LABORNERD

Trumka, Shuler, Holt Baker Hit the Road for Jobs, Fair Economy

2009-09-18T16:12:00.000-04:00

The AFL-CIO's new leadership team isn't wasting a second. Hours after the close of the AFL-CIO 26th Constitutional Convention, they're riding the momentum of this week's high-energy union gathering with a listening tour across the country.

And they're starting in Ohio, the center of recent political battles and heart of the tough questions the nation faces about our economic future.

Today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker held an energetic rally in Cleveland before fanning out across the state to hear from workers and fire up the union movement for the battles ahead.

Speaking at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Trumka said America's workers can and must take the lead in turning around the economic crisis that has hit the nation and particularly Ohio. All of us need to hold corporations accountable, not go back to an economy that's rigged against workers, Trumka said:

The labor movement will do everything in its power to help create good jobs....That's our most important goal. But when you buy into a community, you become part of the family. You have an obligation. Too many corporations today want to walk away from their communities, even companies that were nurtured right here in these same communities.

We need an economic system in this country that rewards work as well as it rewards investment. We need an economic system that gives everybody a fair opportunity to work hard and succeed.

Trumka said the union movement stands firmly behind health care reform that includes a public option and the Employee Free Choice Act. These policies are critical to rebuilding an economy that works for all.

Shuler visited both Akron and Columbus this afternoon, while Holt Baker held a roundtable to listen to union members in Dayton. She spoke to the concerns of younger workers, who are rightly concerned to be entering an economy that doesn't seem to offer any hope of a better life. Said Shuler:

For young people today, the question, "What are you going to do with your life?" is daunting enough, but this economy makes it even more difficult to answer.

You worked hard to get through school, and now you can't find a job. Or you were laid off from your job and haven't been able to find a new one. There's no training available. You can't afford health care, so you don't go to the doctor when you need to. It may be your story, or your friend's story, or a friend of a friend's story. But it's time for that story to change.

Shuler argued that not only do we need new investments in green jobs to turn this around, young people also need the freedom to join a union:

"Some young people might think of labor unions as part of your grandparent's generation. But we are for all ages, and for all workers—full time, part-time, freelancers, professionals and skilled labor jobs alike.

At the end of the day, we all want the same things. We want a piece of the American dream. The labor movement has been the key to the middle class for 60 years, and it still offers the hand you need to succeed."

A report released this month by the AFL-CIO and Working America shows a stunning deterioration in the economic lives of young workers—those under age 35. According to the report, Young Workers: A Lost Decade, one-third of young workers cannot pay the bills and seven in 10 do not have enough money saved to cover two months of living expenses.

Our new leadership team is making outreach to young workers a focus of their efforts, and their actions already show they are ready to go, ready to fight for jobs, for health care reform and for a fairer, more prosperous future for everyone.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

'Young Workers: A Lost Decade'

2009-09-02T09:59:00.001-04:00

Something bad happened in the past 10 years to young workers in this country: Since 1999, more of them now have lower-paying jobs, if they can get a job at all; health care is a rare luxury and retirement security is something for their parents, not them. In fact, many—younger than 35—still live at home with their parents because they can't afford to be on their own.

These are the findings of a new report, "Young Workers: A Lost Decade." Conducted in July 2009 by Peter D. Hart Research Associates for the AFL-CIO and our community affiliate Working America, the nationwide survey of 1,156 people follows up on a similar survey the AFL-CIO conducted in 1999. The deterioration of young workers' economic situation in those 10 years is alarming.

Nate Scherer, 31, is among today's young workers. Scherer lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he shares a home with his wife, his parents, brother and his partner. He spoke at a media conference at the AFL-CIO today to discuss the report.

After getting married, my wife and I decided to move in with my parents to pay off our bills. We could afford to live on our own but we'd never be able to get out of debt. We have school loans to pay off, too. We'd like to have children, but we just can't manage the expense of it right now...so we're putting it off till we're in a better place. My [work] position is on the edge, and I feel like if my company were to cut back, my position would be one of the first to go.

During yesterday's press briefing, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka summed up the report's findings this way:

We're calling the report "A Lost Decade" because we're seeing 10 years of opportunity lost as young workers across the board are struggling to keep their heads above water and often not succeeding. They've put off adulthood—put off having kids, put off education—and a full 34 percent of workers under 35 live with their parents for financial reasons.

Just last week we learned that about 1.7 million fewer teenagers and young adults were employed in July than a year before, hitting a record low of 51.4 percent.

As AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said:

Young workers in particular must be given the tools to lead the next generation to prosperity. The national survey we're releasing today shows just how broken our economy is for our young people...and what's at stake if we don't fix it.

Some of the report's key findings include:

31 percent of young workers report being uninsured, up from 24 percent 10 years ago, and 79 percent of the uninsured say they don't have coverage because they can't afford it or their employer does not offer it.

Strikingly, one in three young workers are currently living at home with their parents.

Only 31 percent say they make enough money to cover their bills and put some money aside—22 percentage points fewer than in 1999—while 24 percent cannot even pay their monthly bills.

A third cannot pay their bills and seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses.

37 percent have put off education or professional development because they can't afford it.

When asked who is most responsible for the country's economic woes, close to 50 percent of young workers place the blame on Wall Street and banks or corporate CEOs. And young workers say greed by corporations and CEOs is the factor most to blame for in the current financial downturn.

By a 22-point margin, young workers favor expanding public investment over reducing the budget deficit. Young workers rank conservative economic approaches such as reducing taxes, government spending and regulation on business among the five lowest of 16 long-term priorities for Congress and the president.

Thirty-five percent say they voted for the first time in 2008, and nearly three-quarters now keep tabs on government and public affairs, even when there's not an election going on.

The majority of young workers and nearly 70 percent of first-time voters are confident that Obama will take the country in the right direction.

Trumka, who is running for AFL-CIO president without announced opposition at our convention later this month, is making union outreach to young people a top priority. He said one of the report's conclusions is especially striking:

Young people want to be involved but they're rarely asked. Their priorities are even more progressive than the priorities of the older generation of working people, yet they aren't engaged by co-workers or friends to get involved in the economic debate.

Currently, 18-to-35-year-olds make up a quarter of union membership. And at the AFL-CIO Convention, we will ask Convention delegates to approve plans for broad recruitment of young workers, as well as plans for training and leadership of young workers who are currently union members. And that's just the beginning of a broad push towards talking and mobilizing young workers in the coming months and years.

According to the report, more than half of young workers say employees are more successful getting problems resolved as a group rather than as individuals, and employees who have a union are better off than employees in similar jobs who do not.

Read the full report here.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

Union Actvism Protection

2009-08-20T15:51:00.004-04:00

A big problem often faced in organizing drives is the intimidating impact of illegal worker firing. Here is how the management abuse works:

Worker supports the union obviously enough that management finds out.
Management fires the person even though it is illegal to fire workers for union activity.
The worker has problems paying bills, etc.
After the drive is resolved (for or against a new union), Management quietly settles and pays back wages for the illegal firing.

During the time between steps 2 and 4 other workers hear whispers that if they work with the union they'll "be next" and "how will they pay their bills?" etc...

This can obviously have a chilling impact on the drive.

That's the problem, here is my solution:

Create a special loan product that will pay the worker their normal wages until the drive is settled. The collateral for the loan is the backpay obligation from the employer (not including the penalty).

Possible Outcomes

Most of the time, backpay eventually arrives and the union is reimbursed. In this case, the worker gets money immediately and over the period from firing to settlement. Morale doesn't suffer. The worker keeps the penalty (or perhaps shares it with the union activism fund). The union loses the opportunity cost of the capital, but ends up with a lump sum. In this case the forgone interest on the small amount of money pales in comparison to the increased momentum on an organizing drive.

Some of the time though, backpay doesn't come through. Anyone know how often this happens? In that case the union has blunted the intimidation power of the firing but expends capital to do it.

On balance, it seems like the cumulative benefits in the more common cases exceed the costs in the rare bad case and organizing is strengthened in all cases.

Thoughts? Problems?

Trumka to Congress: Want Workers' Support? Back a Public Option

2009-08-20T11:57:00.001-04:00

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka appeared on CNBC this morning for a frank talk about health care, politics and the future of the country.

As described this week in Huffington Post, Trumka is laying out a fundamental proposition: When it comes time for millions of union members to mobilize, educate other union members and get out the vote, they'll work on behalf of candidates who support real health care reform that provides quality, affordable health care to all and gives people the opportunity to choose a public health coverage plan alongside private options:

We finally said, look, this is the minimum. If you're going to do something, do something that works. If you're going to have health insurance reform, you must have a public option in it. if you don't, don't expect us to support you.

Trumka said that the union movement is going to put its time, resources and votes behind candidates who support the needs and priorities of working families. Union members have no obligation to support politicians who listen to insurance companies instead of the millions of families who need real health care reform.

Here's what Trumka had to say:

What we said was, there had to be three or four elements in that plan in order for us to support them. If they didn't support the plan with a public option in it, with an employer mandate and no taxation of benefits, that we would tell our members and let our members decide....The American people are demanding that you do something.

We'll look at your entire voting record, of course, like we always do. We'll put the facts out to our members. I think it will be hard for them to get support if they don't support that.

Trumka says union members will step up and put their energy and votes behind candidates who want to fix what's wrong with our system, not maintain a broken status quo:

Every 30 seconds an American declares bankruptcy because of medical bills. Millions of people don't have health care. You have millions of small businesses and large businesses that are struggling because health care costs are out of sight. Insurance companies have a stranglehold on us. The only way to break that stranglehold on the health care industry is to have a public option.

The fight to reform the health care system and provide quality, affordable health care for everyone is at a critical point. Now is the time to make it clear: America's workers are looking to elected officials for leadership and support, and how members of Congress vote on health care will be at the forefront when they go to the polls to vote.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

The Employee Free Choice Act: From 2003 to Today

2009-07-16T14:09:00.002-04:00

Members of Congress soon will cast votes that show us where they stand on the Employee Free Choice Act. As key senators engage in negotiations over the bill, supporters of workers’ freedom to form unions aren’t backing down on three key principles:

Workers need to have a real choice to form a union and bargain for a better life, free from intimidation.
We have to stop the endless delays and make sure workers can get a fair first contract.
There have to be real penalties for violating the law.

Over the past few months, opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act have more than once declared the bill dead, but in fact we’re still working hard to to ensure labor law reform happens this year. We’ve come along way from where we were several years ago.

Here’s a timeline from 2003, when the AFL-CIO Executive Council offered a resolution in support of labor law reform, to the seating of Sen. Al Franken, whose first move was to co-sponsor the Employee Free Choice Act.

Feb. 26, 2003: The AFL-CIO Executive Council approves a resolution, “An Unprecedented Labor Movement Campaign in Support of the Freedom of Workers to Choose a Voice at Work,” which declares the union movement’s intention to do what is necessary for:

…legal reform that protects the free and fair choice of employees to form a union without interference from management and enables more workers to enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining.

Nov. 21, 2003: Rep. George Miller introduces H.R. 3169, the Employee Free Choice Act, in the House. Sen. Edward Kennedy introduces the same bill as S. 1925 in the Senate. Both were denied a committee vote by the Republican majority.

Dec. 10, 2003: Tens of thousands of union members, elected officials, religious leaders and community activists across the nation took part in more than 90 events in 72 cities, united by one message: Workers’ rights are human rights. The nationwide mobilization is the first in a series of annual actions in support of the Employee Free Choice Act held on Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

April 19, 2005: Miller introduces the Employee Free Choice Act as H.R. 1696 in the House and Kennedy introduces it as S. 842 in the Senate. Again, both bills are blocked by the Republican majority and don’t receive a committee vote.

Dec. 10, 2005: Thousands of union members rally across the country in support of the workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain to commemorate International Human Rights Day.

Nov. 7, 2006: In the 2006 congressional elections, the union movement makes big strides in electing pro-working family, pro-Employee Free Choice Act candidates, with new pro-worker majorities in both the House and Senate.

Dec. 8-9, 2006: The fight for the Employee Free Choice Act takes center stage at the AFL-CIO Organizing Summit.

Feb 5, 2007: Miller introduces H.R. 800, the Employee Free Choice Act of 2007, in the House.

March 29, 2007: Kennedy introduces S. 1041, the Employee Free Choice Act of 2007 in the Senate.

March 1, 2007: U.S. House passes the Employee Free Choice Act in a 241-185 vote.

June 26, 2007: U.S. Senate votes 51-48 for cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow it to be considered for a simple majority vote on the Senate floor. Unfortunately, 60 votes were required for cloture (agreement to vote on a bill), so a Republican minority in the Senate was able to block consideration of the bill.

March 4, 2008: The union movement kicks off the Million Member Mobilization campaign to gather support for the Employee Free Choice Act.

Nov. 4, 2008: Despite a desperate multi-million dollar corporate campaign against pro-worker candidates, the union movement wages its most successful-ever political mobilization campaign, helping to elect even more working-family friendly lawmakers to the House and Senate and Barack Obama, a Senate co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, to the White House.

Feb. 4, 2009: Union members and allies deliver some of the 1.5 million signatures they’ve gathered in support of the Employee Free Choice Act to Capitol Hill—exceeding the goals of the Million Member Mobilization campaign.

March 10, 2009: Employee Free Choice Act introduced in the House (as H.R. 1409), with 225 co-sponsors, and as S. 560 in the Senate, with 41 co-sponsors.

In short, we’ve pursued this critical legislative since Bush ran the nation along with a Republican Senate majority in Congress, until today, when our nationwide political mobilization resulted in the election of President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and appointment of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, all of whom expressed support for the bill.

As the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff noted at a Netroots Nation event last month, it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come. But the opposition is well-funded and aggressive, and the broad coalition supporting the Employee Free Choice Act will need to fight harder than ever to make sure we get labor law reform that helps workers:

We started this six years ago, and I thought it was going to be a 20-year fight. We’ve accomplished so much in the face of such attacks, and all the money they’ve been able to spend has not been able to break it.

The campaign is vibrant and active, and all the forces of corporate America can’t stop it—and they’ve tried everything in their playbook.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

Unions Lead Historic March in Arkansas for Employee Free Choice Act

2009-07-14T12:24:00.000-04:00

Wanted to share this piece from the AFL-CIO's Stewart Acuff. Cross-posted from the Huffington Post.

On Saturday, July 11, we made history in Arkansas. We--civil rights and community leaders, local elected officials, and union activists and leaders--1500 of us--held the largest-ever demonstration in Arkansas to demand that Sen. Blanche Lincoln vote for and support the Employee Free Choice Act.

We began at the iconic symbol of civil rights, Central High School integrated in 1958 by nine brave Black teenagers, with Steelworkers President Leo Gerard thundering workers rights are civil rights. Then African-American Little Rock Judge and Rev. Wendell Griffin told the story of his family and how life changed for the better when his father's job at a nonunionsawmill became union. AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker talked about how the freedom struggle of the workers rights movemnt is an extension of the freedom struggle of the civil rights movement. African-American Little Rock State Senator State Senator Joyce Elliott welcome us to her district and talked about the fight to restore the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.

After Sen. Elliott, USW President Gerard kicked off the mile long march in 100 degree heat to the State Capitol.

After the 45 minute march, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer and soon-to-be President Rich Trumka made the case for Sen. Lincoln to support the Employee Free Choice Act. With all the passion and vigor of his call a year ago for union members to support Barack Obama, Trumka talked about the unfinished business of freedom in America and he thanked labor's allies--the ministers and imams and other faith leaders, Interfaith Worker Justice, the local African-American elected officials and community organizations.

There were many more speeches in the course of that very hot midsummer day in Arkansas at the Capitol and at the subsequent catfish fry--more ministers, State Representatives Carrell and Nickels, Maxine Nelson, Chair of Arkansas ACORN all calling for Sen. Blanche Lincoln to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act.

Strategists on both sides of the fight agree that Arkansas and its two moderate Democratic Senators is ground Zero in the history-making campaign to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

July 11 had started with six buses picking up activists in Texarkana, Ft. Smith, and Pine Bluff taking them to meet the multitudes of Little Rock activists.

This huge and historic march is the latest in a series of tactics in Arkansas that are much more reminiscient of the modern Civil Rights movement than a typical legislative campaign. The AFL-CIO Employee Free Choice Act campaign has included a statewide 24-hour candlelight prayer vigil, a previous march and rally, mobilization of faith leaders, and other creative movement activities.

But on July 11, all other tactics were eclipsed by Arkansas' largest -ever march and rally.

Iranian Teachers Enter the Fight

2009-06-19T12:05:00.004-04:00

Looks like Iranian labor is starting to make its presence felt more. Through a good Iranian-American friend I got a translation of this statement from the Teachers Trade Association of Iran. It calls for the release of Ali-Reza Hashemi, the organization's director, who was arrested three days ago, most likely as part of a general crackdown on dissidents. Hashemi certainly has a record of militancy, he was arrested only last year after helping to organize a strike involving thousands of Iranian teachers (which is where the photo is from). As the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center reported at the time, about 70 percent of teachers live below the poverty line in Iran and teachers are paid well below the rates given for other government workers (one estimate showed they received about $100 less a month, a substantial sum considering their average monthly salary of $300). However, as of late April of this year, the Pay Parity Act had not been implemented, despite Ahmadinejad's promises (surprise!)

The statement is also significant because its the first I've seen of Iranian labor officially siding with the "Green Revolution" camp, stating that the "Teachers' Organization of Iran, further, supports the goals of Messrs. Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi and calls on the election authorities to annul this election and undertake a free election." This suggests a different tone than the more generalized initial statement from Khodro workers about the right to demonstrate.

Overall, the situation remains too in flux to be certain of much. However, it does seem significant that already established civil society groups, such as labor, are increasingly entering the fray. While a significant part of the power of the movement in Iran comes from its ability to continue and grow even when its leaders are imprisoned, the presence of existing organizational networks, especially those that can temporarily disrupt and even paralyze the economy, certainly should add strength to the overall struggle.

Here is a summary/translation of the teachers statement:

"Sazman-e Moalleman-e Iran" ("Teachers' Organization of Iran") is writing a statement protesting the arrest three days ago of its leader, Ali-Reza Hashemi. It expresses the view that the wave of arrests by the government will only serve to unite the people, etc. it says, "The only way out of this situation is to accept the request of the candidates and to honor the will and the vote of the people." It expresses extreme objection to the arrest of Hashemi and other activists and says that freeing those who have been arrested will serve to decrease the amount of conflict in the country. It also says "The Teachers' Organization of Iran, further, supports the goals of Messrs. Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi and calls on the election authorities to annul this election and undertake a free election."

And by "strike" I mean "slowdown"

2009-06-19T08:25:00.002-04:00

H/t to Al Giordano and The Field blog for grabbing an English translation of the Khodro workers' statement. Apparently workers there (though no more information of how many) are not actually going out on strike, but are rather engaging in a slowdown in protest. Their statement is here:

Strike in Iran Khodro:

We declare our solidarity with the movement of the people of Iran.

Autoworker, Fellow Laborers (Laborer Friends): What we witness today, is an insult to the intelligence of the people, and disregard for their votes, the trampling of the principles of the Constitution by the government. It is our duty to join this people's movement.

We the workers of Iran Khodro, Thursday 28/3/88 in each working shift will stop working for half an hour to protest the suppression of students, workers, women, and the Constitution and declare our solidarity with the movement of the people of Iran. The morning and afternoon shifts from 10 to 10:30. The night shift from 3 to 3:30.

Laborers of IranKhodor

Iranian Autoworkers Strike Pseudo-Update

2009-06-18T17:30:00.004-04:00

A UK based youth organization, the Communist Students (no really), are also reporting that auto workers are indeed striking in Iran at the Khodro factories. Here is the information they posted:

First news of workers strikes in protest at the current situation, Iran Khodro car (car plant) workers have issued a statement : they condemn the repression and say what we are witnessing is an insult to peoples intelligence. Both shifts are on strike.

In my explorations of Iranian labor, some of the few (English language) sources have mostly come from European Marxist websites and organizations and I tend to believe that through their various connections they know what's going on at least events wise. It would be interesting to know how extensive the strike is, Khodro has factories in a number of major urban areas but it's unclear whether workers have only struck in one city or several.

Iranian Autoworkers on Strike?!

2009-06-18T12:31:00.004-04:00

Via Andrew Sullivan's "Live-Tweeting the Revolution" updates, I see the following tweet:

iran Khodro labors went on strike today

Khodro is Iran's leading car company and the largest producer of automobiles in the Middle East. The company has also seen a strong recent history of labor militancy and repression. In 2005 Parviz Salarvand, a worker and organizer at one of Khodro's plants, was detained and beaten after a series of protests and only released after international pressure, principally from groups such as the ITUC. In 2006 Khodro workers again took action after a number of their fellow workers were fired and turned over to security forces. June and July of last year also witnessed a major strike by thousands of Khodro workers demanding unpaid wages, as well as the shifting of contracted workers to become full-time employees of the company (that sounds familiar). That strike ended sucessfully for the workers who won their immediate demands. Khodro workers have also made their long-term demands clear, as in this letter to the International Labor Organization, in which they asked the ILO to work to help ensure that Iran:

observe workers rights,
not prevent the formation of free workers' organisations,
not arrest and jail workers for the offence of going on strikes and forming workers' organisations,
respect the conventions of the International Labour Organisation.

So while we can't be positive the strike is happening or the extent, it would not be a surprise.

ITUC Statement

2009-06-17T13:45:00.001-04:00

The International Trade Union Confederation puts out a careful statement of "concern" about the violence and repression in Iran, while reiterating the call for a global day of protests on Friday, June 26th demanding that imprisoned Iranian trade unionists be released.

AhmadEFCAnijad?

2009-06-16T18:20:00.006-04:00

I mentioned earlier about the sudden right-wing sympathy for unions one can find as long as those unions are Iranian. But I guess that was too nuanced and labor-sympathetic a position for the right, as can be seen in this CNBC discussion about the effect of events in Iran on oil prices (since that's the only thing that matters) between Jim Cramer and Erin Burnett. After casually dismissing the chances the protests will make any difference (thanks guys) and making a bizarre and ahistorical claim that many in the U.S. believed Soviet elections were legitimate (huh?) the anchors ably slipped in a brief Employee Free Choice Act attack session in which the mechanics of the legislation were directly compared to the election shenanigans in Iran. Because unions are far-right reactionary religious based governments who suppress women's rights. Tune in tomorrow for Charles Krauthammer's column about the need for U.S. surgical air strikes against SEIU and the AFL-CIO headquarters to free the people of Iran from card check tyranny.

If you want to send an "ehf you" message to Ms. Burnett and Mr. Cramer, SEIU's running a campaign here.

Update from Smithfield

2009-06-16T16:46:00.003-04:00

In closer to home (geographically that is) news, remember how after years and years of struggle workers at the Smithfield plant in Tar Hell, North Carolina finally voted in a union? And how they even did it through a ballot election, instead of scary card check? Well, as our friend Josh Rosenthal notes over at Wonk Room (one of the Center for American Progress' universe of awesome blogs), those workers after six months are still waiting for a contract. Check out his piece for the details.

Iranian Labor quasi-updates

2009-06-16T14:31:00.006-04:00

I've still been trying to figure out what if anything is going on with the national strike called for today and what the participation of Iran's independent trade union movement has been. Unfortunately, the main sites (at least in English) that might have some information have not updated with post-election reporting.

There is apparently still planned for Friday, June 26th a Global Solidarity Action Day being pushed by a coalition of the International Trade Union Confederation (the ITUC, the main transnational coordinating body for labor), the Education International (EI), the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) and the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Association (IUF). This is planned to be a coordinated global day of protests at Iranian embassies and consulates calling for the release of imprisoned trade union leaders. However, as of this writing, the site shows no real indication of changing events within Iran.

And in other news, I think I have a plan to pass the Employee Free Choice Act: just tell the conservatives that it only applies to workers in Iran! Scattered throughout the right-wing opinio-sphere have been stirring calls for the right to organize and unionize, as long as those workers are over there. In fact, a National Review article on the subject appears below a banner ad urging Obama not to support EFCA! Ah, but hypocrisy is just so easy.

Finally, here is a video of images from May Day, 2007 in Tehran. It's important to remember that the momentum for the current protests has been building for a while:

I Am a Man

2009-06-16T08:59:00.004-04:00

Iranian sanitation workers join the protests shouting "Take Mahmoud Away!"

Still waiting for news about the general strike and labor participation; seems the few sites easily locatable about Iranian labor have not quite caught up with the news. We'll let you know.

UPDATE: I was remiss in mentioning that I found this video via the amazing work being done by Nico Pitney over at the Huffington Post; if you aren't constantly refreshing his page, you should.

Green-blue marches on

2009-06-15T12:47:00.002-04:00

Our friend Kate Sheppard at Grist has a great piece on the current state of the labor-environmental relationship and the direction it's evolving towards. Check it out.

Iranian Workers Zindabad!

2009-06-15T12:10:00.004-04:00

Been a way for a while but am going to try to resume blogging. As I'm sure it is for many people I've been obsessively trying to gather news from Iran the past few days. It appears that a general strike has been called for tomorrow, which peeked my interest in looking at Iranian labor.

It should not come as a shock that, despite Ahmadinejad's populist rhetoric and policies, he can in no way be described as a real friend of working people or fighter for a just economy. Independent unions are banned in Iran, however there have been underground labor organizations working for their members. One prime example of this involves the ongoing struggle of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, an independent union which has existed since 1968. Under Ahmadinejad's government, this union has been severely repressed and its leader, Mansour Osanloo, arrested numerous times and he is currently incarcerated in the rather infamous, Evin prison. The regime has gone so far as to hold public floggings of workers for the grave crime of taking part in a May Day march.

It's impossible to tell what will happen next in Iran, but people involved in the labor movement should take pride in the role that organized labor has played around the world in struggles for political democracy. To name but two major examples, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in South Africa and the Workers' Party in Brazil both stood at the center of popular movements fighting for freedom in those nations in the 1980s and 1990s. U.S. labor has made political democracy healther as well, particularly in the support of progressive unions for the black freedom struggle. We can only hope Iranian workers can play a similar role in the days ahead.

Corporate Hypocrisy on Bargaining Highlights Need for Employee Free Choice

2009-06-12T15:20:00.000-04:00

The misleading attacks by Big Business on the Employee Free Choice Act now are aimed at the provision that would guarantee that workers can get a fair first contract. Their scare tactics are not only misleading, they're hypocritical.

Right now, workers lack a legal means to ensure they get a fair first contract. Recent research shows that even after workers successfully win a union and the ability to bargain, they're too often blocked from getting a fair first contract. Fifty-two percent of workers don't have a contract a full year after the election, and 37 percent don't have a first contract two years after the election. For too many workers, the promise of the freedom to bargain is out of reach because the law doesn't offer them any help.

The Employee Free Choice Act provides a process to help first-time bargainers to reach an agreement, through mediation and, for issues the parties are unable to resolve on their own, arbitration. The reason we need first-contract arbitration is to create an incentive for companies to bargain voluntarily with their workers.

----

According to research from American Rights at Work, the record of first-contract arbitration provisions in the public sector and in Canada show that disputes rarely reach the arbitration stage; in most cases, the process works to help workers and their employers reach a contract on their own.

Yet corporations are increasing their negative attacks on this provision even though they frequently require consumers to commit to arbitration.

Supporters of the freedom to form unions are hitting this corporate disinformation campaign directly, in the field, online and in the press. American Rights at Work is taking on corporate hypocrisy with a new print ad running today in key newspapers. The ad demonstrates how corporations are attacking the idea of arbitration when it involves their employees—while supporting arbitration in a variety of areas where it benefits them.

As the new ad notes, corporations prefer to use arbitration in consumer disputes, personal injury claims, home construction contracts, nursing home injuries and conflicts related to real estate, credit cards and banking.

Business trade groups even wrote to Congress last year saying arbitration is an "efficient, effective" way to resolve disputes, reported The New York Times, and companies put arbitration provisions into 75 percent of consumer contracts.

So, if corporations want to require arbitration in so many other instances, why are they so afraid of the possibility of arbitration—only after months of negotiations—over a first contract for their employees?

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

Former NLRB Examiner: We Need Employee Free Choice

2009-06-11T13:00:00.000-04:00

Ask Shannon Hilt, who’s seen our broken system for forming unions firsthand, and she’ll tell you that there’s no question: Workers need the Employee Free Choice Act.

Hilt spent three years as a field examiner for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), overseeing the elections process and investigating unfair practices. She says the system we have now, one in which companies, not workers, have all the power, isn’t free, it isn’t fair and doesn’t protect workers.

Writing in the Boulder, Colo., Daily Camera, Hilt explains how her years of experience as an NLRB field examiner have convinced her that we need fundamental labor law reform that gives workers, not their bosses, the ability to decide how they form a union and bargain.

Here’s how Hilt describes the way union elections happen now:

Through the process of holding union elections, I observed that employees were often intimidated and harassed before the election took place. The company has unfettered access to employees before the union election takes place and oftentimes they use that access to hold mandatory meetings where they discourage their employees from voting for a union in illegal ways.

When it came down to the day of the vote, the fact that the elections are held on company property and that employees are released from their work stations to go vote and watched at distance by their superiors makes the election process less neutral than it could be. Throughout the process, I could tell that some workers felt intimidated.

The difficulties and abuses workers often face when trying to form unions have been documented in numerous studies, and Hilt knows that these aren’t just statistics. The harassment, intimidation and firing companies can engage in with impunity stop workers from exercising their basic freedoms, she says:

Many workers, knowing that the law will not protect them and that the employer holds all the cards in the workplace, decide not to risk asserting their collective voice. This is tragic for workers who want to work together to raise their wages, better their working conditions and improve their company. It is also a tragedy for American democracy.

In her valuable op-ed, Hilt asks Colorado’s Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet to join the broad national coalition in support of Employee Free Choice. Read the entire op-ed here.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

On the Wyden-AFSCME Fight

2009-05-28T18:52:00.004-04:00

Ezra Klein just posted a piece criticizing AFSME for an ad they ran attacking Wyden's suggestion that health benefits be taxed. Klein's piece seems to imply that AFSCME is being greedy and undermining healthcare reform. You can read his piece here. I recently subscribed to his RSS feed. I like his stuff. Congratz are in order for his cool new WaPo gig.

Wyden, after all, is a liberal Democrat. AFSCME is a left-leaning union. Both are desperate for health reform. But AFSCME is spending its time attacking Wyden. Why? Because Wyden wants to replace the employer tax exclusion (I told you that thing was important!) with a progressive tax deduction that all Americans, not just those with good employer benefits, would get. That means the poorest among us would get slightly more and AFSCME's members might get slightly less.

Just a couple week ago, I met an AFSCME nurse from Texas. If her benefits became taxable she would all of a sudden see her taxes rise a couple thousand dollars a year. Her wages would not rise at all. Actually her take home pay would drop about 10% (if I did the math correctly). That is not some minor issue. It isn't slightly less as Ezra implies, it pushes her from making it to not making it.

Her employer is doing the right thing in giving her decent healthcare, why should she be punished for the sins of employers like Wal-Mart who aren't giving adequate care? Furthermore already built into the healthcare costs paid on her behalf is roughly $1,100 annually for charity care for the uninsured. Is that not enough.

If we go to single payer, that'd be great, as long as we keep employer-based plans let's avoid jacking up middle class people's taxes by this much this quickly. Phase it in starting at $85,000 and getting to full rates around $200,000, leave my sister the nurse alone. Poor folks tend not to have health insurance and rich folks won't have that much trouble paying a couple thousand dollars more yearly. Taxing health inusrance will negatively impact middle class and vulnerable lower middle class folks at a much higher rate than anyone else. . It's our guys who will be getting squeezed.

Now on to his idea that AFSCME is scuttling healthcare reform. The nurse I mentioned above isn't unusual. Lots of workers have healthcare. Many of them are in unions. Many of them are key election-time workers for democrats. They are essential to a Dem majority. Their needs matter. If healthcare reform becomes viewed as hurting the middle class it will not pass. Is disproportionately screwing cops, firefighters, factory workers, nurses, sanitation workers, and other middle class professionals the way to make reform viable?

The tax system reflects societal values. We tax people progressively since we believe that people are more able to pay taxes on income above $200,000 than under $50,000, for example. We tax cigarettes at a much higher rate than bread since we view bread as a necessary non-luxury item and hope do disincent cigarette usage. Isn't healthcare more like bread than cigarettes. Shouldn't it be considered a basic necessity. It is silly to assume that since what we are trying to do is provide healthcare, that must be what we tax. To build public goods like transit we sometimes tax related things, like gas, rather than transit usage. Perhaps we should tax the things that drive up healthcare costs (like corn syrup, sugar, etc) rather than the actual healthcare itself. That way the taxes would benefit the country by making it healthier rather than enouraging people to not have healthcare, as taxing it would do.

[I have an old friend named Ezra Brooks (not the bourbon) and accidentally slipped a Brooks in for a Klein in an earlier version. Other minor edits made as well. Last paragraph is new.]

New Study: You Won’t Face Coercion if You Sign up for a Union

2009-05-27T12:37:00.000-04:00

If you sign up to join a union, you won’t face coercion or intimidation from your co-workers—or employers. Despite dire warnings by corporations against the majority sign-up process, a new study shows majority sign-up (card-check) protects workers and gives them the chance they need to form a union. It’s another critical point in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give workers across the country the choice about how to form a union and bargain for a better life.

The study, “Majority Authorizations and Union Organizing in the Public Sector: A Four-State Perspective,” written by top labor policy scholars under the direction of Robert Bruno of the University of Illinois, looks at the experience of four states (New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Oregon) where public-sector workers have the freedom to form unions through majority sign-up. If passed, the Employee Free Choice Act would give millions of workers the option of using either majority sign-up or a National Labor Relations Board election to form a union.

The study finds that since 2003, more than 34,000 public-sector workers have successfully formed unions through majority sign-up, without either coercion from their employers or their co-workers.

The study unambiguously revealed that the majority sign-up provision was used extensively without hint of union or employer abuse…contrary to business claims, in 1,073 cases of union certification and in at least 1,359 majority-authorization campaigns, there was not a single confirmed incident of union misconduct.

Workers who successfully used majority sign-up included nurses, nuclear safety policy analysts, custodians and others across a variety of job sectors.

The experience of these workers is a sharp contrast to workers trying to form unions under the broken private-sector system, where management controls the process and can interfere with impunity. In 2007 alone, nearly 30,000 workers were the victims of unfair practices or even illegal firings while trying to form unions.

Scholars at four universities participated in the study: the University of Illinois, Rutgers University, Cornell University and the University of Oregon. It’s an extension of Bruno’s earlier study that looked at majority sign-up in Illinois.

The researchers conclude:

New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Oregon have demonstrated that a majority authorization petition can genuinely determine the will of the employees to be unionized and provides a functional, largely non-adversarial and event-less process for insuring a fair work environment for everyone.

Workers need the freedom to form unions and bargain to get a fair share of the prosperity they create. It’s good for workers and it’s good for the economy. This landmark study demonstrates once again that workers—not their bosses—should get to choose how to form a union.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

Workers Face Increasing Abuse in Attempts to Form Unions

2009-05-20T16:54:00.001-04:00

Today on Capitol Hill, labor law experts and a California worker exposed the ugly truth about corporate abuses of workers trying to exercise their freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.

At the center of the discussion: Kate Bronfenbrenner’s new report, “No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing,” released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the American Rights at Work Education Fund. The report shows that the problems the Employee Free Choice Act would address are getting worse.

Bronfenbrenner has studied these issues for decades as the director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial Relations. This is her fourth survey over 20 years, enabling her to put into historical perspective the obstacles workers face today.

At the Capitol Hill briefing, Bronfenbrenner said weak laws and a hostile environment have emboldened corporations, over the past decade, to step up their abuses against workers trying to form unions.

The research provides a detailed portrait of a system that has failed private-sector workers. Workers have come to understand what our data confirms: Employers are using an arsenal of legal and illegal tactic to interfere with workers trying to organize, and they are doing it with impunity.

The study is the result of an in-depth examination of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) documents, examination of companies, interviews with workers and investigations of unfair labor practice filings to give a clear picture of what the process of forming a union really looks like. And it’s not pretty:

63 percent of companies have supervisors interrogate workers in mandatory one-on-one meetings
57 percent of companies threaten workers with plant closings
47 percent threaten to cut wages and benefits.

What’s more, even if they win representation, a majority of workers still don’t have a first contract after a year.

Angel Warner, a working mom from California, offered a compelling story of these coercive tactics in action. Warner is a Rite Aid warehouse worker who tried to form a union through the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) at a large warehouse with 600 workers. The warehouse was inadequately heated in the winter and cooled in the summer, and the work was difficult and at times unsafe. That’s why Warner and her co-workers hoped to form a union. Wages and benefits were an issue, she said, but not the only issue. Mostly, they were concerned about job security and improving safety on the job, especially after management imposed a quota system that encouraged unsafe behavior.

You walk a fine line of taking a trip to the hospital or a trip to the unemployment line.

We like our jobs, we just want dignity, respect and a voice in our workplace. A person can only take so much—we decided it was time to stand up for ourselves.

Warner said that, as she and her-co-workers tried to form a union, management pulled union supporters aside for threatening meetings and singled out potential supporters for harassment. Pro-union employees were fired, and the workers filed 49 labor law violations against Rite-Aid —but the only repercussion for Rite-Aid is having to re-hire two employees and post fliers saying they would no longer engage in unfair practices.

Warner and her co-workers won the election by only a handful of votes, even after getting two-thirds of the employees to sign up, because of the extended election period and the abuses by management during that time. The election was held two years after starting the process of gathering signatures, Warner said, and even after a year of having won a union, the company still hasn’t offered a contract.

Our labor laws are not working, they’re not protecting the working class. We played by the rules. Even after harassment and threats, we voted for a union, and yet we’re still working without a contract. People are terrified of losing their jobs. It puts such a psychological and emotional pressure on you. It’s hard to function in the workplace because you’re so scared—you walk through the door and you don’t know, is this going to be the day that I walk out with my pink slip?

We have responsibilities to our families, our children. The working class needs help, we’re tired of waiting for justice. I urge Senator and Congresspeople that are on the fence, or have changed their minds, to look at people like me and the people I work with, and the thousands like me, because we’re not unique.

Workers’ rights need to be upheld. We’re ready to stand up for ourselves.

Fred Feinstein, a former NLRB counsel and a University of Maryland professor, agrees that existing labor law isn’t protecting workers. Warner’s story isn’t an exception, Feinstein said—it's one vivid example of a pervasive failure of labor law:

There’s room for better enforcement and better strategies but fund the law itself is defective.

There’s considerable evidence that over the last decades, new tactics have been developed, weaknesses in the law have been discovered, refined and more successfully exploited, so that conditions on the ground have changed…we need to change the legal framework if we’re going to protect people.

Extended delay is a powerful weapon for employers, Feinstein said, because it ensures years of litigation to prevent remedies for their misbehavior.

And, said EPI President Larry Mishel, that this isn’t just as issue of fairness, it’s an economic issue. We’ve seen a 30-year period of rising inequality that didn’t allow people to have a good paycheck, he notes, which has undermined our economy by cutting back on workers’ purchasing power and security. As we rebuild the economy, we need to make sure it’s on a strong foundation.

One clear foundation is to fix the fundamentally broken labor market system—we have an economy that has been producing higher productivity, but most workers haven’t been able to benefit.

Companies are trying to pre-empt union campaigns, targeting union supporters and interrogating workers to find out how they’re going to vote. (Yes, that’s the reality of the “secret ballot” corporate lobbies are trying to impose.) Corporate tactics are designed to make the process less secret and less secure for workers who hope to join unions. Increasingly, management is working to monitor and punish union activities and force workers to choose sides. Said Bronfenbrenner:

We’ve found a climate of employer opposition that revealed a clear pattern of interrogation and surveillance…followed by threats and harassment to make sure that workers who pursue a union do so at clear personal risk.

Bronfenbrenner said that although she studied many unfair labor practice filings, many abuses aren’t even reported, because a climate of fear, weak remedies and long delays prevent workers from protesting unfair practices.

Warner said the common corporate complaint—that workers could act coercively as they campaigned to get their co-workers to form a union—was laughable and unsupported by facts.

From a worker’s point of view, the harassment and intimidation I’ve seen has come from the company side.

Bronfenbrenner and Feinstein both agreed that decades of research into organizing campaigns show this to be the case across the board. Historically, the number of unfair labor practice filings against unions is extremely low—only 42 cases of misconduct over seven decades—while there are nearly 30,000 unfair labor practices against workers by companies every year. People who say both sides are at fault aren’t to be taken seriously, Bronfenbrenner said:

Unions wouldn’t function if workers were coerced. The whole idea of having a union, of the organizing process, relies on workers feeling they have a democratic process, and believing in their union. Workers can vote their way out of a union at many phases—you don’t get to vote against your boss, and employers have enormous power over workers. They can fire you, they control your schedule, your pay, your working conditions.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

I've heard in Harlan County...

2009-05-19T10:30:00.000-04:00

Despite much-publicized battles between labor and environmentalists, my belief has always been that these two groups are natural allies. They tend to share some elements of their constituencies, at least some aspects of progressive politics and values, and an interest (even belief) in fighting corporate power. The efforts of new groups to capitalize on these commonalities in areas such as green jobs or alternative energy production are significant in part because they are overdue.

One of the most substantial areas of overlapping concern here is mining. Mine work is classic labor turf, with a grand history of pitched battles and phenomenal labor-steeped literature. It's dangerous work, the kind of job where a union makes more difference than an extra dollar or two per hour, or even than bargaining to get you health care.

It's also dangerous for the country: as this excellent post at Daily Kos explores, coal mining is perhaps the single biggest contributor to regional effects in carbon footprint in the U.S.

This isn't the only front between environmentalists and mining companies, with mountaintop removal being an unpopular practice as well. But it may be the most important, in part because the Obama administration seems to have bought the idea of clean coal (which, in case no one has told you, is completely made up - hypothetical would be a nicer way of putting it, but blogs aren't supposed to be nice).

It's also one of the most important arenas for labor. In order to fight climate change, recover from this recession, and even out our trade deficit, the U.S. economy is going to need to undergo some major changes. Whether those changes leave miners from my home state of Pennsylvania and around the country worse off (out of the mines with nowhere else to go) or better off (out of the mines but with job training and access to a new, greener economy) is one of the standards by which our politics, and our economy, will have to be measured.

Labor and consumer protection

2009-05-18T14:42:00.003-04:00

There's an excellent article in the Washington Post today about the cost of being poor. Many low-wage workers live in food deserts, areas where there is limited access to affordable, healthy food - which can pose serious consequences in terms of health care costs, longevity, and community health. Payday lenders and check cashing services charge exorbitant fees (the 806% annual interest rate cited in the article is no exception) and lobby against regulation. Poor neighborhoods often have fewer and more expensive retail options, limited transit accessibility, and weakened city services as well. They can suffer from higher crime rates, and their residents may live in deteriorating homes.

Unions have a long history with consumer protection in the U.S. Labor has bankrolled a number of the most important consumer advocacy organizations in the country, and many unions feature consumer issues in campaigns they run to improve corporate behavior. Several key pieces of labor's legislative agenda, such as healthcare reform, are also inextricably linked to the consumer movement.

Then again, Union Plus (an AFL-CIO administered consumer program, the contracts for which are rumored to be worth tens of millions of dollars) offers secured credit cards, which have high rates and fees and are often noted as one of the scammier parts of the financial services industry. I'm sure this program offers a lot of legitimate benefits to union members (and I think I've used one of their discounts, actually) but I'm not sure marketing to workers is the best way to fight for them.

But I digress. The real point here is that it is critically important that labor get behind real reform in the consumer industries. This isn't just a progressive policy position, valuable because it enhances our credibility or helps us bargain with companies whose workers we represent (or seek to represent). Union members are consumers - many of them low-wage workers who are prime targets of exploitative business practices. When I've worked on a campaign or an election that has involved outreach to union members, some of the doors I've knocked on have been mansions, some of them have been nice middle-class homes, but a lot of them have been in trailer parks or run-down apartment buildings, too, just down the street from an ACE check cashing shop and a liquor store that doubles as a grocery.

There's some good news: the Obama administration has indicated serious interest in enhancing regulations on credit cards and other consumer banking tools. But that's just a start - admittedly a very timely one, since the housing bubble (and credit generally) was a major link in the chain that led to the recession. What unions are increasingly realizing is that most key consumer goods and services - anything from m&m's to mass transit - are also consumed by our members, and part of our job is making sure the companies doing business with them (not just the ones employing them) play fair.

AT&T

2009-05-15T15:43:00.003-04:00

It's no secret that manufacturing has been the traditional stronghold of the American labor movement. As more and more manufacturers close down their U.S. factories or declare bankruptcy altogether, we should be concerned about the health of an economy that doesn't export nearly as much as it imports. But the labor movement should also be thinking about how to expand outside its prior core competency.

A number of unions have taken on service industry jobs in a big way, including UNITE HERE, UFCW and IBT. But many of the country's biggest and fastest growing unions - SEIU, AFT, AFSCME - get a substantial percentage of their new membership from the public sector.

Another growth industry is the technology sector in particular and office jobs in general. Office workers may feel disconnected from the traditional labor vision of the blue-collar worker, but a number of workplaces have nonetheless successfully organized into major international unions. This is a critical arena for the labor movement, because as with my post on staff unions, the protestations of many companies that employ office workers that their work is different, more advanced, more dedicated, and so forth merely provides cover for issues such as unpaid overtime, frequent layoffs with limited severance pay, and the like.

It is for that reason that I'd like all of you to take a moment to support AT&T workers in whatever way you can. AT&T wireless is the only unionized cell phone company in the country, and management is mounting a serious charge against what is by all accounts a strong contract in this round of negotiations. The workers have decided to fight back, and they're now on strike standby, using tactics like mass demonstrations to try to avoid a work stoppage that would be costly for AT&T, a huge challenge for CWA, and (as with any strike) an incredible hardship to be borne by a steadfast group of workers.

Bailing out Kenosha

2009-05-14T14:52:00.003-04:00

John Nichols of the Nation reiterates the importance of bailing out the auto WORKERS (like members of UAW Local 72 whose Kenosha, WI engine plant that will be closed as part of the Chrysler's bankruptcy restructuring), and not just the auto INDUSTRY:

The ongoing effort to restructure Chrysler has served as a precursor of the bigger fight over the future of General Motors, the battered behemoth of American manufacturing that has already collected $15.4 billion in federal loans but is still losing $113 million a day. GM faces a June 1 deadline to present the administration with a restructuring plan that cuts costs and reduces debt in return for more federal support. There are already strong indications that GM will follow Chrysler's lead by shutting plants and laying off US workers while using bailout bucks to shift even more production to foreign plants. With "fixes" like these, it's tough to imagine how Obama plans to fulfill his campaign promise to "revive and strengthen all of American manufacturing."

See the full piece here.

Labor Laws Across the Pond and in the Great White North

2009-05-14T14:42:00.002-04:00

Professor Doorey from York University in British Columbia, has a post examining Employee Free Choice as it compares to British and Canadian Labor Protections, and asks what policy reason could possible justify not giving unions don't have the same access to workers that employers have. From his post:

If we want an open and frank discussion about the pros and cons of collective bargaining–which seems like good policy to me–why doesn’t the state simply encourage that by ensuring that unions have equal access to the workers in non-working areas of the workplace (like lunchrooms, etc). That’s what the British laws require, where the state aims to ensure ‘equality of access’ to workers in the period preceding a unionization ballot.

. . . I know employers don’t want their employees speaking to union organizers, but the public policy in both Canada and the U.S. is to encourage employees to hear both sides of the argument for and against collective bargaining. So what reason(s) justifies our laws’ preferential treatment of employers when it comes to access to workers to discuss the option of collective bargaining?

. . . Senator Arlene Spector has proposed a quick vote system (like what we have in Ontario), plus a union access provision that would ensure unions have “equal time under identical circumstances’ to address the workplaces at the workplace. If employers hold a ‘captive audience meeting’ then the union must be entitled too do so also. . . .

Check out the full Doorey's full working paper on Canadian Labor Law here.

Cheney, Rove Attack Employee Free Choice. Thanks!

2009-05-14T13:33:00.000-04:00

Workers who want to pass the Employee Free Choice Act don't just have a broad coalition of allies in support of them—they';re also very, very lucky in their enemies. Opposing the legislation has become a cottage industry for out-of-work, right-wing hacks, and the fight has attracted the attention of one of the most widely loathed out-of-work, right-wing hacks: Dick Cheney.

The broadly unpopular former vice president attacked the Employee Free Choice Act as a "huge mistake"on a Fox News appearance Tuesday, reports Sam Stein of the Huffington Post. And naturally—does it even need to be said?—Cheney's claims about what the bill would do are flatly false and repeatedly debunked.

As advocates of the Employee Free Choice Act, we enthusiastically welcome Dick Cheney as an opponent. What better symbol of the anti-worker campaign than an angry multimillionaire who's already been broadly repudiated for his disastrous effects on the country? (Even some Republicans are wishing he'd "go back to his undisclosed location.")

Meanwhile, yet another beloved public figure from the thankfully-ended Bush era is hitting the airwaves and the lecture circuit to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act—Bush's top political strategist, Karl Rove.

On Monday, Rove visited Peoria, Ill., to talk to a handful of corporate leaders—and more than 200 union members turned up outside the hotel where he was speaking to say he's wrong about the Employee Free Choice Act. Fired Up! Missouri reports that Rove also took the traveling anti-worker road show to St. Louis.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is bringing in 80 corporate bosses to D.C. this week for drop-in lobbying visits to senators. The big-money, anti-worker machine is hoping that its campaign contributions, disinformation and threats will speak more loudly than, say, numbers of actual people. The Chamber also is holding occasional anti-Employee Free Choice "information sessions" around the country to try to convince business leaders they're heading for Armageddon.

In a great piece at the Huffington Post, the AFL-CIO's Stewart Acuff notes that the anti-union movement is "deaf to the kitchen-table concerns of all Americans" and that gives workers and their supporters a critical opportunity to make sure workers have the tools they need to improve their lives.

What's happening in support of the Employee Free Choice Act? Workers across the country have made more than 60,000 phone calls and sent 140,000 handwritten letters urging their members of Congress to support Employee Free Choice; religious leaders are joining together to launch the "Faith Leaders for Workplace Fairness" campaign; and the coalition of supporters of workers' freedom to form unions is large and growing.

So the opponents of workers' freedom to bargain think they're going to win by relying on disliked and discredited political has-beens like Newt, Dick and Karl to make their case?

Keep up the good work, guys.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

Recession hits France

2009-05-13T17:16:00.002-04:00

Ooooh, poor Europeans, pawning off their most treasured intoxicants. Would you like some freedom fries with that whine?

Just kidding - I wish we had a recent protest tradition anything like France.

Staff unions

2009-05-13T16:36:00.003-04:00

If you've ever worked for a union or a progressive nonprofit, you may have run into the debate on the importance of staff unions. Their proponents (disclaimer: myself included) argue that they're important for the same reason all unions are important - they protect workers and can negotiate for a fair deal. Their detractors view them the way many of us view student government - it's nice to play at it, but in the real world/private sector the game is dirtier.

It's true that leaders at progressive organizations, especially unions, tend to have a stronger belief in fairness than in profit. But they have an even stronger belief in the mission of their organization, and they want workers to be believers too. To me, this poses the same problem for workers as the profit motive, even if we like the ultimate goal a lot more: management wants individuals to sacrifice for a larger, organizational purpose, and the union intercedes on all workers' behalf. And even more than other office workers, a lot of us who work for progressive organizations have a tough time remembering that "workers" means us, and the problems we face on the job are just as real (if not always as severe) as what happens in a factory.

When I interviewed at a PIRG-related organization a few years ago, they told me they didn't think of themselves as workers, more like activists with a stipend - little surprise that they fought when their workers wanted a union. Acorn tried to dodge paying some of its workers minimum wage (and in at least one case I know about simply failed to pay workers at all until threatened with a lawsuit). SEIU has been accused of busting their staff union. Reports from UNITE-HERE mention leads telling their organizers not to get "carried away" with the staff union, or saying that their part of the union isn't "contract-oriented."

By the way - terribly unprofessional link above, but I had to include it - there's a Morgan Spurlock Watch?

Part of this is an ends versus means question, but part of it runs deeper than that. If you drive change with volunteers, unpaid interns, poorly paid canvassers, young college graduates who want to get ahead, etc., the terms of change are defined by people who can afford that kind of gig, in terms of time or money. If you want real institutional transformation, with a fundamental shift in who has power, that has to be - as the saying goes - a full-time job.

What Business Wants

2009-05-11T13:40:00.008-04:00

Today the Washington Post editorial board bemoans the fact that employers' organizations such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce continue to embrace an absolutist position against labor law reform, even as various alternatives to the Employee Free Choice Act begin to emerge. Specifically, the Post critiques business groups for their failure "to acknowledge any flaw in the existing process -- except to the extent that it suggested, falsely, that the current playing field is tilted in favor of unions. That hardly sounds like bargaining in good faith." Although not directly commenting on the editorial, David Brody, one of the deans of U.S. labor history, in a post for Dissent notes a vital point in understanding these developments that I would like to build on some: big business groups do not want to compromise because they want to kill any significant bill if at all possible.

Part of the reason I believe that a paper like the Post questions businesses' hard line stance is that we continue to have an image in the country that there existed a time of labor-management peace and cooperation after World War II through the early 1970s. The concept of this post-war bargain or consensus has been this: labor agreed to become less militant in its activism and adapt a more cooperative approach with business. In turn, corporations recognized labor's right to exist and negotiated with unions in good faith. There is some truth to this ideal; you didn't see anywhere near the levels of violence used against labor and businesses did more readily recognize and bargain with unions, particularly in mass industry sectors such as automobiles and steel in which labor had made major gains during the New Deal and World War II.

Yet, rather than a positive agreement among competitors, one might better think of the period especially of the 1950s and 1960s as something of a labor-management Cold War in which neither side could truly get what it wanted and thus adapted a tense peace. By 1950 both sides had been bloodied. For the labor movement much of its advancement and growth had become stalled; the CIO's attempt to organize the South had fallen apart and the Taft-Hartley Act placed major restrictions on some of labor's most effective tools for growth. At the same time, business faced a new more powerful regulatory state had been introduced to reign in business (especially as compared to U.S. history previously) and a labor movement too strong to be repressed or ignored.

In examining the views of business (or at least crucial sectors in the business world) towards labor, understanding this history is important because, as historian Kim Phillips-Fein pithily summarizes, "a standoff is different from a true consensus." Many in the business world never really accepted labor's place in the world or the post-war reality of a more equitable, social democratic inclined state. As Alfred Sloan, the chairman of General Motors stated in 1945, "it took fourteen years to rid this country of prohibition. It is going to take a good while to rid this country of the New Deal, but sooner or later the ax falls and we get a change." Thus, it should come as no surprise to the Post board or anyone else that NAM (for example) is fighting to the teeth against EFCA now. There's never been a time when they would not have.

Against the GM Bailout

2009-05-09T15:05:00.003-04:00

William Greider, at the Nation, advances the argument against a bailout of General Motors. From the article:

GM's restructuring plan envisions a doubling of the vehicles it will import from overseas factories, from 372,000 to 737,000, in the next four years. GM's imported cars--already 15.5 percent of its domestic sales--will rise to 23.5 percent.

"The overall number of vehicles GM will be importing in 2014 represents the production of four assembly plants, the same number that GM plans to close in the United States," UAW legislative director Alan Reuther noted . . . . "GM should not be taking taxpayers' money simply to finance the outsourcing of jobs to other countries," the UAW insisted.

US Steelworkers president Leo Gerard is joining the fight . . . . When the auto industry shrinks, Gerard explained, lots of steel workers will lose too because they are in the supplier chain at paper mills, blast furnaces and iron mines.

The full article here.

Powerful Union Still Refuses To Negotiate

2009-05-09T09:28:00.001-04:00

Breaking News:

Driving a hard bargain: "Additionally he must commit to conversation topics outside of video games, his job at Barnes & Noble, and the New York Giants, which is the full extent of what he currently offers. He must also commit to censure on laughing at his own jokes."

Enjoy the weekend, folks. ;)

Geoghegan on the Supreme Court Nominee

2009-05-08T11:08:00.003-04:00

The Nation featured prominent lawyers and commentators commentating/speculating on who might replace the retiring Justice Souter. One of those was our beloved Tom Geoghegan. It's not particularly labor related, but since we all love him so much, I though you might be interested. A snippet:

. . . First, I'd pick Earl Warren, because we need a strong governor used to getting his or her way--someone used to dominating a cabinet meeting. Second, I'd pick Hugo Black because I'd like to see a cracker barrel politician fanatically committed to the philosophy of Footnote 4 of Carolene Products--a belief that judicial review exists to make the will of the people the law of the land, to be limited only by the most expansive possible reading of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Third, I'd pick William O. Douglas, because the Court could use a libertarian free spirit in an age when the government might try to squat on the human genome. . . .

I would also make each nominee promise to write opinions no longer than those of Warren, Black and Douglas--let's go back to opinions of five pages instead of fifty. Of course, if Obama picks these three Dead White Males, there is no need for them to be dead or white or male. They would tell us that if they could.

Details of Boston Globe Deal

2009-05-08T10:38:00.003-04:00

Details about the Boston Globe's settlement with the Boston Newspaper Guild are coming out, and it looks like NYT Co.'s threat to close the Globe in 60 days forced all the major concessions the paper wanted. According to the Globe:

. . . the company's final offer to the Boston Newspaper Guild, includes two measures that roughly amount to a 10 percent reduction in wages: an 8.3 percent wage cut and five days of unpaid furlough. . . Other provisions include an end to matching 401(k) retirement contributions. Those with the job guarantees would receive enhanced severance payments if they are laid off . . .

The wage number is is between the 23% cut initially demanded by NYT Co. and the 3.5% cut + 3 unpaid furlough day initially offered by the Guild. But the big victory for NYT Co. is the elimination of the 190 job guarantees (which originated as part of a 1994 contract compromise to help the paper whether decreased revenues).

We should find out soon if the Guild members vote to accept the offer.

Unemployment Jumps to 8.9%

2009-05-08T10:27:00.004-04:00

The Washington Post reports that the unemployment rate jumped to 8.9% in April, its highest level since 1983. But it's not quite as bad as some had feared:

The number of private-sector jobs fell by 611,000, the report said, but that loss was offset somewhat by the addition of 72,000 government jobs -- most of them connected with the 2010 Census. The total of 539,000 jobs lost was slightly less than the 600,000 expected by analysts.

Note that the unemployment rate includes only those actively looking for work. If you count the under employed and those who have given up searching, that number jumps to 15.8% (a small jump from March's 15.6%).

Labor's legislative priorities

2009-05-07T19:27:00.002-04:00

It has been a busy week for me, now that I've recovered from my nasty bout of flu-like symptoms, so instead of coming up with my own idea for a post I'm going to borrow from an excellent one I read on this very site!

My personal belief is that both of these theories are right: yes, the intent was always to ask for everything and be prepared to drop something, with majority sign-up (as I said in an earlier post) being the least popular and not necessarily the most important; and yes, different labor unions probably care about various aspects of this legislation, and care about it as a whole in comparison to other legislative agenda items, to varying degrees.

So, let's try to figure out the characteristics of a union that would care a lot about employee free choice in general and majority sign-up in particular:

1. Organizes in the private sector. Many public sector unions already get things like neutrality, majority sign-up recognition, and a first contract without too much of a fight. They probably care more about things like health care reform, budgetary priorities, governmental staffing, etc.

2. Organizes, period. A private sector union that mostly survives based on legacy contracts, slowly shrinking over time (or rapidly, in some industries), probably cares more about other things - immigration reform, health care, you name it, depending on the concerns of the workforce in that industry.

3. High brand recognition, either generally or in an industry or region. A union that is unknown to most workers will still need to do a lot of work to organize, and binding arbitration or neutrality might be more important than majority sign-up. A hugely well-known union with a good stock of resources could capitalize on its name recognition with quick, surgical drives, and organizing that is more broad than it is deep.

4. Belief that rapid growth leads to better contracts more than the other way around. You can spend years organizing somewhere you have a majority sign-up agreement to make sure you are extremely powerful and get a wonderful first contract. You can also sign people up quick, get your foot in the door, and build structures to provide quality representation over the long term based on strength in numbers within the industry: union density. People who care more about density as opposed to rank-and-file organizing probably care more about this bill.

5. Tough corporate opponents, or campaigns, or industries where the demographics are challenging. Unions with these are more likely to feel strongly the need for a change in the laws.

6. Unions with no more pressing issues. If your industry is failing or getting shipped overseas, employee free choice might not be top of the mind. If your workers are largely undocumented or don't have health care, employee free choice might not be top of the mind.

So, what does the landscape look like? I'll do it in approximate descending order of size.

NEA - probably cares more about education reform, health care reform, etc.
SEIU - all of the above indicators point to employee free choice or something like it being of huge importance to SEIU, and this union more than any other may be positioned to capitalize on its passage
AFT - probably cares more about education reform, health care reform, etc.
AFSCME - probably cares more about health care reform, government staffing and spending issues
IBT - an unbeatable brand name (at least in terms of how universally it's known), a lot of private sector members, and a broad approach to jurisdiction (they claim to have twenty core industries), employee free choice would be incredibly helpful for IBT
UFCW - the union with the most private sector members in the U.S., some tough industries and opponents (retail, Smithfield), and a large resource commitment to organizing, employee free choice is likely UFCW's top legislative priority (although Joe Hansen has been very involved in immigration reform and health care reform as well)
CWA - private sector and lots of big corporate opponents, plus a commitment to organizing, so employee free choice is a big CWA priority
USW - the steelworkers have a diverse set of programs, including the blue green alliance. Green jobs and manufacturing stimulus efforts may be a bigger priority for them than for others on this list, although employee free choice has still been a very public effort for USW
LIUNA - if I were running a building trades union, immigration reform would be my number one priority. But I'm not, and anyhow the other indicators (private sector, commitment to organizing) mean that LIUNA is running hard for employee free choice
UAW - I would be stunned if anyone in Detroit is giving employee free choice much thought at the moment. Although it sure would be nice to organize those plants in the south.
UNITE-HERE - bigger problems right now, and anyhow they often get election agreements that are better than employee free choice in terms of neutrality provisions. Important to be sure but I'd be surprised if they're thinking about this a lot right now.

Everyone in labor probably wants employee free choice, believing both that it's helpful for the movement and that its passage is an issue of basic fairness in the workplace. But if I were looking for leadership on working towards passage of labor law reform, in whatever form that will take, I'd look to CWA, UFCW, IBT and SEIU.

Alternatives To Card Check

2009-05-07T13:39:00.003-04:00

A couple weeks ago Harvard Law Professor Ben Sachs (a former SEIU Assistant General Counsel) posted several alternatives to the majority sign up/card check component of the Employee Free Choice Act that Arlen and others so vehemently. [The brilliant] Sachs (right) discusses options that could "ensure that employees would get to choose confidentially whether they want a union, eliminating the possibility for coercion that worries business groups. At the same time, employees could organize without much of the employer interference that troubles labor." Given the current stalemate and potential compromises discussed in today's Steve Greenhouse NYT article, I though they were worth revisiting.

Option One: The Early Voting Model

Increasingly, in states across the country, voters cast their ballot by mail, or they go to a polling place and cast a ballot in the weeks leading up to election day. In the last presidential election, about one-third of all votes nationally were cast through some kind of early voting.

Early voting is easy to translate to the union election process. Union organizers and supportive employees would be entitled, as they are under the proposed card check law, to visit employees and make the case for unionization. The union would then give the National Labor Relations Board (or some neutral third-party established for this purpose) a list of the relevant employees. The NLRB would set up a polling place, where employees could make their decision at any time during the drive, and it would set up a confidential mail-in procedure. Just as is the case under current NLRA law, the rules would prohibit union organizers from interfering with employees while they're making their choices. The NLRB would keep a running tally, and if the union won the support of 50 percent of the prospective bargaining unit (or perhaps a higher percentage if the union wanted some cushion), the NLRB would inform the union that it was entitled to demand recognition from the employer.

Option Two: Phone and Internet Voting

[This] borrows the successful, but seldom touted, voting technology used in union elections for airlines and railroads. Employees get a confidential voter identification number and then vote in their homes by either phone or the Internet. Union organizers, co-workers, and employer representatives are all prohibited from interfering while votes are being cast. If they don't follow the rules, the election results are overturned.

In both processes, "employers could raise challenges: They could argue that people voted who shouldn't be included in the bargaining unit, or they could argue that the union interfered. But the challenges would be heard after, rather than before, the votes were tallied, to avoid the unnecessary delays that currently plague organizing drives."

What do people think? Tenable? Glaring flaws? Granted, Arlen Specter has said he would support "early but not too early" voting, and the Chamber of Commerce says it needs 45 days to tell its story. But do people think it's a palatable option from the labor perspective?

Boston Globe Reaches Settlement with Guild

2009-05-07T12:04:00.003-04:00

It appears that the Newspaper Guild has reached a settlement with the New York Times Company, meaning that NYT Co will NOT close the Boston Globe. From Yahoo:

The Globe had proposed to slash wages by 23 percent to gain concessions of $10 million and keep the financially-strapped newspaper from closing. The Guild has offered a 3.5 percent pay cut, plus three unpaid furlough days, for a total salary reduction of just under 5 percent. It said its offer represents more than the $10 million in concessions sought.

The Times Co. also sought to change its lifetime job guarantees, a key sticking point. At least one of the smaller unions agreed to changes in the guarantees for its members, but the Guild resisted giving up the guarantees. Nearly 470 employees across six unions have the guarantees, including about 190 Newspaper Guild members.

The details of the final settlement will not be publicly released until the Guild has a chance to meet with its members.

Scheherazade and The Chamber of Commerce

2009-05-07T11:48:00.003-04:00

America's last labor beat writer has a story up today about the Senate dealing on how to un-rig the US labor law system. Aparently DiFi (D-CA) is pushing against majority sign-up as is Arlen (?-PA):

While most Democrats back the bill, an all-out lobbying effort by business has
helped persuade several Democrats to oppose it.

We knew that it would be hard to get some of the southern Dems to support reforming labor law in such a way that employees decide which sort of election they would like. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), for instance, is from the center of Walmart's influence, and was always destined to be a fence-sitter as was Specter. I didn't expect that Feinstein would be so hard to convince that workers out to pick the type of election they most want. She is a California Democrat, afterall.

Arlen Specter has moved himself front-and-center with a Dem primary looming in his future and this being one of the pivotal votes that could decide his career. He would love to broker a compromise so he doesn't have to vote against workers with a tight election coming up and can then position himself as the White Knight who rushed in to save reform from going quietly into the dark night.

Mr. Specter said, “I would support quicker elections but not too quick,”
declining to be specific.

He needs to keep his options open. But what, pray tell, is the problem with quick elections? The problem appears to be that they allow an insuffecient time for worker intimidation, or rather management "telling their story." I guess 2-4 weeks, is insuffecient for a story of this length.

Randel K. Johnson, the United States Chamber of Commerce’s vice president for
labor affairs, criticized quick elections. “Employers need a decent amount of
time to tell their side of the story,” he said. “That’s probably about 45 days.”

45 days!! Really? Is he serious? Not since Scheherazade's life depended on it, has anyone taken that long to tell anyone a godamned story about anything. Perhaps it's telling that 1,001 Ar abian Nights is, literally, a fairly tale, like the idea that what management doing is "telling their side of the story." They actually want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring in consultants to run mandatory meetings, force supervisors to make veiled (and less-than veiled) threats to their supervisees, and otherwise threaten workers with the loss of their jobs if a union is chosen. That doesn't sound much like a story to me. Does it sound like a story to you Randel "Scheherazade" Johnson?

The Rights of Undocumented Workers

2009-05-06T12:17:00.003-04:00

A fascinating forthcoming article from the American University Law Review looks into the legal protections offered to undocumented workers in the US. The piece explores the implications of Hoffman Plastics v. NLRB (535 US 137), a terrifying 2002 Supreme Court decision which barred undocumented workers from receiving monetary compensation when illegally fired for supporting a union. If these workers aren't entitled to even that basic legal protection, are they entitled to monetary remedies for sexual harassment? Employment discrimination? Injuries? Disability? Apparently, some courts think not.

A snippet from the abstract (h/t Workplace Prof Blog):

Scholars have criticized these losses but have yet to formulate a coherent framework for evaluating the employment rights of unauthorized immigrants. This article does so by distilling and applying several core principles at issue when employment laws conflict with immigration laws. . .

. . . I contend that employment protections are “rights of partial inclusion” that reflect a distinctive sphere - the workplace - where unauthorized immigrants should be placed on par with citizens in pursuing collective interests. In contrast to arguments that favor limiting resources to lawful residents, partial inclusion explains how employment protections can effectively preserve national identity while simultaneously enhancing unauthorized immigrants’ incentives for social investment. In doing so, partial inclusion furthers the community’s self-definition, while providing unauthorized immigrants with a sense of belonging in a world increasingly focused on their exclusion.

It's worth reading.

How (Not) To Join A Union

2009-05-06T11:03:00.001-04:00

The Center For American Progress has a fantastic video out about just why it is that current labor laws don't work, and don't help workers.

Dumping Majority Sign Up May Always Have Been the Plan

2009-05-05T10:41:00.003-04:00

I just read this:

Bloomberg News is reporting on statements made by Senatory Harkin about EFCA's chances of passing. The gist is that it can't survive with the card check measure, but that some compromise without that provision has chance of becoming law:There isn’t enough support for a provision called card-check that would allow workers to bypass an election and form a union when a majority of them sign cards requesting one, Harkin said Monday in an interview. “Compromises are going to be made,” said Harkin, an Iowa Democrat. “It probably won’t be card-check because too many people are opposed to it now.” . . .

A softened version of the bill may attract support from more lawmakers, Harkin said. “Many do feel there is an imbalance” in current laws that favors business over labor, Harkin said. “They may not be for the card-check, but they are for changing election process and procedures and shortening the period of time for elections” to form unions in a company.

I can think of three reasons why the majority sign-up* provision might be being removed.

1) All unions want something soon so they can declare victory and start organizing.
2) Some unions feel more strongly about majority sign-up than others. The ones who don't prioritize majority sign-up as highly as other provisions such as mandatory arbitration and serious penalties for intimidating workers are seeing their real goals slip away and have more power in the labor caucus than the "Majority Sign-Up or Bust" crowd.
3) This was the plan all along.

The Some Unions Argument
I think the second explanation, that unions genuinely differ on priorities but that the take-what-we-can-get-now position is winning is the most likely. It's silly to assume that Labor is always a totally cohesive entity. It is made up of dozens of semi-autonomous unions with different needs and jurisdictional issues. It has service unions and industrial unions, unions in growing industries and contracting industries, unions with mostly white members and others with mostly non-white members. There are tons of unions with very different theories about how to create movements or whether that is even the goal. I bet many would be happy to give up majority sign-up to increase the chances of the overall bill's success.

I hope one of my colleagues here at Labornerd will do some educated guess work on which unions are likely to prioritize majority-sign up higher v. lower relative to other unions.

This approach doesn't preclude another bite at the apple in 2010 if we pick up Senate seats. As VivaElBund said: we can just aim for a repeat of the 1934 midterms when Democrats picked up seats. And then in 1935 this bill was passed you might have heard of...

The This Was The Plan All Along Argument
I have had a hunch from the get go that the top brass knew we would have to compromise and that including everything we wanted was a part of taking a very strong position so that we were still in good shape to negotiate, like the vendor at a bazaar who wishes to sell an item for $5 and opens for $15. If this is true, then including majority sign-up was brilliant since it focused the pro-business anti-reform crowd's criticism solely on that one aspect of a much larger bill. The Senate can hear all their testimony and then all of a sudden say, "you know, you guys are right, we'll take out the provision" and then push through the penalty stiffening for misconduct, arbitration, etc. Most in Labor would score that a win.

*The provision works such that when a majority of workers sign cards saying they want a union they would receive one. If at least 30% want a closed-ballot election, the workers would choose whether their wanted a union that way. Basically, it allows workers to take the lead in choosing how they want to determine whether there is support for a union. In the current system management can choose. The majority-sign up process is plenty democratic, so many of us have a tendency to call it that rather than card-check since the latter term is more vague.

More on labor lawyer's appointment to the FEC

2009-05-04T19:35:00.003-04:00

Some more reactions to Obama's appointment of SEIU labor lawyer John Sullivan to the FEC:

. . . many campaign-finance reform advocates view Sullivan's appointment with suspicion because of his long tenure representing powerful labor unions, who have traditionally opposed regulations like those mandated under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

It will be interesting to see if Sullivan's connections to labor scuttle the nomination . . . . it sure would be nice to have someone on FEC who sees a distinction between member organizations and corporations when it comes the campaign finance.

Study: Majority Sign-Up Works, Without Coercion, for Thousands of Workers in Illinois

2009-05-04T16:27:00.001-04:00

A new study shines an important light on what the process for forming a union could look like under the Employee Free Choice Act—and cuts through misleading, baseless corporate spin claiming the majority sign-up process exposes workers to coercion or intimidation.

"A Study of Illinois' Majority Interest Petition Provision," authored by Robert Bruno, a professor of labor policy at the University of Illinois, is based on Bruno's in-depth analysis of every majority sign-up petition filed in Illinois since the passage of a 2003 law allowing workers in state, local and educational institutions the right to choose to form unions through majority sign-up. Under the Employee Free Choice Act, workers around the country would be able to choose majority sign-up as a process to bargain for a better life, so the experience of Illinois workers is a real-world test that offers critical data to the debate over Employee Free Choice.

Bruno concludes:

The results of the study unambiguously revealed that the majority sign-up provision was used extensively without hint of union or employer abuse.
In brief, from 2003-2009, 21,197 public-sector workers employed in state, county, municipal and educational institutions voluntarily joined a union. Most importantly, contrary to business claims, in nearly eight hundred petition cases, there was not a single confirmed incidence of union coercion.

Bruno studied the results of Illinois' majority sign-up law over more than five years, looking at accountants, cooks, carpenters, nurses and many other workers at the state, county and municipal level. More than 799 approved majority sign-up petitions, with a grand total of one complaint filed alleging union coercion—a complaint found to be groundless. Not a single petition, successful or unsuccessful, was withdrawn or dismissed due to union misconduct. Compare that with the nearly 30,000 instances of employer violations of workers' rights in 2007 alone, and it's obvious how false corporate complaints about majority sign-up are.

The study, Bruno says, shows majority sign-up to be

a reliable mechanism to bring workplace democracy to workers in all corners of the state's economy.

Hundreds of thousands of workers have successfully used majority sign-up to form a union and bargain—it's a decades-old, functioning process that gave workers like Peter Braunston and Asela Espiritu the chance to bargain for a better life. The myth of union coercion is a powerful weapon in the hands of the corporate interests who want to keep their control over the process, but Bruno's study shows that this tired argument just isn't valid.

Bruno's study is the first in a series that will examine majority sign-up provisions in states around the country. You can read the full report here.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

The Healthcare War Room

2009-05-04T14:24:00.003-04:00

Politico profiles the "5 people you've never heard of who will effect the course of Healthcare Reform." One, "The Organizer" is Dennis Rivera, of SEIU, who "Rivera runs a war room that’s now the epicenter of the left-wing mobilization in support of the reform legislation." From the profile:

Rivera and his team have been laying the groundwork for months, with a war room staff of more than 50 and more than 400 organizers in the field.

They have developed profiles on more than 100 members of Congress, collecting mounds of data on voting records, district demographics and health statistics — and influential allies — “people closest to them who could, at some point, talk to them and be more persuasive than us,” Rivera said, citing clergy, former staff members and business leaders.
. . .
“We are running a political campaign, and our candidate is basically health care reform,” said Rivera, head of SEIU Health Care.

Glad the political establishment finally got the hint about the power of organizing. Now let's make this happen.

Closing the Boston Globe - A bluff or the real thing?

2009-05-04T11:03:00.004-04:00

As you may all have seen, the New York Times Company is notifying federal authorities today of its intent to close the Boston Globe within 60 days. (The notification is required through the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, law.) The move would leave Boston without a major newspaper and put the 600 Newspaper Guild Members and hundreds of Teamsters (the Globe's Drivers) out of work.

The question is, would NTY Co. really do it? Would NYT Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. really allow his legacy to be the closure what the Washington Post calls "America's most storied newspaper"? Or is this just a negotiating ploy to extract a total of $12.5 million in concessions from the Globe's unions? From the Washington Post:

The Globe says the parent company is seeking $10 million in savings from the Newspaper Guild -- the paper's largest union -- as well as $5 million from the mailers, $2.5 million from the drivers and $2.2 million from the pressmen.

Negotiations were disrupted when the Times Co. acknowledged a $4 million accounting mistake in the talks, requiring the Guild, which represents 600 editorial, advertising and office workers, to dig even deeper for savings.
. . .
The Globe quoted the head of the Teamsters local, which represents the newspaper's drivers, as saying his union had come up with the $2.5 million in salary and benefit cuts demanded by the company. But the Times Co. is also said to be seeking to eliminate seniority rules and lifetime job guarantees for some union members.

What do you think - is this just a bluff? Or is the Globe's fate sealed by the facts that the Globe is expected to lose $85 million this year and the NYT Co. is more than $250 million in debt? Not a happy day for the newspaper industry.

UPDATE: According to the Globe:

Teamsters Local 259, representing 210 Boston Globe drivers, reached an agreement with Globe management . . . worth about $2.5 million in concessions.

The other unions still in talks with the paper include the Newspaper Guild (600+ editorial, advertising, and business office workers), Teamsters Local 1 (250 mailers), and the Boston Newspaper Printing Pressmen's Union Local 3 (90 press operators). NYT Co is looking for an additional $20 million in financial concessions from the Globe's other unions and the revocation of job guarantees on 450 jobs. Union representatives have said they conceded most of $20 million asked, and that primary question still dividing the unions and management is that of job guarantees.

Said an official of one of the Globe's unions, summing up the situation, its "do or die."

A Primary Challenger for Arlen Specter

2009-05-03T22:22:00.003-04:00

Speaking of labor's use of new media, Ben Smith points out a veiled threat to Arlen Specter on Andy Stern's twitter feed:

"Congressman Sestak impressive on CNN. Visiting him tomorrow."

Primary challenge, anyone? You know, Senator, you can prevent this easily: just stand with workers and vote for Employee Free Choice.

WU/SEIU Financial Settlement Offer to HERE

2009-05-03T11:38:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, Wilhelm of HERE issued to following response to SEIU's call for binding arbitration:

"You want to leave us financially crippled so that we will not be able to compete effetively wth SEIU's demand to have competitive organizing rights in our core industries."

In response, an SEIU official sent over the following financial settlement proposal (h/t Ben Smith at Politico):

Workers United/SEIU (formerly UNITE) keeps the Amalgamated Bank and the NYC Headquarters
UNITE HERE gets $20 million up front and $3 million a year for five years, as a strike fund the offer values at $11 million
UNITE HERE has exclusive jurisdiction over laundry services and future gaming members. Hotel and food service workers jurisdictions are divided between Unite and WU/SEIU.
"Cessation of hostilities" (all litigation and NLRB petitions withdrawn), no raiding, mutual respect of organizing drives
a May 7 deadline to respond to this offer

That's a total of $35 million over 5 years, plus an additional $11 in contingency funds. I don't know enough about the jurisdictional question to know WU/SEIU's proposed break-up of hotel and food service workers is contentious.

What do you think? How will Wilhelm respond?

Impacts of the Chrysler Bankruptcy

2009-05-02T14:57:00.003-04:00

After settlement negotiations between Chrysler, the UAW, and other Chrysler Creditors fell through (Bloomberg characterizes the situation as one where hold-out hedge funds, like OppenheimerFunds, played "chicken" with Obama and lost), Chrysler will be filing for bankruptcy. From Bloomberg:

Now, the government and Chrysler plan to use bankruptcy to compel the dissidents, all secured creditors, to go along with a plan to create a more viable carmaker in partnership with Italy’s Fiat SpA.

Under the original out-of-court settlement agreement (which the hedge-funds scuttled at the 11th hour:

Fiat would have become a 20 percent owner of Chrysler, and a union retiree health-care trust fund would hold 55 percent, with the rest of the company staying in the government’s hands initially, according to people familiar with the matter.

Though it appears that the government hopes to replicate that agreement, the dissident funds seem prepared to fight that allocation of equity in Court. The Hedge funds are relying on the traditional "absolute priority rule," which says that junior creditors (such as the union retiree trust fund) don't receive anything until secured investors (like hedge funds) are paid in full.

It's also not clear what happens to Chrysler's current 54,000 employees under the bankruptcy formulation. From the Nation:

Unfortunately, Chrysler officials indicated on Friday that, while the company plans to survive, thousands of Chrysler workers – and the communities where they live – are not likely to make it.

On Friday afternoon, Chrysler LLC acknowledged – after the fact was revealed in documents filed as part of the bankruptcy proceedings -- that eight of the company's factories will not be transferred to the "new Chrysler," which will be co-owned by Italian carmaker Fiat Group SpA.

Rather, the auto firm announced, most of these factories are now "scheduled to close by December 2010."

The five plants that are most likely to be shuttered -- in Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin – employ close to 5,000 people.

Obama Nominates Labor Lawyer to the FEC

2009-05-02T14:27:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, President Obama nominated SEIU Associate General Counsel John J. Sullivan to the Federal Election Commission. (It's been a good nomination season for SEIU lawyers.)

While the White House has described Sullivan as a "staunch advocate for election reform." The pick has garnered mixed reviews from the campaign finance community (particularly because that SEIU was one of the largest contributors in the 2008 election and has worked to expand the ability of unions to contribute to campaigns). From Politico:

“While lawyers are of course obligated to represent their clients, the gusto with which Mr. Sullivan has bashed important elements of McCain-Feingold and repeatedly taken radical deregulatory positions does not inspire confidence that he will have different views if confirmed to the commission,” Hebert [executive director of the Campaign Legal Center] said in the statement.

But Craig Holman, a campaign finance lobbyist for Public Citizen, seemed willing to give Sullivan the benefit of the doubt, partly because the Obama administration has been so receptive to hearing the concerns of groups like his.
. . .
Sullivan is an expert on voting rights issues who helped Al Gore during the 2000 presidential recount and Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire during the 2004 Washington state gubernatorial recount.

It will be fantastic to have a voice on the FEC dedicated to ensuring voting rights for low income and minority communities. Do people know anything about his views with regard to campaign finance reform?

Chrysler Bailout Flashback

2009-05-01T14:10:00.003-04:00

In the face of researching the most recent developments in the Big Three Bailout, I stumbled across this August 20, 1979 article from Time Magazine about the Carter Administration's attempt to bail out Chrysler. Some of the passages seem eerily familiar:

Questions about whether a quick federal fix is right—and will be enough

The Carter Administration decided last week that now was the time to come to the aid of the nation's most beleaguered major company. After weeks of rising pressure for a federal fix for the multiplying problems of Chrysler Corp., Treasury Secretary G. William Miller produced—and Jimmy Carter approved —a Government bailout. It was designed to prevent the nation's No. 3 automaker (1978 sales: $13.6 billion) from sliding into a bankruptcy that could have put many thousands out of work and sent a shudder through U.S. financial markets.
. . . .
Its managers, said Miller, must draw up "an acceptable financial and operating plan" for dealing with the company's short-and long-term problems as well as spelling out its cash needs. This strategy will have to include sacrifices by everybody with an interest in saving the company: management, stockholders, employees, bankers and suppliers. Only such an effort can ease the Chrysler crisis. The long troubled company lost $204.6 million last year but topped that in this year's second quarter alone, when it ran $207.1 million in the red. Faced with the possibility of a shattering loss of more than $500 million for 1979, Chairman Riccardo held out the hand for $1 billion in federal aid.
. . .
Early last week evidence of the company's woes increased. Chrysler announced that another 4,600 workers had been laid off, bringing the total to 23,800, nearly a quarter of its normal blue-collar force.
. . . .
The United Auto Workers rejected his plea for a wage freeze, but delegates from its Chrysler council agreed to reconsider making concessions once the UAW agrees to a new three-year contract with GM and Ford. Said UAW President Douglas Fraser: "We'll take into consideration whatever is needed for the survival of Chrysler Corp."

Update the names and increase the numbers by several orders of magnitude, and this article could have been printed yesterday.

Happy May Day!

2009-05-01T13:32:00.003-04:00

While there are a number of different holidays and celebrations associated with May Day about the coming of spring, the only one that matters is obviously International Worker's Day. Unfortunately, May Day in this context has became synonymous in the popular imagination with septagenerian Soviet General Secretaries politely waving to rows of deadly Red Army divisions poised to strike Western Europe. Of course the U.S. is socialist now, which is why I'm deeply disappointed there's no military parade on the Mall, but oh well, communi-fascism is not built overnight.

As for the origins of May Day, another piece of historic amnesia is that, despite all the footage you'll be seeing of protests around the world, it all started right here in the good ol' US of A! May Day grew out of the struggle for a shorter working day, one which can be traced in the U.S. at least as far back as the (appropriately enough) named "Ten Hour Movement" of antebellum times. May Day more specifically itself traces back to October 7, 1884 when the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU), the immediate predecessor to the American Federation of Labor (AFL), passed a resolution demanding the legislative approval of an eight hour day by May 1, 1886.

Sadly, the eight-hour day was not implemented in 1886, leading unions across the nation to commence a major strike wave, including in Chicago. Those protests ended in a sordid and sad tale, the "Haymarket Affair," in which seven police officers were killed by a bomb (culprit unknown), leading to the trial of several prominent anarchists, such as August Spies; a trial most scholars describe as embodying all the impartiality and thoroughness one could expect in say, the North Korean justice system. Among other repercussions of the Haymarket affair was that May Day became an international day of remembrance for the "martyrs" of Haymarket and thus became the international celebration of today.

New NLRB Nominees!

2009-05-01T13:29:00.002-04:00

In case you all missed it (we did), last week, Obama nominated two fantastic people to fill the vacancies on the NLRB: Craig Becker and Mark Pierce.

Craig Becker currently serves as Associate General Counsel to SEIU and the AFL-CIO. In 2007, Becker represented home care worker Evelyn Coke in front of the Supreme Court in Long Island Care at Home v. Coke, arguing that homecare workers should receive minimum wage and fair labor standards protections (current Department of Labor regulations exempt home care workers a from coverage the Fair Labor Standards Act). (Unfortunately, he lost in a unanimous decision.) With regard to his role at SEIU, Becker focused on healthcare sector work and has deep familiarity with the non-traditional organizing techniques SEIU has used to aggregate homecare workers employed in individual homes into a single state-wide unit. Its really important that the next generation of NLRB members understand and value non-traditional organizing and organizing on scale. It's also critical that Becker is respected by both the CTW and AFL-CIO unions- it makes him a great and politic choice.

If people know more about Mark Pierce's background, please post. I'm eager to hear.

The official (and very dry) bios of both are here, at the bottom of the press release.

UNITE HERE Talks Collapse

2009-05-01T11:11:00.000-04:00

On Thursday, as both sides expected, the second round of formal mediation talks collapsed between the UNITE and HERE factions. But Ben Smith of Politico seems to think that both sides signaled some possibility of a compromise. From the SEIU/UNITE side:

[Andy Stern, Bruce Raynor and Edgar Romney] wrote their rival, former HERE chief John Wilhelm, to suggest entering binding arbitration and to offer a peace agreement that would prevent the two sides from "raiding" one another or interfering with relationships with employers. . .

The peace offer includes an implicit threat: That the open conflict will continue, with SEIU's massive resources aligned with the former UNITE side, now known as Workers United, against the former HERE side.

And perhaps a hint of a way out from the HERE side too:

Wilhelm's statement, however, seemed also to suggest an openness on the part of his relatively cash-strapped side of the union to a financial offer from SEIU.

'SEIU has not made a serious offer on financial resources. Under SEIU’s proposal, UNITE HERE would not be able financially to re-establish itself as an International Union and be viable, let alone have the resources to organize," he wrote.

The SEIU/UNITE letter is posted at Politico.

Veterans Push for Employee Free Choice

2009-04-30T15:50:00.000-04:00

Yesterday in Norfolk, Va., union veterans held the first event of what will be a nationwide campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act, uniting union and nonunion veterans from across the country in support of the freedom to form unions and bargain.

In a dozen states, VoteVets.org, Veterans and Military Families for Progress (VMFP), Veterans' Alliance for Security and Democracy (VETPAC) and the AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council are teaming up to host military veterans, family members and union members for rallies, roundtable discussions and mobilization events. More than 2 million union members—14 percent of all union members—are veterans and, along with national veterans' groups, they're ready to mobilize for a level playing field in the workplace and the freedom to bargain for the economic opportunity they deserve.

Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran and the chairman of VoteVets.org, says freedom of assembly and the right to bargain for a better life is a critical part of the American promise that needs to be kept.

The freedom to organize is an American value, one of the many values we veterans fought to protect. Past generations of veterans were able to enter the middle class because unions were there to fight for fair wages and benefits. The Employee Free Choice Act ensures that veterans and civilians in the workforce will continue to get a fair shake, which is why we're proud to support it.

Richard Hatch, an Army veteran and member of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 2201 in southeast Virginia, attended the Norfolk roundtable yesterday. Hatch, who wrote letters to his senators asking them to support the Employee Free Choice Act, says that the freedom to form unions and bargain is a value he strongly believes in.

The reason I signed up to fight is that I believed in the ideal of freedom and why and how America was founded. You have to buy into that to put your life on the line. When you see the injustice that's going on in this country right now—where corporations and their CEOs negotiate their own contracts but workers are stripped day in and day out of their basic rights—that's not why I joined the military and that's not what I was fighting for.

The voices of veterans will be a valuable addition to the broad national coalition behind the Employee Free Choice Act.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

Fighting Disease

2009-04-29T23:39:00.002-04:00

We really need paid sick leave. Preferably unlimited sick leave.

This subject is near and dear to my heart this evening for two reasons. First, there's a likely pandemic going around in the form of swine flu. Second, I feel like I have contracted it.

Just kidding! I'm not quite this much of a hypochondriac. (And if you do have it, I am deeply sorry.) But I do have some flu symptoms - headache, muscle soreness, sore throat, feverish feeling - and because I'm lucky enough to have unlimited sick leave at work I won't be endangering my own health, or that of my coworkers, by going into the office tomorrow.

Sick leave is not the sexiest agenda item of the labor movement. The fact that we are largely responsible for the existence of the modern weekend or the 8-hour work day is well known. The pattern that unionized workers get higher pay and superior benefits has been proven in a variety of industries, regions, and jobs. But sick leave doesn't seem that important most of the time. It basically doesn't seem important unless you are sick, right now.

That's a big problem for a society. Many pandemic experts agree that shutting down non-essential work, business and social interaction is a key ingredient for successful disease control. Mexico, ground zero for swine flu, is taking this advice to heart. (The Center for Disease Control advocates for staying home from work when sick regardless of whether it's swine flu or not - even a mild cold can spread.)

Paid sick leave, especially unlimited sick leave, often gets a bad rap because of the potential for abuse and the loss of work time. But a number of studies over the past few years have indicated that even the purely economic benefits outweigh the costs. A 2004 report by the Institute for Women's Policy Research suggested that access to paid sick leave would lead to improved worker morale, improved productivity, a lower rate of illness transmission within the workforce, lower turnover, and reduced health care costs (which are often borne by employers). Paid sick leave laws in San Francisco have led to neither a dramatic increase in sick leave used nor an economic slow-down. (I'm talking pre-recession here. It's hard to compare a bunch of different lines that all look like they trace the paths of downhill skiers.)

Obviously in rare cases staying home when you're sick can save a life, which is difficult to value. But even if you don't like that hippie-dippie stuff, look, it still makes sense when we're talking about money!

Incidentally, the case for unlimited sick leave as opposed to a certain number of paid days is a straightforward one: if a company is willing to pay for 1,000 paid sick days per year for 200 workers, it gets the most of the above benefits if those days are taken on the 1,000 sickest days had by any worker, not if each worker takes five regardless of whether they need two or seven.

It's worth noting that access to paid sick leave often breaks along demographic and socioeconomic lines. The people who can least afford an extended bout with illness, who are least likely to have health insurance, and who are most likely to be financially motivated to put off health care that could also prevent a disease from spreading are the people who, with my symptoms, would be going to work tomorrow, because a lot of us can't afford a day without a paycheck.

Whew! I sure am glad that I can go drink some Theraflu, turn off my alarm, and go to sleep.

Come on Arlen!

2009-04-28T12:47:00.003-04:00

So Arlen Spector is switching to become a Democrat but his "position on Employees Free Choice Act (Card Check) will not change." WTF Arlen? You've just switched parties! That's the flip-flopiest of all flip-flops. Surely you can easily switch back to your traditional position on this act (or at least go for cloture) and get lots of union money and volunteers in a state where they can really make a difference. Just do it man!

Online social media and the labor movement

2009-04-27T17:38:00.002-04:00

The integration of web media, especially social networking sites and software, into a growth strategy for the labor movement has been the subject of some debate and various false starts over the past couple of years. As unions try to reach out to younger workers and get around an anti-union atmosphere in U.S. workplaces, these may be important tools, especially in industries such as retail where young, web-savvy workers who may be skeptical of traditional union arguments are the norm.

Unions do use facebook and myspace to look for workers at a particular company or facility, with varying results. Facebook's Causes and dedicated union or campaign groups have become de rigeur as well. Few workers visit these pages, though, and most of the time the union has the visitor statistics to prove it. A real web 2.0 strategy could be an important game-changer for the labor movement in a lot of the major organizing fights it needs to take on over the next few years.

Interestingly the UNITE-HERE fight is on the vanguard in terms of these approaches. First, both sides have a number of young organizers working for them who have taken to commenting, generally with an aggressive and highly messaged response, on any stories or blog posts related to the conflict. (I'm curious how much of this is self-directed and how much institutionally mandated - my bet would be some of both.) Second, there's a growing amount of pop culture mockery of Andy Stern that may be part of an attempt to make his personality and its perceived characteristics the identifying factor in the fight. My two favorite examples are the bizarre Fuck Yeah! Andy Stern! and the more substantive Perez Stern blog.

Maybe these are inside the beltway resources, mostly read by politicos and labor nerds who won't be voting for UNITE-HERE or Workers United anyhow. I also have a fair amount of skepticism about this kind of personalizing in a labor fight: eventually you have to sit down and negotiate with the boss, Wilhelm needs to be able to talk with Stern in the same way, and either side thinking the other is responsible for demonization isn't going to help. But figuring out how this type of thing can work for organizers is an important step.

UNITE HERE Board Authorizes Suspension of Raynor

2009-04-23T12:35:00.003-04:00

The latest from Politico:

The leadership of what's left of the divided union UNITE HERE voted today in Chicago to suspend its general president, Bruce Raynor, who is aligned with the UNITE side which is seeking to leave the union and join the SEIU.

The vote of the general executive board to suspend was 32-0, according to a UNITE HERE official, with the charges being "attempts to divide the union as well as promote SEIU as a competing labor organization within UNITE HERE’s jurisdiction."

John Wilhelm, the former president of HERE -- Raynor had led UNITE -- will take over as president during the 90-day suspension.

Raynor then issued a statement with the associated press, saying:

Contrary to a press release just distributed by John Wilhelm’s press contact, today’s General Executive Board meeting ended with me as Chair of the GEB and as General President of UNITE HERE. To be crystal clear: I have not been suspended. To the contrary, the Board authorized Wilhelm to discuss this issue with me.

The statement goes on to identify additional greivences against Wilhelm and again calls for negotiations to end the UNITE HERE merger.

See the full article, including Raynor's statement, here.

UNITE-HERE ratifies strong contract with Yale

2009-04-22T10:40:00.003-04:00

One of the big concerns about the kind of internal strife that's affecting UNITE-HERE and its members is that it makes it more difficult for a union to do its job: protect workers and negotiate good contracts. It's good to see that, at least in one of its traditional strongholds, UNITE-HERE has been able to win a solid contract despite the battle for control of the union raging across the country, with good raises for recessionary times as well as growth language, layoff protection for one of the union's New Haven locals, and maintained benefit standards.

Incidentally, someone else is getting lost in the disaffiliation vote dispute in Philadelphia. (As with many labor related sites, the comments are one of the highlights.) If I was using quotation marks for challenged points, maybe my whole post on UNITE-HERE should have been in them.

IBEW Video, Op-Ed Separate Fact from Fiction on Employee Free Choice

2009-04-21T17:13:00.003-04:00

With millions of dollars being dumped by corporate groups into scare tactics, misleading ads and disinformation against the Employee Free Choice Act, here are some excellent resources that help make the case for why we need this bill to protect workers' freedom to form unions and bargain.

In a great new video, the Electrical Workers (IBEW) union responds to several of the misconceptions about the Employee Free Choice Act that have been promoted by corporate front groups and the pundits and politicians doing their bidding.

The video raises some of the questions posed by opponents of Employee Free Choice and responds with facts and studies:

The Employee Free Choice Act would put the choice of majority sign-up or a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election in the hands of workers, not their bosses.

Majority sign-up isn't a new invention—it's a legal and decades-old process that hundreds of thousands of workers have used to form unions. Studies show that the NLRB election process puts workers at risk of coercion far more than the majority sign-up process.

Nearly 30,000 people were disciplined or fired for pro-union activity in 2007, showing the extent to which current law isn't protecting workers.

Many prominent economists say that the Employee Free Choice Act will strengthen the economy and raise standards of living for workers.

Mike Semm, an IBEW member who serves as president of Local 1597 in Grand Island, Neb., cuts through the corporate spin in a recent op-ed in the Grand Island Independent. He notes how the destructive economic pattern of the past decade has left workers behind and corporate executives unaccountable. The value that workers created turned into CEO bonuses and speculative bubbles, while the workers themselves were left with a dwindling share.

Stagnant wages and tightening family budgets have severely restricted the average worker's buying power. Small businesses across the country are hurting because workers can't afford to buy the products that they're producing...as President Obama has said, we won't be able to rebuild the middle class if working people don't have the freedom to form and join unions...

Unions and businesses have worked together to set up employee training programs, reduce turnover and improve product quality. Recent studies from the Economic Policy Institute show that these cooperative relationships help local communities to prosper, which in turn helps to stimulate demand for local businesses.

Semm says that we need real economic growth, based on work and wages, to get out of our economic crisis. And for that, we need the Employee Free Choice Act to restore workers' ability to bargain for a fair share of the prosperity they create.

The IBEW's new video and recent op-ed column counter the corporate disinformation campaign and make a great case for why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

Back in the day

2009-04-21T09:48:00.005-04:00

Some of us have been posting a little less often and I blame final papers and grading! But for the meantime, with all of the discussions of re-mergers, union divisions and other issues, I'd been meaning to post this awesome old newsreel footage telling the story of the mother of all labor splits: the creation of the CIO and the separation from the AFL. Great footage of "Miner Lewis," Sidney Hillman and the other biggies of the period. Enjoy!

Specter Staff Threaten to Trash Letters in Support of Employee Free Choice

2009-04-20T13:13:00.003-04:00

Is it common practice for Congressional staff to throw away letters from constituents hoping to have their voices heard? That's what some of Sen. Arlen Specter's staff threatened to do to thousands of Pennsylvanians who support the freedom to form unions and bargain.

Specter once co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act before he flipped on the bill last month and announced he would support a minority filibuster to prevent it from coming to a vote. Despite once saying he was "delighted" to support it, Specter now is advancing falsehoods about the bill, parroting the extremist charge that it would take away the secret ballot process, which it would not.

In response, thousands of union members, community activists, religious and civil rights leaders and other members of the broad coalition in support of the Employee Free Choice Act have taken action across the state to make their voices heard. In the past two weeks, they have held seven rallies outside of Specter's offices in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Harrisburg, Erie, Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. Supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act have gathered more than 50,000 letters, 35,000 postcards and 12,000 petitions from Pennsylvanians who support the freedom to form unions and bargain.

Specter's staff grew increasingly aggressive at every event, Pennsylvania union members report. At Specter's Wilkes-Barre office, where union members and allies delivered thousands of letters and petitions, USW member Tim Waters reports that they were told by a staffer, "as soon as you leave your letters will go straight in the trash."

Hello? These are Pennsylvania residents whom the senator represents. This is the way you treat your constituents?

Hundreds of Pennsylvanians took time out this week to make their feelings known to their Senator, bringing with them postcards, letters and petitions from tens of thousands of supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act.

They deserve a respectful hearing.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now blog.)

Sympathy for workers

2009-04-20T10:25:00.002-04:00

Tom Curran's article on the NFL caught my eye this morning. It's not the doomsday tone of the piece, even with about two years (!) to reach a resolution in labor negotiations. It's the question of whether football fans will have sympathy for the league, striking players, both or neither in the case of a work stoppage.

One of my favorite rants over the past year or so has been the extent to which elected leaders - and, in all likelihood, a significant percentage of our country - are willing to see white collar workers as more essential in the current economy than blue collar ones. The banking industry gets hundreds of billions of dollars with little discussion of the role that overcompensation and incentives for risk-taking could have played in causing the economic collapse, but a much smaller proposed auto industry bailout got scuttled in Congress. Then Obama makes UAW concessions one of the key requirements for additional federal assistance.

To me, the explanation is simple and depressing. If a banker gets incentive based pay, it's thought of as the market at work, and efficient until the bank stops making money. If auto workers negotiate a good contract, it's considered greed, especially once the automaker stops making cars people want to buy, to insist that the contract is followed. Part of that has to be that most of us only vaguely understand what someone working for AIG actually does on a day to day basis, but it's easy for us to imagine what an autoworker does.

I've got nothing against bankers, and they've been vilified enough over the past few months, I just think a little less rhetoric about bonuses and a little more systemic change in the industry would be a good sign from Washington.

Anyhow, Curran makes the case that the current economic climate will make football fans very unsympathetic to either side of the dispute. Aside from the fact that the economy could (and hopefully will) change a lot in 23 months, his point makes sense based on the salaries involved: even if you believe, as I do, that players deserve more than they get of the wealth generated by the NFL, especially due to the dangers of the job, it makes sense that folks who've been laid off aren't going to care much if someone making $2 million gets pressured down to $1.5.

I also believe, though, that if one good thing will come out of this economic mess, it'll be a return to the value of work. Although the recession has a disproportionate impact on low income workers, lay-offs have impact huge numbers of people in middle class, white collar jobs, not all of whom thought of themselves as sharing the concerns of "workers". The ones who still have work are waiting for the ax to fall while they calculate how much of their net worth has vanished out of a 401(k).

There's nothing inevitable about the recent trend of undervaluing jobs like manufacturing, retail and agriculture, the engines of real economic growth. If I took a pay cut, or a cutback in hours, I might look at NFL players and owners alike with some cynicism, but regardless of whether the job that's giving me grief is in a factory or a cubicle farm, the next time workers are on a picket line I might have an easier time understanding why.

Employee Free Choice

2009-04-17T15:02:00.002-04:00

If labor leaders and big business agree on one thing, it's that there is no impending compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act. The bill contains three key provisions, which are all officially essential to the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, as well as officially unacceptable to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It may be that this deadlock will hold until either the Democrats cross the threshold of 60 senators or that goal recedes further from view. If it doesn't, a path forward will be based on an assessment of the likelihood of passing each of the three pieces, either individually or in a joint bill that has one or two of the areas watered down, and the comparative value of the three. My math is rough, but I think this is a useful ballpark sense for thinking about the bill.

Majority sign-up is perhaps the most discussed and worst understood portion of the Employee Free Choice Act, being the principal target of misinformation from the corporate lobby. Despite being the preferred method in various municipalities in the United States, the bulk of Canada, and a large number of countries around the world, the false claim that it would get rid of secret ballot union elections (which we don't have in any real sense for union elections) has made this the least popular piece of the bill.

Current conventional wisdom holds that you need about 70% of the workforce to sign union authorization cards before you should file for an election, because union-busting intimidation, firings, and so forth on the part of management can reduce support for unionization by about one fifth of the workers. There's huge variation, of course, but taking this as a rough estimate majority sign-up would allow for unionization in cases where the natural support for the union in the workforce is between 50% and 70% (if it's lower, we still wouldn't win; it it's higher, we already are). Surveys put the number of nonunion workers in the U.S. who would join a union if they could at just over 50% (53% is cited in a number of op-eds by labor pundits). Assuming a normal distribution of worksites with a low peak, the minimum you'd expect to see in the 50-70% range would be about 30% of all nonunion workplaces, with a possibility of closer to 50%. Another way of putting this would be that majority sign-up, in the short term, would probably increase union wins in labor election drives by about 30%.

Employers will quickly adapt to majority sign-up, though, running more preemptive anti-union campaigns and aggressively recruiting a minority of the workforce to file for decertification or so-called secret ballot elections. So in my view a more accurate way of looking at this piece of the Act would be to say that it would permanently allow wins in (probably much) less than 30% additional unionization campaigns than the current rate, but temporarily might allow for 30% or more.

Another attempt to broaden the statistical universe in which unions win is found in a second key provision of the Act, enhanced neutrality rules and penalties for employer abuse. Assuming the rules entirely removed the incentive for abuse (unlikely), this would mean victories in the 50-70% range as well and possibly even below 50% current support, since nationwide numbers for those interested in joining a union are undoubtedly affected by a climate of employer intimidation. The ability to use enhanced legal protections for workers in this area to increase unions' win rate by 30% or more (based on the same math as above) would depend on how effectively increased financial penalties and injunctions to stop employer abuse would fight against union-busting campaigns.

This is probably the easiest piece of the legislation to pass, since worker firing and intimidation are extremely unpopular even among members of the public who don't have personal experience with them, and it's an uphill climb for big business to label this as anything other than what it is.

The end goal of a union is not to win an election but to get a contract. Under the current NLRB framework, 32% of workers lack a contract one year after voting for union representation. Presumably mandatory arbitration would virtually eliminate this phenomenon, meaning an increased contract rate of about 32% of the current election win rate. Needless to say this is substantially smaller than the short-term (or, if employer abuse is effectively removed from the equation, permanent) gains promised by the other two parts of the Act, but while employers could adapt to a more restrictive environment for running union-busting campaigns it is difficult to see how they could avoid reaching contracts with their workers under this provision. Furthermore, binding arbitration has not been demonized to the extent that majority sign-up has, which might make passing it a simpler prospect.

Labor's electoral priorities for 2010

2009-04-16T13:59:00.004-04:00

In 2010, as in most national election years, labor unions are going to put a lot of boots on the ground and spend a boatload of money to try to elect politicians who will support regulation and legislation that improves the lives of working people and makes it easier for them to join a union free of fear or getting fired. Over the past few years, there has been an emerging consensus in the labor movement that unions need to focus those resources more wisely. This is largely the result of three factors: the realization that labor has ignored elected leaders who play a critical role in some aspects of union operations, such as state comptrollers; the leakage of Democrats and moderate Republicans, often supported by labor, away from support of key labor bills; and the amateur hour mismanagement of key endorsements in the 2004 and 2008 Democratic presidential primaries.

Who, then, should labor be focused on in 2010? Based on the current political landscape, the key races are going to be for Senate seats, the vehicle or obstacle to passing the Employee Free Choice Act, universal health care, and other legislative priorities. What does the landscape look like?

1. Safe progressive Democrats and untouchable Republicans. There's no particular reason to waste resources on these races.

2. Vulnerable Republicans. This is the most obvious place to pick up support for worker-friendly legislation. The guy on the right (Arlen Specter) is everyone's flavor of the month, in part because his flip-flop on Employee Free Choice was one of the final signs that the bill was unlikely to pass, as is, right now. He's also in for a tough primary against more conservative Pat Toomey, in which case this seat switches from a vulnerable Republican to an easy open seat race. Also in this group: Jim Bunning, Richard Burr, and David Vitter.

3. Primaries against Democrats who have opposed important labor legislation in red states. If no compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act is reached (and the current stance of both sides is that no compromise is possible), this could be an important part of an electoral strategy for labor. The risk of course is that if a more progressive candidate wins a primary against someone like Blanche Lincoln, that may just mean an additional Republican in the Senate. I'm all for challenging moderate and conservative Democrats, but this seems very risky to me.

4. Primaries against blue or purple state Democrats who have opposed important labor legislation. Right now Michael Bennet is my pick, although Evan Bayh is something of a perennial favorite. Among other things, appointed senators don't have the same advantage of incumbency that people who've actually won statewide election do, and Colorado is a little bluer than Indiana by my guess.

5. Open seats. The list is long (New Hampshire, Missouri, Ohio and Florida are some of the pickups considered most promising.)

6. Defense - protecting Democratic seats, either by supporting an incumbent or supporting a primary challenger that has a better shot at winning. Who needs this most will depend on how the next year goes, but Dodd and Reid are looking shaky.

It seems to me that the key questions for labor leaders are, which of these races are we most likely to win, which are more important to win for legislative purposes, and which send the clearest message that unions don't support politicians that are bad for working people? My inclination would be #5, #6, and a bit of #2 and #4 thrown in, but I don't get paid the big bucks.

Incidentally, one day I promise to write a post without a numbered list. Call it a campaign pledge, and hold me accountable.

UNITE-HERE

2009-04-15T09:42:00.003-04:00

As promised, I'm going to write a little more today about UNITE-HERE and the mess it currently finds itself in. Because people who work in the labor movement tend to care about political messaging, an overwhelming amount of the online content around this issue appears to be written by people with a stake in the outcome of the conflict. I don't have one, except that I think the longer it goes on the worse for workers at UNITE-HERE and around the country, so my aim is to avoid psychoanalyzing the various characters involved as to their motivations or strategy, and instead stick to a discussion of what's at stake and what the factors are in determining results.

As discussed earlier on this blog, Raynor, Wilhelm and Stern are involved in ongoing talks about the distribution of what I'm going to call assets. To my mind, the important questions are what are the assets under discussion, who has a rightful claim to them, who are they most valuable to, who currently has power regarding them, and what's best for the workers associated with each.

1. About 300,000 workers, mostly in HERE industries, are as of yet undisputed members of the union that will likely be run by Wilhelm come the summer. The Wilhelm camp has the best claim, the most power, would likely be best for these workers, and wants to maintain its grip on core HERE industries such as hotels.

2. About 110,000 workers, mostly in UNITE industries, "disaffiliated" from the international union to form Workers United, which has now affiliated with SEIU. I don't have the legal background to make a case as to whether these disaffiliations are legit under labor law or the UNITE-HERE constitution. For Wilhelm to persevere, though, he would have to succeed in exerting some legal power - disaffiliation by "representative" joint boards (by the way, scare quotes are for terms I believe to be disputed - the joint boards are often mostly made up of former UNITE people, whereas the executive committee has a majority of Wilhelm loyalists, so neither should be viewed as a neutral actor) might not be a strong claim to rightful representation of these workers, but barring some clear sign of mass dissatisfaction, a rightful claim is difficult for HERE to establish. Nor is it clear that HERE would in some way provide better representation outside their core industries than SEIU (although I'm sure a lot of us have opinions on that). Stern appears to have all the chips on this one, so the only question to me is whether he's willing to trade it for something else.

3. About 40,000 workers who were part of HERE before the merger in 2004 "disaffiliated" from the international union as well. Here Wilhelm has a slightly stronger case that he has a rightful claim to represent these workers (since a true disentangling of the merger would involve them returning to HERE), and a much stronger case that he can provide better representation than other labor leaders in his union's core industries. However, at least some HERE efforts to back these workers out of Workers United have failed and it may be that here as well Stern is on solid legal footing and has a fair amount of power. It could be difficult to divide these workers from the 110,000 other members of Workers United since they left through the same joint board votes, but that would be an appealing split-the-baby compromise if an approach were devised.

4. It's worth mentioning that there are a not insubstantial number of workers in joint UNITE-HERE and SEIU projects, such as Service Workers United. I imagine their future is a subject of discussion.

5. Amalgamated Bank. This, to my mind, is the billion-dollar factor. The UNITE-HERE merger was motivated in part by the fact that HERE simply did not have the resources to do the kind of internal and external organizing it wanted to, so Wilhelm may need some portion of the bank quite badly. Stern, one of the most growth-minded labor leaders in recent memory, would probably love to get a piece. And for Raynor, with Wilhelm making a move at the upcoming convention and Workers United subsumed into SEIU, his lingering control over the bank may be the best case he has for relevance.

What Wilhelm needs out of negotiations is some continued control over his core industries, plus some form of access to resources that will allow HERE to remain solvent. What Raynor needs is to turn his interest in Amalgamated Bank into a sustainable solution for UNITE workers (which the SEIU merger could lead to) and a job: he's probably not going to be president of anything called UNITE-HERE again. What Stern needs is a compelling reason, probably a legal restriction or financial incentive, not to simply go forward with SEIU's ranks swelled by 150,000 - he clearly believes that SEIU is the best place for most workers, and he would probably only compromise if he were getting something that was a substantial game changer in terms of SEIU's ability to deliver for its members, such as a controlling interest in the bank.

Who would lead a reunified labor movement?

2009-04-14T15:56:00.001-04:00

To continue on the theme of the last post, one of the many complex political questions in play as the efforts of the National Labor Coordinating Committee progress is the form that leadership of a reunified labor coalition would take, and who would occupy the top slot. I'm claiming no insider information, and the prospects of reunification are far from certain, making the role that a coalition leader would take unclear as well. But everyone in my town loves a horse race:

1. The new leader could be a president of a returning Change to Win union, specifically someone who has continued to work with the AFL-CIO and has pushed for reunification. I view this as the most likely outcome, regardless of the form the presidency takes. Terence O'Sullivan, from LIUNA, is probably the favorite - he's popular, he seems to want the job, and he's done a lot of well respected organizing with AFL-CIO affiliated unions after the split (the National Construction Alliance being a good example). Joe Hansen, of UFCW, is also a possibility. Hansen has taken a broker role in various labor conflicts, such as the UNITE-HERE negotiations, and is trusted throughout the movement. He's the current president of UNI Global, meaning he has experience with the thankless job of leading large, amorphous coalitions.

In my view it is highly unlikely that an officer at SEIU or IBT (or AFT, AFSCME or NEA) will get the nod, due to the virtual certainty of substantial opposition from another major union.

2. Another possibility would be a president of a major AFL-CIO union with a presence on the Coordinating Committee, especially one who has played a substantial role in pushing for reunification. Larry Cohen of CWA might be the most likely here, having been cited in the press as a key voice in support of creating a unified labor movement. Leo Girard of USW also seems to fit the bill, with a broad portfolio of projects on important labor issues (such as green jobs).

3. Sometimes major actors can't agree on ceding power to each other, but they can agree on jointly ceding power to a smaller, less threatening actor. The big unions could have trouble picking a leader from among their own ranks and turn to a smaller union for a future president. This would open up the playing field substantially, so if you have any guesses as to who might be the go-to here, please let us all know!

4. Richard Trumka - Sweeney's chosen successor and an increasingly prominent voice on labor issues in the U.S., Trumka may face opposition from CtW leaders who believe the movement needs a new face. His (s)election would also almost certainly cause problems for the reintegration of the Teamsters based on his failed support of TDU. Sweeney may really believe Trumka should be president, or he might have said that out of obligation, but regardless I think the odds are long.

5. John Wilhelm or Bruce Raynor would be even more of a long shot, of course, but it is true that they're both thought of as incredibly talented labor leaders, and it's also true that at least one of them is likely to need a job in a couple of months. (More on that later.)
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Of Backrooms and Cigars

2009-04-13T15:56:00.011-04:00

Apologies for being slow to cover this story, but I was preparing for the first seder, I heard that Steven Greenhouse broker a new story on the merger.

The A.F.L.-C.I.O, the Change to Win federation and the National Education Association announced that they had created the National Labor Coordinating Committee to coordinate positions and act jointly on important national issues, like stimulating the economy....David Bonior, the former House Democratic whip, was chosen chairman of the new group.

This is semi-big news. We know they have all been talking. The AFL president, John Sweeney, is up for re-election at the September convention. Sweeney has officially announced that he will retire at that point and has endorsed Richard Trumka as his successor.

If Trumka gets the nod it is hard to imagine the Teamsters returning to the AFL-CIO since the Trumka-Hoffa feud is the stuff of legends. It peaked when Trumka supported the Teamsters for a Democratic Union in their bid to unseat current president James Hoffa. I hear that Trumka was nearly prosectued over the affair. In recent years, though, he has really rejuvenated his public persona. Probably his most notable achievement in the past while was his, now famous, speech in favor of Obama and against racism. Here it is:

We have a wild potential fight coming up. A few questions.

When, if at all, will CtW unions rejoin the Federation?
If they enter before the September convention, will they vote as a block?
If they do, does Trumka have the votes?
Who else could run? O'Sullivan maybe?
Does Trumka try to slow down a unification to win the President's seat?
Do they move away from a conventional President towards a rotating chairmanship?
How does the U-H split impact the scenarios?
What happens with article XX (jurisdictional dispute resolution)? Which sectors need negotiation? What happens with SEIU, UFCW, etc, and Wal-Mart? How about AFSCME and SEIU over Public Employees?

Lots of questions. It's a wild time.

She always stood her ground

2009-04-10T10:15:00.004-04:00

In one of those "smile on your face" fantastic coincidences, today is the birthday of two of the great labor women of the twentieth century, Frances Perkins and Dolores Huerta.

Perkins, of course, was a long-time activist with groups such as the Consumer's League and in 1911 she personally witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, further spurring her activism. She served as the industrial commissioner of the state of New York under then governor Franklin Roosevelt, going on to become FDR's Secretary of Labor (and the first female cabinet member). Perkins became one of the most vital "inside" voices in the Roosevelt administration, pushing him in more progressive directions and bills ranging from the Social Security Act to the Fair Labor Standards Act to the NLRA were some of the results.

Dolores Huerta was a California teacher who had long been involved
in issues regarding migrant farm workers. In the early 1960s, while involved in such organizing, she met Cesar Chávez and was a co-founder of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. Huerta led organizing on the five year Delano "grape boycott" which brought the UFWOC to national attention and wove together struggles for labor rights and civil rights. In 1970 the UFWOC won a collective bargaining arrangement and in 1972 the union affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Huerta's work also helped to secure legislation in California improving the lives of farm workers and she continues to agitate and fight to this day through the Dolores Huerta Foundation.

All of us here at Labornerd wish both of these truly inspiring and amazing individuals a happy birthday. And given these trends, let's pray there are some other young women celebrating their birthdays today who might take an interest in the movement.

Unions: More badass than pirates

2009-04-09T12:24:00.006-04:00

As you may have read about, Somali pirates recently took over their first U.S.-flag ship, the Maersk Alabama, however the crew succeeded in fighting the pirates off and retaking the ship. What you might not have heard is that most of the crew are members of the Seafarers International Union and among other services provided by their union is, yes, anti-piracy training. This seems to me the final proof why we need stronger unions: not only will they bring a better standard of living and fight for social justice, they can also beat up pirates. Now if we can only get a story about some union folks taking on a group of ninjas...

On a more serious note however, before fleeing the pirates did seize the ship's captain and we wish him and his family all the best in a speedy return home (as well as our hopes that the situation in Somalia can stabilize to the point where these problems lesson overall).

Specter Supported Employee Free Choice Before He Was Against It

2009-04-07T18:39:00.002-04:00

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) today repeated his intent on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to block a Senate vote on the Employee Free Choice Act, despite his past support of the bill. The bill hasn’t changed—so why has Specter flipped?

Compiling a few video clips, we look at Specter’s most recent statements and compare them with what he said in 2005, when he was “delighted” to join Sen. Ted Kennedy, Rep. George Miller and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Back then, Specter said the bill was important and necessary, worth supporting specifically because the option of majority sign-up needs to be available if workers want it to form a union.

Said Specter in 2005:

We held hearings last year and it was my conclusion, my judgment that this legislation ought to be pursued.

The basic approach, that workers should have an opportunity by majority rule to determine labor organization, is fundamental in America.

That was when Specter felt current law was “unwise” to allow the kind of management delays and coercion that were—and are—too common in the process of forming unions. He argued explicitly in favor of making sure workers had the option of majority sign-up.

Later in 2005, in a video message to AFL-CIO Convention delegates, Specter boasted about the seniority he achieved thanks to union members’ support and proudly proclaimed himself a “lead sponsor” of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Now, after consulting with “interested parties,” Specter has changed his mind on the issue, saying he won’t even support allowing the bill to get a simple vote in the full Senate.

The language of the bill is the same now as when Specter co-sponsored it in 2005. It’s the same language as it was in 2007, when Specter voted against a filibuster and in support of allowing a Senate vote.

The video encourages viewers to call Specter and see what his position on the bill is today. You can reach his office in Allentown, Pa., at 610-434-1444 or his office in Washington, D.C., at 202-224-4254.

Keep Organizing

2009-04-07T15:54:00.006-04:00

Greg Sargent points to a potential new meme that may be used by waver-y Democrats to avoid moving on the Employee Free Choice Act, this time from new Colorado Senator Michael Bennet. Speaking at a meeting of the Larimer County Democrats, Bennet first said that the bill would be unable to pass in its current form. He then went on to argue that something between a delay and taking the bill off the table was needed because Democrats have to be sure "that we've got all hands on deck working on health-care reform because this is the year to get that done."

I'm of two minds about this. Health care reform does look plausible this year and has long been a core goal of the union movement. Furthermore, the prospects for health reform getting through without labor knocking doors and generally mobilizing politically are certainly dimmer. The chances for reform also seem less assured if Democrats are divided and business lobbyists' are in the "revenge soon, take out on everybody" mindset that the Employee Free Choice Act seems to generate.

At the same time, not again! As I alluded to in an earlier piece, Democratic presidents and the party have constantly put major overhauls in labor law reform at the back burner and they have failed again and again. Meanwhile, labor has been one of the "best soldiers" in the Democratic coalition, playing a critical role in winning election after election and assisting greatly in passing other legislation from environmental protections to stopping Bush's Social Security privatization push. After so many decades, being told again to move labor law reform to the end of the line just doesn't seem right or smart (more union members = stronger base for Democrats).

As for what's next, it'll be interesting to see whether any decent compromise ideas come out of current negotiations, which will also help determine how much a 2010 strategy makes sense. In the meantime, it's good to see the unions not backing down, as a major diminution in organizing can only weaken the chances for the reforms that we need.

UPDATE: And as I was about to post this, finally some good news! Mark Warner says that he will vote for cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act. As Greg Sargent notes this is important given that the "closer the vote looks, the more the anti-EFCA camp might have to give up towards reaching a compromise."

Lincoln (D-Walmart) Announces Opposition to EFCA

2009-04-06T19:59:00.004-04:00

Not a huge surprise, but disheartening news nonetheless: Blanche Lincoln, the Arkansas Senator who last week tacked an anti-Estate Tax amendment onto the Senate's budget resolution, has just come out against the Employee Free Choice Act. Lincoln is the first Democrat to speak publicly against the bill. Think Progress has the details, as well as this revealing nugget:

The Arkansas-based Wal-Mart corporation had hired a former Blanche Lincoln staffer to lobby against the Employee Free Choice Act. Notably, Lincoln waited until after Vice President Biden helped her raise $800,000 before announcing her opposition to a piece of legislation that both Biden and Obama strongly support.

On the one hand, Lincoln's announcement diminishes the chances of seeing EFCA passed during the 111th Congress. On the other hand, Lincoln's betrayal means that vivaelbund's "Git 'Em in '10" campaign may have just gotten a little spicier, what with a Democrat in our sights! Who wants to head down to the Ozarks come primary time to punish a corporate shill? I'll buy the first round of Lime Rickeys at Sonic!

Feel free to let Senator Lincoln know how you feel about her decision to stand with Wal-Mart and against workers using this form on her website.

Civil Rights Leaders Urge Passage of Employee Free Choice

2009-04-02T17:18:00.000-04:00

(This piece by AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt-Baker is cross-posted from The Huffington Post.)

Martin Luther King Jr. often drew the parallels and connections between the civil rights and union movements. Today, on the eve of the anniversary of King's assassination, national civil rights leaders called for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give workers the choice of how to form a union.

During a telephone press conference, Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), a coalition of some 200 organizations, pointed out that unions have been one of the main vehicles for African Americans to move into the middle class.

The Employee Free Choice Act has been largely written about as a labor bill but those of us in the civil rights community know it is so much more...workers' rights are civil rights; and that the right to organize is a civil and human rights issue of the first magnitude.

From generation to generation, by organizing unions, working Americans have turned entire industries and occupations into sources of middle class incomes, secure benefits, and opportunities for upward mobility. This is true for Americans from every background--but especially for African Americans.

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous added that the fight for Employee Free Choice "is a fight not just to make sure everyone has a job, but to make sure everyone has access to a good job."

There are those who say the Employee Free Choice Act will hurt the economy. They forget that slavery was a full employment system. Everyone on the plantation had a job.

The reality is working people's income has flat-lined while the income of the wealthy has grown. In times when we're looking at getting our economy going again, putting more money in the pockets of working people is good for the entire country.

Listen to an audio recording of the press conference here.

The civil rights leaders' endorsement of the Employee Free Choice Act is important, writes Art Levine on the Huffington Post, and could help convince wavering senators to support the bill and is an indication that the battle for the legislation is far from over. Click here to read Levine's post.

Melanie Campbell, executive director of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, said,

It is outrageous that in this day and age, working men and women face the same kind of mistreatment and intimidation in the workplace when trying to form unions as civil rights leaders did when fighting for equal rights and protections.

Often what is lost in the back and forth "inside the beltway" debate over the Employee Free Choice Act is the real life impact of either being able to organize and bargain collectively or being intimidated and told to be quiet and not make a fuss.

Women in the workforce, particularly African American women have continually struggled for equal protection and equal employment opportunities. Often union membership has offered women not just the added wages and benefits but the adequate training to compete with their male counterparts.

Steven Pitts, labor policy specialist at the University of California Berkeley Labor Center, also spoke during the press conference.

The civil rights leaders echoed what labor educator Edgar Moore says in a guest column at the AFL-CIO website. In "African Americans Win With Unions," Moore, a faculty member at the University of Nebraska-Omaha's William Brennan Institute for Labor Studies, writes:

The Employee Free Choice Act is important for African American workers. Union membership has been a passageway to the middle class for generations of African American workers.

Last November, the National Baptist Convention of America, one of the nation's largest African American religious groups with 3 million members, endorsed the Employee Free Choice Act.

During the press call, Henderson summed up the issue by quoting labor giant A. Philip Randolph:

As A. Philip Randolph used to say, the two tickets for full equality for African Americans have been the voter registration card and the union card. The first card allows all Americans to choose better leaders. The second card allows all Americans to choose a better life.

Look for the Union Label

2009-04-02T10:17:00.005-04:00

My Metro DC Labor Council "Union City" newsletter (an awesome resource by the way) tells me that one hundred years ago today the American Federation of Labor chartered the Union Label Department. You can think of this as the original "fair trade" purchasing, as labor organized campaigns to get people to buy union made goods. In the late 1970s, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) took this to the modern media age and made a series of commercials encouraging people to look for the union label. Here's one of them; man the '70s were awesome!

Really? This is all Gettelfingers Fault!?

2009-04-01T17:38:00.003-04:00

The legacy costs are due to management underfunding of commitment mostly made in the 50s. The bankruptcy is due to management not making cars people want to buy in the US today. Hard to see how either is Gettelfingers fault.
I am seeing, via Ambinder, that Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) has taken a swing at UAW:

For decades, U.S. automobile executives have made one bad choice after another and led their companies down the path toward ruin. But at the same time, union bosses share equal blame for failing to act responsibly to achieve long-term stability and prosperity for their members, consumers and the auto industry as a whole.
...
If President Obama is willing to fire the CEO of General Motors because of his failures, then he should be even-handed in demanding Ron Gettelfinger's resignation for his equally egregious failures.

The union didn’t design the cars and the flaws in them weren’t the result of craftsmanship so much as engineering, operational decision-making, and management processes. To fault the hourly workers for the problems is silly. The problem is that the company didn’t produce cars that were of the type demanded in the US. They are profitable worldwide because they meet the demands of those markets with decent quality products. They made a huge unsustainable bet on SUVs and lost. Let’s not blame the workers or their union for that. It's hard to imagine how Gettlefinger could have had a role in that decision.

The legacy costs have their origin in the 1950s when workers chose increased benefits rather than increased salaries. Management didn't put enough money in escorow to cover the cost of those benefits. That wasn't Gettelfinger's fault nor was it Wagoner's. That the company made terrible decisions on which vehicles to prduce and invest R&D in certainly is Wagoner's fault. How can any of this reasonably be blamed on the people who built the cars?

Let's get national healthcare already so that American workers can compete with workers around the world. Under the current system they are at a disadvantage the size of monthly healtchare premiums. Screw tariffs, let's get healthcare to even the playing field.

Git 'Em in '10

2009-03-31T08:33:00.004-04:00

George Voinovich has often been cited as one of the Republicans who might be the potential 60th vote on the Employee Free Choice Act. Hopes were raised when he announced he would be retiring; the thinking went that he would be freer to vote without a need to hew the party line. Well, it looks that's out too, as he penned an op-ed for the Politico yesterday firmly coming out against the bill. I think this may show the final fallacy of those who were hoping that we could get some Republicans and conservative Democrats to vote against the bill, but for cloture. It's not like the Chamber of Commerce doesn't realize the importance of the cloture vote and their wrath was going to fall no matter what.

There may be alternative good strategies for getting the bill through this year, I don't know. However, it seems like the best strategy is the "git 'em in 10" one of knocking off more Republican Senators in 2010 and replacing them with pro-labor people. With races in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire that shouldn't be impossible. In the meantime, labor can keep organizing at the grassroots around Employee Free Choice and help Obama get some of his big legislative items both through (such as health care) and also help to ensure the stimulus is working. If people feel in two years that Obama's doing the good job, then hopefully we can just aim for a repeat of the 1934 midterms when Democrats picked up seats. And then in 1935 this bill was passed you might have heard of...

Weekend Reading: I'm Sticking to the Union

2009-03-29T22:43:00.004-04:00

This week, we bring you a memoir-in-progress about one man's relationship with organized labor. The man in question, in case you were wondering, is my father. Let's call him "Pa Aufzoo." Enjoy and, as always, leave your comments below.

I recently read an excellent piece by Elaine Bernard of Harvard’s Labor and Worklife Program in the Fall 2008 issue of DSA’s Democratic Left. It was called “The State of US Labor and Building Union Power.” Two points stood out: That unions have been in a steady decline for the past 50 years and now represent only 12% of workers (and only 7.5% of private sector workers). And workers who organize themselves are more committed trade unionists than those who go to work for an employer that is already organized, and see there dues as simply another deduction.

Elaine cited 1955 as the date that unions reached “highest density,” when one out of three workers was a union member. I can’t claim credit, but I was organizing for the ILGWU from 1951 to 1954. I grew up at a time when the labor movement was becoming an important force in American life. Thanks to the New Deal, the Wagner Act was passed, the NLRB was created, and workers felt that government was finally on their side. It was against the law to fire a worker for union activity. Unions that had struggled for decades to organize and negotiate contracts with their employers, were finally winning recognition.

In the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s, everybody knew Walter Reuther and the UAW, John L. Lewis and the UMW, David Dubinsky and the ILGWU and Sidney Hillman and the ACWA. They knew there was an AF of L led by a plumber named George Meany and a CIO led by a steel worker named Philip Murray. And in 1955 they merged and became the AFL-CIO. It is true that some people thought that unions were communist-controlled, and other people thought they were gangster-controlled, but for the most part people acknowledged that unions were a force for good: they were instrumental in improving the wages, hours and working conditions for their members. “You’ll get vacation with pay; take your kids to the seashore.”

As a small child, I knew about the ILGWU because my mother had been a member. I am not sure when I first learned that she had taken part in the 1910 Cloakmakers Strike, and that she was a shop chairlady and active in Local 9, the cloak finishers local, before she married in 1916. However, after my father died in 1931, my mother’s attempt to return to work was thwarted by the union. She was no longer a member. It was the depression. There was very little work. What there was went to members in good standing.

By the late ‘30s, my mother finally got sporadic employment at a union shop on Beach Avenue in the Bronx, Zweig and Sternheim. I have a vivid picture of that shop imbedded in my memory. I used to go with my mother when she had work, and I didn’t have school. I would sit on the floor next to her and collect al l the empty spools of thread and build castles and towers. I remember walking up the one flight of stairs to the factory. We would enter, I believe my mother would punch a time clock, and we would walk across the factory floor to the finishers’ tables. In the front of the shop were the operators, and next to them were the pressers. Toward the back were the long tables on which the cutters spread the material which they would cut, and which would then be bundled and given to the operators. I took all of this for granted. Most of the workers were Jewish and Italian. My mother didn’t develop any friendships with the people with whom she worked.

There was also an office where I assume Mr. Zweig and Mr. Sternheim and a secretary or bookkeeper worked. My mother once told me, very angrily, that when the union’s Business Agent visited the shop, he would go into the office and then leave. He did not stop to talk with the workers, or even the shop chairman, to inquire if anyone had complaints or questions. This was my mother’s image of an ILGWU Business Agent around 1940. When I applied to the ILGWU Training Institute 10 years later, my mother asked me what it would lead to. I told her I would be an organizer. That was OK. And after that? I replied, “a Business Agent.” She couldn’t restrain her derision. “So you went to college to become a Business Agent? I can’t believe it.”

Despite her contempt for business agents, my mother felt a loyalty to the union. She would say that a bad union is better than no union. Her reasoning was interesting. You can make a bad union better. You can get rid of the corruption and elect honest officers. But if you don’t have a union, the bosses will exploit you and you have no recourse. You have no contract, no mechanism for making things better.

I suspect I absorbed this view very early in life. As a pre-teen, my heroes were FDR and Walter Reuther. I remember the newsreels of the sit down strikers in the Detroit auto plants. I was in awe of the workers in the steel mills and the coal mines, and their struggles to form unions. By the time I graduated from high school, my commitment to organized labor was firmly established, though it was tempered by my mother’s less than enthusiastic feelings about the ILGWU. Still, she admired David Dubinsky and his leadership, as well as his politics. It was to reach her and workers like her that the American Labor Party was formed in New York in1936 by a group of labor leaders led by Dubinsky. My mother considered herself a socialist, an admirer of Thomas and Debs and Hillquit, but she was also a realist. She felt that only Roosevelt could save America. My mother bought our first radio in 1936 in order to hear Roosevelt’s speeches. And t he labor movement grew.

By the time I entered CCNY, I began to think about two possible vocational goals: to become a high school social studies teacher, or to go to work for a union. I knew that unions had research departments and education departments. I felt that would be a meaningful career. I majored in Economics, taking all the labor courses available, and I took all the Education courses that I needed to qualify to teach.

In 1945, when I entered college, the war came to an end. Germany and Japan were defeated. The United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. In Europe, six million Jews had been slaughtered by Hitler. Europe had been devastated. GIs were returning, and the war plants were converting to peacetime. Women who had worked in the factories were expected to give up those jobs and return to their homes or to more traditional work.

My mother was now working fairly steadily. It was hard for her to travel downtown, but she did it. And she was again an active member of Local 9. She read the union’s newspaper, “Justice” in its Yiddish version “Gerekhtikeit” and supported the Liberal Party. We denounced the passage of the Taft-Harley Law in 1947, we cheered and wept at the creation of the State of Israel, and my mother kept wondering why the nations of the world could not find another way to resolve differences, other than war.

In 1955, the AFL and the CIO merged, but there were still sharp differences between the older craft and the newer industrial unions. There were political and philosophical differences, and there were differences with regard to priorities. And these differences continued over the years. At one time it was the UAW that left the Federation, at another the IBT, most recently the SEIU. There are still people who think of unions as either radical- or gangster-controlled, or both. And employers have done a very effective job of fighting unions. And the unions have done a very poor job of fighting back. And now it is 2009, and as Elaine Bernard pointed out, unions today represent the lowest percent of workers in recent history.

To be continued.

Apparently the Backroom is at UFCW

2009-03-27T14:39:00.003-04:00

A source tells me that Andy Stern, Bruce Raynor, and John Wilhelm were all at UFCW today negotiating over their big mess. From what I hear Joe Hansen, the UFCW President, is facilitating the backroom meeting. Perhaps some good will come from it. It seems to me that most of the moves have been made. I wonder what is left to resolve.

What Are We Going to Do Now?

2009-03-27T13:56:00.007-04:00

In case anyone missed it, this has not exactly been the best of weeks for the labor movement. First off and most significantly was the sudden reversal by Senator Arlen Spector on his previous support for the Employee Free Choice Act. And while perhaps we should have never trusted a guy whose last name is the same as the villainous organization from the Bond films, considering that Spector voted for it in 2003 and in 2007 co-sponsored it, voted for it, and voted for cloture, there was obviously some reason for hope. This of course leaves labor scrambling to find a Republican who can join the Democrats in fulfilling that basic American notion that you need 60% + support on anything for it to truly be democratic. Meanwhile, just today we get word that Diane Feinstein is having some second thoughts on the bill, adding to the already small, if loud, legion of conservative Democrats who've been wavering on their votes.

Anti-union folks are already declaring victory and most progressives seem a lot less hopeful about its chances. And sadly, there's precedent for this. In a way similar to health care, labor law reform has been one of those progressive white whales that we never quite seem to reach. And just as today, the Senate's been its graveyard, so too has it in the past. For example, in 1965 Lyndon Johnson signalled that he would move forward with repealing Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, which allows states to ban "union shop" contracts. The bill overturning Section 14(b) squeaked through the House and then was filibustered and died in the Senate. Similarly, did labor law reform fail under Carter and a striker replacement bill under Clinton.

That doesn't mean it has to happen again. Labor has often been the Rodney Dangerfield of the larger Democratic Party coalition, doing a lot of the hard work and not getting much respect, as Democratic presidents have not really put their full muscle behind labor law reform. For now, it seems the best course is to continue organizing for the Employee Free Choice Act. 2010 actually looks good for Democratic prospects in the Senate, including in states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio where labor can really play a decisive role. As I'm sure they're already planning, labor should go all out against Spector (whose reversal probably won't save him from the wingnuts) and consider primary challengers to Democrats who waver too much (especially if they're from a state like California!) And with a little luck, this time will be different.

Oh, and when I wrote the title this is what I was thinking about:

A New Sheriff in Town

2009-03-26T18:53:00.006-04:00

A while back I did a post about the exciting possibilities, as well as the potential limits, to Hilda Solis' influence within the Department of Labor. One bright spot I pointed to was her power to act on the issue of "wage theft." If you haven't heard the term before, it means exactly what it says. Around the country workers are regularly cheated out of the full wages they deserve both by law and in their contracts. As one of the leading fighters against wage theft, Kim Bobo of the Interfaith Workers Justice Center has noted, employers cheat workers out of their full wages in many ways. Some of the most egregious involve activities such as paying workers below the minimum wage; Bobo tells a story for example of employees at the industrial laundry company Cintas, where workers were paid under the minimum wage for years and, in one case in Illinois, eventually won $209,867.82 in back wages and penalties. Many workers also lose their full wages through being classified as contractors when they should be considered full-time employees or in not receiving adequate overtime pay for their work.

While unions and labor advocates have been pointing to problems of wage theft for some time, it looks like we're going to move from advocacy to action soon. On Wednesday the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that placed an official seal on this issue. The GAO report in specific focused on the unsurprising, but still awful handling of this issue under the Bush administration. During these past eight years, the Department of "Labor" (ie., Department of Management) has mishandled and ignored numerous cases of wage theft, as well as child labor violations, leaving thousands of workers without recourse in getting a fair shake. To give a sense of just how egregiously inactive the Wage and Hour divison was, the GAO report notes that its investigators, "found cases where it took over a year for WHD to respond to a
complaint, cases closed based on unverified information provided by the employer, and cases dropped when the employer did not return phone calls."

Fortunately, elections have consequences and among those is that it appears that we'll be finally getting back a Department of Labor worthy of its name. The release of this report looks to being serving as a springboard for our friend Hilda to step into action, following up on her earlier pledge that "there's a new sheriff in town." Solis announced this week that the DOL will be hiring 150 more investigators tasked to the Wage and Hours division to ensure compliance. Furthermore, DOL is looking to add another 100 investigators to ensure that contractors for stimulus projects are complying with labor laws such as Davis-Bacon. We'll keep a watch on this, as there are sure to be more dramatic cases as the DOL finally gets the resources to do its job.

Union Friendly Republicans

2009-03-24T15:06:00.004-04:00

Arlen Specter has often been talked about as a pro-labor Republican. I have a grudging respect for the guy who many years has had a perfect rating on labor issues. He is pro-choice in a state where it doesn't help him that much and centrist in a party where it is isolating. Often, because of his solid stands on worker issues he has avoided union-led electoral opposition and skated to office. He is about to cross the Rubicon. Via the Post:

Sen. Arlen Specter has told a business lobbying group he will vote against a bill that makes it easier for workers to form unions...Specter was the only Republican to support the bill two years ago. Unions were counting on him as the crucial 60th vote needed to overcome an expected GOP filibuster of the measure when it's taken up later this summer.

I am saddened by his choice since I thought there was a chance he'd transcend his Ivy Lawyer background do the right thing for normal people. Though I have some respect for the guy (less since his nasty questioning of Anita Hill) I wish him no mercy in the nasty Republican primary and hope Labor will show him no quarter in the general election brawl. I will knock thousands of doors of working people to get out the message if he sells us short.

Update: Since it's unlikely Specter will beat Toomey given that 200,000 Republicans switched in 2008 (presumably to vote for Obama in the primary) and he would be unlikely to beat a Dem with the Rendell and Union apparatus out in full-force, does this mean that Specter plans to retire and this was him voting his conscience? He is getting pretty old and has been sicker these last few years.

UNITE-HERE Divorce Complete? Say Hello to "Workers United"

2009-03-23T19:52:00.005-04:00

This past weekend in the City of Brotherly Love, the five-year-old partnership between UNITE and HERE may have finally met its end.

Workers representing 150,000 former UNITE-HERE members held the first convention of a new union to be known as "Workers United." The Workers United folks, representing 15 UNITE-HERE Joint Boards (largely composed of folks loyal to Bruce Raynor's UNITE side of the organization, but also representing close to 40,000 former HERE members) had voted on March 7th to disaffiliate from UNITE-HERE, but until last weekend's convention, it wasn't clear what these schisms would amount to.

The president of the new union is Edgar Romney (no relation to Mitt, as far as we know), and will be the only African-American head of a major international union. And in a move that should surprise no one, Workers United has announced its affiliation with Andy Stern's SEIU.

So what are we to make of all of this? The establishment of Workers United will not spell an end to the acrimony between the Wilhelm and Raynor factions (especially given the continuing struggle for control of the Amalgamated Bank), but one may hope that both sides are starting to see where this is all headed, and perhaps some healing can begin. That's the optimistic view, at least. And as long as we are accentuating the positive, it is worth noting that Workers United strikes plenty of progressive notes on its website and it has put together a dynamic and diverse leadership team.

On the other hand, the affiliation of Workers United with SEIU raises serious question that could deepen, rather than heal, some of the biggest rifts in the labor movement right now. Although SEIU has denied meddling in the internal affairs of UNITE-HERE, Workers United's lightning-fast affiliation with SEIU certainly gives credence to those that have leveled such accusations in the past. And for those wary of Stern's conquistador instinct and authoritarian tendencies, the circumstances surrounding the establishment of Workers United may also be a cause for concern.

There is also the worry that the alliance between Workers United and SEIU may advance the problematic idea that the UNITE/HERE split is just another shot fired in a proxy war between Change to Win and AFL-CIO, with Workers United/UNITE/CtW/SEIU on one side, and HERE/AFL-CIO on the other. As vivaelbund has written, the differences between UNITE and HERE are substantive and long-standing, and it would be an unfortunate oversimplification to reduce it to a territorial pissing match. That being said, I would be surprised if HERE did not speed up its negotiations with AFL-CIO in response to these new developments.

Although I am among those who have some reservations about Stern and the circumstances surrounding Workers United's founding, the new union appears to have great potential and I wish it the best. My personal feelings about UNITE-HERE echo those expressed by AFL-CIO union presidents Leo Gerard of United Steelworkers and Ron Gettelfinger of UAW in their letter from mid-March: the UNITE-HERE partnership is broken, and the sooner the break-up is complete, the better for all involved. We need to move on.

AIG Shows Why We Need the Employee Free Choice Act

2009-03-20T15:20:00.002-04:00

(Note: this is a cross-post from the Campaign for America's Future by our friend Mike Elk. Definitely worth reading)

At first, it might seem a bit odd that Bank of America and Citigroup paid for a conference call to coordinate a campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act. Why would Bank of America and Citigroup be so interested in hosting efforts against a measure that would allow workers to more easily join unions, since unionization has traditionally had little appeal for financial service workers? As a union organizer, I've never heard of stockbrokers wanting to unionize.

The real interest big banks have in opposing unions and the Employee Free Choice Act lies in the unions' role in preventing corporate greed.

Unions are a countervailing force against corporate greed in a market that has proven incapable of regulating itself. One example is the 2003 dismissal of New York Stock Exchange Chairman Dick Grasso. CalPERS—the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the nation's largest pension fund with assets of over $200 billion dollars—raised red flags when it discovered that Grasso was going to receive a compensation package of nearly $140 million. The compensation package was designed for him by a board of representatives from NYSE-listed companies. Since Grasso was charged with regulating these companies, such a large compensation package represented a clear conflict of interest. Under the threat of pulling their investment out of NYSE-listed companies, CalPERS and other worker-run pension funds forced Grasso to step down as NYSE chairman. That was a major victory for workers and for market accountability.

Corporate greed has gone unchecked recently in part due to the decline of the labor movement. Is it a coincidence that union membership declined dramatically from 20 percent of the private sector workforce in 1980 to just over 7 percent in 2006 while CEO pay has increased from 42 times what the average worker made in 1980 to 364 in 2006? Unions demand an economy that works for all, not just those at the top, such as AIG executives. As William Greider, author of the Soul of Capitalism, told me, "Unions are an honest broker in the economy.”

Through pension and retirement funds, workers can fund companies that invest in communities and in green jobs, promote workers' rights and operate in a transparent manner; and penalize companies that don't. With over $6 trillion of workers' money in retirement plans, pension funds, profit-sharing and stock plans and union reserve funds, the money of workers' plays a large role in fueling the global economy. Through putting workers' representatives on the board of these funds, unions can make sure that "worker investments are managed in workers' best financial interests." By investing in transparent, open and financially healthy companies, unions through stockholder activism can lead the way in ending the culture of reckless corporate short-term profit-seeking, which led to the rise of subprime mortgages and credit-derivative swaps.

Unions have long sought ways to make corporate profits sustainable in the long run in order to both retain and create jobs. It is ironic that the United Auto Workers (UAW) has been unfairly scapegoated as the cause of the demise of the auto industry since, as early as 1949, they have called for the Big Three to make small, more fuel-efficient cars. In 1949, in a pamphlet entitled "A Small Car Named Desire," the UAW cautioned automakers against investing solely in big cars since some consumers would ultimately be interested in cheaper smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. In short, unions have also sought was is best for all— not just for workers, but creating the economic conditions that will allow their companies to thrive.

As President Obama stated, "We know that strong, vibrant, growing unions can exist side by side with strong, vibrant and growing businesses. This isn't a either/or proposition between the interests of workers and the interests of shareholders. That's the old argument. The new argument is that the American economy is not and has never been a zero-sum game. When workers are prospering, they buy products that make businesses prosper."

Indeed, passing the Wagner Act, which allowed unions to collectively bargain for higher wages, in 1935— during the middle of the Great Depression—was crucial to getting the economy going again.

The recent AIG scandal shows why we need an active force to protect us against the greed of Wall Street CEOs. Unions, representing the combined interests of everyday Americans, can be a valuable instrument in fighting for the interests of all, not just those at the top. By passing the Employee Free Choice Act, we would make it easier for workers to advocate for a union without facing the kind of employer intimidation that currently results in one of five workers who attempt to organize a union being fired from their job. The Employee Free Choice Act would not just protect the right of workers to join a union, but would protect us all from the corporate greed of AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup and the rest of their partners in crime.

SEIU v. UHW Reviewed, Part II: Recasting the Narrative

2009-03-20T11:00:00.001-04:00

Challenging the Narrative, Analyzing Trusteeship and Moving Forward

Check Part I for some history on the SEIU v. UHW fight.

As I mentioned in Part I, the media narrative of ongoing battle has been framed in two ways - either as a clash of egos (between SEIU President Andy Stern and former UHW president and current NUHW President Sal Rosselli), or a clash over policies (top-down v. bottom up unionism/democracy v. oligarchy/local autonomy v. central coordination/class struggle v. class snuggle). Each of these characterizations is too simplistic to capture the dynamics between these two parties.

A Clash of Egos?

There is no doubt that there is deep personal animosity between Stern and Roselli. But characterizing the fight between SEIU and NUHW as a simple clash of egos would be to oversimplify the reality: this is not just Roselli v. Stern. This is Roselli + former UHW leadership v. the entire SEIU International Executive Board (IEB).

Some have suggested the IEB is made up entirely of Stern allies, who owe Stern favors or are somehow in the thrall of his charismatic leadership. On this blog, NoShitFromNobody characterized Andy as a "brawler" and his style as authoritarian. There is no doubt that Andy is aggressive and pushes hard for what he wants for the union. But the local leaders (e.g. David Rolf, Tom Balanoff, Dave Regan and Monica Russo) and members who populate the IEB are far from pushovers. It's quite true that the IEB's leaders have largely bought into Stern's vision and that they are not necessarily the biggest cheerleaders of union democracy, but they are not simply subject to Andy's will.

The rancor between Rosselli (a former IEB member) and other members of the IEB has been running high for a long time. Prior to the SEIU convention in July, Roselli organized patch-through-calls to the personal cell phones of IEB members at all times of day and night - making a lot of people very angry. In other words, this thing is personal for many more people than just Sal and Andy. To reduce it to a showdown between just two players is overly simplistic - there are deep constituencies mobilized on both sides.

A Clash of Policies

As reported in Part I, the primary conflict between UHW leadership and the SEIU IEB has its roots in the California Redistricting Controversy. Rosselli and his allies have argued that the process was thoroughly undemocratic. They then supplemented their argument by arguing that SEIU's undemocratic practices have lead to sweetheart deals with employers that have led to sub-par contracts for workers.

We should be discussing whether "alliance agreements" (sometimes derisively called "class snuggle") lead to appropriate results, whether decisions are suitably democratic, and the amount of power rank and file leaders have at SEIU. There are also clearly completely legitmate policy arguments to be made on both sides of the California redistricting argument.

But to characterize this rivalry as having its entire basis policy differences and a struggle for more democratic decision-making just doesn't ring true. Two points:

1) No one has clean hands in this fight. Current complaints before the San Francisco NLRB allege that Rosselli's team simply let contracts expire or bargained incredibly weak, short contracts so that when UHW was trusteed, the units would be easier to raid. If this is true, it means that the UHW leadership bargained in bad faith, potentially leaving workers unprotected, without contractual wage or employment protections, simply to build the nascent NUHW's power.

Now because SEIU is the source of these claims, one might dismiss them as propoganda. But, SEIU claims to have numerous witnesses who can attest to the former-UHW leadership's strategic bad faith. Furthermore, the NLRB found the complaints credible enough that it launched an investigation. Because the facts alleged would be "inconsistent with a free and fair election," the NLRB has put the NUHWs election petitions on hold pending the outcome of their inquiry. If these allegations are true, they undermine Roselli's policy rationale for challenging SEIU: that SEIU wasn't doing living up to its promise to members. If these allegations are true, one might say the same about the UHW leadership.

2) The California Nurses Association has been the other vocal, active critic about SEIU's choices to bargain by alliance with employers. Arguably, the rivalry between the two unions was more vitriolic than that between the SEIU and NUHW leadership. But yesterday, CNA and SEIU announced a peace agreement. It's not just a cease-fire, but an agreement to work and organize together. If policy were truly the root of the problem, the rift could not have been addressed simply by a decision about membership allocation. Now the CNA and the former-UHW leadership were never explicitly allies, and the CNA is not UHW. But the fact the former's rivalry with SEIU appears to have been primarily about power adds creedence to the theory that policy is also just a fig leaf in the NUHW/SEIU struggle.

The Trusteeship

Trustreeship is a harsh tool. But to characterize the trusteeship of UHW as a simple power grab would be highly inaccurate. Trusteeship of a local is governed by Title III of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959.(29 U.S.C. 461). The provision requires that evidence of justification for trusteeship be given to the Secretary of Labor. Every trusteeship is subject to judicial reivew. Titles 1 and 5 of the Act give union members the right to challenge any union decision in federal court. The word is that, because of the virtual certainty of a court challenge, the SEIU legal team bent over backwards to make sure the case completely consistent with LMRDA and the SEIU Constitution.

When investigating the conduct of the (former) leadership of UHW, the investigation team held a full week of hearings in front of Former Labor Secretary Marshall, who acted as an impartial hearing officer. Some have argued that because of Marshall's pre-existing relationship with SEIU, it is naive to consider him an unbiased party. But, according to those present, every single procedural ruling went to UHW - meaning that they were given the broadest possible leeway to present their strongest case. After concluding this process, Marshall issued the report finding that the UHW leaderships' actions constituted an active threat to the stability of the national union and that there had been a misuse of member resources. It concluded by recommending trusteeship unless key conditions were met.

In other words, though reasonable people can (and maybe should) disagree about the motivation behind the trusteeship and about whether trusteeship was the proper strategy, the bottome line is that the trusteeship was LEGALLY justified.

An Impasse

Just because the move was legal, doesn't mean it was strategic. While negotiating the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy was smart enough to realize that Krushchev could not back down without losing face - he had to be able to go back to his constituency and be able to declare victory. But in this intra/inter-union not-so-cold war continues, the escalating tactics and stakes make victory on either side more and more impossible. Its easy to imagine that neither side has envisioned what victory would actually look like - other than total capitulation from their opponent (unlikely, since both groups have resources and dedicated members to keep the fire burning for a long long time).

Right now the visible trajectory has both sides going nuclear. Today's agreement between the CNA and SEIU suggests there may be hope for cooperation and compromise, but frankly the vitriol on both sides makes the future look bleak. At some point, one side or the other needs to step back and design a way out of the conflict that doesn't require the other party to simply back down. This thing doesn't end any other way.

Finally, A Peace Agreement

2009-03-19T16:32:00.003-04:00

In the midst of all the inter-union rancor, a bright spot: today two of Labors' most bitter rivals SEIU and California Nurses Association - National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA) signed a “transformative” agreement to cooperate, and generally bury the hatchet.

CNA had long criticized SEIU for its neutrality agreement with employers, calling them "rigged scams". Almost exactly one year ago, the CNA sent representatives to Ohio to derail what "what it considered an insider deal" to unionize 8,300 nurses with Catholic Healthcare Partner. According to the New York Times, CNA organizers "swept into town, buttonholing workers and maneuvering their way into hospital wards, to press the workers to vote not to join SEIU." SEIU launched a national campaign, accusing the CNA of being union busters.

But now, suddenly, there is not just a cease-fire, but a commitment for cooperation. SEIU has taken down its shamoncna.com website. The two rivals will work together to organize California Hospitals. Nurses will join CNA; other hospital employees will join SEIU. (It's not clear how this will affect SEIU's current nurse members.) SEIU and CNA have also argeed to work jointly to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

It is not clear what this new alliance means for the NUHW/SEIU rivalry. Though CNA and former UHW president Sal Rosselli have not been public allies, their policy arguments against SEIU have been largely the same (opposing SEIU's employer agreements and its "top down" structure), Rosselli did not condemn CNA actions in Ohio, and UHW and CNA have been grouped together as SEIU rivals in public discourse.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. But overall, it's incredibly heartening to hear that CNA and SEIU will be jointly pouring more energy and money into organizing and Employee Free Choice instead of fighting eachother. Lets hope the love will spread.

Dissent of the Day

2009-03-19T16:20:00.002-04:00

Taking a page from Andrew Sullivan's book (blog), I want to give fair shrift to dissent.

On my post on the UHW/SEIU Timeline, reader gkristal takes issue with my characterization of the UHW member election ratifying the California Redistricting and questions whether former Carter Labor Secretary Ray Marshall could possible have been an impartial judge:

. . .the ballot that SEIU-UHW members had to choose from had the following two choices: a) be moved into a new statewide longterm care local or b) be moved into a new statewide healthcare local - eliminating UHW. . .

Second, the hearing officer, Ray Marshall, was paid for solely by SEIU and had SEIU counsel assisting him through all stages of the proceedings. Generally in labor if two sides wish for there to be an impartial hearing officer, both sides have an equal say in the selection. Marshall also has a long standing financial relationship with SEIU, so impartiality should not be assumed.

See his full comment here.

UHW/SEIU Timeline Update

2009-03-19T16:14:00.005-04:00

A Recent development, updating the UHW/SEIU Timeline I posted yesterday:

Yesterday, the National Labor Relations Board ruled in favor SEIU, dismissing petitions for new elections for the 14,000 worker unit at Catholic Healthcare West. According to the NLRB, existing contracts at CHW block any new union election. While there is an exception in the law for schisms within a Union, the NLRB determined to view the conflict between the NUHW and SEIU as that between two rival unions, rather than factions within a single union.

The NLRB did NOT rule on allegations of Rosselli and other former UHW leaders' failure to bargain UHW contracts in good faith prior to trusteeship. The NLRB's investigation of those issues is still ongoing.

UPDATE: In issuing this decision, the NLRB considered two legal arguments in an unusually long 15 page decision (sorry, I don't have a link). First, that the existing collective bargaining agreements barred any petition for election at the CHW facilities, and second that this was a dispute between unions rather than a union schism which would fall under the labor law exception to the contract bar.

The first argument is fairly straightforward. Union representation is likened to the American system of representative democracy. When we elect represenatives to Congress, they serve out their full term, even if those who have elected them subsequently decide they disagree with the elected officials decisions. This is in contrast to the Israeli or British Parlimentary models that allow for votes of no confidence and the subsequent formation of a new government. Likewise, the union is the elected representative of a bargaining unit for a term of years. At the time of contract expiration, the workers have an opportunity to vote in a representative, but not until that point. This has been the system from time immemorial (i.e. since 1937). So NUHW's petition for new elections is improper on its face.

The second argument is more esoteric. The "schism" exception to the contract bar was established in the 1950's in the midst of the anti-communism madness, when unions were disaffiliated from federations and vice versa. At that time it was often unclear whether the body the workers had elected to represent them even continued to exist. With regard to SEIU-UHW, that is simply not the case. Trusteeship (whether you argee with it or not) is an entirely legal process dictated by the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, consistant with SEIU's international constitution and subject to judicial review. So although the leadership of SEIU-UHW may have changed, the entity unquestionably continues to exist, and the "schism" exception codified into the law is not triggered.

In other words, the 14,000 workers in the 30+ CHW bargaining units are legally represented by by SEIU-UHW and will continue to be so until their contract expires. After that, it's an open question.

Rumors and Portents

2009-03-19T08:55:00.004-04:00

I haven't dipped too much into the various intra-union kerfuffles, but wanted to pass along some thoughts on current UNITE HERE issues:

1) First, it seems like it may be premature to talk as if UNITE-HERE (or whatever it may become) is definitely rejoining the AFL-CIO. The vote among the General Executive Board just gave permission to President John Wilhelm to negotiate such a deal; we'll have to see how that turns out.

2) Perhaps more importantly, we should all be careful about reducing the UNITE HERE conflict to a proxy war, with the HERE faction allying with the AFL-CIO and UNITE siding with Change to Win. Such a view is understandable, given the interest of many in the HERE faction in leaving Change to Win, along with the possibility that UNITE would remain in Change to Win and the swirl of reports about SEIU involvement in the dispute. At the same time, matters are more complicated. For example, it also should be noted that the presidents of two major AFL-CIO unions, Leo Gerard of the United Steelworkers and Ron Gettelfinger of the United Auto Workers, wrote a letter essentially endorsing the UNITE faction's view of what to do next. The letter bemoans the conflict and says that for the good of these unions and the broader movement that "[n]o matter how well intentioned, from our perspective, when a merger does not work it is in the best interests of the membership to break it up." Furthermore, as some of the best commentary has pointed out, this is a conflict that has been growing since before there was a Change to Win and which has a lot of real principles and differences over strategy and management at its heart.

Right now I think we just wish the best of luck to all involved. And while it's certainly disheartening, let's also remember that the labor movement's gone through all kinds of internal battles over the years and survived. It'll make it through this one too.

SEIU Layoffs Under Challenge

2009-03-18T13:31:00.006-04:00

Yestderay, the New York Times reported that one of SEIU's staff unions, the Union of Union Representatives (UUR) filed a complaint with the NLRB, saying that 75 staff layoffs violated SEIU's staff contracts. Apparently, UUR and the other SEIU staff union (OPEIU - the Office and Professional Employees International Union) are absolutely up in arms.

Today, the Washington Post has more detail. Though Stern claims that the layoffs are not due to financial hardship, the Washington Post article suggests that SEIU's $80+ million in expenditures on the 2008 elections and their planned expenditures to pass the Employee Free Choice Act may have strained the union's budget.

"It's completely hypocritical," said staff union President Malcolm Harris. "This is the union that's been at the forefront of progressive issues, around ensuring that working people and working families are taken care of, but when it comes to the people that work for SEIU, they haven't set the same standards."

SEIU officials say the layoffs are part of a long-running plan to reallocate resources. Its national office will devote more of its resources to lobbying and communications in Washington to take advantage of Democrats' ascendance. Most organizing would be left to local chapters, where officials say they have identified dozens of openings for the laid-off staff.

Not reported in either article: In addition to the NLRB complaint, it appears that UUR has also filed a complaint with the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission (EEOC), alleging both age and racial discrimination. Apparently the 75 layoffs are mostly middle-managment as opposed to upper managment positions. These occupied positions are laregly by middle aged people of color who suggest that they were passed over for promotions in favor of younger, white employees.

More scandal. Just what the labor movement needed.

UNITE HERE to Rejoin AFL-CIO

2009-03-17T16:33:00.003-04:00

The Nation Reports that UNITE HERE has voted to exit the Change to Win Federation and renegotiate affiliation with the AFL-CIO. UNITE HERE is currently in the midst of a civil war between the UNITE and HERE factions, with the UNITE crew trying to undo the merger and HERE crew wanting to keep things as-is. The critical statement from the UNITE HERE General Board Resolution:

By substantial margins, the Board voted to:
Authorized [sic] President Wilhelm to negotiate with the AFL-CIO for the re-affiliation of UNITE HERE, and further that UNITE HERE will disaffiliate from Change to Win given SEIU's brazen interference in UNITE HERE's affairs and its intrusion on UNITE HERE's industry jurisdiction.

The UNITE HERE General Board is chaired by former HERE President and current UNITE HERE president John Wilhelm. Wilhem's allies hold a majority of board positions.

Former UNITE President Bruce Raynor responded:

Earlier today, a General Executive Board meeting was held at which John Wilhelm and his followers continued their effort to silence the voice of those 1,500 rank-and-file members - representing 150,000 workers - who voted to disaffiliate their joint boards from UNITE HERE and the more than 75,000 members from those joint boards who have signed petitions to form a new union. Thousands more members are signing petitions every day.
At this point it is clear that there is a total breakdown of the union and the merger has reached its official end. Not surprisingly the General Executive Board meeting has become dominated by the Wilhelm faction's delusion that the former UNITE side Joint Board's and a number of HERE locals can still be governed by this kangaroo court. Today, we saw the board as a shell of its former self, with nearly half of its membership comprised of union professional staff who represent no workers.

Read the full article here.

SEIU v. UHW Reviewed, Part 1: Piecing Together a Timeline

2009-03-17T15:07:00.006-04:00

Again last Thursday, advocates for the newly formed National Union of Healthcare workers (NUHW) picketed in front of SEIU offices in Fresno, demanding that current UHW members be able to vote to switch their membership. Last month, SEIU filed Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) complaints against the current leadership of NUHW (the former leadership of UHW), alleging that in their last days at at UHW they undermined ongoing contract bargaining so that units would be more susceptible to raids by NUHW. The NLRB has launched an investigation. And on March 3, SEIU-UHW sued NUHW leaders, seeking to enjoin their destruction of SEIU property and seeking damages for NUHW's attempts to sabotage the SEIU local.

In other words, the fight isn't close to simmering down. Since it's been a while since we did any updates on SEIU UHW/NUHW spat, so we thought we would dive back in, full steam ahead.

This peice is divided into 2 parts:
1. UHW v. SEIU: A (robust, if not complete) Timeline
2. Challenging the Narrative, Analyzing Trusteeship and Moving Forward

Part I
UHW v. SEIU: A Timeline

The media narrative of ongoing battle has been framed in two ways - either as a clash of egos (between SEIU President Andy Stern and former UHW president and current NUHW President Sal Rosselli), or a clash over policies (top-down v. bottom-up unionism). Each of these characterizations is too simplistic.

But before we get into that, I want to lay out a timeline of events that led up to this so that we are all on the same page. In talking to even the biggest labor nerds about current fight in California, the sentiment I hear most often (after exasperation) is confusion - this whole boondoggle burst onto the national stage and few other than SEIU and UHW insiders have a sense of how it all got to where it is today. (Please feel free to point out what I am missing - I'm sure people will have strong opinions on the subject.)

California Redistricting

At SEIU's 2000 convention, they adopted the "New Strength in Unity" plan, which would restructure the local leadership in different states in order to consolidate union strength based on geography and industry specialty (i.e. healthcare workers in one state-wide local, janitors in another). Over 8 years, reorganization plans were implemented in Florida, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Illinois, Washington, and California. The 150,000 member United Healthcare Workers -West was constructed through this process and Sal Rosselli became its president. But in 2006, Long Term Care workers were still divided between 3 locals (UHW, 6434 -formerly 434b, and 521) and leaders voted to pursue ways of consolidating the member. Not suprisingly, each local proposed a solution that would establish itself as be the dominant local by retaining the majority of their membership and absorb new members from similar industries. In late 2007, it became clear that the dominant proposal would shift long term care members out of UHW and into a single Long Term Care local. That's when shit started to hit the fan publicly. (Whether Rosselli had longstanding policy greivances with Stern before that or not, they didn't become public until the redistricting threat became clear).

Prior to the July 2008 convention, at which Convention Delegates would vote on the California redistricting proposals, UHW leaders launched an aggresive campaign lobbying members across the country to vote against the redistricting proposal and brought a counter resolution to the floor. It was defeated. UHW leaders attacked the decision as undemocratic.

In the fall, mail ballots were sent to "affected" members in California, who voted 86.2% to 13.8% in favor creating long term care local in place of a broader healthcare local. (I can't vouch for the neturality of the language on the ballots). On January 9, the SEIU International Executive Board ratified the following resolution:

International Executive Board hereby approves Hearing Officer Page's report and recommendations, and directs that a new local union with jurisdiction for California long-term care workers be chartered, that Local 6434 be merged into this new local union, that Local 6434's charter be revoked, that long-term care members currently represented by UHW-W be consolidated into this new local union, with the exception of the Bruceville Terrace workers as set forth in the Hearing Officer's report, and that the homecare workers currently represented by Local 521 be consolidated in this new local union . . .

Trusteeship Hearings

Following the Convention, Stern accused UHW of financial impropriety (specifically moving $500,000 million off the books to fund the anti-redististricting campaign and converting the Delegate database for the purposes of the same campaign) and asked for a comprehensive investigation in UHW's use of funds.

On September 12, 2007, Stern asked former Carter Labor Secretary Ray Marshall to serve as an impartial hearing officer to determine UHW's behavior was grounds for trusteeship. The hearings were held in California September 26- 27 and November 12-15. Witnesses were called, evidence was submitted, members submitted statements. Both sides were given 30 days to submit briefs. The word from those who attended is that every procedural ruling was decided for UHW, giving them the widest latitude to offer up evidence and make their case.

After reviewing all sumbissions, Marshall detailed a 105 page report which found that funds had been misused and contact databases converted for purposes contrary to the SEIU charter. He then issued the following recommendation:

In view of the foregoing, I recommend that the International Executive Board not establish a trusteeship on the basis of the specific issues raised in the Amended Notice but establish a trusteeship if the UHW refuses to abide by and cooperate with the January 2009 decision of the IEB to have California LTC workers unite into a single local union.

The report then went on to list five conditions to avoid trusteeship, including requiring that within 5 days, the UHW leadership submit a written commitment to abide by the California Redistricting plan.

Aftermath: Petitions, Protests and Lawsuits

On January 28, when Rosselli refused to meet Marshall's compliance requirments, SEIU initiated trusteeship. The same day, UHW's former leadership then formed a new union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) and filed petitions for union elections at over 60 healthcare units already represented by SEIU, in order to enable them to switch unions. Many of these positions may be barred because they address bargaining units like Kaiser Permanente, where workers currently have SEIU contracts.

However, other petitions filed address 15 Sutter Hospitals where contracts recently expired. SEIU alleges that UHW leaders deliberately put workers at risk and let these and other contracts expire so that the units would be vulnerable to raid by the new NUHW. SEIU subsequently filed ULPs with the NLRB and the NLRB has halted all of NUHW's election petitions pending investigation.

Then, on March 3, SEIU-UHW filed suit in the San Francisco U.S. District Court

"for alleged attempts to sabotage UHW’s representation of its members. The lawsuit seeks a court order to stop Rosselli and others from obstructing the trusteeship and using or destroying union property. It demands compensatory and punitive damages, attorneys fees and court costs."

And that brings us up to date: Currently the NLRB investigation and the lawsuit are ongoing. NUHW members continue to protest outside of SEU staff buildings, demanding that SEIU allow elections to take place at each of the petitioned facilities. In other words, it's a big fat mess.

UPDATE I: Yesterday, the National Labor Relations Board ruled in favor SEIU, dismissing petitions for new elections for the 14,000 worker unit at Catholic Healthcare West. According to the NLRB, existing contracts at CHW block any new union election. While there is an exception in the law for schisms within a Union, the NLRB determined to view the conflict between the NUHW and SEIU as that between two rival unions, rather than factions within a single union. The NLRB's investigation of malfeasance by Rosselli and other former UHW leaders is still ongoing.

UPDATE II: Today SEIU and California Nurses Association (CNA) signed a “transformative” agreement to cooperate. In their longstanding rivalry, CNA has allied with Rosselli and other and has levelled some of the same critiques against SEIU (particularly opposing SEIU's neutrality in contract bargaining with employers and its "top down" structure). Almost exactly one year ago, the CNA sent representatives to Ohio to derail what "what it considered an insider deal" to unionize 8,300 nurses with Catholic Healthcare Partner. The deal struck today joins the two together in organizing hospital workers. The nurses would join CNA, and all other workers would join SEIU. This apparent peace pact marks a complete 180 degree turn for both groups (CNA called SEIU's Ohio efforts "a rigged scam" and SEIU called the CNA "union busters"). If these bitter rivals can bury the hatchet - it may give cause for hope in the NUHW/SEIU situation as well. It does, however, mark the loss of powerful ally for Rosselli and crew.

Part II: Challenging the Narrative, Analyzing Trusteeship and Moving Forward

Check back for Part II, I'll take on the two key narratives of this fight - the clash of egos and the clash of policies, take a look at the motives behind the trusteeship.

Workers' Centers: Labor Organizing in the New Economy- Part I

2009-03-17T11:38:00.010-04:00

A conversation on Workers' Centers and Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) United
with Jose Oliva, National Policy Director, ROC United

The Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) is a workers' center that organizes low-wage restaurant workers at both the local and national level. Their most recent national action took place on February 13th or 2.13, which is the legal federal minimum wage for tipped workers. On this day, thousands of restaurant workers and their allies engaged in high-visibility actions aimed at increasing the tipped minimum wage to at least 60% of the regular minimum wage.

Jose got involved with this work first through Casa Guatemala, a community organization in Chicago. While this organization was involved with multi-issue community organizing, many of the people were having problems with their employer. While his initial response was to help connect people to lawyers, he realized that this was a systemic problem. After partnering with day laborer organizations, Jose saw that poor working conditions were bigger than a few sectors; rather the entire economy was shifting. This led him into his work with the Restaurant Opportunities Center.

What are workers' centers and how are they different than traditional unions?
Workers Centers are market invention tools controlled by workers that fit the new economy... Worker Centers operate in sectors of the economy that craft or industrial unions, due to a variety of reasons, are unable to organize, often with immigrants and people of color. Workers Centers work outside the National Labor Relations Act so they are less vulnerable to attacks on unions... And because they are not beholden to the laws that govern unions, they are able to engage in creative organizing tactics like secondary boycotts and other strategies that immigrant workers often bring to the U.S. from their native countries.

I see workers centers as third-wave unionism that offers a different model for this new economy. (with trade unions as first wave, then industrial unions as the second wave). These centers will not replace traditional unions but offer a new type of labor organizing. Workers' Centers are still mostly experimental, but so were industrial unions until the 1920s.

What are some unique aspects of ROC compared to other workers' centers?
Industry Focus: Instead of serving as a multi-industry workers center, ROC focuses on a single industry. Through organizing all segments of the restaurant industry, we are working to create broad change throughout that industry. The strategy is referred to as “surrounding the industry” and consists in carrying out comprehensive research on the restaurant industry in any specific city/market and then using that research to develop workplace justice campaigns that improve the conditions for workers in specific restaurant companies while simultaneously engaging in policy campaigns at the local and national level that improve conditions and raise wages on a larger scale.

Organizing Focus: Many workers' centers started as multi-industry community organizations that tried to enforce the law but quickly realized the limitations of focusing on individual cases. We are at a crossroads and are beginning to see the maturation of the workers center movement. In the next 4-8 years, I predict that we will see more single sector workers centers that are not taking individual cases but instead advocating for broader changes, organizing workers in larger-scale campaigns.

Innovative use of the law: While most workers’ centers have been inventive and creative in their use of the law to build power for workers, ROC has pioneered a model that allows us to sign agreements with employers that improve working conditions for workers that are legally-binding documents. Several other workers’ centers have started to use a similar strategy, and have been able to use the legally-binding agreements as rallying points to build membership.

What are some of the important national campaigns that ROC is working on?
As a national organization, ROC provides technical assistance to local ROCs, brings workers from across the country together to develop a set of national strategies, and advocates for policy change and workers justice. $2.13 has been the tipped minimum wage for 20 years, so we are working on campaigns to increase the tipped minimum wage, including our a day of action on February 13. We are also campaigning for national legislation for paid sick days....

In local campaigns, we focus on improving the conditions for the major restaurants in that area. Each city has a mini-empire of restaurants that all have the same owner and tend to be trendsetters in terms of wages and working conditions. Through organizing at those restaurants, we can improve conditions city-wide.

El Salvador and the U.S. Labor Movement

2009-03-15T23:54:00.013-04:00

Yesterday was election day in El Salvador and after twenty plus years of rule by the right-wing ARENA party, last night Mauricio Funes of the left-wing FMLN party became the country's new president-elect. The FMLN's history dates back to the late 1970s, when several leftist guerrilla groups united under its umbrella in combating what was becoming an increasingly repressive conservative government. During the main years of conflict from 1980 to 1991 over 75,000 people were killed as the FMLN and conservative governments (backed by ultra-right death squads) battled for control. What does this have to do with the U.S. labor movement you might ask? Well, a lot. The conflict in El Salvador had major repercussions for the U.S. labor movement's recent growth and perspectives.

During the Cold War, few major U.S. institutions had a more hawkish leadership than did the AFL-CIO . It was AFL officials such as Irving Brown and Jay Lovestone who led the fight against communist party influenced unions in France, Germany, and Italy in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The AFL-CIO famously supported the Vietnam War (though not without dissent in the ranks) and various AFL-CIO affiliated organizations worked around the world to support what the leadership called "free trade unions." In some cases these actions were either positive (aid to the Solidarity movement in Poland) or relatively benign. In other cases, the AFL-CIO involved itself in some of the worst U.S. foreign policy interventions of the Cold War. For example, in the 1980s, the AFL-CIO leadership essentially supported (with some caveats) Ronald Reagan's policies in Central America of military aid to the Salvadoran regime and violent antagonism towards the left-wing Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

The importance of the conflict in El Salvador for U.S. labor derives mainly from the internal conflicts generated by then President Lane Kirkland's hawkish views on the Central American conflicts. While dissension had existed over the AFL-CIO's Vietnam policy, regarding Central America, it appeared faster and was better organized than ever. In September of 1981 Jack Sheinkman, secretary-treasurer of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU), Doug Fraser of the UAW and William Winpisinger of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) came together to form the National Labor Committee in Support of Democracy and Human Rights in El Salvador (NLC). Along with the NEA and AFSCME, these union leaders broke with the AFL-CIO leaderships' position and pursued a different path for labor (and U.S.) foreign policy. Among other activities, the NLC supported independent trade unions in El Salvador, saving a number of Salvadoran unionists' lives in the process. It also lobbied Congress against Contra funding and aid to the Salvadoran regime and helped organize an April 1987 March on Washington that drew over 100,000 people.

The NLC's activism drew the ire of Lane Kirkland and the AFL-CIO leadership, leading to a number of public, dramatic conflicts that spilled onto the floors of the biannual AFL-CIO conventions. Such fights served not only as a way for progressives within the movement to air grievances about AFL-CIO foreign policy, but they also became proxy wars in larger struggles over labor's future. By the mid-1980s many unionists (including an influx of activists from New Left movements) felt that Kirkland and the Federation's leadership were leading the movement far astray; besides a conservative foreign policy, they seemed unwilling to work with other progressive groups, and seemed uninterested in mounting new organizing drives. Progressive dissidents who hoped for a more engaged and open labor movement began to meet each other and organize through participation in the NLC's activities.

This group would come to include many of the same individuals who gathered around the New Vision ticket, headed up by then SEIU president John Sweeney, who in 1995 would lead a reform ticket that won the first contested election for AFL-CIO president in its history. Many of the reforms of the Sweeney era were previewed by the NLC. For example, labor's outreach to other progressive groups under Sweeney could be seen in the NLC's outreach to faith-based and human rights organizations. The work the NLC did with Salvadoran unions also paved the way for increased international solidarity activism starting in the 1990s, including involving anti-sweatshop activism. The NLC as an organization changed missions in the late 1980s, becoming a very effective ant-sweatshop NGO that operates to this day. While it would be too much to say the NLC fundamentally changed the U.S. labor movement, it was a significant (and under appreciated) factor.

As for El Salvador itself, there's so much that could be said, but for the moment I think we all just wish President-elect Funes the very best of luck with the challenges ahead.

PS: And on a personal level, in light of the FMLN victory, I'd like to dedicate this video to the memories of Roberto D'Aubuisson and Ronald Reagan:

Our Friendemy, Larry Summers?

2009-03-13T15:24:00.006-04:00

Given the past record of Larry Summers both in his views and policies, I think a lot of us were skeptical about his coming into the administration and what that signaled about Obama's economic views. During the main nominating season a few months back, many liberals argued that the buck stopped with Obama and that people like Summers or Geithner would fall in line with Obama's goals, rather than all of these folks' beliefs representing the core of Obama's philosophy. Well, I'm still skeptical, but this always helps. After earlier writing a piece for an economics encyclopedia asserting that unionization "cause job losses", here's what Summers had to say today at a speech at the Brookings Institution:

If we want to propel this economy forward and we want to have a sound expansion, it has to be an expansion whose benefits are more broadly shared . . . And it goes to the question of having a healthy and well-functioning trade union movement. And I think it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the way in which our labor laws have functioned, and have been enforced and been acted on over many years, have not been constructive from the point of view of having a healthy trade union movement. And an attempt to redress that balance seems to me something that is appropriate at such a time."

As Sam Stein notes at Huffington Post, while Summers didn't say "Employee Free Choice Act," this certainly makes the case for it in the abstract. Which is all the more important because in this battle we could certainly use some Nixons willing to go to China.

UPDATE: Speaking of friendemies, Jagdish Bhagwati supports the Employee Free Choice Act!! Mr. Bhagwati is an economist at Columbia University who has spent a lot of time arguing for the benefits of mostly unfettered economic integration and a long foe of those in the global justice movement (though his critiques have not been the same simplistic and snide disimissals so many others have offered). But hey, that's what friendemies are for!