatory to impose "paycheck protection" only on union members and not on members of other groups that talk to their members or shareholders about elections such as the National Rifle Association, National Right To Life Committee, Christian Coalition, National Federation of Independent Business, and many corporations. Democrats believe that the latter groups are omitted from the proposal because they are mainly Republican instead of Democratic in orientation. That is not prescription for bipartisan reform.
- All recent versions of the McCain-Feingold bill have dealt only with banning soft money contributions to parties and banning corporate and labor contributions for TV and radio sham issue ads that are really campaign ads. There are no new controls on what groups may say to their own members or shareholders about elections. Singling out labor unions' funding of communications to their own members is a way of changing the subject from urgently needed reforms.
- The McCain-Feingold bill's ban on soft money and regulation of broadcast issue ads applies equally to unions and corporations.
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It is contrary to the American tradition of voluntary associations for the government as "big brother" to require every individual member of the group to give advance written approval of what the group will spend to discuss elections with its membership. These are decisions of the group as a whole, and if a member feels strongly enough about it, he or she can resign from the group.
- Workers are not compelled to be members of unions under U.S. law as interpreted by the Supreme Court in the Beck decision and by the National Labor Relations Board in subsequent rulings. At the time of hiring and annually workers are informed of their right to not belong to the union. If they choose not to be members, they must pay a fee to the union for representing them with the employer, but there is a process by which they can have that fee reduced to omit political and other unrelated union expenditures. That process is codified into law by a provision of the McCain-Feingold bill.
January 18, 2001
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