First Workers' Warehouse Action in 3 Decades

Riot Police Called In To Arrest Peaceful Protesters Outside Walmart Warehouse

BY DAVID MOBERG

Members of Chicago's southwest suburbs' 'mobile force team' arrested peaceful protesters outside a Walmart warehouse yesterday.   (Courtesy of Pat Barcas)

Several hundred supporters of strikers at a giant Walmart warehouse near Chicago converged on the tiny town of Elwood, IL, on Monday, effectively shutting down this key hub of the big retailer's distribution center for most of the day.

 "Today's CPH—zero," cheered warehouse worker Phil Bailey, using the managers' abbreviation of "cartons per hour," the dreaded standard for the seemingly always more intensified pace of work in the warehouse. Warehouse Workers For Justice (WWFJ), an organization launched and supported by the United Electrical Workers (UE) to raise standards for the industry, reported that managers had sent the day's workforce home early.

Union and community organization members, clergy, Walmart retail workers, and civic leaders rallied in a nearby parking lot and marched around the two big buildings, before 17 leaders from the supportive constituencies sat down in the late afternoon across Centerpoint Drive, outside the main gate

A couple dozen police officers, clad in heavy black helmets and riot gear, and backed by military-style vehicles, assembled on Walmart's property. Their equipment—which seemed like overkill for a protest negotiated in advance—had all been purchased with money from the Illinois Terrorism Task Force, specifically for this "mobile force team" jointly operated by a consortium of local police forces, according to Elwood police Chief Fred W. Hayes.

The riot police marched trough the main gate of the warehouse, then handcuffed and arrested the non-violent sit-down protestors on minor traffic obstruction charges, as both they and other demonstrators sang, "We shall not be moved."

On September 15 a small group of workers walked out of the non-union facility after management fired—then later changed tactics and "suspended"—some key leaders, including Bailey. He is one of four named plaintiffs in a class action suit that lawyers working with WWFJ filed two days earlier. Workers charged their immediate employer, Roadlink Workforce Solutions, with committing wide-ranging wage theft and related violations of state and federal employment law.

Although Walmart owns the warehouse, it contracts with Schneider Logistics to manage operations, including the further subcontracting of actually providing workers to temporary employment firms like Roadlink, which employs about 125 people at Elwood.

In a situation made more chaotic by management's actions, more workers were fired or suspended on September 15 when they tried to present a petition about their grievances to management. About 30 Roadlink workers initially, now up to 38, said they were striking over unfair labor practices—management penalties for engaging in legally protected collective action—as well as the issues in the lawsuit and petition.

This may be the first warehouse strike in the huge warehousing operations that have grown rapidly over the past three decades in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, which according to World Business Chicago is the world's third-largest intermodal transportation hub.

The Walmart warehouse is located in a logistics business park, in an isolated and largely rural spot, connected to the nearby interstate highway by roads jammed with trucks even on a day when Walmart was not operating. Yet people, let alone protests, are rarely visible.

"I was like, 'Wow!' on Monday when I saw people picketing, and I joined in," Mike Patton, 45, said. "I couldn't believe someone was taking a stand. It's nice to see people came around to doing what's right. You work like a dog in there—faster and faster, and then they cut your hours."

Many workers complain about the unpredictable hours as well as the low pay--$10 an hour with no prospect of a raise—for heavy work in harsh temperatures. Striker Mike Compton told the solidarity rally that managers routinely referred to workers as "bodies" that were deployed in an endless quest for a higher CPH, deprived of breaks, and exposed to dangers.

"The carts we use are suppose to have brakes, but they're broken," he said. "All of us have bruises on our legs that never heal. ... What we asked for is some basic rights. When they illegally fired some of us, we started picketing. We'd had enough."

The demonstration of solidarity included relatively large groups from unions such as SEIU (Service Employees) and UFCW (Food and Commercial Workers), supporters from the OUR Walmart organization of retail workers and from Action Now, a Chicago community group, and an elected commissioner of the Will County Board, the county's governing body. "I believe elected officials should stand up to corporate power for our constituents," Jacki Traznere said as she sat in front of the warehouse awaiting arrest.

There was also one representative from the Sensata factory in northwest Illinois. Bain Capital, formerly led by Mitt Romney, owns Sensata and is in the process of closing the plant and outsourcing the factory's well-paid jobs to China.

"Your present is our future," Sensata worker Ted Gaulrap told the strikers, "crappy jobs and no benefits. But remember that working people standing together can do anything."

But the complex subcontracting and high turnover in the warehouse industry makes it harder for workers to pursue the obvious path of forming a union. UE national director of organizing Bob Kingsley says Warehouse Workers for Justice is trying to "develop a model" that will work in the industry.

It will involve, he says, "straight-up organizing" of temp and permanent employees but will probably require changes in labor laws as well. UE strongly emphasizes relying on the warehouse workers themselves in making decisions and "leading the struggle," he says. Much as UE did decades ago in organizing at General Electric, he says, workers may form organizations that function as unofficial unions for long periods before seeking formal recognition.

But "we have got to have some breakthroughs to engage and empower warehouse workers," Kingsley says, expressing pleasure with the size and diversity of the turnout. "That's why what's happening here is so important."

UK Fire Union Chief Calls to Nationalize the Banks

UK Fire Union Leader Calls For Nationalization Of Banks

By Matt Wrack (General Secretary FBU)

Friday, 19 October 2012

On Sat Oct 20, thousands of workers, pensioners, unemployed and youth will march in London, Glasgow and Belfast against the attacks of this Tory-led government. Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, sends a special message through the pages of Socialist Appeal to all those marching for a better future: The economy staggers from crisis to crisis. Overly optimistic government predictions are refuted by the harsh reality of a double-dip recession. The crisis has devastated the lives of workers in Britain and across the world. Austerity measures mean real wages cut, unemployment, pensions destroyed and public services slashed. They are on a scale not seen before. The aim is to make working people pay for a crisis we did not cause. We need to set out clearly what lies behind the crisis. The Con-Dem coalition argues that further privatisation and deregulation is the route out of recession but it was the deregulated private finance sector that sparked the crisis. The government's arguments need to be challenged. The banks cannot be allowed to carry on the way they've done before. We need a sharp break with the practices of the past. Service The Labour movement should place on the agenda the call for a publicly owned finance industry which would provide a public service to industry and working people. Taking over the banks will enable the state to plan investment. Instead of investment bankers gambling with money in financial markets, funds could be switched to creating millions of sustainable jobs and investing in the housing, public services and infrastructure we need. The privately owned banking system created a huge credit bubble that burst and triggered the biggest economic slump in Britain for generations. When the crisis broke, the government took shares in RBS and Lloyds and took over mortgage lenders Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley. The taxpayer advanced £133 billion to restore the capital of these banks. So far, only £14bn of the original cash outlay has been recovered. The banks are still rigging interest rates, laundering illegal cash, gambling in exotic financial assets and paying their top executives grotesque salaries and bonuses. Deceit Three-quarters of the assets of Barclays bank are invested in trading on the stocks, bonds and currency markets. Barclays's elite traders and top executives took £1bn home between them this year to "reward" this gambling. Banks still engage in outright deceit and law-breaking. Barclays was caught out over the Libor scandal, HSBC in laundering Mexican drug money and Standard Chartered with Iranian banks. The banking system is not doing its job in providing loans on reasonable terms to help the economy recover. Banks are needed to provide financial services to firms and households. Most workers have wages paid directly into a bank. We need to be able to access our money. Sometimes we need to be able to borrow money. At other times, we need to save. In addition, we need banks to raise funds and provide credit to finance investment and growth across an economy. This is what banking as a public service should be about. Britain's big banks dispose of £6 trillion in funds. Yet they earmark just £200bn of this to investment in industry, a measly 3 per cent of the total. Four years after the crisis began, bank lending is falling, not rising. The banking sector stands indicted by these figures. Having been bailed out by the taxpayer the banks continue to fail to assist in any sort of recovery. Regulation failed to stop banks collapsing and bringing down the economy. More regulation won't work now. It's expensive, bureaucratic and ineffective. Despite the mess the banks have caused, we are still told we should leave them as they are because they make money. But a survey of the period from 2002-2008 shows that the finance sector paid £203bn in tax, while manufacturing paid nearly twice as much. Tax revenue from the finance sector during that period was less than the estimated up-front costs of the bank bailout of £289bn. Competition Some argue that the banks should be broken into smaller units so that competition can flourish and the monopoly of the big five can be broken. But the banks are too interconnected - if one goes down, they can all go down like a row of dominos. In any case, the crisis did not start with the big banks. In Britain, it started with the smaller lenders like Northern Rock. More regulation or a break-up of the banks will not make them operate in the interests of the wider economy. Their main objective will still be to maximise profits for their shareholders and bonuses for their top executives. Private ownership means profit comes before everything else. New regulations can be bypassed. That will continue as long as banks are under private ownership. The public has no control over the banks' decision-making, even in banks that are majority state-owned. Only public ownership of the major banks with a new democratic structure of control can turn banking into a public service. A publicly owned banking system could finance a mass programme of useful public works, to create jobs and modernise infrastructure. Public ownership We therefore welcome that for the first time in history, the TUC has adopted  the policy of the public ownership of the banks. 9In the past, Margaret Thatcher attacked us not because she was mad, but because she was acting in the interests of the ruling class . Today, in the face of economic crisis, this  same class wants to restructure the economy in the interests of capitalism and make the working class pay. But local communities will not sit back and see their services destroyed. In this fight, we must take direct action such as occupying hospitals or schools. We must see the end of this government at the earliest opportunity. But what happens next? Under New Labour we had attacks on jobs, wages and conditions. No one wants to see the Coalition government that attacks us replaced by another Labour government that attacks us. We need a change in policy. The resources are there. But they are in the hands of the Billionaires, not in our hands.We need to ask ourselves what sort of society we want – one where spivs and gamblers decide what happens or where the majority decides? We face a huge challenge. We must rise to the occasion and act decisively in the interests of our class.

Can. Supremes Rule Workers Have Right to Privacy

Canadian Supreme Court rules employees have right to privacy on work computers

Workplace computers contain so much personal information nowadays that employees have a legitimate expectation of privacy in using them, the Supreme Court of Canada said in a major ruling Friday.

The court said an individual’s Internet browsing history alone is capable of exposing his or her most intimate likes, dislikes, activities and thoughts.

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“Canadians may therefore reasonably expect privacy in the information contained on these computers, at least where personal use is permitted or reasonably expected,” Mr. Justice Morris Fish said, writing for the majority.

Notwithstanding that privacy interest, the court ruled that nude photos of an underaged students can be used to prosecute an Ontario high-school teacher who had them on his laptop.

It said that in some cases, the seriousness of an offence and workplace computer policies are sufficient to override the right to privacy.

Scott Hutchison, a privacy expert at Stockwoods LLP, said the decision will play an “incredibly important” role in stepping up the protection of computer privacy.

“For most people, the reality is that they use their work computers for personal matters in the same way they might make a personal call on a work telephone,” Mr. Hutchison said.

While the judgment focused on principles rather than strict rules for workplace computer privacy, its words are bound to feature prominently in future cases.

“There is a big world of litigation coming about how employees are affected when employers try to go in and get information,” said Frank Addario, a lawyer who represented the defendant, Richard Cole.

“Who doesn’t use the Internet at work?” Mr. Addario said. “The Supreme Court is recognizing that the Internet is highly revealing of private personal choices and they have given it constitutional protection.”

Mr. Addario said future cases are likely to focus on the extent to which employers can scrutinize their employees’ computer activity; whether a workplace policy could effectively eliminate an expectation of privacy altogether; and the constitutionality of attempts to obtain Internet search information from companies such as Google.

Employers will have to modernize their workplace computer use policies as a result of Friday’s judgment, Mr. Addario said. He added that the court went out of its way to state that delving into an employee’s Internet browsing history represents a clear incursion into his or her private world.

“There is no ‘on-off’ switch for privacy,” Mr. Addario said. “Policies need to take into account the privacy interest that exists on the device and the information on it. It can’t be invaded willy-nilly.”

Mr. Cole was charged with possessing child pornography and fraudulently obtaining data from another computer hard drive after a school technician who was conducting routine surveillance found a file containing nude photographs of the underaged student.

The court ordered a new trial.

“The evidence is highly reliable and probative physical evidence,” Judge Fish wrote. “The exclusion of the material would have a marked negative impact on the truth-seeking function of the criminal trial process.”

The student depicted in the photographs had sent them to another student by e-mail and Mr. Cole – whose responsibilities included patrolling students’ e-mails and files – had allegedly gained access to it and copied them into his own computer.

The school’s principal seized the computer, searched it more extensively and then provided it to police. Police investigators then searched the laptop and discs without a warrant.

The Supreme Court faulted the police for not having a search warrant. However, it said that their confusion was sincere and a warrant would have certainly been obtainable under the circumstances.

KIRK MAKIN

JUSTICE REPORTER — The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Oct. 19 2012, 8:27 PM EDT

Last updated Friday, Oct. 19 2012, 8:32 PM EDT

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/supreme-court-rules-employees-have-right-to-privacy-on-work-computers/article4625660/

Democrats Desert Labor Allies

Labor’s Hail Mary pass

This is a maddening time for anyone concerned about the lives of working-class Americans. The frustration and anger that suffused AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s declaration last week that labor would distance itself from the Democratic Party was both clear and widely noted. Not so widely noted has been a shift in the organizing strategy of two of labor’s leading institutions — Trumka’s AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union — that reflects a belief that the American labor movement may be on the verge of extinction and must radically change its game.

It took a multitude of Democratic sins and failures to push Trumka to denounce, if not exactly renounce,the political party that has been labor’s home at least since the New Deal. In a speech at the National Press Club last Friday, Trumka said that Republicans were wielding a “wrecking ball” against the rights and interests of working Americans. But Democrats, he added, were “simply standing aside” as the Republicans moved in for the kill.

 primary source of labor’s frustration has been the consistent inability of the Democrats to strengthen the legislation that once allowed workers to join unions without fear of employer reprisals. American business has poked so many holes in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act that it now affords workers no protections at all. Beginning with Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, every time the Democrats have held the White House and strong majorities in both houses of Congress, bills that strengthened workers’ rights to unionize have commanded substantial Democratic support — but never quite enough to win a Senate supermajority. And during that time, the unionized share of the private-sector workforce has dwindled from roughly 30 percent to less than 7 percent.

Many union activists viewed the 2009-10 battle for the most recent iteration of labor law reform — the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) — as labor’s last stand. EFCA could never attain the magic 60-vote threshhold required to cut off a filibuster, despite the presence, at one point, of 60 Democratic senators. Given the rate at which private-sector unionization continues to fall (which in turn imperils support for public-sector unions), many of labor’s most thoughtful leaders now consider the Democrats’ inability to enact EFCA a death sentence for the American labor movement.

“It’s over,” one of labor’s leading strategists told me this month. Indeed, since last November’s elections, half a dozen high-ranking labor leaders from a range of unions have told me they believe that private-sector unions may all but disappear within the next 10 years.

While some unions still wage more conventional organizing campaigns, the campaign that best captures the desperation of American labor today is that of the SEIU. Perhaps the best-funded and most strategically savvy of American unions, SEIU has embarked on a door-to-door canvass in the minority neighborhoods of 17 major American cities. The goal isn’t to enroll the people behind those doors in a conventional union but, rather, into a mass organization of the unemployed and the underpaid that can turn out votes in 2012 and act as an ongoing pressure group for job creation and worker rights during (presumably) Barack Obama’s second term.

“We realized we could organize one million more people into the union and it wouldn’t in itself really change anything,” SEIU President Mary Kay Henry told me earlier this year. “We needed to do something else — something more.”

The SEIU’s program — like its semi-counterpart in the AFL-CIO’s Working Americaprogram, a door-to-door canvass in white working-class neighborhoods — will surely help Democratic candidates, despite the frustrations that nearly all labor leaders feel toward the party. But, like Working America, it signals a strategic shift by American labor, whose ranks have been so reduced that it now must recruit people to a non-union, essentially non-dues-paying organization to amass the political clout that its own diminished ranks can no longer deliver. Since labor law now effectively precludes workplace representation, unions are turning to representing workers anywhere and in any capacity they can. It’s time, they’ve concluded, for the Hail Mary pass.

The unions’ support for the Democrats’ party committees has already diminished considerably, though, as Trumka made clear last week, they will continue to support individual pro-union Democrats. But the greater change in union strategy is the one that’s been forced upon them. They are going outside the workplace. They have no place else to turn.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/labors-hail-mary-pass/2011/05/24/AFHWwiAH_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics
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Union Lock-outs on the Increase

Lockout. It's a word that football, hockey, basketball and now the Minnesota Orchestra have put into mainstream discussion. 

First, let's be clear what a lockout is: It's the opposite of a strike. The employer withholds work in order to gain concessions from workers.

Lockouts are growing in frequency. Sotheby's auction house locked out art handlers. Cooper Tire did the same to its workers. Drivers for SuperMom's bakery in the Twin Cities were recently locked out for two weeks. One of the most egregious examples is in the Red River Valley of Minnesota and North Dakota, where 1,300 skilled, highly trained workers who turn beets into sugar have been locked out for nearly 15 months by their already profitable employer -- American Crystal Sugar.

Lockouts have not been very common in the past, because usually businesses would prefer to keep operating and getting the value of workers' labor. But in the current economic climate, even profitable enterprises are seeking to wrangle a few extra dollars out of workers.

But these lockouts have real consequences. There are the obvious ones we can see publicly. In the NFL, millions of viewers saw replacement referees blow call after call. The NHL season is in jeopardy of being canceled once again. Now, Orchestra Hall, a major Twin Cities attraction, has fallen silent.

Some lockout consequences, while not necessarily obvious, are even more painful. In the Red River Valley, the casualties have included homes and marriages.

Crystal Sugar's farmer-shareholders haven't been spared pain, either. Shareholders have typically been paid about the same per ton of sugar beets -- or more -- as shareholders in the nearby Minn-Dak Sugar Cooperative. But this year, Crystal Sugar has estimated a beet payment of $59 per ton, while Minn-Dak's latest estimate is for a payment of $74.05 per ton. At the same time, executive pay is up. In the past three years, the top four officers saw their total compensation increase upwards of 34 percent, with CEO Dave Berg seeing a whopping 52 percent increase between 2009 and 2011.

This trend represents an overreach on the part of employers. The response of fans to the NFL referee conflict is a great example of how the average American sees this issue. We are not sympathetic to rich people deciding that they want to rewrite the rules of the game when they are already winning. Nor are we sympathetic to corporate executives mismanaging their shareholders' investment and rewarding themselves with a raise.

The attacks on public-sector collective bargaining rights are similar. Most Americans continue to believe that we all benefit when workers get some say in their jobs. Just look to the overturning of restrictions on collective bargaining in Ohio, and the overwhelming support by public-school parents for the Chicago teachers' strike.

Why does this support persist despite high unemployment and decreasing union density? It's because most of us know that nobody cares more about the quality of the work than workers themselves. It's true for referees, hockey players, musicians, teachers and technicians in a sugar-beet factory.

UU Editor:  The answer to the spread of lock-outs is SIT-DOWN STRIKES.   Throw Management OUT.   Sit-down Strikes end soon in solid VICTORIES.

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Shar Knutson is president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, a labor federation of more than 3,000 local Unions that represent more than 300,000 working people.

Where Did Our Pensions Go?

A total of 84,350 pension plans have vanished since 1985. This figure shocked Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Donald L. Barlett and James W. Steele, who just released their latest book, "The Betrayal of the American Dream." Their chapter on retirement chronicles the heist of the American dream's secure retirement by the financial elite and is a very important section of the book, says Steele, who spoke with the AFL-CIO about the retirement crisis. Steele says there is another number we should pay attention to: $17,686. That's the median value of 401(k) accounts in 2011. For most working people, the amount in their 401(k) account would pay them less than $80 a month for life.

"What's happening with retirement is almost parallel to what you see happening in other parts of the economy," says Steele.

The elite has its agenda to eliminate pensions with the shift to 401(k)s, which cost companies less. Now, there's a revenue stream for Wall Street and an obligation shift to people with little or no experience understanding how to deal with their own retirement issues....This is typical of all the other things the economy elite has been doing for decades with deregulation, unrestricted free trade and tax cuts—these things are all related.

"In the '50s, '60s and '70s, the amount of workers with access to pensions was significantly rising," says Steele. "We fully underestimated the speed in which the downturn would occur, and how Congress went along and encouraged it."

Barlett and Steele write that the shift from defined-benefit pension plans to 401(k)s began in the 1980s. Companies realized 401(k)s would substantially reduce corporate costs. Workers were told that pensions no longer made sense and were outdated since people moved around from job to job. The 401(k) was marketed as more “portable.”

Steele says 401(k)s were engineered by corporations as another way for the wealthy executives to set aside money. They were never intended to be a principal retirement plan, only a supplement. 

"Once corporate America got on to this, the idea took root," says Steele. "The entire obligation shifted to the employees."

Congress ignored the concerns raised by Trade Unions and other pension rights organizations. And the consequences are dire for middle- and lower-income workers. 

"This is so typical of what has been happening over the last two to three decades," says Steele. "This is the slow, steady erosion of economic security Americans had (or thought they had)....Now economic pundits, corporate folks and Wall Street people are saying people just have to work longer, in part because retirement plans now in place will not provide much security to people as they get older."

Bartlett and Steele feature stories of average people who did everything right (saved, worked hard) but are still living on the edge of poverty because of policies that enhance the rich at the expense of everyone else. 

Over and over again, people thought they had something good. They were working hard and then, through no fault of their own, lost it all. Most people we talked to in the book are employed.

People thought it was something they had done to lose their job or benefits....They didn’t realize it was part of a broader pattern. There are great swaths of working people who are affected and we think it's our fault. For most of these people, it's not their fault, it's just the way policy has been organized. Systematically dismantling pensions and retirement is the perfect example.

With the decline of pensions, it's even more important to strengthen, not cut, Social Security benefits. Although the country dodged a bullet in 2005, when Bush's plan for Social Security privatization fizzled, Steele says we still need to be vigilant to protect our benefits from the Wall Street casino. 

Don and I make this point that the 2008 recession wouldn't look a whole lot different from the Great Depression if we didn't have Social Security and Medicare because there was no safety net then. 

The economic elite, says Steele, attack Social Security because it's a large pool of money for Wall Street to play with. 

Nobody should kid themselves that they're not going to come back and try to implement some parts of that [privatization]....The amount of money at stake is too good and that’s all they care about—access to that money, not American workers. 

You can purchase "The Betrayal of the American Dream," on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. 

Public Workers Pensions Vote GOP

How Pensions Violate Free Speech
By BENJAMIN I. SACHS

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/under-citizens-united-public-employees-are-compelled-to-pay-for-corporate-political-speech.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Cambridge, Mass.
A CENTRAL principle of American political life is that everyone gets to choose which candidates to support. The idea that the government could force us to support those we oppose is anathema. But this unacceptable state of affairs is one of the unintended consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2010 Citizens United case.
That’s because the vast majority of people who work in the public sector — state, local and federal employees — are required to make contributions to a pension plan. Nearly all states make participation in a pension plan mandatory and a “condition of employment” for public employees. To get and keep your job with the government, you have to give some of your paycheck to the pension plan.
Public pensions, moreover, are so-called defined benefit plans, which means that employees don’t have a say in how their mandatory contributions are invested. The employees cannot request, for example, that their money be used only to buy government bonds or that it be invested only in certain mutual funds or only in select corporations.
Instead, the employees’ money is invested according to whatever decisions the pension plan’s trustee makes. And, not surprisingly, pension plans invest heavily in corporate securities: in 2008, public pensions held about $1.15 trillion in corporate stock.
Here’s the problem. In its Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court held that companies have a First Amendment right to make electoral expenditures with general corporate treasuries. And they’ve done so, with relish, pouring millions into the political system.
What Citizens United failed to account for, however, is that a significant portion of the money that corporations are spending on politics is financed by equity capital provided by public pension funds — capital contributions that the government requires public employees to finance with their paychecks.
This consequence of Citizens United is perverse: requiring public employees to finance corporate electoral spending amounts to compelled political speech and association, something the First Amendment flatly forbids.
Contrast this situation with how the court treats political spending by Unions. In many states, public employees are required to pay dues to a labor union. If the public employees union were to spend any of the money raised through dues on politics, the court has ruled, the dues requirement would amount to forced political speech and association. To prevent this First Amendment violation, the court has held that no Union may use an employee’s dues for political purposes if the employee objects.
The same should be true for pension funds and corporate politics. In a world where corporations can use their general treasuries for political spending, no government should be allowed to require employees to finance the purchase of corporate securities through a pension plan, unless the government provides those employees with a meaningful way to object to financing corporate politics.
The good news is that the rules governing Union dues and political spending provide a road map for restructuring public pensions in order to bring them back into conformity with the First Amendment.
Here’s one way it could work: Pension plans would determine the number of employees that object to financing corporate political spending. They would then negotiate “opt out” rights with the corporations in which they invest. These corporations would calculate the percentage of their annual expenditures that go to politics and promise to return to the pension plan an amount equal to the objecting employee’s pro rata share of the corporation’s political budget.
Whatever the route to reform, however, public pension plans need to ensure that employees are not compelled to finance corporate political speech. Until they do, these pension funds will be vulnerable to the challenge that they are violating the First Amendment.
Benjamin I. Sachs is a professor at Harvard Law School.