The empire strikes back

Via Buzzflash, citing AP for Wednesday, we hear that

[t]he Labor Department cautioned organized labor in a letter made public Wednesday not to use money from pension funds to lobby against President Bush's proposal to overhaul Social Security.

"The department is very concerned about the potential use of plan assets to promote particular policy positions," Alan D. Lebowitz, a department official, wrote AFL-CIO's top lawyer.

In the letter to Jonathan P. Hiatt, AFL-CIO's general counsel, Lebowitz also wrote that officials charged with administering multistate pension funds must not hire or fire service providers primarily on the basis of their positions on Social Security legislation.

We can assume this letter arose from the fact that the AFL-CIO successfully pressured some investment companies that manage billions in union pension funds to withdraw from a business coalition advocating the bogus so-called "private accounts" scheme to "save" Social Security. That is, labor unions, following the practice of Big Business, have been using their economic clout to advance the interests of their members, in this case by opposing the reactionaries' surreptitious attempts to break down Social Security.

As a result, we can assume further that the letter is an attempt to intimidate unions, throwing out broad hints that they will be the subject of DOJ's baleful attention should they continue to be unhappy about doing business with outfits that are lobbying to undermine their members' retirement security.

When I first heard about this business around the end of March, I described the argument that unions were violating their "fiduciary duty" by leaning on the companies as "loony." It would seem the AFL-CIO agrees, because it blew off that bit, saying through Damon Silvers, an attorney for the group,

"we have no problem" with the letter. He said the AFL-CIO has considered a company's position on Social Security as a "collateral issue," and not as the sole or primary basis for a decision.

Silvers also said "we don't disagree" with the contention that pension funds should not be engaged in lobbying, but added pointedly that

"we believe, and we believe the department agrees, that the plans ought to be able to educate their participants on matters directly related to their retirement security,"

defending unions' legal activities by cleverly echoing language that businesses have used in the past to justify their own possibly illegal lobbying (i.e., by calling it "education").

It remains to be seen if the DOJ tries any follow-up; as I noted originally, this whole thing is not an exercise in law enforcement but in political intimidation, raising the possibility of a resource-draining, attention-diverting battle. Given that, the fact that such a case would require stretching the law well beyond the breaking point may prove irrelevant to the decision whether to pursue it or not. Personally, I persist in doubting the DOJ will do more than huff and puff because the political fallout among a number of those blue-collar-but-"red"-state union members could be quite unpleasant for the Bushites. But considering that the WHS* have been pretty adept at shooting themselves in the foot on Social Security, we'll still have to see.

In any event, as I noted in March,

keep it in mind: This is happening not because we're losing but because, at least on this, we're winning.

Footnote: Meanwhile, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) is pushing the Government Accountability Office to find out how much public money the White House is spending on Bush's campaign of pre-selected "open meetings" on Social Security to which only supporters of administration's effort are to be admitted (and at which others can be arrested and strip-searched).

*WHS = White House Sociopaths