"If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union. It's that simple. We need to stand up to the business lobby and pass the Employee Free Choice Act. That's why I've been fighting for it in the Senate and that's why I'll make it the law of the land when I'm president of the United States." --Barack Obama
Nobody is making it the law of the land. Nobody is fighting for it. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) has drifted down to the bottom of the AFL-CIO's website, buried beneath good economic proposals which, however, do nothing to build a labor movement. EFCA is not to be found anywhere on the front page of Change to Win's website at all. The media's not smearing EFCA with U.S. Chamber of Commerce lies anymore. Congress and the White House are silent. Any escalation of pressure on senators from union members has never materialized, the polite letter-writing campaigns having drifted away rather than ramping up into pickets or sit-ins.
"Without access to lawyers, the law doesn't apply to you." - Ian Millhiser
I've flown business class a couple times, it was nice.
You get to board the plane early, have a comfortable seat, enjoy free drinks. Nice. And it's fine, they pay extra for that. The airlines make a reasonable calculation about how much they're owed for providing those services and they get compensated.
Yet when it comes to dealing with the rest of society, their workers, customers and government, business interests always want to dispute the bill for services rendered. If the law says otherwise, heck, they can get Congress to write laws they like better.
They can also directly write their own laws. And by laws, I mean contracts. Privately drawn up agreements that will be enforced by the courts or an arbitrator whose judgments are considered binding by the courts.
1. "We need to stand up to the business lobby that's been getting their friends in Congress and in the White House to block card check. That's why I was one of the leaders fighting to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. That's why I'm fighting for it in the Senate. And that's why we'll make it the law of the land when I'm President."
2. Obama blasted the GOP Bush regime as "the most anti-union administration in history," before saying that "if a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union," referring to a key EFCA provision: Enshrining card-check majority recognition of unions in labor law, rather than at the employer's discretion.
3. Still, having spent $80 million to help elect Obama, some unions are counting on the Democrat to deliver on his campaign promise. As Gerry McEntee, head of the American Federal of State, County and Municipal Employees candidly told the Washington Times (much to the delight of Republicans, who broadcast his remarks in press releases), "the payback would be the Employee Free Choice Act -- that would be a vehicle to strengthen and build the American labor movement and the middle class."
4. On his campaign Web site, Obama openly embraced the card check legislation, which is supposed to make it easier for workers to organize unions.
"Obama and (Vice President-elect Joe) Biden believe that workers should have the freedom to choose whether to join a union without harassment or intimidation from their employers. Obama co-sponsored and is a strong advocate for the Employee Free Choice Act, a bipartisan effort to assure that workers can exercise their right to organize. He will continue to fight for EFCA's passage and sign it into law," according to the site.
5. The provision of a controversial bill that would give workers the right to unionize as soon as a majority of employees in a workplace signed cards saying they want a union has been dropped, a move designed to make it easier for the legislation to pass.
6. What is close to emerging, according to reports, is a bill that would leave out the original measure's ''card check'' provision but would require shorter unionization campaigns.
Progressives believe in a "we're all in this together" philosophy while conservatives follow a "you are on your own" philosophy. The differences between these approaches can be clearly seen in the battle over how we share the benefits of our economy.
Conservatives encourage people to take "personal responsibility" rather than to rely on each other for support and guidance. When it comes to things like negotiating for pay and benefits this approach limits each of us to the power and resources that we have alone as individuals.
But big companies are not "on their own." They are legally allowed to concentrate resources and power that dwarf anything an individual could muster. Companies might have thousands, even tens of thousands of employees who have to do what they are told. They have top legal teams at the table across from you. They can place advertisements and hire PR firms to spin false stories that turn the public against you.
A "you are on your own" approach puts each of us alone at the table with powerful the big companies. When we ask for higher pay, time off, benefits or better working conditions they can set us against each other by saying, "we'll just find someone else to do your job." Big companies seeking to lower or eliminate worker costs (you) and pocket the savings on one side of the table with regular individuals on the other side of the table is a one-sided negotiation. The result is an increasingly one-sided economy, with the benefits of the economy going overwhelmingly to those who control these powerful companies.
The negotiating table is out of balance and the result is this terrible economic downturn.
At first glance, Joe Sestak reiterating that he is a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act while speaking at a United Steelworkers conference doesn't seem like much of a news story. As the title of this post implies, however, there is something that made it very interesting:
U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak keeps increasing the likelihood that he'll challenge Sen. Arlen Specter for the Democratic Senate nomination next year.
On Sunday, he told the United States Steelworkers Legislative Conference in Atlantic City that he backs the Employee Free Choice Act, the proposed law that would make it easier for unions to organize.
The catch is that Senator Arlen Specter did not speak at this event. In fact, he was disinvited.
Here is the full story, courtesy of an email exchange with Jim Savage, who is President of a Steelworkers local here in Philadelphia:
"The Senator [Arlen Specter] was invited & confirmed as the keynote speaker."
"There was quite an uproar when we found out. He was uninvited because of the rank-and-file reaction."
"Also, it's worth noting that the Senator was none too happy about it."
At that point, Sestak was then invited. Before he spoke, he was "introduced to the delegates as "our next Senator" to a rousing ovation."
The general sentiment toward Specter was "fuck'm."
I have to say, talking to local union leaders is a lot more fun than talking with communications staff.
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, United Steelworkers (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."
Stay classy, Specter staffers.
Needless to say, it is a good bet labor unions in Pennsylvania are not going to be as pro-Specter as the upper echelons of the Democratic Party leadership would like.
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.
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.
Today, a coalition of Philadelphia-area rabbis and rabbinical students will meet with Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter to make the case for the Employee Free Choice Act.
Dozens of Pennsylvania rabbis and rabbinical students signed an open letter in support of Employee Free Choice, organized by the Philadelphia Jewish Labor Committee (JLC), and will deliver it today to Specter. Specter is a key vote in the fight for workers'; freedom to form unions and bargain-a fight that these rabbis know is critical to our economy and to basic fairness.
The meeting and letter are part of a larger outreach effort by the JLC to promote workers' freedom to form unions and bargain. These values, say a growing coalition of rabbis, are a key part of the Jewish tradition of supporting the dignity of workers and the strength of communities.
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.
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.
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.
Put down that grande non-fat caramel macchiato or whatever Starbucks concoction you're drinking. Turns out the coffee giant has a nasty history of being anti-barista, anti-union, and thus anti-Employee Free Choice Act as well.
The National Labor Relations Board has repeatedly found Starbucks guilty of illegally terminating, harassing, intimidating, and discriminating against employees attempting to unionize. Late last year, a judge ruled Starbucks had committed over a dozen violations of the National Labor Relations Act at a few New York stores. Starbucks has settled five such labor disputes in the last few years in New York, Minnesota, and Michigan, spending millions on legal fees to avoid exposing their anti-worker ways.
To make matters worse, Starbucks has led the charge on a so-called Employee Free Choice Act "compromise," joining Costco and Whole Foods to form the Committee for Level Playing Field. This Orwellian-sounding group has come up with a "third way" on Employee Free Choice, which would require 70 percent of workers to sign union authorization cards instead of the far more manageable 50 percent initially proposed by this legislation.
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.
(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.
You can search this nation far and wide and still wind up with very few elected moderate Republicans. As I've discussed before, the Republican tent is shrinking: those who don't subscribe to a narrow set of backward ideas are pushed out. Some have reacted courageously, like the trio of Republican moderates who voted for the stimulus bill.
Some however, take the convenient route.
Case in point: New York congressman Peter King, who represents the moderate 3rd district, was an original co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act in 2003. This was back when President Bush was certain to veto the bill if it passed, so King hopped on board, appeased the unions in his home district, and kept everyone content.
Now that we have a President who supports the measure, King has jumped off the wagon. From his official statement:
"I do not, however, intend to support EFCA in this Congress. Our country is facing its most severe economic crisis in 75 years. It is a crisis different from previous recessions in that it includes restricted credit, massive job loss, a plunging stock market and increased foreclosures and bankruptcies.
Virtually every component of our economy is suffering. While I am confident we will recover, I believe the road ahead will be long and difficult. Under these conditions, I have concluded that the Employee Free Choice Act would be too severe a shock to our economy at this time and would be counterproductive."
He concludes the statement with a telling sentence: "I will continue, of course, to monitor the situation but that is my current thinking.”
From that statement, you might actually think that Congressman King is going to monitor the economic situation. However, what he's really going to be watching are his chances to defeat Kirsten Gillibrand in the 2010 Senate race (Gillibrand is a 21st Century Democrats endorsee and a strong Employee Free Choice supporter). As we've heard, NRSC Chairman John Cornyn is reaching back in time for his 2010 candidates, and he seems to have his sights set on former-Governor George Pataki. If Peter King wants Party money for his Senate bid, he needs to look like the "better Republican." It'll be Pataki vs. King in a beauty contest of conservatism. He can't be doing things like - gasp - protecting the rights of working people. It would be so un-Republican of him.
And while we're at it, let's talk about the idea that the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act would be a "shock" to our economy in these troubled times. Look, the economy is already shocked; working families are shocked by the $2,000 on average that disappeared from their income between 2001 and 2007. The bill does NOT get rid of the option for the NRLB secret ballot election, even though the current election system is rife with flaws. And despite popular belief, when management and labor bargain on equal terms, it helps the workers as well as the management. Just ask this group of 40 leading economists, including two Nobel laureates, who put a full page ad in the Washington Post last month supporting the bill.
Peter King isn't watching the economic situation. He's watching John Cornyn and George Pataki, and he's watching Senator Gillibrand's poll numbers to see if he has a shot at her seat. Meanwhile, Politico reports that numerous Freshman Democrats are voting for the bill despite their electoral vulnerability. There's something to be said for political courage: not everyone has it.
My name is Lisa Tomasian and I'd like to tell you the story behind a letter I wrote to the trustees of SEIU-UHW.
Having worked at Kaiser Hospital as a Radiology Technologist as well as having served as an elected union shop steward for the past 18 years, I believe that workers' rights are human rights. I've come to believe that labor unions are the vehicle and voice for workers to advocate for social justice.
As Registered Nurses, we know all too well that working in a hospital these days means engaging in a daily struggle to provide care in an industry more concerned about it’s bottom-line than about providing patient care.
Registered Nurses struggle day in and day out to provide care without adequate staffing and resources. Non-RN hospital staff are struggling to fulfill essential hospital functions with ever decreasing numbers of staff, while worrying that they’ll be the next to be laid off.
Our patients, left to wonder if a nurse will be available to help if they ring their call-lights and whether their hospital bills will bankrupt their families are likely the most affected.
Under the pact, SEIU and CNA/NNOC, the largest unions in the nation representing healthcare workers and registered nurses, respectively, will work together to bring union representation to all non-union RNs and other healthcare employees and step up efforts to enact Employee Free Choice Act.
The resulting massive increase in unionization will improve the experience of providing and receiving care in US hospitals—and the resulting movement will change the whole nature of how health care is provided in the US.
In the words of Rose Ann DeMoro, the Executive Director of CNA/NNOC, the nation's largest organization of direct care RNs with 85,000 members in all 50 states:
"This is an exciting new day for nurses and patients across the nation. This agreement provides a huge spark for the emergence of a more powerful, unified national movement that is needed to more effectively challenge healthcare industry layoffs and attacks on RN economic and professional standards and patient care conditions. It will also strengthen the ability of all direct-care RNs to fight for real healthcare reform and advocate for improved patient care conditions and stronger patient safety legislation from coast to coast."
In the words of Andy Stern, President of SEIU, the nation’s largest healthcare union:
"This marks the beginning of a new future for nurses and other healthcare workers and their patients throughout this nation. We are lining up to make sweeping changes to this country’s broken healthcare system, and as we wait for the starting gun it is imperative that we put the past behind us and move forward by putting all healthcare workers in the strongest possible position to define reform, move legislation, and make the new healthcare system operational. Is this accord surprising? Perhaps, but those who recognize our shared value of making sure registered nurses and other healthcare workers have not only a say but a critical role in helping reshape a failed system into something that actually helps people know that this is the right step to help us meet the challenge and the call of this moment.”
Among key elements of the pact:
• The two unions will work together to organize non-union hospital workers throughout the country, with CNA/NNOC as the leading voice for RNs, and SEIU as the leading voice for all other hospital workers.
• The unions will launch an intensive national organizing campaign with an initial focus on the nation’s largest hospital systems.
• In addition to organizing, SEIU and CNA/NNOC will coordinate on a broad range of other issues from bargaining with common employers to the campaign to enact the Employee Free Choice Act.
• SEIU and CNA/NNOC publicly endorse measures that allow states to adopt single-payer health care systems.
• Both parties will refrain from "raiding," seeking to displace the existing members of the other's organization, or from interference in the other's internal affairs.
• The two unions will create a new joint RN organization in Florida to represent current and future RNs of both unions. In all other states, SEIU will continue to represent their current RN members in collective bargaining.
In my previous posts, United Healthcare Workers Holding our Ground and We are the Union. SEIU who are you? I shared my experience of the trusteeship SEIU International imposed on SEIU-UHW and the birth of our new union, NUHW. What I'd like to do today is share with you why this experience has been a defining moment for me and my sisters and brothers building NUHW...
This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog. AFL-CIO Government Affairs Director Bill Samuel provides a reality check for the media spin around the Employee Free Choice Act. Bill was on NPR yesterday in a discussion of the issue with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Check it out here.
It seems that another bank on the public dole is using its taxpayer-subsidized time and resources to lobby against the Employee Free Choice Act.
Today, Sam Stein of the Huffington Post reports that Citigroup hosted a private conference call yesterday to bolster opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act that included a senior executive at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business lobbying group that has put tens of millions of dollars into the anti-Employee Free Choice disinformation campaign. Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake notes that the Citi stock analyst who downgraded Wal-Mart over fears of the Employee Free Choice Act passing was on the call, too.
The national tragedy reflected in the most recent unemployment figures is a story that goes far beyond the official, horrifying statistics.
Unemployment hit 8.1% of the labor force in February, 2009, with an additional 651,000 persons unemployed. We now have 12.5 million unemployed, another 8.6 million underemployed and at least 2.1 million "marginally attached to the labor force". Among those "marginally attached" were 731,000 "discouraged workers" who, due to a lack of available jobs, did not look for work and therefore are not even counted as unemployed.
Not including any of the millions of other Americans who are categorized as not in the labor force at all, the number of our fellow citizens now unemployed or underemployed is now at least 23.2 million Americans.
That's nearly 4 million more people than the entire population of New York State; nearly 9 million more than the population of all six New England states combined.
What grassroots organization speaks for these tens of millions of citizens?
Right now, America needs A Union of the Unemployed.
