Increased productivity and job creation is made possible through teamwork, camaraderie and innovation, not through collective bargaining and arbitration. That message has been clearly delivered to union bosses throughout the nation by South Carolina’s new governor, Nikki Haley, its new director of Labor License and Regulation (LLR), Catherine Templeton, and by South Carolina Speaker of the House Bobby Harrell.
Only days after taking office, Governor Haley said this about unions: “There’s no secret I don’t like the unions. We are a right-to-work state. I will do everything I can to defend the fact we are a right-to-work state. We are probusiness by nature. I want us to continue to be pro-business. If they don’t like what I said, I’m sorry, that’s how I feel.”
You don’t get any clearer than that. Bobby Harrell, the state’s Speaker of the House, which in South Carolina is one of the state’s most influential elected officials, has spent the last three years joining South Carolina Representative Eric Bedingfield in the fight against “Card Check” legislation, federal legislation that would allow unions to infiltrate South Carolina’s right-to-work state employers.
Harrell and Bedingfield, along with South Carolina Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler, successfully pushed for a South
Carolina Constitutional Amendment that guarantees South Carolina workers the right to a secret ballot election in union votes – a clear push against President Obama and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s pro-union agenda. As a result, the National Labor Relations Board is expected to take South Carolina to court over the Constitutional Amendment.
As a top priority by union bosses and President Obama, as well as Democrats in Congress, federal Card Check legislation, otherwise erroneously known as the Employee Free Choice Act, would remove the rights of workers to a secret ballot election during a union vote. It also would provide that after a collective bargaining was established, if an agreement wasn’t reached, a federal bureaucrat would intervene and set the employer’s contract for its employees – even in right-to-work states, such as South Carolina.
Speaker Pelosi, in addressing a crowd of 3,000 AFL-CIO members said, “Our work in Congress is based on two truths:
America’s economy is only as strong as America’s middle class; America’s middle class is only as strong as America’s unions.” The latter may be true in Pelosi’s San Francisco Haight-Ashbury district, but not in the solidly pro-jobs belt of South Carolina.
Haley, Harrell and Templeton certainly are no union boss favorites. It might be safe to say that they are collectively and
individually the antithesis of what union bosses are looking for in candidates. According to the American Institute for Economic Research, “Since 1990, labor unions have contributed over $667 million in election campaigns in the United States, of which $614 million or 92 percent went to support Democratic candidates. In 2008, unions spent $74.5 million in campaign contributions, with $68.3 million going to the Democratic Party.” With Card Check being the number one legislative issue among unions, Haley, Harrell and Templeton are to be sure to fight unions every step of their way.
Haley’s new LLR appointee, Catherine Templeton, also has asserted her own anti-union stance: “In my experience I have
found there is not one company that operates more efficiently when you put another layer of bureaucracy in . … We will do everything we can to work with Boeing and make sure that their work force is taken care of, that they run efficiently and that we don’t add anything unnecessarily.”
That anti-union position is not unexpected. Templeton is an attorney for Ogletree Deakins, a labor and employment law firm
in South Carolina. According to Ogletree Deakins, Templeton has been involved in union avoidance for the past 14 years and has extensive experience with national labor campaigns against the UAW, IBEW, and the Teamsters. She has spent the last couple of years traveling around the United States providing training on the Employee Free Choice Act.
If there ever was a statement that Haley could make, appointing a clear anti-union advocate to the LLR director’s post is it.
As a result of Haley and Templeton’s aggressive anti-union comments, the International Association of Machinists, as well as the AFL-CIO, filed suit in federal court demanding that Haley and Templeton cease all rhetoric and remain neutral on union issues. Though ultimately thrown out of court, the plaintiffs claimed Haley and Templeton’s actions, “taken under the color of state law, intimidate and coerce workers so that they are compelled to refrain from joining or supporting labor organizations.”
The Machinists Union representative went on to say that Haley and Templeton’s actions are unprecedented for state elected officials.
In South Carolina, it is clear that Haley, Harrell and Templeton are certain to ensure union bosses, pro-union National Labor Relations Board members and collective bargaining agents stay clear of infiltrating South Carolina’s workforce.
