Senator John Kerry writes an op-ed in The Herald News on the Employee Free Choice Act. He starts it with a strong defense of unions and their value to the US economy, while adding in a full frontal assault on the Big Business interests that are actively trying to prevent American workers from having rights and prosperity.

Workers in unions earn 30 percent higher wages on average, and are 60 percent more likely to have employer-covered health insurance. The question is what we will do to empower workers in this new century — and it should begin with The Employee Free Choice Act’s common sense, fundamentally fair mission of making it easier for men and women to join a union in their workplace. The legislation would give workers a fair and direct path to form unions through majority sign-up, help employees secure a contract with their employer in a reasonable period of time and toughen penalties against employers who break the law.

Powerful, entrenched opponents of the legislation have made a variety of false statements, arguing that the bill will take away workers’ right to a secret ballot election, expose workers to intimidation and harassment or hurt the economy. These arguments are untrue and especially dubious because they have no reliable data to back them up. Too often, these objections come from the same people and groups that have enriched and protected Wall Street over Main Street — among them those who opposed ideas like minimum wage increases and family medical leave, which history has proven are mainstream, commonsense policies.

Kerry goes on to write extensively on how the Employee Free Choice Act is not something small businesses should be worried about, an argument Big Business has pushed hard in this fight.

Honest and well-meaning people can differ, and many small business owners in particular have asked me how this legislation would affect their businesses. I don’t think they have much to worry about, for three key reasons.

First, in the decades when our labor laws protected workers’ free choice to join unions, small businesses thrived and America built the strongest middle class in the world. The evidence shows that our nation’s economy and overall productivity grew when American workers had an ability to share in the prosperity of our country and their companies.

Second, the Employee Free Choice Act makes no changes to the small business exemptions under our nation’s labor laws. Small businesses employing an estimated four million American workers would still be exempt and completely unaffected.

Third, the economic benefits of unions to all businesses, large and small, are well-established. Unions help reduce costs associated with turnover because they give employees a voice in the workplace to speak up for changes, rather than simply quitting or being fired.  Employment security fuels collaboration and information sharing, leading to higher productivity.

The research also shows that union firms are just as productive and successful as non-union firms.  A U.S. Small Business Administration report, for example, indicated that small business bankruptcy rates are lower in states with high unionization rates than they are in states where fewer workers have a voice.

In an ironic twist, the actual threat to small businesses may come from the groups fighting the Employee Free Choice Act most vigorously — the big corporations whose very business strategies have consistently hurt small businesses across the country by squeezing small businesses out of the marketplace.

There you have it – a solid, forceful defense of the Employee Free Choice Act from the perspective of small businesses.

Two items today…

First, Steve Rosenthal tears apart the last bogus poll by Rick Berman’s business front group, “Center for Union Facts.” The poll was much touted by anti-American worker bloggers because it absurdly claimed that most workers don’t want to join a union.  Rosenthal writes:

What this poll “clearly demonstrates” is its lack of seriousness and accuracy by including respondents who would likely never be unionized to begin with. According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), of the 140.5 million people in the civilian workforce, 33.5 million or 23.8% have no rights under the National Labor Relations Act or any other labor law. Furthermore, there were a little over 13 million managers and supervisors in 2005, and about 4 million small business workers without collective bargaining rights because they were employed by businesses too small to fall under the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board.

The CUF question was clearly designed to get the least number of people to say yes as possible.

The Employee Free Choice Act makes it easier for Employees – rather than Employers – to make that choice.

Of course, what Berman’s outfit wants is bold headlines touting the stats and something Republicans can reflexively throw into their talking points. This will likely become a right wing zombie lie, repeated throughout the fight for Employee Free Choice.

Second, Michael Gottesman, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown, had a post yesterday on the American Constitution Society blog deconstructing a highly misleading anti-union op-ed by Richard Epstein in  the Wall Street Journal. Gottesman provides a highly detailed and scholarly legal rebutal that undercuts a lot of bogus spin from Epstein. It’s worth a read, as Epstein’s incorrect constitutional arguments against Employee Free Choice will be seen again during the course of this fight.

BoingBoing is one of my favorite blogs and normally quite progressive — Xeni Jardin in particular has done phenomenal coverage of Tibet and China over the last few years. However it’s disheartening to see a guest post today by a journalist named Charles Platt. Platt takes a job at Wal-Mart in a journalistic effort to see how bad Wal-Mart workers really have it. Surprisingly Platt sees Wal-Mart as something of a workers’ paradise, undeserving of its bad reputation.

The main thing to understand is that Platt really talks past the issues in his post. He thinks he’s rebutting Wal-Mart criticism by discussing his particular work training and job flexibility. But I’m fairly sure the desire to unionize workers at WalMart or criticize its executives’ exorbitant pay are not at all tied to issues of worker training, display creation, or employee policies that honor federally mandated break time. The attack is not on the quality of a service-industry job at all.

Platt doesn’t say how long he worked (he calls it a “brief experience”) or if he was able to survive, pay rent, make car payments based on his low wage, nor does he discuss if had adequate healthcare coverage, pension benefits, 401k, etc. He clearly made no effort to organize his coworkers into a union, so he has no perspective on what the response would be if he did so. All he did was get a job for a short period of time as a thought experiment. To even suggest that this “brief experience” is representative is at minimum disingenuous  and could very easily be called intellectually dishonest.

The post does make me think of the Discovery Channel show “Dirty Jobs.” In it the host goes around the country and does dirty jobs for a day at a time. Does he get a sense of what the job entails? Sure, but he also doesn’t make claims of knowing what being a chimney sweep for 40 years is like. However long Platt was working at Wal-Mart, it’s absurd for him to claim that he has an adequate or even real sense of what Wal-Mart employees go through based on his “brief experience.”

What’s most odd is Platt’s contention that his “brief experience” is enough to rebut critiques of unions like SEIU or United Food and Commercial Workers International Union are only around because the unions want to organize Wal-Mart workers and collect their dues. Platt seems to miss the point that unions always seek to organize workers for the benefit of the workers; sometimes that includes using the collective force of the union to go beyond contract negotiations, which is only possible through union dues.

It’s problematic that BoingBoing gave this guy space to run this crap, but it’s such a bad, misleading post that it’s become an opportunity for substantive rebuttal. Commentors in the thread are very pro-labor and make some good points. Warlord writes:

I’m living well in retirement because my building trades union negotiated wages and benefits from decent employers who were not afraid to cede power and money to an entity that suppied skilled labor that they could send out to their customers. Done right there is a synergy in the exchange between equals

Sadly Walmart is not willing to share their wealth with those who make it possible

Sadder still is the automatic dismissal of the union as a way for the worker to gain power making the trade of labor for money more equitable for all concerned

Sam C. goes hard after Platt:

Mr Platt makes three obviously false assumptions in the OP:

1) That Wal-Mart’s treatment of its employees is entirely down to the cuddly, affectionate nature of its management, and nothing to do with the ongoing efforts of unions and of whistleblowers like Ehrenreich.

2) That a few Horatio Alger-style anecdotes about success somehow refute the huge weight of evidence about structural disadvantage and injustice.

3) That everyone is like him – white, male, educated, mentally and physically healthy – or could become so if only they tried hard enough.

I expect this kind of ignorance, fantasy, and other-blindness in (some of) the teenagers I teach, but from a senior journalist, it’s just embarrassing. People’s lives are deeply shaped by social structure and by bad luck over which they have no control, and for which they are therefore not to blame. The attempt to shift the responsibility for poverty onto the poor isn’t just morally ugly – although it is that – it requires an astonishing level of self-deception. Wake up, Mr Platt.

Also worth note is A.B.’s push-back on Platt’s odd conclusions about union interest in Wal-Mart:

If Mr. Platt’s agenda or bias weren’t already obvious, this snn question revealed his anti-Union stance. Only a die hard anti-Union writer would ascribe bad motives to organizations that are fulfilling their explicit mandate.

Mr. Platt’s rhetorical question is as malicious as asking “why do hospitals have ambulances? I bet it’s so they can get patients to get millions in medical bills.” Or, more topically, “why do the Steelers players try to score touch downs? I bet it’s so the organization can make more money from the fans.”

Unions have the explicit goal of organizing and protecting workers. Monitoring the activities of an anti-Union organization, which is not only the largest retailer in the United States, but (from the Union’s point of view at least) underpays its workers and treats them poorly, would obviously be something one would expect of a Union.

Mr. Platt wrote this article in bad faith. [This comment has been partially disemvoweled (presumably by Platt and not a regular BoingBoing editor. I have edited some vowels back in to make it more legible.]

Again, I’d say the comment thread is largely critical of Platt’s piece, which is refreshing. It’s disappointing to see BoingBoing hand over space to such anti-union drivel based on anecdotal reporting of a journalist under cover. That said, this sort of reporting is easy to beat back. It always help when the enemies of change do a shoddy job in their resistance to workers’ rights.

Disclosure: I’m proud to work for the Service Employees International Union. This post was neither approved by nor written with the knowledge of SEIU. It represents my views alone.

Steve Rosenthal has a must-read piece up on Huffington Post today documenting ten “violations of democracy” that exist under current NLRB organizing regulations for union formation. Given how hard big business lobbyists have pushed the “Employee Free Choice ends the ‘secret ballot'” canard, Rosenthal’s piece is essential. Here are violations one through three from Rosenthal’s piece:

Violation of Democracy #1: In order to have a union election, 30% of workers need to sign cards calling for an election. If that principle were applied to American presidential elections, we would have needed 70 million Americans to sign cards calling for last November’s national election.

Violation of Democracy #2: Once 30% sign cards calling for an election it can take months – sometimes years, sometimes never – because of arcane rules that allow companies to file objections that lead to countless electoral delays, before the workers actually have a chance to vote in an election. It’s usually in the interest of companies to sap the momentum from an organizing drive and delay an election as long as possible. Imagine if a candidate kept trying to push off Election Day in the hopes that the political climate would become more favorable or his opponent would give up – that’s what the current process allows companies to do. In fact, it took a 15 year organizing battle to finally unionize the Smithfield Packing slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, NC.

Violation of Democracy #3: During the run-up to the election the union is not allowed to campaign on the company’s property – which can mean not only the workplace but company-owned property such as parking lots. Meanwhile, the company is free to campaign anywhere it wants and can paper the workplace with anti-union messages. Imagine an election for president where one candidate is allowed to wander freely across the land talking to voters, while the other candidate and their campaign is banned from America and can only stand in Mexico and Canada hoping to speak to voters as they cross the border.

If you can stomach seeing how difficult it is to organize unions under current NLRB law, keep reading Rosenthal’s list of violations of democracy.

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times today on the importance of strong unions to economic growth and recovery. Included in his analysis is this passage on the Employee Free Choice Act:

Although America and its economy need unions, it’s become nearly impossible for employees to form one. The Hart poll I cited tells us that 57 million workers would want to be in a union if they could have one. But those who try to form a union, according to researchers at MIT, have only about a 1 in 5 chance of successfully doing so.

The reason? Most of the time, employees who want to form a union are threatened and intimidated by their employers. And all too often, if they don’t heed the warnings, they’re fired, even though that’s illegal. I saw this when I was secretary of Labor over a decade ago. We tried to penalize employers that broke the law, but the fines are minuscule. Too many employers consider them a cost of doing business.

This isn’t right. The most important feature of the Employee Free Choice Act, which will be considered by the just-seated 111th Congress, toughens penalties against companies that violate their workers’ rights. The sooner it’s enacted, the better — for U.S. workers and for the U.S. economy.

The American middle class isn’t looking for a bailout or a handout. Most people just want a chance to share in the success of the companies they help to prosper. Making it easier for all Americans to form unions would give the middle class the bargaining power it needs for better wages and benefits. And a strong and prosperous middle class is necessary if our economy is to succeed.

Reich’s whole essay is worth a read, but that passage stood out.

Big business lobbyist and anti-American worker activist Rick Berman has been the subject of scrutiny on this blog before. But apparently his son, musician David Berman of the Silver Jews, has even more insight about his father than currently available from places like American Rights at Work or CREW. David’s take on his father is about as brutal as anything I’ve read on the man:

Now that the Joos are over I can tell you my gravest secret. Worse than suicide, worse than crack addiction:

My father.

You might be surprised to know he is famous, for terrible reasons.

My father is a despicable man. My father is a sort of human molestor.

An exploiter. A scoundrel. A world historical motherfucking son of a bitch. (sorry grandma)

You can read about him here.

www.bermanexposed.org

My life is so wierd. It’s allegorical to the nth. My father went to college at Transylvania University.

You see what I’m saying.

A couple of years ago I demanded he stop his work. Close down his company or I would sever our relationship.

He refused. He has just gotten worse. More evil. More powerful. We’ve been “estranged” for over three years.

Even as a child I disliked him. We were opposites. I wanted to read. He wanted to play games.

He is a union buster.

…

I fled through this art portal for twenty years. In the mean time my Dad started a very very bad

company called Berman and Company.

He props up fast food/soda/factory farming/childhood obesity and diabetes/drunk driving/secondhand smoke.

He attacks animal lovers, ecologists, civil action attorneys, scientists, dieticians, doctors, teachers.

His clients include everyone from the makers of Agent Orange to the Tanning Salon Owners of America.

He helped ensure the minimum wage did not move a penny from 1997-2007!

Like I said, simply brutal.

Jane Hamsher has one of the best side by side organizing process comparisons I’ve seen between current organizing elections and organizing in a post-Employee Free Choice Act world.

This is the “secret ballot” process, which is in place right now:

A union decides they want to unionize workers of a particular company. They have to collect cards signed by more than 30% of that company’s eligible workers saying that they want to join the union and allow that union to negotiate with management on their behalf. The union usually does this by talking to workers and gathering signatures outside the work place, frequently at their homes, because companies have a bad habit of firing workers who try to organize (Dean Baker estimates one in five lose their jobs).

The union then turns the cards over to the NLRB, who verifies them and calls for an election. Now in practice, although the union only has to have cards signed by more than 30% of the workers they usually present 50%, because they know there is going to be intense pressure put on workers by employers and professional “union busters,” and they don’t want to waste their time unless they think there is serious support.

The NLRB is required to then set a date for a “secret ballot” election within 42 days, during which time workers are usually subject to various forms of intimidation. It’s easy for employers to ask for and receive extensions, however. When the “secret ballot” election is finally held, it’s conducted on the work premises, and workers have to file past the watchful eyes of their supervisors in order to cast their ballots. This is the “right” to “secrecy” that the anti-union forces seem to be so committed to preserving.

If more than 50% of workers vote to recognize the union to represent them, the union is recognized and they can begin negotiating with the employer for a first contract.

This is how majority sign-up (“card check”) would work under the Employee Free Choice Act:

A union decides they want to unionize workers of a particular company. They have to collect cards signed by more than 50% of that company’s eligible workers saying that they want to join the union and allow that union to negotiate with management on their behalf.

The union then turns the cards over to the NLRB, who verifies them.

If more than 50% of the cards are verified by the NLRB, the union is recognized and they can begin negotiating with the employer for a first contract.

Got that?

“Secret ballot” isn’t “more secret,” it’s an extra step. In both cases, the union is responsible for getting cards signed and turning them over to the NLRB, so they know who has signed them. The “secret ballot” is just an extra hurdle that workers have to surmount if they want to recognize a union.

This is all to point out that the “secret ballot” canard pushed by big business lobbyists and GOP hacks is just that – spin meant to confuse the public (and voting members of Congress) about what is at issue with the Employee Free Choice Act. Business lobbies and Republican elites don’t give two shakes about protecting workers during union organizing drives. They only care about protecting the lop-sided structure of current NLRB regulations of how unions can be formed that gives businesses a huge leg up to block unionization. Employee Free Choice creates a level playing field and puts the decision about when and how to form a union back in the hands of workers.

Paul Krugman writes on the need for the Employee Free Choice Act in this month’s issue of Rolling Stone. Krugman has a lengthy letter about what Obama should do and this is one of his key items. Krugman is wrong about the timeline – the chances of passing Employee Free Choice this year is great and likely to happen this spring or summer.

“What caused the Great Compression? That’s a complicated story, but one important factor was the rise of organized labor: Union membership tripled between 1935 and 1945. Unions not only negotiated better wages for their own members, they also enhanced the bargaining power of workers throughout the economy. At the time, conservatives warned that wage gains would have disastrous economic effects — that the rise of unions would cripple employment and economic growth. But in fact, the Great Compression was followed by the great postwar boom, which doubled American living standards over the course of a generation.

“Unfortunately, the Great Compression was reversed starting in the 1970s, as American workers once again lost much of their bargaining power. This loss was partly due to changes in the world economy, as major U.S. manufacturing corporations started facing more international competition. But it also had a lot to do with politics, as first the Reagan administration, then the Bush administration, did all they could to undermine the ability of workers to organize.

“You can make a start on reversing that process. Clearly, you won’t be able to oversee a tripling of union membership anytime soon. But you can do a lot to enhance workers’ rights. One is to start laying the groundwork to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it much harder for employers to intimidate workers who want to join a union. I know it probably won’t happen in your first year, but if and when it does, the legislation will enable America to take a huge step toward recapturing the middle-class society we’ve lost.

Giving union formation control to bosses and not workers is extremely rare in the modern industrialized world. Yet that’s how it currently works in the US and why passing the Employee Free Choice Act is so important. Matt Yglesias points out the company the US keeps with our current labor laws.

In review, of the ten countries Heritage deems to have the largest degree of economic freedom, seven feature majority sign up as an option for workers trying to form a union. Then there are two East Asian dictatorships. And then there’s the United States of America. The next ten spots on the list are composed of nine labor-friendly countries and Bahrain—a small Persian Gulf dictatorship.

The US is in the company of dictatorship by not having  majority sign-up. This is not good company to keep. I’m embarassed by it — hopefully members of Congress are too and will decide to advance modern laws that support economic freedom for American workers.