RIGHT-TO-WORK, PREVAILING WAGE FIGHT MAY STIR ALL CAMPAIGNS

Labor becomes election issue

By Ryan Alessi

FRANKFORT — Regardless of whether it was intended, Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s forceful push for legislation targeted at organized labor is morphing into more of an election issue than a legislative one.

Fletcher’s aggressive support for the repeal of the prevailing wage law and enactment of so-called "right to work" legislation has pleased many business leaders, who often show appreciation through campaign donations.

Some Democrats have said that garnering contributions was Fletcher’s purpose all along, a charge the governor has denied.

But so far the most visible effect of Fletcher’s actions has been fierce opposition from labor unions, who filled the Capitol last week to voice their displeasure with those issues during the governor’s budget address.

Union leaders now are pledging to sweep across the state with grassroots campaign support and an influx of political donations for lawmakers who oppose "right to work" and the repeal of the prevailing wage law.

"It’s looking like it’s perhaps not going the way the Republicans around Frankfort would like," said Joe Gershtenson, director of the Center for History and Politics at Eastern Kentucky University.

Fletcher hinted for months that he would endorse some form of legislation favored by business leaders, such as "right to work," which bars unions from mandating that workers join them and pay dues.

He then went on last week to write into his draft of a proposed $17.7 billion two-year spending plan a provision that would repeal the prevailing wage law, which calculates a pay level for construction workers on public projects based on regional averages.

Neither proposal seems likely to pass this year, lawmakers of both parties say.

Republican Senate Floor Leader Dan Kelly of Springfield said last week that prevailing wage wouldn’t be a priority of the Senate unless it came from the House.

And Democratic Rep. J.R. Gray of Benton, House Labor and Industry Committee chairman, said the issues probably won’t even get hearings.

Nothing will happen before Jan. 31 — the filing deadline for 2006 legislative election candidates — so that the issues don’t spur more potential challengers to get into the legislative races.

But Gray conceded that the House risks taking additional political heat by not even discussing the proposals.

"The number-one thing in my mind is to kill the two issues. And the number-two thing is to keep down as much divisive discussion as we can," Gray said.

Before the session, business leaders such as Luther Deaton, president and CEO of Central Bank & Trust Co. of Lexington, and Bill Stone, CEO of Louisville Plate Glass Co., adamantly called for the repeal of prevailing wage and enactment of right to work.

"What the right-to-work law says to the economic development community around the country is this is a state that’s committed," said Stone in a December interview.

Fletcher said something similar in his Jan. 9 State of the Commonwealth Address. And last week in his budget draft he included $40 million extra in projects by banking on a repeal of the prevailing wage law.

"I believe the time for prevailing wage laws has come and gone. It makes every school building more expensive," Fletcher said Tuesday night during his speech.

Gershtenson, from EKU, said it will be interesting to track whether Fletcher’s re-election campaign sees a spike in contributions from business leaders and corporate political action groups as a result of this push.

However, Fletcher’s 2007 campaign — which raised just $218,000 in its first three months — isn’t required to disclose his donors again until November.

Overall, smaller and midsize companies, particularly manufacturers, tend to be most interested in right-to-work legislation, said Russell Quick, president of the South Jefferson Republican Club and a commercial real-estate agent.

But their political and financial clout don’t match up to the unions, he noted.

Members of organized labor will be listening to what each legislator says on the matters in preparation for the 2006 elections, said Bill Londrigan, Kentucky State AFL-CIO president.

"Based on the responses and the actions of the elected representatives, we will decide on who it is that we will be targeting and working to defeat in the fall," Londrigan said, noting that it’s not a Democrat-versus-Republican decision.

Rep. Brandon Smith, a Hazard Republican, said it’s plain knowledge that he’ll vote with the unions who "have supported me all along." He said the governor knows where he stands, and his party loyalty hasn’t been questioned.

Administration officials, so far, have shrugged off the union opposition.

"That tells us the national AFL-CIO is in a desperate effort to protect its position in Kentucky and has very little regard for the welfare of the majority of people in this state," said Brett Hall, Fletcher’s communications director. "We fully expected this."

Londrigan insisted that the unions weren’t planning to respond the way they have until the governor "made this his rallying cry."

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/legislature/13683579.htm