Relationship Between Business Roundtable and US Government

Relationship Between Business Roundtable and US Government

Introduction

The Business Roundtable is an anti-union consortium of over a thousand corporations whose chief executive officers (CEOs) attempt to influence government policy on civil rights, education, labor, tax policies, and numerous other issues. It is a deeply conservative organization whose attacks on organized labor are as virulent as those of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). It enjoyed its greatest successes to date in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, where it exercised tremendous influence during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. Bush, and it retains great influence. The BR is headed by a chairperson who serves up to two one-year terms. The chairperson reports to a policy committee made up of CEOs, which meets four times per year. Both the chairperson and the policy committee are elected at a yearly conference. The BR also has numerous task forces that develop policies and strategies on specific topics. Its day-to-day activities are supported by a full-time staff of lawyers, specialists, and policy analysts.

Relationship Between BR and United States Government

Although the BR did not form officially until 1972, its genesis lay in the business community's desire to derail union-led efforts to pass labor law reform. Since the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1946, much labor legislation has favored business over unions. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) merged in 1955, in part, because the two organizations hoped their combined strengths could pressure Congress into repealing Taft-Hartley (Business Roundtable, 1988). That did not happen, but AFL-CIO political action committees (PACs) did succeed in raising money to support pro-labor candidates. Corporations, by contrast, complained that labor laws handcuffed the business community with needless regulations. In 1965, CEOs from AT&T, Bechtel, Exxon, General Dynamics, General Electric, General Motors, Union Carbide, U.S. Steel, and others formed the Labor Law Study Group (LLSG) to put forth the business community's positions. It spawned two spinoff groups, one of which represented building contractors whose opposition to prevailing wage laws led them to call for repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act. In 1972, the three groups merged to create the Business Roundtable.

BR leaders felt that existing groups like the Chamber of Commerce and NAM were not doing enough to influence public policy. Publicly, the BR stated its goals were to help CEOs coordinate efforts to stimulate the economy, and to provide government and the public with statistics and information germane to keeping American business strong. Privately, the BR's agenda also involved an assault on organized labor and on labor laws. It especially desired repeal of Davis-Bacon and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The BR also launched a massive public relations campaign to sell the idea that organized labor was out of touch with mainstream citizens, and was an outmoded idea that no longer had a place in American society. By the 1980s, it had succeeded so well that the media and many high-school textbooks regularly put ...