On this episode of Nuts World.
In twenty eighteen, Vincent Fernuccio and Jennifer Butler created Institute for the American Worker to better inform policy makers and stakeholders in Washington, d C. About current developments and labor policy.
The Institute for the American Worker worked with Congressman Burgess Owens to introduce the Start Applying Labor Transparency, or SALT Act, to amend the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of nineteen fifty nine, requiring greater transparency and financial transactions between unions and labor consultants, closing loopholes that have allowed backroom deals to thrive. Here to discuss the SALT Act, I'm
really pleased to welcome my guest, Vincent Bernuccio. He is the president and co founder of Institute for the American Worker. He previously served in the US Department of Labor Transition team for both Trump administrations and served in the Joy gege W. Bush Administration's Department of Labor. Vincent, welcome and thank you for joining me on Each World.
Mister speaker, Thank you so much for having me on. It is an absolute honor and I appreciate it.
How did you get interested in this whole topic.
Well, I graduated law school and I was looking for a job. I actually we met when I was running for Congress in Michigan. I was a sacrificial land against John dingle.
An active courage it.
Was, but you know, helped me my career. I got on themigp and eventually it got me a appointment to the Department of Labor under then Assistant Secretary for Administration Management and Deputy Secretary and Acting Secretary Pat Pizzella. And then I was off to the races. And that's what got me into labor policy and been doing it ever since the Bush administration.
That's great.
Let's start with President Trump's recent executive action restoring accountability to policy influencing positions within the federal workforce. Can you walk us through what Schedule F is and why the Trump administration sees it as essential for restoring accountability in the federal workforce.
Absolutely, so this is going to be one of the most impactful things I think the President does. I'll just give you a little bit of history. There's kind of been a ping pong on this. So in the first Trump administration, he issued an executive order called Schedule F President Biden got elected and put his hand on the Bible, went to the Oval Office, and it was one of
the first things that he repealed. And then to President Trump in the current administration, one of the first things he did is reinstitute that the executive Order, and he's actually moved it from Schedule F to this Career Policy Schedule. And let me tell you what this does. This essentially makes fifty thousand federal employees, or two percent of the federal workforce, makes them at well employees just like most of the private sector, just like states like Utah, Texas, Florida, Kentucky,
Georgia and others already have. And the reason this is so important is because if you have career federal employees that aren't doing their job, whether because they're either just not good, they just don't want to, or they simply just do not like the policies the president is putting forward, this gives politicals the ability to say, well, you're not
doing your job, you should be let go. And you know, I've seen this firsthand in multiple administrations that you can see career federal bureaucrats actually throw sand in the gears of policy. And this would go a long way to make sure that that doesn't happen.
When Lincoln became president, there were about fifteen hundred policy positions. He eliminated twelve hundred of them because he knew that with Southerners and with Democrats, he couldn't win a civil war if they were the instrument of affecting things. So literally, out of a total fifteen hundred and twelve hundred left.
And I always remind people that that giving the elected official the ability to actually drive the bureaucracy is central, because if you don't do that, the bureaucrats really are running the place and the elected officials are just on the surface. Does Schedule F still exist or has it now got a new title.
It's got a new title, and it makes sense. So it was Schedule F under the first Trump administration. Now it is this policy Career schedule. And the reason for the change is, once again, these are still civil servants. They're still governed by the Civil Service for Formact. The only difference is that if they are in a what's known as policy influencing position, that if they're throwing sands in the gears of that policy and they're thwarting the
people's elected representative. It's President Trump, it could be any president. This goes beyond administration. It also goes beyond policy. This isn't just a labor policy. This is energy, this is education, this is financial services. That those elected representatives could say, well, you know what, you're not doing your job. We don't have to go through this long, lengthy review process to dismiss you. It's just you're not doing your job. You're
now an out well employee. You're throwing sand to the gears of policy. You should be removed.
Well, obviously you're going to have some substantial opposition from the American Federation of Government Employees in the National Treasure Employees Union.
What's their counter.
Are they in favor of not having elected officials be effective?
Yes. What they are trying to do is essentially throw sand in the gears of these type of reforms. What they are pushing for is making it as difficult as possible to remove federal employees whether or not they're doing their job. You see them opposing President Trump on this executive order soon to be rule. You see them trying to throwart his other executive actions, such as, you know,
protecting national security. He issued another executive order recently that said that, you know, you can't have collective bargaining and multiple federal agencies that deal with national security, something that the law very clearly gives him the right to do and to determine which agencies those are. These unions they like the status quo, they like the protections, and what they don't like is accountability for those federal employees that are not doing their job. And frankly, I think that's
a disservice to the good federal employees. And there are a lot of good federal employees out there. I've worked with good career federal employees that then have to pick up the slack for the ones that aren't doing what they're supposed to do.
As a part of all this, you have been strongly supporting Representing Burgess Owen's bill, the Start Applying Labor Transparency Act or SOLD Act. Walk us through what would that do and why is that important?
Absolutely so. Now we're shifting over from federal public sector unions too. Now we're talking about mostly private sector unions here. And this is what Representative Owen's bill does. There's a thing called salting. When unions come to organize, they can have organizers that take jobs will lie to the employer and say, well, I want to take this job, you know, just to work for you think, you know, I just want to be a barista at Starbucks, so give me
a job. What they're really doing is they're actually paid by the union to take that job and then to start organizing. And not only do they lie to the employer, but they also lie to the employees. I'm just your fellow coworker. Hey, have you heard about this union? Maybe it's a good idea. We've actually seen quotes of workers that say, well, you know, we thought this was kind of schemey, I thought this person was my friend. Now I find out that they're being paid to organize me.
What is this about. It actually gets so bad that you had a paid union salt testify before Congress and not put in their disclosure form that they were getting paid by the union. And they testified, Oh, I'm just a Starbucks barista, and then it later came about oh, actually no, you're not. You're actually being paid to organize Starbucks. That really called into question that person's testimony.
Isn't that also a felony? Oh?
I know that this was undee Chairwoman Virginia Fox. I know there were investigations going on to see what exactly happened, especially when that union salt signed that truth and Testimony form.
Would this spill basically require that somebody who is being salted has to make it public.
That's it? So right now, if an employer goes out and they hire a consultant to talk to their employees and say, you know, we don't think a union's right for us, that employer and the person they hire have to fill out certain forms with the Department of Labor. And you know, the first ones you do within a month. So we're just saying, why don't we have parity here?
If the employer has to report hiring someone to talk to employees about unionization, the unions, if they hire someone to talk to employees about unionization, they should file the exact same forms.
All of this is built in a sense.
When the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of nineteen fifty nine, which was the first big effort to create transparency in this area, why was it not adequate?
Basically, you know, it gave discretion. I would argue that the Department of Labor actually has the ability to say that if you're talking to employees, whether you're on the union side or whether you're on the employer side, you should file these forms. However, that's not how it is
being interpreted. So what Representative Owen's bill does is it says, well, since it's not being interpreted that way, let's be crystal clear within the STAF that if you're talking to employees, whether it's union or employer side, you should file these forms.
The whole process of getting all this out in the open also relates back to what's really kind of a bizarre model in the government, where we the taxpayers, are actually paying for the union members to organize the government. See if people who are supposedly being paid to be civil servants, but they're actually being paid to be union organizers.
That's right. That's a process called official time. And it's not just union organizers. It's actually doing all sorts of work on the taxpayer dime for the union. It's being a union official, in some cases, working full time for the union. This is actually something that President Trump did away with in his first term. You had union officials working full times in some cases for years for the union, but still getting their taxpayer salary. So once again President
Trump deserves a lot of credit with this. He's put forth a policy to make sure that this is reported. Was reported in his first term, President Biden simply did not report it. Now President Trump is saying it has to be reported again. But he has actually gone further, and it's not just about how much the government is paying union officials with taxpayer dollars instead of doing their
job to do union work. It's actually about how much time federal employees, agency employees are doing just to negotiate with the union, to handle grievances and all of these things.
Once again, to this administration's credit, the Office of Personnel Management a couple weeks ago said not only should agencies report official time, but they should also report how much agency time is spent on collective bargaining and speaker if you like, I can get into some of the just kind of crazy things that we have seen unions negotiate over in the federal workforce.
I think for the average taxpayer that would be really helpful because most of us, including me, I know in general that it's much worse than we think it is, but we don't really have specific examples.
The first one is. I was on a panel under the first Trump administration, the Federal Service Impasses panel that did mediation and arbitration between the federal government and federal unions when they came to an impass. So I saw a lot of these cases firsthand. They're all public, and we actually put a study out on our website detail of all of this. It's all available at I the number four AW dot org, IFAW dot org. But let
me give you a couple examples. So one you had a union negotiating over being able to smoke on tobacco free federal facilities. You had another one where they were negotiating over the right mister speaker reminds you the right to wear spandex in the office. And they had another one where they were negotiating over the height of modesty panels under cubicles. It was an office move and does the cubicle go two inches or four inches above the bottom of the floor. Now, they negotiated for years over
this two inches versus four inches. They could have probably purchase go plated cubicles for the entire office. For the amount of money that they spent in official time, in staff time and travel and supplies, you name it. So those are the things that they're bargaining over, and those are the things that, thankfully will continue to come to light with these transparency measures from the administration.
Turns out across the whole government to be a lot more money than people think.
Well, official time alone in the first Trump administration was well over one hundred million three was one hundred and twenty something million dollars in official time, and that doesn't count how much on the agency side was spent. So we're going to see probably some very high numbers, and that's year over year.
A different front. Senator Josh Holly proposed the Faster Labor Contracts Act, the Speed Up Union contract negotiations. I find Holly interesting and complicated. What do you make of this bill?
I think complicated is the right term. And unfortunately Senator Howlly has this larger framework, and this is the first bill from his larger framework, and it is pretty much part and parcel borrowed from the Democrat Union wish List Bill, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act or pro Act. Unfortunately, the timing was a little unfortunate for Senator Hawley. So what this bill does is it would allow federal bureaucrats
to impose an arbitration panel on two private parties. So if a union organizes an employer and within a couple of weeks, if they don't reach a collective bargaining agreement, first they say would go to mediation. So that's where both sides come together as essentially marriage counseling, try to
get to an agreement. If that doesn't work within a very short amount of time, then they go to arbitration, where these federal bureaucrats would impose this three person panel that would actually write a contract for two private parties, one of which maybe never even agreed to the process in the first place. And I mean this everything at a work site, ours, pay, working conditions, you name it. So it's extremely troubling.
Two questions, guys.
One, it strikes me that that literally gives the union every reason not to agree.
We've seen this in the public sector, not so much in the private sector, but in the public sector where yeah, you'll have one side and maybe it's the union, we'll stall the negotiations and then they get it to the arbitrator, and the arbitrator will just look at maybe another unionized facility and go well, they're getting this, so that works for them. This should work for this, whether city, town or in the Haley bill, now private company over here.
But let me tell you kind of the unfortunate timing of this. So those federal bureaucrats, they are at the FMCS, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and right after this bill was introduced, President Trump announced that he was ratcheting back how much funding was going to fmcs. And actually, at the same time, it was a little old, was about a decade old, but there was re unearthed reports of corruption and overspending and all these problems with fmcs.
So that was right after Senator Hawley introduced this bill that basically gave all of this power to the FMCS. So we'll see what happens with it. But I know a lot of people are extraordinarily skeptical of having federal bureaucrats dictate these panels that could then write entire contracts for two private parties.
It seems to me that private sector unions have been steadily shrinking as a percent of the whole workforce, So trying to design a coercive bargaining system, it is essentially an effort to fit back to growing the unions in the face of the fact that the American workers seem to be leaving them.
That's right. So this was the first year, and this is public in private that union membership drop below double digits nationwide. This is Baxsin's early nineteen hundreds. In the private sector, it's below six percent. I believe it's about five point nine percent right now. And it's not so much unions. I mean, I think unions can do good.
I think unions can really help workers. The problem is that they are in this antiquated, one size fits all kind of industrial revolution collective bargaining model that does not allow for flexibility, It does not allow for ingenuity, it does not allow for individual workers to be rewarded. I think today's modern workforce is looking at that model and saying, no,
that's not what I want. So instead of having this framework that center Hawley is putting out, instead of having all of these government mandates to think that if you really want to grow union membership and have unions thrive is have them adopt a new, flexible, individual focused professional service business model as opposed to the compulsion they have today.
In a sense, you'd move people towards more of a everybody gets to be a professional, as in a law firm, rather than the kind of classic indust show era mass unionization.
Yeah, it's making them professional service organizations that you can join voluntarily. The employers aren't compelled to negotiate with them, but they will because unions can provide top notch services. But I think that's the way of the future, you know. Unfortunately, even for workers now, a lot of unions not only have a floor for pay, but they also have a ceiling.
So in a lot of unions and a lot of collective bargaining agreements, the only way you get ahead is unless you get another degree, is logging another year on the job. Doesn't matter how hard you work, how productive you are, how much money you make your boss, it's well, you're under the CBA and the only way you're getting a raise is by seniorti logging another year on the job. So I think that is why a lot of workers are looking at unions and saying, yeah, it's just not for me.
We're entering a different era.
It seems to me when you look both at the kind of bills like Halley for the private sector, and then you look at what's happening with the Trump administration reforms in the public sector. What do you think is the impact of public opinion? How important is it that the American people understand these things.
Well, it's interesting because you see poll after poll unions do get high approval ratings. But the interesting thing is that when you scratch the surface and this goes to you that business model that a lot of workers just aren't buying right now is that, yeah, unions are good, we like unions. But then you scratch the surface and well, would you want a union at your workplace? Would you want to join a union? And that approval drops significantly.
Unions they do have that public perception that they have support, but it's a lot of well it's good that they're out there, but I just don't think it's right for me.
That's where I think that if you change that business model of the unions, the paradigm a collective bargaining, not what Senator Hawley is trying to do with his framework, and certainly not what we're seeing out of the Democrats with the Proact and all this force and compulsion and making it harder for workers to work for themselves or you know, attacking the franchise business model. All of this in the proact, that's the problem. But workers just want something different.
I mean it does anyway that you have to put all this in the context of both competition from around the world and the scale of change that the emerging artificial intelligence is going to imply, and that, if anything, you're going to see more fluidity and more flexibility rather than more rigidity and the way the labor market operates over the next two or three generations. I mean, does that sort of fit your sense of it?
That's absolutely correct, and you know you do see what does come to the flexibility and put AI aside for a second. When it does come to flexibility, being able to work for yourself, being able to achieve by your merit or how hard you work. You see that that's what workers are looking for. That's what modern and young workers are looking for, not this one size fits all model, not the compulsion of you have to do this or you have to live by this rigid contract. That is
really where I think the future is. And I see the future in independent contract. You know, I was an independent contractor for a long time, and it can be very lucrative and it also gave me a lot of flexibility, you know, take on projects clients. I liked determine my own schedule when I wanted to be with my family.
You see things like Representative Kylie has his Modern Worker Empowerment Bill and his Modern Worker Security Bill, and they're leaning into independent contracting, making it easier for workers to work for themselves, to get benefits if they're working for themselves. You saw that during the first Trump administration with their
independent contract rule in the Department of Labor. Unfortunately, you see with the Proact in Congress, and what you saw coming out of the Body administration is that they were just going in the exact opposite direction and trying to make everyone in an employee and you know, borrowing the failed ideas from California of saying you can't work for yourself.
Don't you think that to some extent that whole model of independent contractor may eventually be applied to the civil service.
Federal government has a lot of independent contractors now. You do see that. You do see a lot of efforts out there, you know, kind of right size government. You know, there's ideas out there, like the Yellow Pages test if you can find something in the yellow pages. You shouldn't have a career sort of a servant doing it. It
should just be contracted out. Contracting is something that you know, the federal government specifically does a lot of, and you know you do hear a lot about that, and I think there the efforts are to make contracting fair, you know, to get the best and most economical contractors without a lot of extra strings attached. And once again you saw a lot of those strings, especially in the Union context during the Biden administration.
The whole process.
It seems to me the long term trend is towards more flexibility, more unique designs, more opportunities because we now have the technology that can handle the complexity.
Not only do we have the technology that can handle the complexity on that, but I think we have a workforce that that's what they want. They want that flexibility, they want that ability to earn and achieve on their own without being put into some one size fits all contract That essentially is a business model that is several generations too old and really has not adapted with the times.
But unfortunately, we're seeing a lot of the bills that look to favor that Model's simply just doubling down on that failed business model of the past that has not kept up with the economy and the modern workforce.
Yeah, as you look out over the next three to five years, what do you see as the major projects that you will be undertaking.
For I for a w Obviously we want to support the administration. They have this rule making out right now, going back to that policy career schedule. So we have a portion of our website, I the number four aw dot org that goes into detail on that rule. We have it on a regulation watch portion of O website, and we actually have a link there where people can go and comment and say, yes, this is a good idea.
You know, the people's elected representatives should have a civil service that is not throwing sand in the gears of the policies that they were enacted to create. We see good labor bills that are coming out of Congress, like those two Kylie bills we were talking about before, the Modern Worker Empowerment Act and the Modern Worker Security Act. We see Representative Bob Ander, who's a freshman who I worked with very closely when he was in the Missouri
state legislator. He introduced a bill called the Worker Enfranchisement Act, And this bill would say that if unions want to monopoly to represent everyone once again in a private sector workplace,
that they should get a majority of everyone. And it actually calls for the same quorum that the National Labor Relations Board that will do these elections does and says that, you know, you should have two thirds of the employees voting, and if a majority of those two thirds, so really you're roughly saying, if you know, thirty three percent plus one of workers vote for the union, that's how they
get in. But you shouldn't have these elections where single digits of percentages of employees vote to bring a union in. So those are just some of the bills. You know, we're very excited on. The Employee Rights Act was introduced last Congress. That was kind of all the good ideas that a lot of the Republicans had, or most of
the good ideas a lot of Republicans had. So hopefully that will reintroduce this Congress, and that you know, there's a whole bunch of other good ideas out there, both coming from Congress and coming from the administration.
You know, you mentioned in passing the new effort to basically outlaw independent working. Can you talk to us for a second about the whole political structure of California as it relates to compulsory unionization.
Well, unions, as you can imagine, are extremely powerful in California, and I think that's a reason why there's some of the issues out there. So if we're talking about their attacks on independent contracting, and you know what put that in context of, you know, some of the federal work that we do is they passed what was known as AB five several years ago, and imediately after AB five was enacted, they realized we went too far. We did
this thing, it was called the ABC test. It made independent contracting nearly impossible, and wanted to make everyone into an employee. Well, they realized that went too far, and they actually passed another bill and it was actually the same author of the original AB five passed another bill to create all these exemptions from AB five. And then after they did that, voters said, well, it still goes too far, and then they on when the ballot, passed
more exemptions and ratcheted back AB five. But now that ABC test without those exemptions, that is exactly what's in Congress's protecting the right to organize act so without the exemptions, and when even California said you went too far, now Congress is pushing the exact same thing. So it is extremely troubling. And on our website we also have stories from California and AB five And I can think of one woman that actually had to leave the state because
she wanted the flexibility. She did online teaching and she wanted to take care of her infant children and she couldn't do that if she was an employee. And when AB five passed, she realized, well, my business is drying up, so she actually moved out of state to make sure that she could keep helping to support her family and also have the flexibility to spend time with her kids. We have a lot of those stories on the website and it really is telling.
Well till Marco, Well, look, I want to thank you both for the leadership you're providing for joining us today. Our listeners can find out more about what you do at the Institute for the American Worker by visiting your website at IFOAW dot org. And I really appreciate Vincent you're taking time to.
Be with us.
Hey, thank you for having me on.
Thank you to my guest, Vincent Nuccio. You can learn more about the Institute for the American Worker on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by Ganglish Sweet sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producers Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team
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