Unions Cheer Defeat of Prop 226

by Jim Lobe

Almost 54 percent of the electorate of the country's most populous state turned out this week to vote against Proposition 226 which, if approved, would have required labor unions to get the permission of their members each year to use their dues for political purposes, such as contributions to pro-labor candidates.

A successful vote would have made it far more difficult for unions to raise the tens of millions of dollars they provided to mostly Democratic candidates in 1996.

John Sweeney, the leader of the largest U.S. union confederation, the AFL-CIO, hailed the victory as a "modern political miracle" and said that the threat posed by the referendum actually had mobilized thousands of union workers to organize against it.

"This was a life-or-death issue, the most serious effort to silence America's working families in recent history," he said. Indeed, Proposition 226 was widely regarded as the greatest threat to the labor movement since Sweeney took over the AFL-CIO from a virtually moribund leadership almost three years ago and began a major reform which has seen massive resources poured into organizing, particularly women and minority workers.

At the same time, Sweeney launched a major political effort in the 1996 election campaign, donating an unprecedented 45 million dollars to candidates across the nation, particularly in critical Congressional "swing" districts where Democrats faced strongly anti-union incumbents.

The results of that effort were mixed. Unions did not achieve their hopes of returning a Democratic majority to Congress, but they did knock off a number of Republican targets and scared others who argued that a resurgent labor movement represented a serious threat to the party and its right-wing agenda in 1998 and 2000.

Proposition 226, which enjoyed the avid backing of the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, and outgoing California governor and presidential aspirant Pete Wilson, served as the Republicans' most effective weapon in its counter-offensive.

Originally launched by a right-wing candidate for a local school board who was angered by the role played by the local teachers' union in his defeat, the proposition quickly claimed the national spotlight after Wilson endorsed it and Grover Norquist, a Gingrich adviser and head of Americans for Tax Reform, raised enough money to get the 750,000 signatures needed to put the initiative on the ballot.

To the right, the referendum offered a "no-lose" proposition. "It divides labor union members from labor bosses," Norquist told The Nation weekly magazine. "If you win, unions have to pay more heed to what members want and, say, stop supporting candidates who are gun controllers. And by just having this debate, even if you lose, you let union members know the union bosses are taking their money and there's something they can do about it."

Norquist also said his goal was to sponsor similar initiatives in all 50 states, as well as in the U.S. Congress where Republican have already tabled a federal version, the "Payment Protection Act," which, however, is subject to a presidential veto.

Norquist and others had reason to be optimistic. When it was first submitted just a few months ago, opinion polls showed that it had the support of more than 70 percent of voters, including union households. In part, that was due to good packaging by its right-wing sponsors, who called it "paycheck protection." In addition, its message -- that union members should not be required to contribute to political causes with which they do not agree -- was superficially appealing.

Sensing a threat to their very survival, the unions, which currently represent about 11 percent of the US workforce but a substantially higher percentage of California households, mobilized against the measure. Tens of thousands of union activists were activated, and the AFL-CIO poured more than 20 million dollars into the campaign, much of it devoted to radio and television ads focused on exposing the forces behind the referendum.

That was three times the amount raised by proponents of the measure despite extravagant promises by Norquist early in the campaign. Republican activists blamed each other for the defeat. "They were out-spent and out-organized," one California activist told IPS yesterday.

One of the right's biggest disappointments was business' failure to rally behind the measure. Despite repeated appeals by Wilson and Norquist, the state's Chamber of Commerce and other major corporate associations refused to take sides, let alone contribute money.

Labor observers say business' neutrality is explained by union threats to launch a referendum of its own to place tough restrictions on corporate contributions to political campaigns and by labor's success in depicting the referendum's authors as "right-wing extremists."

Despite the California vote, Norquest and his allies have vowed to carry their fight to other states and possibly resurrect the initiative in California in the year 2000. They also have the satisfaction of knowing that more than 20 million dollars the AFL-CIO could have spent in the upcoming Congressional elections in November has already been accounted for in the referendum campaign.

In fact, even before the election, labor leaders said they would they plan to take a lower profile in the 1998 elections and may spend substantially less in Congressional races than they did in 1996.