By Mark Gruenberg

PAI Staff Writer

CLEVELAND (PAI)—To nobody’s surprise, the Republican Party platform, adopted at its convention in Cleveland this month, backs a national so-called “right to work” law, slams federal workers and trashes the National Labor Relations Board for using federal minimum wage and overtime pay laws to deny “flexibility” to businesses. And it wants to abolish the U.S. minimum wage, letting states and cities set their own minimums.

“We support the right of states to enact right-to-work laws and call for a national law to protect the economic liberty of the modern workforce,” the GOP says in one of many anti-worker planks. And the GOP stops just short of demanding abolition of federal unions.

The platform, adopted by delegates who also made business mogul Donald Trump their presidential nominee, also pledges to renegotiate trade pacts in favor of U.S. interests – while not specifying which U.S. interests.

Party platforms are often filed and forgotten, and this platform may be no exception. But they do lay down principles the party expects its candidates, from the presidency on down, to adhere to. With GOP platform writers coming from the party’s business-oriented establishment wing, those principles are anti-union, anti-worker or both. Key passages include:

• A slam against regulations in general and NLRB and Labor Department regulations in particular, as bad for business: “We will revisit existing laws that delegate too much authority to regulatory agencies and  review all current regulations for possible reform or repeal,” it says.

• Elimination of the minimum wage and the Jones Act – which says U.S.-flagged U.S.-crewed ships must carry goods between U.S. ports – in U.S. territories.

• After declaring the GOP would “challenge the anachronistic labor laws that limit workers’ freedom and lock them into the workplace rules of their great-grandfathers,” the platform takes aim at the NLRB, promising “to restore fairness and common sense” there.

Taking aim at the Obama Administration, the platform says: “Instead of facilitating change, the current administration and its agents at the NLRB are determined to reverse it. They are attacking the franchise model of business development, which is essential to the creativity and flexibility of the new economy. They are wielding provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, designed for the manufacturing workplace of the 1930s, to deny flexibility to both employers and employees.

“They have outlawed union transparency rules that allowed members to discover what was being done with their dues. They have outlawed alternatives to unions even when they were favored by the workers. Their project labor agreements discriminate against the vast majority of workers by barring them from jobs on taxpayer-funded projects. Their patronizing, controlling approach leaves workers in a form of peonage to the NLRB.”

• One way to “bring labor law into the 21st century” is to have it “encourage cooperation between management and workers, not conflict,” the platform says. That cooperation should include so-called “merit pay,” though the GOP doesn’t call it that. Bosses often use “merit pay” to divide and conquer workers, including within already unionized workplaces.

“All workers, including union workers, must be free to accept raises and rewards without veto power from union officials,” the platform says. And “all unionized workers should be able to find out what is going on in their union trust funds and their executive compensation.” 

• The “minimum wage is an issue that should be han­dled at the state and local level,” the platform adds. And it advocates “employee empowerment and workplace flexibility.”

Republicans use “flexibility” as code for their comp-time-not-overtime legislation. Their bills coerce workers into comp time, but then leave when they can take it up to the boss.

• The platform takes special aim at federal workers, who are favorite targets of Congress’ ruling Republicans.  That includes implying federal worker unions should be banned. It charges, incorrectly, that “the federal workforce is larger and more highly paid than ever.”

Data show the federal workforce is at its lowest level since 1960 and federal pay panels routinely point out that except for the lowest-paid workers – such as janitors – federal workers’ pay trails their private-sector counterparts with the same skills and in the same jobs.

• The platform also specifically slams unionists’ political contributions, ignoring that they’re voluntary, and that they’re not taken from union dues.  “We believe the forced funding of political candidates through union dues and other mandatory contributions violates the 1st Amendment. Just as Americans have a 1st Amendment right to devote resources to favored candidates or views, they have a 1st Amendment right not to be forced to support individuals or ideologies they oppose,” it declares.