Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 8

Pennsylvania State Rep. William Keller has an op-ed in the Philadelphia Daily News about the necessity of passing the Employee Free Choice Act:

From the perspectives of the national labor movement and big-business owners, perhaps no decision is more hotly anticipated than the fate of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The ultimate decision will dramatically affect, for better or for worse, the future of America’s struggling middle class.

A new report out today from SEIU details the economic argument for passing Employee Free Choice. Here’s a small piece of a very lengthy study on why we need Employee Free Choice now and how it will help our economy.

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that if 5 million service workers join unions:

  • 5 million workers would get a 22 percent raise on average, or an additional $7,000 a year;
  • $34 billion in total new wages would flow into the economy;
  • 900,000 jobs would be lifted above the poverty wage for a family of four ($10.22/hr); and
  • Between 1.8 million and 3 million dependent children would share in these benefits.
  • The economic impact on individuals would be about four times as large as the recent federal minimum wage increase, and allow nearly six times more in new wages to flow into the economy.

This is just service workers. It’s certain the impact is even greater when you look at numbers for unionizing non-union employees.
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.

Pressure Politics

What Glenn Greenwald said:

When Obama does things that warrant praise — when he appoints someone like Dawn Johnsen as OLC Chief, or defies Beltway demands by going outside of the intelligence community to find his CIA Director — he should be praised.  When he does things that warrant criticism — such as going on national television to talk about the need for a special process to allow the use of “tainted” evidence against Guantanamo detainees, or when he openly contemplates naming someone as CIA Director who supports rendition and torture, or when he votes in favor of warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty — he should be vigorously criticized.  When he makes statements without any apparent basis — such as Sunday’s assertion that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons — he ought to be made to account for that claim and show evidence for it.  That’s just basic accountability for a political official.

Like all politicians, Obama is not intrinsically good.  Good things don’t happen by virtue of the mere existence of his presidency.  His presidency will be good only and exactly to the extent that he does good things.  Pressure and criticisms make his doing those good things more likely (there is a quote from FDR, which I cannot find but am certain commenters will quickly cite, where FDR privately instructed his supporters to publicly criticize him for not doing X so that he would be able to do X more easily).

Obama is about to become one of the world’s most powerful political leaders, if not the single most powerful.  He begins with sky-high approval ratings, his political party in control of Congress by a large margin, and enjoys reverence so intense from certain quarters that such a loyal following hasn’t been seen since the imperial glow around George Bush circa 2002.  He’s not going to crumble or melt away like the Wicked Witch if he’s pressured or criticized.  The far more substantial danger is that he won’t be pressured or criticized enough by those who are eager to see meaningful changes in Washington, and then — either by desire or necessity — those are the voices he will ignore most easily.

This is something that I think is universally true – politicians respond to pressure. Confrontational politics work, even when — especially when — they are focused on our friends and allies.

Clinton Confirmation & Tibet

Over the last week or so Students for a Free Tibet has been conducting an advocacy campaign on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calling on the Committee to verbally ask Senator Clinton about Tibet. Today, the New York Times published a list of questions from foreign policy experts they hoped the FRC would ask Clinton. Shi Yinhong, “a professor of international relations and the director of the Center for American Studies at Renmin University in Beijing,” asks:

Tibet may prove to be the most divisive issue between China and the West. There is a real possibility that China and the Obama administration will have friction or even a temporary diplomatic clash over Tibet. How will you treat this possibility? If Barack Obama is inclined to meet with the Dalai Lama, what will be your attitude? Might you or other senior members in the State Department meet with the Dalai Lama or other leaders of the Tibetan exile government?

This is a great question. I have personally been asking a number of Senate staffers ask:

“What concrete steps will you commit your office to take to support the Tibetan people’s right to self-determination, including steps to press the Chinese government to negotiate substantively with the Dalai Lama and concrete steps that the US government can take of its own accord?”

Either of these questions would be a great step forward in the treatment of Tibet as a critical issue for US-Sino relations.

Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 7

Registered nurse and SEIU member Fredo Serrano of Las Vegas pens an op-ed in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Serrano takes on some basic assumptions about unions and the impact unionization has on businesses, making a powerful case for passing strong Free Choice legislation to help workers continue to grow the economy.

I’m an operating room registered nurse at Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas. Shortly after I came to Sunrise Hospital 13 years ago, my co-workers and I came together to form a union. Unlike the vast majority of employees who seek to form a union in their workplaces, we were ultimately able to negotiate free and fair conduct guidelines for the campaign.

Under current law, employers can demand an election process wherein, according to research, 91 percent of employers force employees to attend intimidating one-on-one meetings with their supervisors, and 30 percent unlawfully fire workers who support forming a union.

Because of our landmark agreement with HCA, we saw none of these tactics. It was a positive experience for management, staff, and the patients whose care was never disrupted. But unfortunately, the free and fair election at my hospital was a special exception to a broken rule. The Employee Free Choice Act will guarantee the basic right to a free choice like I had to employees everywhere. …

Having a union has made a dramatic difference in our lives. Before we united under the Service Employees International Union, the health plan available to hospital employees was too expensive for many ancillary staff to afford, meaning that dozens of the people working in the hospital did not have health care themselves. Today, we all have access to employer-provided health care for ourselves and our families. We’ve negotiated a pay scale to attract and retain high-quality and experienced caregivers. Nationwide, workers in unions earn 30 percent higher wages on average and are 59 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage.

And we’ve ensured that registered nurses and other direct care providers have the ongoing training and education we need to provide the highest quality care.

Wal-Mart’s Lee Scott and his corporate allies want us to believe that giving workers a seat at the table and a hand on the steering wheel will lead to them running the ship aground. But my experience at Sunrise has proved just the opposite.

Trouble in China

Reuters is reporting on an official Chinese government report that predicts major social upheaval and mass protests in 2009. While much of this is driven by economic and unemployment problems, this cannot be circumscribed to those areas — the problems are social too.

The Outlook report also stressed the nation’s strains were about more than growth rates. Protests were increasingly politicized, making it harder for officials to douse them by force or cash hand-outs, the report said.

“Social conflicts have already formed a certain social, mass base so that as soon as there is an appropriate fuse it always swiftly explodes and clashes escalate quickly,” said Huang.

The article points out (and I agree) that the candor of the report is meant to shake people in the government into treating these issues seriously and readying adequate responses. It’s a sign of the extent to which the Chinese Communist Party recognizes that their hold on power is tenuous. If circumstances don’t go well for them, they are at grave risk to lose their hold on power.

Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 6

Over at FireDogLake Tula Connell has posted a detailed report on polling done relating to the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s not surprising that in these tough economic times, an overwhelming majority of Americans think workers need to be able to organize.

The survey, conducted Dec. 4–10 for the AFL-CIO by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, found:

  • 75 percent of those surveyed support recognizing a union when a majority of workers have signed up in support.
  • 64 percent support strengthening penalties against companies who illegally intimidate or fire workers who are trying to form a union.
  • 61 percent favor binding arbitration if a company will not agree to a first contract. (This provision had the highest number of respondents who weren’t sure how they felt about it.)

Support for the Employee Free Choice Act crosses party and state lines, with 74 percent of those who identify as moderate or liberal Republicans in favor. Conservative Republicans were the only group not expressing majority support.

Those surveyed were told arguments for and against the bill, including the falsehood spread by opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act that it would take away the secret ballot (it wouldn’t). Support remains steady, even when those surveyed heard messages from both supporters and opponents of the bill.

The survey found that most people don’t realize the extent to which management fights workers’ efforts to form unions. That matters because the more people realize employers harass and intimidate workers, the more they support the Employee Free Choice Act.

It’s really great news that Big Business astroturfing and huge paid media campaigns aren’t  penetrating public consciousness. There rhetoric isn’t passing the smell test…maybe it’s because big corporate lobbyists and shills like Rick Berman have vastily underestimated the intelligence of the American public. It will be interesting to see how the forces opposed to worker rights rejigger their efforts in the face of failure to find a successful message to pitch their swill.

A Failure of Equivalence

In an otherwise somewhat troubling piece about the Obama administration’s possible plans to “rein in” Social Security and Medicare, New York Times reporters Jeff Zeleny and John Harwood write this series of paragraphs.

The bad fiscal news underscored how, on his first week in Washington since the election, Mr. Obama is being challenged by a broad array of problems, some inherited and some a result of his own missteps, a departure from a transition that until now had been praised as orderly and swift.

The fighting between Israelis and Palestinians will present him with a complex foreign policy challenge immediately upon taking office.

The week opened with the first casualty among Mr. Obama’s cabinet appointments, as Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico withdrew as his choice for commerce secretary amid questions about whether he had been adequately vetted. Then Mr. Obama had to apologize to Senate leaders for not informing them of his choice to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta.

Yes you read that right, apologizing to Dianne Feinstein and having a nominee act to avoid distracting from the administration’s agenda are challenges in the same way war in Israel is a challenge. Equivalence