Card Check and Gut Check

By Harold Meyerson

Thursday, May 14, 2009

If our nation was governed by business's version of democratic choice, we would hold elections to determine the winner, but nearly half the time the incumbent would remain in power even if he lost.

In its campaign to derail the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), business has fearlessly depicted itself as the defender of elections and the secret ballot as well as the foe of the dread "card check" -- the process, championed by unions and included within EFCA, that would allow workers to sign union affiliation cards rather than compelling them to go through a ratification election in which harassment and firings of workers are all too common.

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.

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Labor to Big Biz: You won't derail employee free choice!

Author: John Wojcik

The labor movement remains undaunted in its push for the Employee Free Choice Act despite the defection of Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, the only Republican member of the Senate who had supported the measure. Specter announced March 24 that he will now oppose the legislation.

Stewart Acuff, special assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, described the defection as a result of “corporate America’s increasingly desperate efforts to maintain their destructive stranglehold on our economy and on our lives. They have lied over and over ad nauseam about the Employee Free Choice Act and they have tried to bully U.S. Senators just as they do workers who try to form unions. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to obfuscate, distract, and confuse the public and lawmakers.”

The right wing drive has reached into the Republican primary elections in Pennsylvania where the latest Quinnipiac University poll shows that Specter may have difficulty keeping his seat in 2010. He’s trailing former Congressman Pat Toomey 41 to 27 percent in the Republican primary.

Sources in the labor movement say that union leaders had met with the senator to assure him that, had he remained a supporter of employee free choice, labor would have worked to get union members to cross over from the Democratic Party to vote for him in the Republican primary.

Union leaders believe that, despite the setback with the loss of Specter, who was a cosponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act two years ago, labor has what it takes to win passage of the measure.

“What grassroots American movement can, in the span of one week, run 57 letters to the editor in newspapers across America, send 14,000 handwritten letters to 10 U.S. senators, and simultaneously plan 35 grassroots advocacy events with workers in 10 states? America’s labor movement can,” Acuff said.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said that while Specter’s cave-in to corporate lobbyists is disappointing, it won’t blunt the momentum behind the fight to protect the right of workers to form unions and bargain for a better life.

“The fact is the Employee Free Choice Act has more support than ever,” Sweeney said, “with large majorities in both houses of Congress, the president and vice president, and 73 percent of the public. We do not plan to let a hardball campaign from big business derail the Employee Free Choice Act or the dreams of workers."

Specter’s main excuse for backing down was that “it is not best to consider measures that would increase unionization during a recession.” The labor movement’s position is that, historically, the nation’s most important labor law reforms have been made during tough economic times. The National Labor Relations Act, which made encouragement of collective bargaining rights the official policy of the government, was enacted during the Great Depression. Labor’s position is that the higher wages and better benefits that would result from greater union density would provide the economy with the boost that it needs.

There is evidence that this point of view is taking hold well beyond the ranks of the labor movement.

The Wall Street Journal admitted on its editorial page recently that the Employee Free Choice Act would not destroy secret ballot elections.

The Economic Policy Institute recently released a study by John DiNardo, professor of Economics and Policy at the University of Michigan, that says unions do not harm businesses and do not destroy jobs.

CNBC’s strongly pro-business host, Erin Burnett, said on Meet the Press, recently, that the “populist rage” sweeping America results from 30 years of stagnant and declining wages, anger over CEOs making 400 times what the average worker earns, and from a recession created, at least in part, by a lack of demand and buying power.”

Growing support for the Employee Free Choice Act has forced even sections of big business to put forward what they describe as “compromise measures.” Starbucks, Costco and Whole Foods have endorsed their own version of labor law reform which leaves in place the company-dominated elections and includes no requirements for companies to negotiate once a union is formed.

“Though their so called compromise is totally inadequate,” Acuff said, “it does signal that the ranks of corporate America have broken down as the passage of employee free choice becomes more inevitable. “It is a rare, beautiful thing when we see the class solidarity of the upper classes break down. Sometimes it mistakenly seems that the class solidarity of the upper classes is the most powerful thing in our political economy. Of course, it isn’t as we learned in November of 2008 and are learning again today.”

Note:
In his statement Specter also cited his concern that passage of the Act would eliminate the secret ballot elections. Would somebody please send him a copy of the Wall Street Journal editorial - B.A.

Economic Crisis:

Global Labor Needs a Global Stimulus

By Scott Marshall

“Workers of the World Unite” is back by popular demand. And not just by demand, but by necessity.

Global transnational corporations and their partners finance capital are working full time to craft an economic solution to the world crisis that preserves their enormous profits and power while putting the burden of recovery on working people. How could it be otherwise?

The capitalist beast has not changed its spots. But it has mutated into a much larger, globally interconnected, behemoth. Its institutions, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization are in full swing. Not to mention the infamous G8 and G20 big country summits. Of course, none of these even have seats at the table for labor.

The global nature of the economic crisis, and the vast, new levels of global economic integration all demand that labor develop its own global strategy.

The recent meeting of world labor leaders in Washington, DC at the time of the last G20 emergency meeting was a very good start. (Read about it in the People’s Weekly World) This meeting of labor leaders from the big economies mapped out some important strings that should be attached to any global deals to protect the public interest. But labor needs to go far beyond just adding its own conditions to the plans being hatched by these global capitalist forums.

First the crisis demands that world labor take steps to accelerate the growing trend of international labor cooperation and even organizational integration. An important first step is world labor unity. How about the merger of global labor federations and industry groups without regard to political or ideological conditions – an end to the cold war for good? It also means further development of initiatives like the United Steelworkers and the British Unite the Union merger into a new global union. (Read about it here) These are all parts of a growing objective process that matches labor unity to the actual conditions of global capital. Again Workers of the World Unite!

Secondly, global labor needs a global program. This will take a lot of discussion. It will take the best thinking of us all. The truth is that the massive impact of the global economic disaster on working families everywhere, can make demands that seemed utopian and impractical in the past, realistic solutions for today.

For example don’t we need a massive global economic stimulus that creates jobs? How about a project by the G8 nations to provide clean drinking water for the billions of people who live without it around the world? Not only would this global infrastructure project be a major blow for world health, it could create millions of jobs in areas that need them most. Such a project would help build sustainable infrastructure for further development in poverty stricken areas of the globe.

Or how about a global minimum wage? As a beginning, why not set minimum standards for transnational companies that prowl the globe in search of cheap labor? They can afford it. Such a minimum wage would have to be based on real circumstances in any given country. But a global minimum wage would protect the living standards of workers in developed countries by raising living standards everywhere. Better wages and benefits help lift standards all around.

Lastly global labor needs to intensify its fight for global labor rights. Stronger labor movements help curb the worst excesses of global capital run wild. At home we need the Employee Free Choice Act to better defend the interests of all working people. More labor power is a counter balance to corporate greed and corruption. The kind of greed and corruption that helped produced the current economic crisis in the first place. Sustainable economic development requires more democracy in the system. Unions contribute to democracy by giving workers a bigger collective voice.

Stronger labor organizations will result in workers and their families keeping more of the wealth they produce. Unions raise the standards for all workers by creating upward pressure on wages and working conditions around them. This in turn creates more demand from below for goods and services making for a more sustainable economy.

Workers of the world unite – now more than ever!