Category: Labor

NYT Gets It

The New York Times has a huge editorial in support of labor and the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s all good, but here’s a key passage:

The first and biggest test of Mr. Obama’s commitment to labor, and to Ms. Solis, will be his decision on whether or not to push the Employee Free Choice Act in 2009. Corporate America is determined to derail the bill, which would make it easier than it has been for workers to form unions by requiring that employers recognize a union if a majority of employees at a workplace sign cards indicating they wish to organize.

Ms. Solis voted for the bill when it passed the House in 2007. Senate Republicans prevented the bill from coming to a vote that same year. Mr. Obama voted in favor of bringing the bill to the Senate floor and supported it during the campaign.

The measure is vital legislation and should not be postponed. Even modest increases in the share of the unionized labor force push wages upward, because nonunion workplaces must keep up with unionized ones that collectively bargain for increases. By giving employees a bigger say in compensation issues, unions also help to establish corporate norms, the absence of which has contributed to unjustifiable disparities between executive pay and rank-and-file pay.

Educating on Employee Free Choice

There has recently begun to be a higher volume of pro-Employee Free Choice Act posts written on progressive blogs. I’m seeing a lot more bloggers make the case for increased worker rights and modernization of labor laws. In an effort to promote their good work, as well as spread the education of liberal blog readers on why it is so critical that Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act with all speed, I’m going to periodically highlight some of the best commentary on Employee Free Choice that I see around the blogosphere.

Mick Arran of Fact-esque has a great post up discussing the US Chamber of Commerce’s announced intention to spend $10 million to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act. Arran makes a highly pragmatic argument about the relationship between unions and successful businesses. Arran writes:

[The Employee Free Choice Act] allows workers to sign a card in secret before the employer can marshall his forces to scare the bejesus out of employees and intimidate them into voting against unionizing even when they want a union. And to the employer, make no mistake about it, keeping a union out is tantamount to fighting a war. They have convinced themselves that the company will disintegrate if the employees are union, that they are therefore fighting for their very lives. The fact that that has almost never been true and that to the contrary unionized shops tend to make more money than “right-to-work” shops isn’t part of their worldview. They neither recognize it no acknowledge it.

I’ll be curious to see how Arran continues to write about the Employee Free Choice Act.  The successes of unionized businesses suggests that at some level the opposition to unionized workforces in the business world isn’t entirely ontological. Hatred of unions is something that is taught in the business world. Clearly the Chamber of Commerce is investing $10 million to teach this lesson to their constituents again. But it just isn’t true and posts like Arran’s help highlight the facts.

One small nit-pick with Arran’s post: the use of the acronymn. It’s the Employee Free Choice Act, something which is clear and easy to understand, as it gives workers a choice as to how they can organize unions in their workplace – by majority sign-up or by an election. Using the acronym makes what we’re talking about abstract and unintelligible. If we can succeed in telling the public and members of Congress specifically what we support, then we can win. If we argue for alphabet soup, winning becomes much, much harder on an elemental level.

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

LA Times: Disclosure Failure

In today’s Los Angeles Times a man named Bret Jacobson writes a virulently anti-union screed attacking Labor Secretary nominee, Congresswoman Hilda Solis.  Here’s how the LA Times describes Jacobson at the bottom of his op-ed:

Bret Jacobson is founder and president of Maverick Strategies LLC, a research and communications firm serving business and free-market think tanks.

We’ve seen a lot of anti-union, anti-Obama, anti-worker, and anti-Free Choice op-eds penned by business consultants and “free-market think tank” types of late, so this isn’t a terribly shocking biography for drivel like this. Of course, this isn’t all Jacobson is. Here’s what the highly-informative BretJacobson.com has to say:

Prior to founding Maverick Strategies, Bret co-founded the Center for Union Facts, overseeing that organization’s research activities, guiding its communications, launching its new-media capabilities, and helping plan its strategic national advertising and earned-media campaigns.

And just for those not paying attention at home, here’s Sourcewatch:

The Center for Union Facts is a secretive front group for individuals and industries opposed to union activities. It is part of lobbyist Rick Berman‘s family of front groups including the Employment Policies Institute. The domain name http://www.unionfacts.com was registered to Berman & Co. in May 2005.

American Rights At Work is a bit more hard hitting in their assessment of the Center for Union Facts:

The Center is the latest public relations campaign and front group devised by “notorious D.C. lobbyist”1 and veteran spin doctor Richard “Rick” Berman with his firm, Berman and Company.

The Center for Union Facts is a front group focused on damaging the public image of unions, depressing workers’ rights, pushing legislation that would make it more difficult for workers to join unions, and furthering an anti-union business climate.

Berman earned his status as one of The Hill’s top lobbyists, along with Jack Abramoff,2 by working on behalf of unpopular clients like the tobacco, alcohol, and fast food industries.  Berman’s campaigns have attempted to relax drunk driving laws, argue obesity is not a public health issue, prevent increases in the federal or state minimum wage, and attack advocacy groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

…

  • The Center for Union Facts’ legislative agenda is strikingly similar to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s.   The big business lobbying group both adamantly opposes the Employee Free Choice Act, and is in strong support of the Secret Ballot Protection Act.  Berman formerly devised union avoidance strategies for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,18 and he still has strong ties to the Chamber through Randel Johnson, Vice President for Labor at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.19  Berman told The New York Times that he asked Chamber of Commerce officials at a state conference to recommend that businesses in their states donate to his anti-union campaign.20  Randel Johnson has repeatedly denied any Chamber funding of the Center, yet admitted “he had served as an adviser to the Center.”21
  • On its website, the Center claims it is “supported by foundations, businesses, union members, and the general public.”22  Berman will only divulge that several companies and a foundation fund the Center, but will not release the names of his donors.23
  • No individuals, foundations, or corporations have come forward to admit any sponsorship of the Center.  Why wouldn’t they want to distance themselves from Berman’s hyperbolic and unsupported rhetoric?  Berman gets paid to say what responsible business leaders don’t want attributed to them.  The Washington Post reported that food industry officials, who would only be interviewed about Berman, “on the condition that they not be identified by name or by where they work, said that by keeping the sponsors anonymous, Berman’s group can be more vociferous, provocative and irreverent in its criticisms.24

In short, the Center for Union Facts is the key organization in Big Business efforts to stop the progress of labor in America, most notably through fighting against the Employee Free Choice Act. One of their co-founders, Bret Jacobson, was given license to push the Center’s anti-union, anti-worker agenda in an op-ed against the nominee for Labor Secretary, while the Times failed to disclose the only informative part of his biography. He’s the founder of a research firm? What is that supposed to tell the Times’ readers? Pretty much every person I know who works in politics does some level of consulting. The most important piece of Jacobson’s biography – his professional connection to one of the biggest anti-union groups in America – is left out of a column that specifically pushes the Center’s agenda. In an AP article three days ago, a spokesman for the Center attacked President-elect Obama’s pick of Solis for Labor Secretary (though, amazingly, the AP cited the Center as “a group critical of organized labor”).

There has been a heavy, persistent trend in the mainstream press of anti-union articles and op-eds. The business lobby has been very good about getting their surrogates’ op-eds placed in big papers like the LA Times, NY Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. There is a major fight going on between big business and America’s workers about the future of organizing to increase worker rights in America. The fight is centered around the Employee Free Choice Act, but clearly the Secretary of Labor is now another front in this fight.

As frustrating as it is to repeatedly read columns, like Jacobson’s, which include outright lies about what the Employee Free Choice Act is and does, I am 100% willing to take part in a national debate about how our country relates to working families. There are obviously different sides in this debate and there is nothing wrong with the debate being played out in the press. But in this atmosphere of daily volleys back and forth between big business front groups like the Center for Union Facts and the Obama administration and the American labor movement, it behooves the press to be honest about who is taking part in the debate. The LA Times was brutally negligent to not disclose Bret Jacobson’s employment at the Center for Union Facts, the only piece of his biography that had any bearing on his column. By not disclosing Jacobson’s ties to this anti-worker group, the LA Times succeeded in giving their pages over to a press release from a big business front group, with no means for their reader to discern it from a non-partisan piece on President-elect Obama’s pick to chair the Department of Labor.

So editors of the Los Angeles Times, let me show you how this is done:

Disclosure: I’m proud to work for the Service Employees International Union…so proud that I disclose it when I write about issues that relate to my employer. That said, this post was not approved by nor written with the knowledge of SEIU. It is representative of my views alone.

Now that wasn’t hard, was it?

Reframing Employee Free Choice

D-Day has written one of the best posts on the Employee Free Choice Act I’ve seen recently. He works to move away from the conservative frame which has permeated all media coverage of the Act, while deconstructing the big business talking points about “ending secret ballots” in union formation.

Too often Democrats let Republicans define the debate, even during this era of epic conservative decline. In the traditional media, the debate over the Employee Free Choice Act has consistently been about whether or not unions want to “eliminate the right to a secret ballot election” for workers.

Now of course, this isn’t true. In fact, even under EFCA, if 30% of the workforce calls for a vote, they get a vote. But this is not the real problem in labor-management relations. That argument is about the implications of EFCA passing. In fact, the current circumstances of labor elections is the problem that needs to be solved by EFCA. I finally found the best and most coherent argument around that at the AFL-CIO site (h/t Ezra). The truth is that the system for labor elections, the vaunted “secret ballot,” is broken.
…
If labor elections were legitimate, there wouldn’t be the need for legislation. Instead, think of it as your “secret ballot” Presidential election marred by: mandatory pro-McCain training sessions held across the country, mandatory meetings where “Obama is a Muslim” propaganda is foregrounded, threats to take away your job if you vote for Obama, and threats to close your workplace entirely if Obama wins. There is nothing democratic about these one-sided farces characterized by intimidation and harassment. That’s why we need a new system for determining whether workers want to collectively bargain, and majority signup is simply the best practice out there.
…
The Employee Free Choice Act does not restrict workers’ rights, it affirms them. We must make it a reality in 2009.

The terms of the debate have been set against us. Redefining how we talk about the Employee Free Choice Act is critical. There are myths to be busted and D-Day does a good job in his post of setting the example of how it can be done.

I don’t think there’s a single piece of legislation more important to helping working Americans and bolstering the economy than the Employee Free Choice Act. It needs to be at the top of the agenda in 2009.

Bush Auto Deal to Break Unions

Marcy Wheeler lays it out:

Yet then Bush throws in the demands that Republicans made–without noting that this was basically an ideological ploy to break the union, all the while demanding that employees of American-owned companies make significantly less than the employees of Japanese-owned companies.

Targets: The terms and conditions established by Treasury will include additional targets that were the subject of Congressional negotiations but did not come to a vote, including:

  • Reduce debts by 2/3 via a debt for equity exchange.
  • Make one-half of VEBA payments in the form of stock.
  • Eliminate the jobs bank. Work rules that are competitive with transplant auto manufacturers by 12/31/09.
  • Wages that are competitive with those of transplant auto manufacturers by 12/31/09.

These terms and conditions would be non-binding in the sense that negotiations can deviate from the quantitative targets above, providing that the firm reports the reasons for these deviations and makes the business case to achieve long-term viability in spite of the deviations.

In addition, the firm will be required to conclude new agreements with its other major stakeholders, including dealers and suppliers, by March 31, 2009.

Remember, the measure the Republicans were using to measure “wages that are competitive with those of transplant auto manufacturers” was the lizard lie number–the $73/hour, the number that includes legacy costs, the payments to retiree pensions. Otherwise, there would be no reason to make this stipulation–because if you use the real wage number, and not the lizard lie number, American manufacturer wages are already competitive with the transplants!!

So what Bush is demanding is that the UAW lower wages plus pensions to the level of Japanese wages plus pension (though since they have very few retirees, their pension number is basically zero). Alternately, they could lower this number by basically picking the pocket of a bunch of seniors, by taking away pension money those seniors already earned while they were still working. But one or the other will have to happen.

Now, Bush did give the Obama Administration an escape hatch: the ability to deviate from the quantitative targets provided that the companies report why they did so.

But as written, Bush’s last major act as President is to demand that workers for American-owned companies work less than workers for foreign owned companies. American capitalism, at its finest.

The Republicans have consistently sought to use a Detroit bailout to break the UAW. Blue collar factory workers have always been held to a different (read: lower) standard for bailouts than the white collar compatriots of the GOP on Wall Street. The parts of the bill that explicitly require workers at American companies make less than workers at foreign companies should be enough for Congress to oppose it.

The GOP has spent much of the last eight years preaching about the existence of people who hate America as a political attack on Democrats. While those narratives were always bunk, it is apparent that there are people in our government and ruling political class who hate most of America and want American workers to fail. Clearly now we see that it’s Bush and the Republican Party. This is sickening.

Rep. Solis to Labor Dept. – A Win for Workers

President-elect Barack Obama has nominated California Democrat Hilda Solis to be Labor secretary. This is a great pick for working Americans, the labor movement, and progressives.

I have a post of on SEIU’s blog that goes into Solis’s labor record in some depth, especially her forceful advocacy for the Employee Free Choice Act. You can read the post here. It’s worth noting that though I’ve been working at SEIU for three months, this is the first opportunity I’ve had to contribute to the blog. I’m glad to do it in such an exciting moment.

Lehman vs UAW

In a diary at Daily Kos, 4workers makes a great point on the differences between how union and white collar financial jobs are being talked about during the economic crisis:

When Lehman Brothers failed, I didn’t hear talk about how the employees (not the execs, but the employees)there made too much, needed to accept less, didn’t need these “legacy benefits” like health care. And I’ll bet a lot of them made more than the average auto worker.

But now that it’s blue collar auto workers in trouble, all we hear is that they need lower expectations, to be more competitive with foreign workers—-and that unions, especially, are in the way of that competitiveness. This despite the concessions the UAW made and is continuing to make in the spirit of “we’re all in this together-ness.”

This is a great point. There is clearly a double standard in terms of how most politicians and the press are willing to talk about affected workers in various industries. It’s frustrating and sickening — and this sort of commentary ensures that the financial industry will get bailout after bailout, while a sector that connects to millions of jobs in America gets run through the ringer for a comparatively tiny sum.

I Never Told You What I Do For A Living

Nancy Scola of techPresident writes about the SEIU New Media team that I’m a proud member of.

Labor Online: The SEIU HQ down in DC has been busy putting together something of a web all-star team. First the Dodd campaign’s Tim Tagaris donned the purple, and now Matt Browner-Hamlin (Dodd campaign, the Senate run of Ted Stevens’ opponent in Alaska), Michael Whitney (American Rights at Work, Generation Dean), and Joaquin Guerra (Bill Richardson’s campaign) joined up. Having such a strong web shop seems to be paying dividends, at least in the blogosphere. The team has just a new campaign called “Bush and McCain: Where’s The Difference?” and put more than a hundred thousand dollars behind it in ad buys through both BlogAds and Common Sense Media. You’ll find the ads popping up on blogs today; for example, I just spotted it as an in-line ad over on MyDD.

Left off from their list of new rock-star like additions to the SEIU New Media team is Michael Link, formerly of the DNC, and Erik Moe, who worked with Tagaris and I on the Dodd campaign. Stay tuned for more good things from our team.

Middle Class Score Card

The Drum Major Institute has put out their annual score card on how Congress rates on middle class issues. You can go see how your state’s congressional delegation stacks up and what issues are included in their metric.

One thing that is particularly impressive is that this year, the vote on the Civil Justice part of the score card, the vote on Dodd’s amendment to strip retroactive immunity from the SSCI bill is included as an issue senators are judged. Why? Because the middle class supports the rule of law.