Everyone in the US says that they want 'clean' elections. But until the long-threatened reform in campaign finance actually occurs, Washington decision-making will always be influenced by corporations, unions and professional interest groups via political action committees (PACs).
Witness United Parcel Service. Its PAC, a legal entity set up to collect donations of up to $5,000 an election for an official running for federal office, is lately facing charges of influencing legislative initiatives through heavy donations to candidates. It is specifically alleged to have targeted recent attempts by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) to set certain 'ergonomic standards' that would theoretically help protect workers at risk from such muscular-skeletal, cumulative-trauma diseases as carpel tunnel syndrome. UPS has a long history of Osha violations and was cited 2,786 times between 1972 and 1995 and fined $5.8 million. Last year it paid $158 million in workers' compensation for job-related injuries.
So it set out - unabashedly - to defeat Osha for what it saw as unnecessary, burdensome federal regulation. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in the election cycle of 1993-4 UPS had the highest spending of any of the 4,000-plus PACs in the US with $2.65 million going to candidates running for Congress. The split between Republican and Democrat was roughly equal, though in the first half of last year, subsequent to the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, 74 per cent of the PAC's $358,160 went to the majority party.
Certainly, UPS is not alone: In 1992-3, FedEx Corp had the third largest corporate PAC after UPS and AT&T. The Teamsters, the strong, vocal union that represents roughly 180,000 of UPS's 330,000 employees, has a PAC that in the same period made $2.5 million in donations. Of that figure, 95 per cent went to Democrat candidates.
Such 'institutionalised corruption,' as PAC contributions have been called, has apparently paid off for UPS. Osha has been targeted in the six-month long budget mess in which Congress and the White House have been embroiled. The agency now exists by virtue of a continuing resolution to maintain funding, which has nonetheless been cut by $48 million from 1995 levels. As part of that level of funding, Osha has been specifically precluded from issuing any safety standards that would impact ergonomic practices in the workplace.
The Teamsters, meanwhile, have not given up their fight to have Osha reestablished and restructured. The union and UPS management have been in federal mediation over work rule standards UPS implemented two years ago. 'We are doing everything to save funding for Osha,' says a Teamsters spokesman. 'We're trying to alter the congressional mood.' As is everybody else.
Mead Jennings
Source: Airline Business
