It’s no secret that many Republican lawmakers dislike labor unions, which are big supporters of Democrats. But it’s unusual to see a politician willing to castigate an employer in his state just for talking to union officials about setting up a union at its factory.
Consider the case of Bob Corker, the Republican senator from Tennessee, and Volkswagen, the German automaker that employs 2,000 workers at a plant in Chattanooga. As my colleague Steven Greenhouse reported last week, the company is working with the United Auto Workers on a plan to unionize its factory so it can establish what is known as a “works council” in Germany. These councils are essentially committees of workers that meet with management to discuss how to improve conditions and productivity. Some studies have found that plants with such committees have higher productivity and wages than factories without them, which is why both workers and management might want them.
But Mr. Corker appears to have never seen a union he liked. In an interview with the Associated Press, he called Volkswagen’s decision to engage in these talks “incomprehensible” and said the company would become a “laughingstock in the business world” if it went ahead with the plan. His criticism is particularly strange because he is reported to have played a big role in bringing Volkswagen to Chattanooga, where he was once mayor. To be fair, Mr. Corker is not alone; the governor of his state, the Republican Bill Haslam, is also opposed to the Volkswagen-U.A.W. plan.
The lawmakers say they are worried that a unionized Volkswagen plant would somehow ruin the investment climate in the state and compel other companies not to invest there. A more realistic explanation for why the lawmakers oppose the U.A.W.’s foray into their state is that they fear it will support the state’s Democratic party.
The strangest thing about Mr. Corker’s and Mr. Haslam’s criticism of Volkswagen is that Republicans are usually on the ones telling everybody else in government not to meddle in the affairs of profit-making businesses. After all, it’s their mantra that businesses, not lawmakers, create jobs. But I guess none of that matters in this case because even a company as successful and profitable as Volkswagen, which is competing with Toyota and General Motors to be the world’s largest automaker, must be deluded if it’s entertaining the possibility of working with a dreaded union.
By: Vikas Bajaj, Editors Blog, The New York Times, September 12, 2013
September 13, 2013
Posted by raemd95 |
Businesses, Unions | Bill Haslam, Bob Corker, Republicans, Tennessee, Union Busting, United Auto Workers, Volkswagen, Workers |
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The financial challenges low- and middle-income Americans face are daunting. But the poor and middle class are in an equally serious, if less well recognized, political predicament: the government has become almost entirely unresponsive to them.
This a profound political failure. A democracy in which government policy responds to the rich and not to the poor or the middle class is a democracy unworthy of the name.
For several decades now, we have tried to deal with the problem of money in politics with campaign finance regulation, but reform has failed. Political actors, enabled by the Supreme Court, have responded to regulations simply by redirecting their spending in unregulated directions.
The end of campaign-finance reform, however, is not the end of the line. Although we pay too little attention to this fact, there are still sources of power in American politics that are not dependent on wealth. Primary among these is political organization. In fact, the best hope for restoring political equality is to make it easier for the poor and middle class to organize politically.
Throughout much of the 20th century, we had a legal system in the United States that was remarkably successful at promoting just this kind of political organizing. That legal system was labor law, and it is not a coincidence that during these same decades the labor union was able to serve as a highly successful political voice for the lower and middle classes.
Unions, after all, represent workers, nearly all of whom are in the income classes currently lacking effective political representation. Unions turned out their members to vote and consolidated millions of modest contributions into powerful campaign and lobbying operations. Sometimes, unions pushed for politically liberal causes, and sometimes for conservative ones. But when they were powerful, unions were able to insist that government policy respond to the views of the poor and the middle class.
In contemporary America, however, there is a nearly insurmountable impediment to unions’ ability to serve as a collective political voice for workers. It stems from the legal requirement that unions bundle political organization with collective bargaining, which means that in order to take advantage of the union as a form of political organization, workers must organize economically for collective bargaining purposes.
This bundling of functions, an artifact of how unions formed historically, is a major problem for political organizing today. This is true most obviously because managerial opposition to collective bargaining has become pervasive. It is also true because changes in markets have made the practice of collective bargaining difficult. And because substantial numbers of American workers say they do not want to collectively bargain with their employers, traditional unions are not an attractive form of political organization for many.
All of this has contributed to a dramatic decrease in unionization rates, which has in turn played a central role in the declining responsiveness of government.
But what if we unbundle the union and allow workers to organize politically without also organizing for collective bargaining? If we shift our aim away from reviving collective bargaining and toward enabling political organizing by underrepresented groups, we would allow workers to organize “political unions” even when they don’t want to organize collective bargaining ones.
It’s more straightforward than it sounds. The key is that we would make the workplace available as a site for political organization. While the law would continue to protect workers’ right to organize traditional unions, it would also protect workers’ right to organize strictly political ones. Workers would have the right to talk about politics with one another at work, as long as they did so during nonworking time.
Employers would be prohibited from retaliating against their employees who organized politically, and if the workers did form a political union, they would be entitled — as traditional unions are — to use voluntary payroll deductions to finance their activities. But these political unions would be prohibited from collective bargaining, and no worker would ever be required to pay dues to a political union — or to be represented by one — unless she chose to be.
The types of policies that political unions chose to pursue would be entirely up to their members. Some might fight for bread-and-butter issues like a higher minimum wage, but others might concentrate on social issues or even foreign policy. But whatever issues they chose to pursue, these unions would give a political voice to those in America who currently lack one.
Campaign-finance reform has failed because it does nothing to address the underlying disparities in wealth distribution that produce political inequality in the first place. Legal reforms that enable political organizing are fundamentally different because organization, like wealth, is its own source of political power.
Allowing workers to organize for politics, even when they decide not to organize for collective bargaining, would help restore balance to a democracy that wealth has so badly skewed.
By: Benjamin I. Sachs, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times, September 1, 2013
September 2, 2013
Posted by raemd95 |
Economic Inequality, Unions | Collective Bargaining, Democracy, Labor Day, Low Income, Middle Class, Politics, Wages, Workers |
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It takes a lot to get Theodore J. St. Antoine mad. But what really got my Uncle Ted’s Irish up (our family hails from County Roscommon) was Michigan Governor Rick Snyder conspiring with the Republican-controlled legislature to turn the ancestral home of American labor into a “right-to-work” state – and to do it through fast-track legislation snuck through without public hearings or even notice while angry citizens mobilizing to protest this desecration of Michigan’s heritage were barred by police from their own State Capitol until the wretched deed was done.
The new law, says the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, was passed “in a travesty of normal democratic deliberation” as Snyder and Republicans rushed the right-to-work bill through a lame-duck session in a way that was “insidious.”
The anti-union crowd waited until after the election to pass it, said Dionne. Then Snyder, who had previously avoided taking a stand on right-to-work “miraculously discovered that it would be a first-rate economic development measure.”
Further, the law was attached to an appropriations bill as a rider to make it much harder for voters to later challenge the law through a popular referendum. It was the first time, Ted told the Wall Street Journal, he had ever seen a right-to-work law passed using a spending bill as a human shield to prevent the people from later shooting it down.
And so in a curtly-worded letter to Governor Snyder, Ted, who is a long-time labor law professor and one-time dean of the University of Michigan Law School, wrote this: “You have been elected to represent all the people of this State. You should do so.”
Ted now devotes most of his time to speaking and writing about subjects like the Model Employment Termination Act, a law he wrote as official draftsperson and which protects workers against arbitrary and capricious bosses.
As I said, Ted has a long fuse and his equanimity has been honed by years spent mediating union and management disputes, including the dozens of Major League Baseball arbitrations he’s settled involving super stars (and super-sized egos) like Curt Schilling, Sandy Alomar, Jr. and Darryl Strawberry.
And so Ted was surprised and disappointed that Governor Snyder, who posed as a sensible centrist, would act in such a ruthless and underhanded way against labor in a state that honors and even reveres labor unions.
“Although I am a life-long Democrat, I voted for you because I felt you had the business acumen and the balanced judgment to lead Michigan through some serious financial difficulties,” Ted said to Governor Snyder.
Though he understood the pressures Snyder was under, Ted said the Governor’s actions were disappointing nonetheless since “almost no one who seriously studies labor relations believes so-called ‘right-to-work’ legislation is a matter of ‘worker freedom.'”
Existing federal and state law already forbids workers from joining a union against their will or being subject to its discipline, said Ted. What the law does require is that if a majority of the employees want union representation, the union and the employer may agree that all the employees in the unit must pay their fair share of the representation costs that the union is legally obligated to provide for all the employees in the unit, without discrimination among union members and nonmembers, said Ted.
“Right-to-work” laws, said Ted, allow some workers to become “free riders” who benefit from the fruits of the union’s negotiating without having to pay for those benefits.
“It’s wholly contrary to democratic principles to argue that the minority need not pay what can fairly be described as the tax that the majority has levied to fund the collective representative,” said Ted.
But let’s be honest with ourselves, Ted told Snyder. “‘Right-to-work’ legislation is not proposed for the benefit of workers. Its proponents are the same persons who in the past have opposed minimum wages, workers’ compensation, Social Security, and a wide range of other social legislation.”
Right-to-work laws are supposed to attract new business into a state, but studies say their track record is mixed as best. “What we do know is that as union strength has waned, income and wealth inequality in this country has greatly increased,” said Ted. “Both the working class and the middle class have been the losers. And the true objective of ‘right-to-work’ legislation is to stifle even further the strength of unions.”
Indeed, as Dionne says, “the moral case for unions is that they give bargaining strength to workers who would have far less capacity to improve their wages and benefits negotiating as individuals. Further gutting unions is the last thing we need to do at a time when the income gap is growing.”
And not just the income gap. At a time when Big Money is stronger than ever, our democracy pays a huge price not having the countervailing power which labor unions provide.
It’s hard not to see this vote against unions, so quickly after Republicans were soundly defeated all throughout the union strongholds of the Midwest, as being a petulant reprisal against those who beat them and an effort to pave the road to Republican victories in 2014 by using the law to erode the foundations of the opposition.
After Republicans lost the popular vote for the fifth time in the last sixth presidential elections, Dionne said he was initially hopeful Republicans understood “new thinking might be in order.”
But after the sneak attack Republicans launched against labor in Lansing, Dionne is not so sure anything has really changed. It now looks as if Republicans are once again in the hands of those who reject adjusting to a new electorate and new circumstances and instead believe the strategy for future victories lies in using naked government power to “alter the political playing field in a way that diminishes the political influence of groups likely to be hostile to the conservative agenda.”
And that is why my disappointed uncle sent his “Dear Rick” letter to Michigan’s Governor Snyder.
By: Ted Frier, Open Salon, December 19, 2012
December 20, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Collective Bargaining, Unions | Anti-Union, Income Inequality, Michigan, Middle Class, Politics, Republicans, Rick Snyder, Right-to-work law |
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A common refrain among union critics is that Americans no longer need unions—that unions were well and good for the exploited sweatshop workers of a century ago, but today’s empowered Americans need no such crutch.
With workers’ incomes falling, and with the United States leading all industrial nations in the percentage of its workers in low-wage jobs, it’s increasingly clear that today, we need unions for many of the same reasons that the workers of 1912 did: They’re exploited and underpaid. But if it’s only the nation’s most exploited workers who need to band together, why have America’s most talented employees formed unions of their own?
Actors, writers, directors, and cinematographers all have unions. Baseball, football, and basketball players have unions. And now, ESPN.com reports, America’s track and field athletes want a union of their own as well.
The immediate grievance that has spurred the athletes to action is Rule 40 of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which prohibits Olympic athletes from advertising for non-Olympic sponsors in the days leading up to and then during the Olympic games—that is, when they are most marketable. Rather than just trying to get the IOC to change this one provision, however, the athletes have decided to form a union to win more power for themselves with the IOC on a host of issues.
Among the leaders of this effort is Olympics star Sanya Richards-Ross, who told ESPN:
I’ve seen my husband [Aaron Ross, a cornerback for the Jacksonville Jaguars], who has been in the NFL for six years, an I’ve seen what a strong players’ union does, not only for the benefit of the players but the benefit of the sport. … There are unions in every industry because they need to have that voce, not just for financial reasons but for consideration of other things.
Scott Blackmun, the CEO of the United States Olympic Committee, expressed openness to the athletes’ initiative. While declining to comment on their specific proposal, he told ESPN, “I understand the desire and need on the part of the athletes to try and create some real estate they can sell during the 16 days they’re really at the peak of their careers, so I am sympathetic to the need and desire to do that.”
Not exactly a union-busting tirade. But then, Blackmun can’t parrot the standard talking points of most American CEOs. He can’t go after Richards-Ross and the other athletes leading the union initiative as outside agitators or cynical union bosses. He can’t because the athletes are irreplaceable. And in American labor relations today, it’s only the irreplaceable workers, paradoxically, who can unionize.
As a stream of studies has demonstrated, most organizing drives founder because management fires a number of the workers involved. (It’s illegal to fire them, but the penalties are negligible.) Just about the only workers who can unionize without fear of being fired are workers whom management can’t replace—the famous, the highly skilled. That’s why athletes and entertainers can organize and strike. Airline pilots can be replaced, but not immediately, not in large numbers. If they strike, they wreak havoc on the nation’s travel.
American management’s war on unions has already helped reduce the percentage of unionized private-sector workers from 35 percent in the middle of the last century to less than 7 percent today. One day soon, the only remaining unionized workers may be America’s most celebrated and talented employees. And the fact that even they need a union to win better compensation and safer working conditions makes it pretty clear that every other employee needs one, too.
By: Harold Meyerson, Editor-at-Large, The American Prospect, September 25, 2012
September 27, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Unions | Colective Bargaining, Income, International Olympic Committee, Politics, Private Sector, Sports, Track and field, U.S. Olympic Committee, Workers |
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In 1961, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the United Auto Workers about what the civil rights movement had learned from the labor movement. He said that, in the 1930s, “you creatively stood up for your rights by sitting down at your machines, just as our courageous students are sitting down at lunch counters across the South.”
When King was describing the “kinship” between the two movements, organized labor was strong, representing about a third of the non-agricultural private-sector workforce. The civil rights movement was still a fledgling campaign, not yet having won passage of the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act.
This Labor Day, the roles have reversed. The civil rights movement is the nation’s iconic cause. The gay rights movement, hardly a blip on the radar screen a half-century ago, is winning meaningful victories in the courts and in legislatures. But unions are on the road to virtual extinction.
Even public-sector unions, now a majority of the labor movement, are on the defensive. A new movie, “Won’t Back Down,” unfairly paints teachers unions as impediments to quality education for students of color. One character asks, “When did Norma Rae get to be the bad guy?”
To revive itself, labor must rediscover its roots as an early civil rights movement for workers. In some places, this is already starting to happen. On Aug. 11, the AFL-CIO held a massive rally in Philadelphia demanding a “Second Bill of Rights,” including the right to organize and bargain collectively. This summer, the UAW has been trying to organize a Nissan plant in Canton, Miss., where 70 percent of the workforce is African American, using a civil rights frame.
“The civil rights experience was fought on that very ground,” the UAW’s Gary Casteel told Reuters. “We’ve been saying that worker rights is the civil rights battle of the 21st century.”
In particular, unions should emulate three strategies of the civil rights movement.
First, labor must make clear, in word and deed, that it is part of a broader movement for social justice and against concentrated wealth and power, not just a special interest concerned only with its membership. The civil rights movement has succeeded when it has made a pitch for ending discrimination universally, and it has struggled when focusing on narrow, race-specific preferences. Labor has a good case to make: When union wages increase, nonunion employers respond by raising pay, too, to attract workers. And each percentage-point decline in the U.S. unionization rate has been accompanied by a comparable fall in the proportion of income going to the middle class.
Second, unions need to show that they are a vehicle for vindicating the individual rights that Americans hold dear against the power of large employers and the government. Just as King fought for individual civil rights as a fulfillment of the Declaration of Independence’s promise of equal opportunity, so the labor movement should fight for individuals’ First Amendment right to engage in the freedom of association, including the right to form a union.
Third, like the civil rights movement, labor needs to codify its notion of rights through strong federal legislation. The crowning glory of the civil rights movement is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which through the force of law and sanctions helped delegitimize racial bias. Organized labor has the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which institutionalizes the right to organize, but its sanctions are so weak that employers routinely flout the law and pay the penalties. In part because employers frequently fire or demote employees for trying to unionize, the watchdog group Freedom House rates the United States as less free for labor than 41 other nations.
The Civil Rights Act should be amended to outlaw employment discrimination not only on the basis of race and sex, but also for exercising the right to join a union. Doing so would allow employees to sue in federal court and to receive compensatory and punitive damages from employers. It would stigmatize employers who broke the law as civil rights violators. Without employers trying to block organization, polls suggest that many American workers would join unions, if given a free choice.
Organized labor has been written off before. But if a civil rights approach succeeds in strengthening the movement, more people will join it. And if part of the reason the gay rights movement is succeeding is that more people know someone who is gay, the growth of the labor movement could generate a similar virtuous cycle for American unions.
By: Richard D. Kahlenberg and Moshe Z. Marvit
September 3, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Civil Rights, Unions | Income Gap, Labor, Labor Day, Middle Class, Politics, Private Sector, United Auto Workers, Wages |
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