Bob Lutz: Labor Rules Are Payback for Unions

Published: Tuesday, 24 Apr 2012 | 9:06 PM ET

By: Bruno J. Navarro
 

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A federal rule that fast-tracks elections to unionize workers is nothing more than a political payback to organized labor, former General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said Tuesday.

“I think, look, the whole thing was voted in by a Democratic-controlled Senate. This is the Democratic Party paying back the unions for their support,” he said on CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report.”

Lutz said it wasn’t a surprise.

“Do we like it? No. Do we think it’s a good thing? No,” he said. “Will it make America more competitive? No.”

Earlier, the U.S. Senate rejected a move to overturn the new rules set by the National Labor Relations Board. The measure, proposed by Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., would have thrown out rules to make it easier to unionize – and tougher for companies to dissuade workers from doing so.

Assured a White House veto and an uphill battle in the Democratic-controlled Senate, the anti-union measure failed along party lines, 45 to 54.

(Monday on “The Kudlow Report,” Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus criticized the NLRB rules.)

Greg Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and a labor organizer, said the NLRB rules were absolutely necessary, saying the process was “completely slanted in favor of business.”

“It does call for a faster election. Faster elections are needed,” he said. “Once the board rules, OK we’re going to have an election date, right now businesses have the right to file appeal after appeal after appeal.

“The delays are endless. This is the smart way to do this. This is what’s fair for employees,” he said.

Lutz argued that workers don’t want unions.

“The fact is, many workforces in the United States, once they understand the full ramifications of unionization, elect not to have a union,” he said. “The UAW has been significantly unsuccessful in unionizing the Japanese and German transplants in the southern states."

“So, you can hear the rhetoric all you want, the bottom line is this is the Democratic Party paying the unions back, and trying to foster increased unionization in American industry,” he said.

Junemann said it was an issue of fairness.

“What’s happening here is that Congress needs to try to level the playing field on behalf of workers,” he said. “If workers decide they don’t want a union, that’s their right.”

Home Depot’s Bernie Marcus Blasts Obama Record

Published: Monday, 23 Apr 2012 | 9:09 PM ET

By: Bruno J. Navarro

What businesses need right now is for the government to eliminate regulations and simplify the tax code, Home Depot  co-founder Bernie Marcus said Monday.

“I think that this administration is not friendly to business. I don’t mean they’re not friendly. They just don’t understand what makes business work,” he said on CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report.”

Marcus, who is retired from the building supply chain and now runs his own foundation, proposed a hands-off approach. 

“The entrepreneurs who built the free enterprise system, who built the middle market in the United States without government help basically don’t want government help. They want to be left alone. Cut out the regulations. Let them understand what the tax situation’s going to be. Let them understand what Obamacare is going to cost them. And let them go on and create jobs and hire the people who are unemployed,” he said. 

In a past CNBC appearance, Marcus made headlines for a scathing critique of the Obama administration, claiming that Democrats are out of touch with the private sector. He also took aim at Republicans — "Some are crazy." — Goldman Sachs and the rest of Wall Street, whose work in derivatives he said has hurt the country. 

On Monday, he took a more measured tone. 

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Tue 24 Apr 12 | 07:31 PM ET

The National Labor Relations Board got the green light today by the Senate to allow so-called ambush union elections in 10 days. Bob Lutz, former GM vice chairman, and Greg Junemann, IFPTE president, discuss.

“We saw the statistic that 50 percent of graduates with MBAs are unemployed, are working at jobs that they don’t want,” he said. “This is not a great economy. This president has not created jobs. And you can spur all you want, it just hasn’t happened.” 

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich agreed with Marcus — on one point.

“It’s not a great economy,” he said. “But I don’t know what exactly Bernie Marcus is complaining about. From a business perspective, this economy has turned way up, profits and earnings, share prices. I mean, if I were the head of a business, I’d be pretty happy with Obama. The people who are unhappy — and I they have a right to be unhappy about the economy — are a lot of working people who have seen their wages go down not because of Obama but because a lot of the ways in which big businesses have created more profits is by cutting payrolls.” 

Reich, who served in the Clinton administration and is now a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, said that headwinds were coming from elsewhere. 

“The real challenge ahead is aggregate demand. There just is not enough of it,” he said. “You’ve got Europe, you’ve got China shrinking in terms of slowing down, and you also have at the same time American consumers dipping into their savings, going deeper into debt. I worry, frankly, about a slowdown before Election Day.” 

Marcus said that the economic recession forced companies to make cuts that are still being felt. 

“When the economy tanked, they learned to live with less people,” he said, adding that the only growth is happening overseas. 

Companies, Marcus added, “have lots of money, and they are producing great profits, but they are not hiring people, and they are not hiring people because of the instability of the economy that they’re looking at.” 

Marcus also cited the rising cost of fuel, including gasoline prices. 

Asked by host Larry Kudlow whether he blamed President Obama for the economy, Marcus qualified his response. 

“Hey, listen. Things happen. I can’t blame everything that happened on him. I mean, he’s inherited some things in 2008,” he said. “But my God, he’s been in the job for three years. He hasn’t made a dent in it, and the policies he’s pursuing now don’t look good for the future.”

In particular, he blasted an effort by the National Labor Relations Board to inform employees of their rights — a rule blocked by a U.S. Court of Appeals last week — as “making it simple for unions to organize.” 

Reich challenged that view of labor.

“We’ve had about 30 years after the Second World War when unions got up to about roughly 34 percent of the total workforce, and everybody grew and everybody did well. And we grew on average faster on average than we’ve grown since,” he said. 

“One of the problem is consumers don’t have money in their pockets. They don’t have money in their pockets because they don’t have bargaining leverage. They don’t have bargaining leverage partly because they don’t have unions or anybody else sticking up for them. Why assume that unions are a zero-sum game and bad for business? That’s not been the history of America.” 

Marcus called Reich’s argument “wrong.”