Social Security & Labor's "Fiduciary Obligations"

As always, David Sirota nails it:

President Bush is back at his war against labor unions, this time promising them retribution if they continue to oppose Social Security privatization. GOP political hacks at the Labor Department sent the AFL-CIO a threatening letter claiming the union's opposition to Bush's plan may be breaking the law. Specifically, the administration charges that the union is violating its fiduciary duty by threatening to remove its pension investments from Wall Street firms that are actively lobbying for the privatization scheme.

Here's the thing with Bush's argument: the union has a fiduciary duty to make sure workers get the best return on their investments, and more broadly, the most generous overall pension benefits possible. Those overall pension benefits, however, inherently include Social Security because a workers' overall retirement pension is the mix of both their private pension, and Social Security. Thus, the AFL-CIO is perfectly justified in using workers' pensions to advocate for the policies that will best shore up Social Security for the long-term, and oppose those that will destroy the system. If, as Bush wants, the union continued to blindly invest worker pension money in Wall Street firms that were actively working to destroy Social Security, the union would be doing a financial disservice to the workers it is supposed to protect. In other words, the union would likely be violating its fiduciary duty if it DIDN'T do everything it could to oppose Bush's plan and try to make sure Social Security was preserved for the long-haul.

It is easy to see what Bush's move is all about, and even congressional Republicans admit as much. As the Times notes, "House Republicans viewed the warning as a shot over the bow of labor at a time when Mr. Bush's plan has largely stalled in Congress and when Wall Street firms have distanced themselves from it." His plan is so radical and controversial, the Financial Times this morning noted that even House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) is backing away from it.

Now, desperate for a lifeboat, Bush is going back to the doing what he always does when he is in a fight: attacking workers and unions. As I've shown in an earlier post, this is all part of Bush's desire to destroy the labor movement, and limit workers' rights. After all, at heart, Bush is a blueblood elitist who never had to do a days work in his life. To him workers' rights and interests are nuisances, not priorities. Too bad for him
workers are fighting back with a vengence.