THE EFCA (CARD CHECK)
The Employee’s Free Choice Act (EFCA) or Card Check legislation has lost some key political support in Washington DC. The Business interests have stepped up their lobbying efforts against the EFCA. Should some of the EFCA language be altered to ease it’s passage into law?
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Workers Rights in America: Unraveling the Card Check Debate
The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)
by Shamus Cooke
Global Research, March 30, 2009
Sometimes in politics a particular issue strikes at the core of deeper social-economic forces. Card Check — properly named The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)– is such an issue.
EFCA, if implemented as proposed, would allow workers at any work place to join a union simply by having the majority of employees sign union authorization cards. The current law mandates that there be a secret ballot election one month after the requisite number of signed cards are submitted. This one-month period allows employers to mount campaigns to discourage employees from voting for a union, often using conscious distortions and intimidation as tactics. EFCA would prohibit newly unionized workers from striking for two years to gain a first contract. Moreover, if a first contract has not been negotiated within the first three months, a Federal Mediator can step in and impose a contract. Currently, employers who are compelled to recognize a union do not have to concede to a negotiated contract at all; and if, after one year a contract has not been negotiated, the union can be subjected to a vote of decertification, which is often the case.
No other recent debate has spurred such passions on two opposite poles: the corporate elite versus labor. The cause of the uproar is the effect it would have on the relationship between these two classes: card check would vastly strengthen the working-class at the expense of the employers.
The employers have thus organized to kill it. As soon as the bill was announced in congress, a behind-the-scenes lobbying blitz began, combined with a well-financed public relations campaign (business groups have promised to spend at least $200 million in the effort).
The fears of the corporations are entirely warranted. If implemented, Card Check would encourage millions of workers to shed their current fear of organizing and go on the offensive in such a way not seen since the Wagner Act of 1935.
More than likely, however, Card Check will not be approved by the Democratic-controlled congress; at least not the original version of the bill. This will not be a surprise for the many who realized that, as a political party of extremely big business, the Democrats would be unwilling to push forward such a large piece of pro-labor legislation.
But Card Check is a Catch-22 issue for the Democrats. While having to obey their corporate masters, the Democrats’ generational alliance with the labor movement is in jeopardy if Card Check fails, and such a falling-out would have enormous implications for the political landscape of the United States.
Before Obama, workers had already grown tired of the false promises of so-called “worker friendly” Democrats. The millions of dollars of workers’ dues money that helped get Bill Clinton elected was utterly wasted when Clinton enacted NAFTA and countless other anti-worker policies.
The union bureaucracy had to promise rank and file union members concrete results this time around to keep them voting Democrat: Card Check was a pre-condition for getting union support. Obama and other Democrats promised its passage; its failure may be the final blow between the Democrats and the unions.
Meanwhile, workers must ask themselves a question: how ridiculous is it that they’re being asked to organize and “mobilize” to push Card Check through Congress, when such a mobilization already occurred to get “worker friendly” Democrats into Congress, alongside a so-called worker friendly President? This question answers itself.
Apparently, the mobilization of the corporate lobbyists is having a more profound effect on the minds of the Democrats. Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln is one of several Congress members who’ve previously supported the bill, but have “other priorities” now. Another notable figure who has indicated opposition to EFCA is California Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein, who said this is not the time for this measure because of the economic crisis. Even perhaps more ominous is the fact that Larry Summers, President Obama’s top economic adviser, has come out in opposition to unions and to EFCA in a New York Times full page ad that appeared in the March 11, 2009 edition. Summers is quoted in the ad saying, “Another cause of long-term unemployment is unionization.” The Times ad goes on to say, “The Employee (Free) Choice Act is the last thing our fragile economy needs.”
Other Democrats are seeking a compromise bill, and so are the more far-seeing corporations. Both understand the potential consequences of Card Check failing: the Democrat-labor alliance is a major component in maintaining the current social status-quo, benefiting the very wealthy. Upsetting this relationship has scared the more insightful mega-corporations — Costco, Whole Foods, Starbucks — into offering a rotten compromise version of Card Check.
Also willing to compromise are certain top labor officials, whose privileged status demands the status quo stay in place (regardless of their past promises). In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal — the loudest voice of big business — optimism was voiced in response to the following words of the AFL-CIO political director: “We certainly understand that it would be unusual if a bill [Card Check] was passed as it was introduced word for word.” And this comes from a person who urged the AFL-CIO to spend $300 million dollars to campaign for Democrats in the 2008 elections.
The Huffington Post also reported recently that Andy Stern of SEIU was backing off from demands that Card Check be addressed quickly in congress. The need for haggling, deal-making, and betrayal apparently has taken priority.
However, even a compromise deal will be extremely difficult to pull off. Not only have union officials made serious promises to workers, but the majority of corporations are unwilling to budge an inch for them — since their workers might then gain the confidence to demand a mile.
And this is the real fear. The current social status-quo is already in jeopardy because of the economic crisis, and Card Check will give workers a powerful lever to shift society in a direction that actually benefits them. One cannot expect a political party that continues to give hundreds of billions to Wall Street to pass such a law, although its failure is not inevitable. Even the corporate two-party system is not immune to the demands of the working-class, especially if these demands are coming from millions of angry and organized workers. In this case Card Check could be pushed through congress in spite of the Democrats.
If, however, the Democrats fail to pass Card Check — the REAL Card Check and not a sell-out version — labor must dump the Democrats once and for all. It is up to rank and file union members to make sure this overdue break happens.
Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/04/20/stern_considers_alternatives_t.html
HOUSE OF LABOR
Stern Considers Alternatives to EFCA
By Alec MacGillis
As key senators have announced that they are not planning to support the Employee Free Choice Act, labor leaders put on a brave face, saying they have every intention of finding the needed 60 votes and that it is premature to start talking about alternatives to the bill.
But in an interview today, Andy Stern, head of the influential Service Employees International Union, stepped gently away from that unified front, raising the prospect of reforms that would overhaul union elections without giving workers the option of organizing sans secret ballot elections.
The legislation now before Congress, dubbed “card check,” would let workers organize if a majority in a workplace sign pro-union cards; as it stands, employers require secret ballot elections. Unions say elections are marred by employer intimidation; employers say going with card-check — what the unions call “majority sign up” — would expose workers to union pressure.
Speaking to The Post’s editorial board, Stern noted that there are ways to try to level the playing field in union elections without giving workers a way around the secret ballot requirement, such as shortening the window before elections are held — thus giving employers less time to pressure workers — and stiffening penalties for employer violations.
“We are on the hunt for a solution,” he said. “No matter what you do, you have to change the election process. Whether it’s majority sign up or not, workers have to have a choice about having an election. The bill has to address … fast elections, eliminating employer behavior and what happens if there are employer violations. Regardless, that needs to be done.”
He even suggested that the card-check bill had been introduced as it is in the Senate only in order to have the same language as the bill that is in the House, and that this may not have been the right way to go. “We sort of have a bill that talks a lot about majority signup and nothing about the problems of the election system,” he said. “That was probably a decision made in the House to have the same bill come up and potentially pass the same bill — which is not going to be a logical way to follow through now that we know … what the situation is.”
Stern and SEIU secretary treasurer Anna Burger said they have not given up on getting 60 votes for card-check, saying that they still hold out hope that Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the only Republican to support the bill in 2007, could yet reverse his declaration against the bill last month. “Oh sure,” Burger said about the chances of Specter flipping back. “This is Arlen Specter we’re talking about.”
But they also acknowledged that, for now, they are having to search for their 60 votes without any help from President Obama, who has expressed support for card-check but not made it a priority.
“The President has said he has a series of things — that we agree that he needs to get done — which are major for every man woman and child, like health care, like the budget, like financial regulation,” Stern said. “We respect that we have a job to do to line up enough votes without him. I don’t think there’s any question that he says there will be a vote, that this bill’s time has arrived and he will do whatever is in his power to bring this home. We just aren’t there yet.”
Then Stern signaled one last time that if card-check does prove to be unrealistic, he believes that unions must get behind some other substantive reform, instead of waiting until 2011 in hopes of a bigger Democratic majority after the next election. “We need to get something that’s significant done,” he said.
Card Check, FDR, and Right-Wing History
April 2009 By Chip Berlet
printer friendly version Berlet’s ZSpace page
The Obama administration will face stiff opposition to the pro-union “Card Check” legislation he promised to support, known officially as the Employee Free Choice Act. Opponents have launched a campaign that highlights the lack of union democracy, corruption, union bosses, and street thugs—all wrapped into a frame of coercive “Big Labor” versus individual rights.
The anti-labor campaign is a component of the broader strategy by the Republican Party and frenetic conservative commentators to paint a picture in which Obama appears to be leading the country down the road to socialism, tyranny, and financial ruin—just like FDR. To counter this, it helps to know some history of labor legislation, especially the Wagner Act and the Taft-Hartley Act.
Right-wing ideologues view the Administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a failed experiment in socialism. Some assert that it was a form of National Socialism, aka Fascism. Ultra-conservative institutions portray the National Labor Relations Act passed in 1935 as a wholesale attack on the free enterprise system. They spent the next ten years mobilizing support to gut portions of the protections granted to workers and unions; and they succeeded in this by passing the Taft-Hartley legislation in 1947.
Wagner Act of 1935
The National Labor Relations Act, (often called the Wagner Act to honor Senator Robert R. Wagner of New York), sought to ensure that working people had the right “to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection.”
As one government summary explains, “In order to enforce and maintain those rights, the act included provision for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to arbitrate deadlocked labor-management disputes, guarantee democratic union elections, and penalize unfair labor practices by employers.”
Immediately upon passage of the National Labor Relations Act, business and political conservatives sought legislation to undercut union organizing, especially in the period 1938-1941. According to labor historian Gilbert J. Gall, “Lobbyists of the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued that Congress should change the law to prohibit ‘coercion from any source.’” They obviously hoped that such a clause would function as a mandatory open ship provision under statutory interpretation, making it impossible for unions to obtain union security through bargaining.” At the time, opposition to these proposed employer-friendly laws aimed at weakening unions and worker’s rights came from both Republicans and Democrats.
Ultraconservatives remained undaunted. On Labor Day 1941, with the U.S. entry into World War II seemingly inevitable and just weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor, an editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News: “[T]he greatest crisis that confronts the nation today,” wrote editor William B. Ruggles, “is the domestic issue of the right to work as a member of a labor union, if the individual wishes, or without membership in a union if he elects.” This editorial, titled “Magna Carta,” coined the term “right to work.”
During the war years, right-to-work legislation went nowhere on the federal level and the focus shifted to the state level where a variety of legislative battles were waged. In the “period from 1938 to 1944 numerous states passed harsh and sometimes punitive laws restricting union behavior” and “some of the laws simply aimed to harass unions,” observes Gall. There was a major emphasis on restricting union security arrangements and regulations concerning picketing or strikes, although “much of this state anti-union legislation proved unconstitutional.”
After World War II and the death of President Roosevelt, however, ultraconservatives developed plans to “roll back” the economic fairness and social justice policies of the Roosevelt administration. Along with a strategy to unweave the government social safety net were parallel plans to discourage workers from joining labor unions. “Right-to-Work” legislation returned on the federal level and headed to Congress
The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947
Rollback of the New Deal was the specific aim of ultraconservatives, but they pursued a broader agenda as they fanned fears of a domestic communist threat to justify not only crushing the labor movement, but pushing back the alleged socialist social engineering and big government created by FDR’s New Deal. They also launched a public campaign to expose socialist and communist subversives in Hollywood, the State Department, and U.S. universities.
The drive to gut the Wagner Act coincided with the turmoil created in the shift from a wartime economy and the return of veterans to peacetime work. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, after WWII there was “a massive if peaceful wave of strikes. Unions sought to make what they considered well-deserved gains after enduring wage freezes imposed during the war. Workers were also prodded by the sharp inflation, fueled by pent-up consumer demand, that followed the lifting of wartime price restrictions. Strike followed upon strike in such important sectors as railroads, coal, steel, autos and oil…. The strike wave mobilized widespread anti-union sentiment which soon made itself felt in the federal government.”
The Taft-Hartley Act was primarily a series of pro-management amendments to the Wagner Act. The National Association of Manufacturers still considers the passage of Taft-Hartley one of its crowning achievements. In its written history, the group brags “NAM played a leading role in the 1947 enactment, overriding President Harry Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act, which served to level the playing field in labor relations.”
Actually, Taft-Hartley gave employers the advantage. Since then, anti-union employers have developed a variety of methods to harass, intimidate, and fire workers seeking the protection of a union contract. The Card Check plan heading for a Congressional vote this year seeks to restore the rights of workers outlined in 1937 by the U.S. Supreme Court: “Employees have as clear a right to organize and select their representatives for lawful purposes as (a company) has to organize its business and select its own officers and agents. Discrimination and coercion to prevent the free exercise of the right of employees to self-organization and representation is a proper subject for condemnation by competent legislative authority. Long ago, we stated the reason for labor organizations. We said that they were organized out of necessities of the situation, that a single employee was helpless in dealing with an employer….”
It’s easy to find flaws in labor unions and union bureaucrats, but Card Check is one struggle where we should not be on the sidelines.
Z
Chip Berlet is senior analyst at Political Research Associates. This article and others in this series will also be available at the PRA website http://www.publiceye.org. Last month’s Z Magazine article on this topic is available here, http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/20741.
Labor Unions Find Themselves Card-Checkmated
Business groups have outmaneuvered workers groups, jeopardizing key components of a congressional proposal that has been unions’ top priority. Labor supporters say their side has gotten disorganized.
By Tom Hamburger
May 19, 2009
Reporting from Washington — In the Ozark Mountain town of Rogers, Ark., more than 250 business owners gathered for lunch at a construction company last month to focus on what they saw as a major threat — a proposal in Congress to make it easier to form labor unions.
At each place setting, attendees found pre-stamped postcards and pre-written letters to be sent to Arkansas’ U.S. senators, Democrats Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln, who had supported the labor bill in the past. After lunch, the business owners were ushered to computers to send e-mail messages as well.
Five days later came the good news: Two Senate votes had been stripped from the pro-union bill. Lincoln said she would oppose it outright, while Pryor declared the current version “dead” and said he would look for compromises.
Today, thanks to those and other defections, key components of the bill are in serious jeopardy. And the legislation has produced one of the biggest surprises in Washington since Democrats swept the White House and Congress: The nation’s labor unions, which organized so effectively last year to help elect President Obama, have been outmaneuvered so far on their top priority by their opponents in the business community.
“We were outspent, out-hustled and out-organized,” said one chagrined union advisor who was not authorized to speak by name.
“The legislation is severely challenged,” said John Wilhelm, hospitality president of Unite Here — the textile, hotel and culinary workers’ union. “The unified business community has been so strident about the issue, they have effectively achieved solidarity among Republican senators.”
The labor movement, somewhat divided, he said, has let Democratic support drift away.
No legislation is more important to the unions than the Employee Free Choice Act, which would ease the rules for forming bargaining units and, union leaders believe, help the depleted labor movement gain new members. Under its core provisions, unions could start a new bargaining unit at a company if a majority of workers simply signed cards requesting one, a process known as “card check.”
The new system would eliminate the company’s option to call for secret ballot elections, which union officials have long argued give companies the ability to manipulate and intimidate workers before a unionization vote.
Businesses fear that card check would leave workers vulnerable to coercion by union officials.
Organized labor believed it could push card check into law.
In 2007, the measure passed the House and gained more than 40 cosponsors in the Senate. Now, with even more Democrats in the Senate and Obama in the White House, the unions saw the odds in their favor. Obama’s campaign stump speech last fall included strong support for the legislation.
But once he was elected, labor leaders made a fateful decision. Originally, they had planned to keep in place their extensive network of field organizers, who had just worked to elect Democratic candidates, and ask them to build pressure on lawmakers to vote for card check.
Instead, they changed course. The labor groups scaled back, partly to give Obama time to get his bearings amid the deepening economic crisis.
Business groups, meanwhile, had started work well before the election and did not stop. They feared that card check would lead to new unions and higher labor costs. Opponents included retailers, such as Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart, as well as restaurant chains, construction firms and hotels.
More than 500 business and conservative organizations had formed the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace to coordinate an array of trade associations and other groups fighting card check. Since 2007, the umbrella group has spent as much as $10 million. Its members include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which on its own earmarked $20 million in 2008 and 2009 to defeat card check, on top of $35 million to elect business-friendly lawmakers in 2008.
Half a dozen other groups backed by corporate, GOP or conservative ideological interests have also joined the fray.
Before labor groups had fully engaged this winter, the allied business groups successfully cast the legislation as undemocratic: How could Congress oppose secret-ballot elections? They also hired well-connected lobbyists. For example, Wal-Mart, one of the nation’s largest employers and a staunch foe of unionization efforts, deployed Lincoln’s former chief of staff, as well as Pryor’s former legislative director.
But the most important part of the business strategy was coaxing thousands of small companies to pressure their lawmakers, particularly moderate Democratic senators such as Lincoln and Pryor.
Soon, Democrats were complaining at their weekly caucus meetings of being whipsawed by the powerful lobbying on both sides. The issue seemed to be everywhere. Even at a meeting on agriculture, one Lincoln aide recalled, card check would be raised prominently.
When it came to key senators, business interests outmuscled labor.
Lincoln, for example, reported overwhelmingly more calls and letters from business interests and their supporters than from the union side. And thanks to “airlift” programs run by the Chamber of Commerce and allied groups, some key senators received far more personal visits in Washington from card-check opponents than from supporters.
Ten airlifts came from Arkansas alone — on top of the 100 Arkansas business officials who arrived in April for an annual dinner with the state’s delegation.
The unions stepped up their pressure. On a frigid, blustery day in early April, 100 union members gathered outside Lincoln’s office in Little Rock and chanted for her to support the legislation.
“Who can give it to us?” a union organizer with a bullhorn asked.
“Sen. Lincoln!” shouted the union members.
But it was too late. Lincoln, the target of so many personal visits in Washington by business interests, had already decided to oppose the legislation.
Another target for both sides in the debate was Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who was then a Republican. Like Lincoln, he had cosponsored the card-check bill in 2007.
Pressure on him came from groups such as the Pennsylvania Food Merchants Assn., which represents grocery stores. In March, it reported to its members that Specter appeared to be “on the fence.” The group urged: “Your associates, friends, family and neighbors should flood Sen. Specter’s office with letters, phone calls and e-mail messages.”
Later that month, Specter announced that he would oppose the legislation in its current form.
At least a half-dozen senators who supported the legislation in 2007 either opposed the bill this year or expressed reservations. That left the unions short of the 60 Senate votes they need to overcome a bill-blocking filibuster.
With its chances fading, labor became divided. Wilhelm complained that another union, the Service Employees International Union, undermined labor unity by signaling openness to a compromise before the rest of the movement was consulted. The SEIU rejected the criticism, with its president, Andy Stern, saying in an interview that he and other major unions coordinated closely on card check.
The legislation’s chief sponsor, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), is trying to fashion a modified bill that can win the needed 60 votes.
One possible compromise: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a former cosponsor who now has reservations about the bill, would retain the card-signing process for workers to form unions. But, to ease concerns about coercion, she proposes that workers mail the cards to a third party rather than turn them in at the workplace.
tom.hamburger@latimes.com
Democrats Betray Labor
Card Check is Pronouced Dead
By DAVID MACARAY
Earlier this week it was acknowledged by labor officials and Democratic insiders that the EFCA (Employee Free Choice Act), as presently written, wasn’t going to pass. While the bill may be reintroduced in a different form, the crucial “card check” component has been pronounced dead. Although labor wonks across the country were disappointed by the news, most weren’t surprised by it.
Despite all the hoopla and anticipation, skeptics had predicted long ago that this ambitious bill, which would have provided working people with far greater access to labor unions, had virtually no chance of passing. Why? Because it was too explicitly “pro-labor.”
Big Business and the Democratic Party (despite its lip service) simply couldn’t allow legislation this progressive to become law. Not for nothing has Taft-Hartley remained on the books for 62 years.
Let’s clarify what the EFCA was and wasn’t. First, it wasn’t the draconian, anti-democratic measure it was portrayed to be by its Republican opponents and back-pedaling Democrats (e.g., Senator Diane Feinstein of California) who, while schmoozing with organized labor, were looking to bail.
There was nothing “anti-democratic” about it. Clearly, it was “public,” rather than “secret,” but how is that anti-democratic? Legislators use nay and yea votes on the floor of Congress hundreds of times a year, and a show of hands is used everywhere—from city councils to school boards to company boards of directors. How is card check “anti-democratic”?
If you want an example of “anti-democratic,” just consider the system that exists today—a system that allows a group of workers who actually want to join a union to be nonetheless prevented from doing so by a combination of stalling tactics and company propaganda.
You say you want to join a labor union? Fine, you have that legal right. What that means, precisely, is that you have the legal right to “want” to join. But the company can make you wait months and months before you vote, and has the authority to force you to attend hours of mandatory “fright seminars.”
Management has the right to barrage you with anti-union propaganda. They have the de facto right to threaten you, intimidate you, offer you bribes and promises, and spread false or slanderous information. And while those tactics are more or less legal (if you think they’re not, try fighting them in court), what isn’t legal is allowing you to simply sign a card saying you want to join. Now how topsy-turvy is that?
Second, instead of depicting the EFCA as some sort of wildly “radical” measure, let’s put it in perspective. What the EFCA would have given American workers is what they already have in Europe and Canada. Yes, they have this arrangement in Canada—our calm, stolid, unimaginative, boring neighbor to the north. We’re speaking here of Canada, people, not Albania.
Accordingly, as anti-labor as some members of Canada’s conservative party are, they would, frankly, be taken aback, if not staggered, by the suggestion that Canadian workers not be allowed to freely choose whether or not to belong to a union. While Canadian conservatives may regard unions as detrimental (and harbor the conceit that they themselves wouldn’t join one if given the opportunity), they don’t interfere with workers who choose to join. If only our country were as egalitarian.
How ironic is it—given our fetish for personal liberty—that it’s harder for an American to become a union member than for a foreigner to become a U.S. citizen?
And third, let’s not pretend that this debate had anything to do with the freedom of choice, or adherence to the Bill of Rights, or any other noble-sounding issue. Opposition to the EFCA was no more about a worker’s constitutional “right to choose” than it was about George Washington’s powdered wig.
Let’s be clear: This whole anti-EFCA drive was designed to keep the unions out. Everything else is smoke. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce didn’t spend tens of millions of dollars to promote some abstract principle involving a citizen’s right to choose; they did it to pierce the heart of organized labor.
So who do we blame for the defeat? Obviously, when something as big and expensive and widely publicized as the EFCA falls on its face, somebody has to be held accountable. In truth, organized labor seems the likeliest candidate.
Not only was labor unable to speak with one voice (e.g., UNITE HERE’s battle, SEIU’s leadership scandals, Change to Win’s breakaway from the AFL-CIO, et al), but they once again allowed themselves to be sweet-talked and misled by the Democrats. Yes, labor had on board its Russ Feingolds (D-WI) and Carl Levins (D-MI), but there were too many other DINOs (Democrats In Name Only) eager to jump ship.
In hindsight, organized labor should have relied more heavily on the support of America’s four “most popular” unions—police, firefighters, nurses and airline pilots. This would have helped clear the public relations hurdle raised by teachers, autoworkers and longshoremen, unions that have been receiving bad press.
As much as we like to think we’re an “issue-driven” electorate, it’s often a handsome face, a nice smile, or a famous family name that wins elections. After all, isn’t it the cute weather girl who gets hired for TV, and not the nerdy meteorologist?
Unbelievable as this sounds, it was reported that one of Governor Rod Blagojevich’s staffers once told him “he had the hair” to become U.S. president. And polls showed that 25% of Republican males approved of Sarah Palin because they found her “hot.” (That whirring sound in the background is James Madison spinning in his grave.)
Still, organized labor may not have invented the game, but they’re compelled to play it. Therefore, “pretty” unions (police, firemen, pilots) are going to be more popular than the conspicuously “ugly” ones—like teachers, who are being blamed for the nation’s low test scores, and the UAW, which, as urban myth has it, was responsible for killing the American auto industry and Detroit along with it.
At the EFCA’s coming-out party, the American Labor Movement should have dolled itself up before entering the room. It should have made the grand, sweeping entrance worthy of a prized debutante. Instead, it chose to conduct business in its usual, plodding fashion. Granted, it’s easy to second-guess, but organized labor clearly needs a makeover.
Of course, we’re already hearing people say, “Wait til 2010,” suggesting the Democrats will pick up enough senate seats to have those 60 votes necessary for cloture. The problem with that logic is it assumes the Democrats want card check to pass. Alas, there’s little evidence to support that assumption.
David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright (“Americana,” “Larva Boy”) and writer, was a former labor union rep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net
The Union Bosses, and the Hollywood elite either think the rank-and-file-dues-paying-members are either too stupid or too lazy to read the “Employee Free Choice Act of 2009” at the Library of Congress Thomas website http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.1409: because they keep saying that Card Check doesn’t eliminate the secret ballot.
“SEC. 2. `(6) Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, whenever a petition shall have been filed by an employee or group of employees or any individual or labor organization acting in their behalf alleging that a majority of employees in a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining wish to be represented by an individual or labor organization for such purposes, the Board shall investigate the petition. If the Board finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations designating the individual or labor organization specified in the petition as their bargaining representative and that no other individual or labor organization is currently certified or recognized as the exclusive representative of any of the employees in the unit, the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative described in subsection (a).”
“…the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative described in subsection…”
Nope, Card Check doesn’t eliminate the ‘secret ballot’ it eliminates the ENTIRE VOTE! If this is truly ‘our’ Union, why do the International Union Elite keep lying to us about something that is so easy to check?!? Is honesty and integrity too much to ask for from ‘our’ leadership?!?
On Feb 8th of this year, SEIU International President Andy Stern sent out the following “tweet”:
“Why won’t Tom Donahe debate me on employee free choice #EFCAfail4:10 PM Feb 8th from mobile web SEIU_AndyStern “
Since May 15th, I have been calling President Stern’s office at 1(202)730-7300 no more than once per business day and offering to take up President Stern’s challenge to debate him. Since then, I have not received a single message from President Stern himself, though my local Union Rep (who I have far more respect for than I have for President Stern since Andy seems to be too busy and important to talk to this dumb ‘prole’ where as my Rep has been respectful, polite and professional and is willing to have an honest conversation with me about a topic we clearly don‘t agree on) did contact me and offer to discuss Card Check with me, though I was left with the distinct impression that my Rep’s call was prompted by “up the chain of command” and because of my calls to President Stern.
So this all begs the question, Why won’t President Stern debate me on the Union usurpation of choice from employees? Or perhaps he simply doesn’t want to risk loosing a public debate with a high-school drop-out against his Ivy-league collage education? I mean, that would be pretty embarrassing…
So if ‘our’ Union is willing to lie to it’s own members about this, what else are they lying to us about?!?
Verum Ad Potentia
NO SOLIDARITY FOR LABOR
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_24/b4135028917564.htm
SEIU chief Stern dismisses fears that union conflicts will derail progress Chris Usher
By Michael Orey and Jane Sasseen
BW Magazine
Months after helping put Barack Obama in the White House, organized labor’s most important unions are sliding into vicious internecine warfare.
The strife has become so intense that the senior Democratic leadership is intervening. The Democrats, under pressure from labor to pass legislation that would make it much easier to unionize workplaces, fear the disputes will further erode support for the controversial issue; they also need union support to help secure popular backing for health-care reform. While the business lobby has so far been surprisingly successful at stalling the unionization bill, known as the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), it will have a tougher time getting its way on labor issues and on health care if the unions bring their quarreling to an end.
At the heart of the dispute is a three-way fight between the Service Employees International (SEIU), the country’s second-biggest union, and two factions of Unite Here, until recently one of the fastest-growing unions. The two leaders of Unite Here, Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm, have fought bitterly over strategy and finances. On May 28, Raynor quit the union and joined 100,000 of his followers who had affiliated in March with the SEIU, which is commanded by Andrew L. Stern.
The much larger SEIU might now organize the same workers as Unite Here, and could claim a large share of the troubled union’s $400 million in assets. Wilhelm is fighting back. “The unified approach that the labor movement hoped for has been derailed by Andy Stern and SEIU,” says Wilhelm. Stern vehemently disputes that notion. “I don’t think the labor movement has ever worked more closely on an issue than it has on EFCA,” he says.
Epic struggles inside Big Labor are nothing new. But this fight—plus another clash involving a breakaway chapter of the SEIU in California—comes at a bad time for the Democratic leadership as it prepares for critical legislative efforts. Democratic senators met on June 3 to discuss possible compromises needed to pass EFCA, also known as card check. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has done a highly effective job of stalling the legislation by pressuring moderate Democrats to withhold their support for the bill in its current form, since it would do away with secret ballots at union-organizing votes.
Most Democratic senators want to see a compromise that would keep the secret ballot but otherwise make it easier for unions to organize. Stern says he is open to approaches that would garner the 60 votes needed to overcome a potential filibuster, but Wilhelm accuses him of not consulting adequately with other unions.
GRASSROOTS SKILLS
The spectacle of union leaders quarreling openly about a bill they consider a top priority doesn’t help the Democrats. Says one party official close to top SEIU leaders: “They could use their money to organize politically instead of fighting other unions.” The Democrats need the grassroots skills of the SEIU and other unions to push back against the Chamber’s shrewd recruitment of business owners to oppose the EFCA.
Prominent Democrats and other labor leaders are now getting involved. Sources say Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid met with top union officials to get them to settle their differences. And on May 28, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten sent a letter to Raynor and Wilhelm, telling them: “This conflict is causing collateral damage…. The longer it continues, the less likely we are to enact a strong Employee Free Choice Act.”
Stern dismisses the idea that the infighting is derailing labor’s progress in Washington. It’s a sign of union strength, he argues, that discussions on card check continue. “No other bill could have withstood this kind of opposition and still survived,” he says.
Still, labor supporters like Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group, are worried. “Any time you have labor fighting, it gives politicians an excuse to buy big business’ argument,” he says. Stern ripostes that progress is still being made. Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis and Health & Human Services head Kathleen Sebelius were both championed by the SEIU; White House political director Patrick Gaspard is an SEIU veteran. Obama’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board are expected to vigilantly oversee efforts to form unions and bargain collectively.
The next challenge is health care. Labor groups have helped keep a government-funded insurance option—a key union goal—on the table. Union lobbyists have also so far fended off the idea of taxing health-care benefits to fund universal coverage. Some 500 full-time organizers from the SEIU are working to build grassroots support for the union version of health-care reform. Democrats hope a reunified labor movement will do even more.
with Christopher Palmeri in Los Angeles, Moira Herbst in New York, and David Kiley in Detroit
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