Sept. 24, 1997

"I been sayin' it for years, ain't I been sayin' it, Miguel?"

Oh man, this is kinda scary.

On a day-to-day basis, I'd say I see eye-to-eye with people in the Texas AFL-CIO on about zero issues per day. It's been my contention that labor unions outlived their usefulness decades ago, but perhaps my opinion came a little premature.

Now it seems the Texas AFL-CIO has filed suit in Travis County against the Texas Workforce Commission, alleging the TWC held an illegal closed-door session and voted to fire all five labor representatives on the commission's board of directors.

"From its inception, the Texas Workforce Commission has focused solely on what is good for employers, not the workforce," Texas AFL-CIO president Joe D. Gunn said in a Sept. 9 news release. "In this agency and in the Bush administration, the boss always wins, and the No.1 workforce priority is cheap, compliant labor."

Anybody else hear that little "click," signaling the light bulb flashing brightly over the head of organized labor?

Those of us loosely classified as the "radical right" have been saying pretty much the same thing for the past few years, unless I miss my guess. To borrow from San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders, the whole drive behind linking "education reform" to "real-world skills" has been to furnish mindless little robots for the big multi-national corporations.

The fired labor representatives help displaced and laid-off workers to find benefits, job training and new employment.

The lawsuit, filed by the Texas AFL-CIO and two of the terminated labor representatives, Gene Edgerly and Boyce Breedlove, seeks to void the agency's Aug. 22 actions taken under what the plaintiffs term was a "secret vote." The Texas Open Meetings Act requires proper posting of contemplated action on the agenda for any meeting, limits the legitimate reasons for holding closed-door meetings and requires public announcement of any action taken in closed or "executive" session.

The Aug. 22 meeting came after commissioners recessed their Aug. 19 meeting, and was called to discuss "personnel matters." Public representative Diane Rath and business representative Bill Hammond voted for the termination of the labor representatives, while labor representative Terry O'Mahoney opposed the decision.

The suit also seeks an injunction to preserve the tape recording of the executive session during which the decision to hire the labor representatives occurred.

Gunn charged the agency's explanation of the firings as an "administrative cover up" by executive director Mike Sheridan amounts to a "cover up."

"Texans don't want rogue agencies conducting business behind closed doors," Dunn said. "It's time to shine a light on how George Bush's appointees have kidnapped an agency that is supposed to help employees as well as employers."

Whether this signals a new willingness by some of the forces who have traditionally walked in lockstep with the "reform" movement to seriously question what the end goal is, remains to be seen. Organized labor has historically closed ranks and stood behind anyone espousing socialist ideals.

It's surely ironic to see them realizing that what they've been working for all these decades isn't the socialist utopia they thought they were working toward — but instead a world state run by multinational corporations.