The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a story Wednesday discussing the agenda of organized labor leaders in Washington. Unfortunately, this piece unquestioningly accepts their description their agenda as being focused on job creation. The reality is, labor leaders have advanced an anti-growth, anti-competitiveness agenda for more over a year now. This agenda seeks to increase union membership to the detriment of workers’ rights while promoting union-only jobs funded at taxpayer expense.

Organized labor’s priorities include:

• Passage of the anti-democratic Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would cost 600,000 jobs in the first year alone
• A radical overhaul of the National Labor Relations Board to implement aspects of the jobs-killing EFCA
• Expanding the application of Davis-Bacon wages for federal construction programs
• Promoting union-only labor for federal contracts through so-call “Project labor agreements”
• Enacting federal policies to encourage unionization through misguided posting requirements for the employees of federal contractors
• Government mandated paid leave, included in the Healthy Families Act
• Counterproductive and unnecessarily aggressive OSHA enforcement that further burdens employers and does little to improve workplace safety
• Advancing costly ergonomics regulations
• Opposition to free trade agreements despite the proven job-creation benefits of expanding exports

If union leaders are looking for ideas on how to work with employers and policymakers to enhance our competitiveness and create jobs I recommend they read the recently released Milken Report.

Proponents of the Healthy Families Act are unfortunately taking advantage of the Administration’s guidance for employers on dealing with the potential H1N1 pandemic by advancing a restrictive mandate on employers that will reduce flexibility of leave options for employees.

“Workforce Magazine” reports that that advocates of the bill are interpreting recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to “establish policies for employee compensation and sick-leave absences unique to a pandemic” in a way to further promote federally mandated paid leave.

What isn’t noted is that most employers are already providing some form of sick leave for their employees; 83 percent of workers in private industry have access to illness leave.

The NAM encourages manufacturers to review the Administration’s information and develop contingency plans, as appropriate, in an effort to limit the potential negative impact on our workers, their families and our communities. However, mandating a costly one-size-fits-all approach to paid leave is far from the right approach. This legislation threatens an employer’s ability to provide the benefits that best fit the needs of their workforce. Additionally this bill would place limits on employers that provide more benefits than the minimum requirements proposed in the bill.

The advocates who are calling for passage of the Healthy Family Act in response to the H1N1 are also purposely overlooking the regulatory realities that would disconnect any new law from this year’s illness. It took 17 months to implement the final regulations for the Family and Medical Leave Act (enacted February 5, 1993; final regulations January 6, 1995). The Healthy Families Act is an equally complicated piece of legislation and there’s just no possibility of implementing it before the winter flu season. So what we’re seeing is alarmism for political purposes.

While most employers are concerned with the immediate threat posed by the Employee Free Choice Act in Congress, there is a long list of other threats facing job providers.

Workforce Management magazine provides a great overview of the spectrum of employment policy legislation pending in the 111th Congress. This article details proposals like the Healthy Families Act that would make job creation more difficult and expensive, WARN Act expansion which makes it harder for employers to retain jobs during times of economic down turn and proposals like the Paycheck Fairness Act that will expose employers to unlimited punitive damages for allegations of gender-based discrimination.

Worth a read.

A bit of good news today as it was announced this morning that the SEIU has asked that the Proposal 4 that would impose a competitiveness-killing paid sick leave mandate on employers, be removed from ballots in November. The proposal sought to require seven days of paid sick leave each year for employees who work at least 30 hours a week, and a pro-rated number of days for employees working fewer than 30 hours. The devil was in the details though, as in the “fine print,” the proposal would have also allowed employees to take that leave with little or no advance notice in increments as small as an hour or less.

Ohio Gov. Strickland had recently come out strongly opposed to the measure which he deemed: “unworkable, unwieldy and would be detrimental to Ohio’s economy”. One may assume that a similar proposal in the U.S. Senate sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would be have the same detrimental economic impact…however on much larger national scale.

UPDATE (10 a.m. Friday): Here’s the news release from the Ohio Manufacturers Association.

The NAM issued a release, as well: “REMOVAL OF PAID LEAVE BALLOT INITIATIVE IS GOOD FOR OHIO JOBS GROWTH AND ECONOMY, SAYS NAM.” Excerpt:

“We are relieved that Ohio businesses will not have to face this issue in November,” [NAM President John] Engler said. “Rising energy, health care and other costs in a slowing economy have taken a toll on manufacturers in Ohio and across the nation. Gov. Strickland (D-OH) and Sen. Brown (D-OH) clearly recognized that the added burden of this misguided proposal couldn’t have come at a worse time. These types of restrictive mandates limit employers’ flexibility to provide the best fit of benefits for their employees,” he noted.