Public Employee Press

Behind the attack on public service unions:
A shadowy right-wing network

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Back in the 1990s, Hillary Rodham Clinton warned of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" out to destroy her husband's administration.

Today, a cabal of many of the same right-wing players, their conservative political allies and their rich backers has put a bull's-eye on public employees and their unions.

The 2010 elections "brought to power politicians in state capitals across the heartland who had a hidden agenda," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said.

Newly elected Republican governors are working with a "shadowy" network on their agenda, which includes crippling the public sector, shifting tax dollars to wealthy interests, weakening democratic institutions and cementing conservative power.

The right-wing network pushing this program includes Washington-based think tanks and groups, such as the libertarian Cato Institute, the U.S Chamber of Commerce and the Heritage Foundation; organizations that support conservative public policy and legislators, including the State Policy Network (SPN) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC); and financiers like the Koch brothers, Colorado beer magnate Joseph Coors and banking fortune heir Richard Mellon Scaife, who years ago funded campaigns to discredit President Bill Clinton.

Chipping away at government

FreedomWorks, headed by former Republican congressional leader Richard Armey, supports the Tea Party movement and opposes the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make union organizing easier.

American Crossroads, set up by Karl Rove, former President George W. Bush's adviser, spent $750,000 for a nationwide cable TV campaign against public employee unions as the fight over collective bargaining rights raged in Wisconsin earlier this year.

Besides attacking unions, the right-wing network is pushing to weaken child-labor laws, restrict voting rights, privatize Medicaid, crack down on immigration, cut unemployment benefits and give tax breaks to businesses and the rich.

In a January article about the anti-union legislation, the New York Times reported that ALEC, which works with Republican state lawmakers and corporate executives, is "quietly spreading these proposals from state to state."

The article quoted ALEC official Michael Hough acknowledging that the aim of the legislation is to reduce labor's power. ALEC has drafted legislation to take away collective bargaining rights, cut pension and health-care benefits, limit wage increases and restrict the collection of union dues, which would undercut labor's political strength.

The State Policy Network works with state think tanks to support free-market principles and push for conservative public policies, including deregulation, lower taxes and restrictions on unions.

Matt Mayer, president of the Buckeye Institute in Ohio, which is linked to SPN, took credit for influencing the anti-union legislation backed by Republican Gov. John Kasich, politico.com reported. Kasich supports banning teacher strikes, ending arbitration of pay disputes between the state and unions, and taking away the right of state-funded child-care workers to unionize.

Dictatorial financial managers

An SPN affiliate in Michigan, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, gave Republican Gov. Rick Snyder the blueprint for a law that allows him to appoint dictatorial "emergency managers" to eliminate union contracts and fire elected officials where cities have budget problems.

Earlier this year, when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker came under fire for his drive to roll back collective bargaining rights, an SPN affiliate came to his defense by funding a video that called union demonstrators communists and socialists.

Billionaires Charles and David Koch, whose family empire includes Dixie cups, Brawny paper towels, Northern tissues, gas, oil, timber, cattle, coal and asphalt, are major backers of SPN. They donated
$1.2 million to help elect Republicans, including Walker and Kasich, in the 2010 elections. Between 1997 and 2008, Koch foundations donated $400,000 to ALEC.

The brothers also fund Americans for Prosperity, which gave seed money to the anti-government Tea Party movement. AFP bankrolls a project that tries to prevent workers from joining unions.

"The point of this whole right-wing network is to get rid of the unions," said Kerry Corpi, director of research and bargaining at DC 37's parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "They are all basically acting from the same playbook."

"The stakes are high," Trumka. He asked whether we will become a country ruled by greed in which working people have no rights and no pensions. "Or will we be a country where all of us have a voice and we look out for each other?"