Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 34

In Maine’s Bangor Daily News, Mike Allen, an Air Force veteran and union letter carrier, writes in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act. In the course of an incredibly powerful telling of his father’s history and his history as union members and the benefits they received by being part of the union, Allen puts forth a key point: citizens are allowed to join the military with their signature and ought to be able to form a union with the same.

Honoring the brave men and women who serve our country starts with fighting for an economy that works for everyone. They should have the same opportunities I have had. It is no surprise that the decline of the middle class can be linked to the decline of unions in America. One solution to making sure workers can level the playing field is by giving them the opportunity to collectively bargain for fair wages and benefits. If we continue down the path we have followed for the past 30 years, the middle class will quickly disappear.

I support the Employee Free Choice Act because if enacted, it would let workers form a union when a simple majority of workers in the workplace sign cards indicating they want one instead of going through a company-controlled process.

In the Air Force we had a saying for complainers: “You signed your name on the dotted line.” Each of us knew what we were doing when we joined up. If my signature was good enough to serve in our military, it should be good enough to be honored by my government and employer when I sign up to join a union.

America’s veterans have sacrificed much to protect our way of life. We honor them not by valuing the short-term greed of CEOs more than long-term economic health of the middle class. Working families power our economy, and working families are struggling now more than ever to make ends meet.

Allen’s whole piece is worthy of attention. Maine’s two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, are key votes that could possibly determine whether or not there is meaningful labor reform in this Congress. I’d hope that Collins’ and Snowe’s offices put his words in front of them as just the latest piece of evidence that should compel them to support Employee Free Choice.

Opposing Torture

http://www.dailykostv.com/flv/player.swf

Via Jane Hamsher, David Waldman of DailyKos has an incredible segment where he demonstrates the real issues underlying the torture “debate” in America. Waldman rightly redirects the discussion towards the recent revelations regarding the Bush administration’s use of torture to, after the start of the Iraq War, prove “evidence” of a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Jane writes, “Kagro’s absolute moral clarity on the subject is unique in a media landscape largely devoted to normalizing torture as an American value.” Indeed, this is exactly the sort of moral clarity both I and Peter Daou called for last week from the Obama administration. The question remains outstanding as to whether or not it will be forthcoming.

Moral Clarity

Peter Daou’s Huffington Post column on the imperative for the Obama administration to restore the rule of law without hesitation raises excellent points about both what change really must mean under Obama and how the netroots community is trying to ensure this happens. Demands for investigation, transparency, and accountability in the face of Let’s-Move-On-itis common to Washington Democrats and Beltway pundits are not, as Daou says, “the rantings of immature outsiders and political neophytes.” Daou writes:

But as always, the progressive community, a far more efficient thinking machine than a handful of strategists and advisers, is looking ahead and raising a unified alarm. The message is this: anything less than absolute moral clarity from Democrats, who now control the levers of power, will enshrine Bush’s abuses and undermine the rule of law for generations to come.

I feel as if we’re a country balanced on the blade of a knife.  Decisive action, done out of moral clarity to restore America’s good name, can save us. There must be unequivocal support for the rule of law. This should not be negotiable, because anything less will ensure that there is no effective break from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. We will instead have a largely better actor who is less likely to move to systematically undermine the rule of law, who presides over a system that is functionally identical in mechanism and meaning to what was constructed under Bush and Cheney.

It’s hard to think of a more troubling outcome with the change in administrations than one which leaves us in a place we thought we had left when we voted on November 4th, 2008.

China’s Greenhouse Gas Problem

Paul Krugman has a great column today taking China to task for its solipsistic views on greenhouse gas emissions and China’s massive contributions to global warming. It’s good to see an economist put forward an argument involving emissions, tariffs, trade, and global warming that yields a conclusion that points towards actually helping sustain the globe, not abstract principles of trade and economy.

Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 32

Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post explains the importance of first contract arbitration in the Employee Free Choice Act. First contract arbitration is the second main plank of Employee Free Choice.

But the kind of democratic choice that business favors is choice without consequence — a position made clear by its opposition to the other key component of EFCA: binding arbitration between company and union if they’ve been unable to agree on a contract within 120 days of a union winning the election. A study of first-contract negotiations by John-Paul Ferguson and Thomas A. Kochan of MIT’s Sloan School of Management makes clear why such arbitration is needed. After surveying 22,000 unionization campaigns between 1999 and 2004, the authors found that even after a majority of workers voted for a union, they actually reached a contractual agreement with management (which is currently under no legal obligation to come to an agreement) only 56 percent of the time.

Heads, management wins. Tails, the employees lose.

It’s ironic that businesses rely on arbitration all the time as a means of resolving differences; in this regard, arbitration is a tool for business success. Yet when it comes to giving workers recourse to have arbitration as a means of getting their first contract between the newly-formed union and their employer, big business is suddenly opposed to arbitration. Currently businesses stall by negotiating in bad faith, as they know that if a contract is signed in the first year, they can run a campaign to decertify the union. It’s a crime that even when workers fight and organize and choose to join together in a union, employers still have the ability to effectively ignore the results.

Deep Thought

The Democratic agenda, including but not limited to nominations to key executive branch posts, is so dangerous and controversial that it takes 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate. By contrast, the Republican agenda under Bush and Cheney was so harmless and uncontroversial that a simple majority was enough for the Senate to approve any action.

Our American Way of Life

Richard Smith at VetVoice has an incredibly poignant push-back on Dick Cheney’s recent pro-torture, image rehabilitation tour. Richard writes:

[O]ur American way of life includes concepts of freedom from tyranny and a certain American personal independence that has been passed down through the many generations of this nation. If we are to believe that torturing human beings made us safe, that denying habeas corpus has made us more secure, that warrantless wiretapping impeded the evildoers, then what did I and we volunteer to lay our lives down for? In short, if we violate the very ideals that hold together our American way of life in the pursuit of security, what exactly are we secure from? What does that tell us about the success of the “evildoers” in attempting to “destroy our American way of life”?

Smith poses these thoughts as questions, but I think we can all see that they are rhetorical. That a patriotic young veteran even has to ask them shows how profoundly the Bush-Cheney administration failed our citizens and our Constitution.