NAM president: labor movement uses trade issue to attract members.

The United States labor movement should be backing a strong free-trade agenda for the benefit of its members, but labor has strategically positioned itself to be on the wrong side of the issue, according to John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers. Engler has an inkling as to why that is.

"It strikes me that [with] labor having been around politics a long time, that there are other agendas underway here--such as winning political power to do things like card check and other kinds of agenda items," Engler told the 2008 Summit on American Competitiveness in Chicago organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce. "It is hard to believe that even the labor leaders truly believe that trade is bad, but trade maybe simply is a convenient issue to tee up to achieve political power to do other things."

Unionization has declined to less than 8 percent of the private-sector workforce, Engler pointed out. Labor leaders are using the anti-trade sentiments "to bring other members in" to the labor movement, particularly "as dues revenues dry up for unions themselves."

Engler asked the CEOs of Caterpillar and John Deere whether the union leaders in their companies would provide vocal support for the free-trade agenda, given that exports are good for Caterpillar's employees. "Is there anything that we--we being the greater business community--could be saying to labor ... in your respective companies to help them balance the conversation some? Are they able to do that? Can a local [labor] president speak up for the company, not for the union?"

Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens wasn't willing to tackle the question. "We had our share of challenges with organized labor in the union, but at Caterpillar, we're absolutely focused on employees and creating a terrific team effort," he said. "We tried to give a tremendous amount of emphasis to your point, governor, to our employees in places like Aurora, Decatur and East Peoria here in the state of Illinois ... I leave it to them to challenge the organized labor leadership, which is vehemently opposed to trade agreements, which if they were to get the trade agreements blocked or turned inward, would cost them their jobs ...."

Robert Lane, CEO of Deere & Co. replied: "We're doing the same thing."