THE LIBERAL VOICE

Unions should organize unemployed

Where’s the Outrage Over Workers Getting the Shaft?

By Marie Cocco        www.truthdig.com

No cable television rants. No congressional hearing staged to publicly whip those responsible for so transparent a betrayal. Not a pitchfork in sight.

    You would be hard-pressed to know that American workers suffered a cruel defeat last week when Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter—the lone Republican to have once supported a measure that would make it easier for workers to form unions and more likely that employers would negotiate in good faith—effectively killed the effort for this year.READ FULL ARTICLE

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090330_make_them_pay/

Worker opposition to Ford-UAW agreement reflected in votes

By Lawrence Porter    world wide socialist website

Despite massive pressure from United Auto Workers officials, workers at three Ford Motor company plants have voted to reject the concessionary contract amendment supported by the union. The vote, under conditions of an historic crisis in the auto industry, is a direct repudiation of the pro-company policies of the union.

The UAW signed the contract with Ford believing that an agreement there would give it a boost in pushing through concessions at General Motors and Chrysler. Ron Gettelfinger, UAW president, hailed the proposed agreement with Ford as a breakthrough and has called on workers at GM and Chrysler to follow suit.

However, the union is running into sizeable opposition. According to reports released today, in several locals the contract was either rejected or barely passed. In three locals, workers voted down the contract overwhelmingly. READ FULL ARTICLE

3,000 Rally in Chicago for Employee Free Choice

AFL-CIO BLOG

Last night, some 3,000 gathered in Chicago to demand that Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would protect workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain and prevent corporations from dominating employees’ decisions about forming a union.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that participants heard from workers who were coerced and harassed by their bosses for attempting to form a union, as well as from union leaders and elected officials like Rep. Danny Davis, who was one of the 10 Illinois House members who co-sponsored the bill in 2007. READ FULL POST

Unions push for Organizing Act

Unite Here rep explains why the union is campaigning for the Employee Free Choice Act

The Little Unions That Couldn't

By T. A. Frank                     Washington Monthly

Supporting EFCA
Originally uploaded by Change to Win

In Washington, the rhetoric over EFCA has centered on one specific element of the legislation called "card check." Under the proposed new law, if a majority of employees fill out cards authorizing a union to represent them, the union is automatically certified. Currently, employers can demand a secret-ballot election among employees to reaffirm the results. EFCA would eliminate this option. Republicans have called this a threat to liberty and democratic values. Democrats counter that it’s essential to protecting workers against employer coercion. But this squabble is a distraction. In reality, card check is the least important part of a very important bill. The following story should help explain why. READ FULL ARTICLE

L.A. charter staff reaches out to teachers union

UTLA Walk Out 6/6/08
Originally uploaded by MsShutterBug

By Howard Blume    LA TIMES


Nearly 80% of teachers and other qualified staff members at The Accelerated School south of downtown have turned in pro-union signature cards, organizers said last week. A simple majority would be needed to make Accelerated's faculty the first from an independent charter to join forces with United Teachers Los Angeles, which is trying to expand its influence. CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE

The Coming fight over Employee Free Choice Act(EFCA)

Originally uploaded by AFSCME.org

Global Research, January 19, 2009
By Sherwood Ross

It’s estimated 86,000 workers got fired trying to exercise their legal right to organize a union during the Bush years and signs are Corporate American will fight to keep things that way.

“We like driving the car,” Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott says, “and we’re not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us.” (Or share-the-ride with their hires.)

Until now, the surest way to lose your job or get sent to vocational Siberia at outfits like Wal-Mart has been to urge your co-workers to organize. No matter the UN Declaration of Human Rights Article 23 states “Everyone has the right to form and join trade unions...”

Scott and others are girding for a fight to stop the Employee Free Choice Act(EFCA) that would allow employees to unionize if a majority sign membership cards. It’s a much simpler method than staging company-wide elections by secret ballot.

EFCA would also stiffen penalties for intimidating or firing union supporters and impose arbitration when a firm won’t bargain. “Though union membership has slid to 12 percent in recent decades, the desire to unionize has grown” from 30% to 53% of nonunion workers since the mid-1980s, writes author Esther Kaplan in The Nation (Jan. 26).

Unionized workers, Kaplan notes, can earn nearly 30 percent more than nonunion toilers, plus they enjoy far better health and retirement benefits. Even nonunion workers cash in from unions: “when unions reach a high enough density in a particular industry, wages in nonunion shops tend to rise to meet the new standard,” Kaplan writes.

Candidate Obama backed EFCA: “If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union; it’s that simple,” he opined last April. “Let’s stand up to the business lobby.”

EFCA is a priority to level the workplace playing field. Kate Bronfenbrenner, the Cornell labor guru, says employers fire workers in one-fourth of organizing campaigns; threaten them with plant closings or outsourcing in half of campaigns; and threaten to fire them in meetings in two-thirds of campaigns.

“The fact that our labor law has no penalties for employer violations, no punitive damages, no financial penalties, that the worst thing that happens to employers when they commit egregious violations is a slap on the wrist, has emboldened employers to break the law at an extreme that is really astonishing,” The Nation quotes Bronfenbrenner as saying.

It’s so tough to organize, Kaplan points out, that unions avoid elections in favor of exerting public pressure on employers. In the past decade, election petitions plunged 41 percent.

When Communications Workers of America, for example, attempted to unionize Cingular, now AT&T, it signed 30,000 new members but lost three elections as a “result of antiunion threats from Comcast,” Kaplan writes. Under EFCA’s card check deal, the result likely would have a union victory.

No matter how much U.S. workers improved their productivity, during the Bush years their share of the profits pie shrank as CEO’s stuffed their own pay envelopes.

“Corporate profits have doubled since 2001, while real wages have flatlined and the number of workers earning poverty wages has risen to nearly a quarter of the workforce,” Kaplan writes.

Employers are fighting EFCA on grounds it takes away a workers’ right to the secret ballot. Actually, current law allows both the secret ballot and majority card sign-up, at the employers’ discretion. Under EFCA, employees would be the ones to choose.

The Chamber of Commerce says EFCA will devastate small employers and suppress economic growth. In fact, the more workers get paid, the more they spend, generating consumer demand for products and enriching employers.

Much as Americans have resented immigrants, each new wave brought to U.S. shores not only willing workers but consumers who had to buy everything starting from scratch. Southern employers began to wake up to a similar concept in the Sixties as African-Americans fought for better education and landed higher-paying jobs, generating demand for more goods and services. Prosperity followed. Ditto as women began demanding equal opportunities and pay.

EFCA likely will trigger the same result as the above examples, or when Henry Ford raised employees’ pay so they could buy the cars he manufactured.

Leveling the union-employer playing field will do more for the U.S. economy than any bank bailout. That’s because it’s a cure for poverty, not a fix for failure. Kaplan’s article is titled “Can Labor Revive The American Dream?” That’s a very good question.

                           © Copyright Sherwood Ross, Global Research, 2009

The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11905