Money speaks for money, the Devil for his own
Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone?
What a comfort for the widow, a light to the child
There is power in a Union — Billy Bragg, (1988)
There is power in a union. At least there used to be. Unfortunately, anti-union sentiment has been the norm for several decades, helped along by politicians, big business, and some shenanigans within the organizations themselves.
The result is what Thomas Geoghegan discusses in the April issue of Harper’s (“Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy,” Harper’s Magazine, April 2009) and what the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff and friends discussed at a press-conference held last week at the Tennessee State Capitol.
From Geoghegan*:
Who’s to blame? Let’s start with the lawyers…First, and worst of all (as I always have to say being a labor lawyer), we lost the right to organize. That’s a long story, but over the years employers found out they could just ignore the Wagner Act and fire pro-union workers right before so-called “secret-ballot” elections: they found out there was no real limit on what they could use as a threat. And the result is that people in this country can’t get a wage increase. They can’t get a wage increase despite all our gains in productivity. That’s not supposed to happen. But that’s what did happen. The Economic Policy Institute reports that, since 1972, the median hourly wage for men has basically remained flat, and has actually declined for the bottom fifth of workers. (Women saw more of an improvement, but that’s only because women were grossly underpaid in 1972…What is more astonishing is that in this very same period, when workers were losing financial ground, their productivity – their output per hour – nearly doubled. They were doing twice as much work for the same wage or less.
I hope Ayn Rand, if she were still alive, would be a least a little shocked.”
(In light of the “Go, Galt!” movement, that last bit from Geoghegan is particularly amusing.)
On February 4, 2009, 4,000 workers rallied on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC…led by the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers and its President Leo Gerard, workers came to tell the Congress what hell corporations put us through when we try to organize unions, how workers are fired, intimidated and retaliated against when they try to get a voice at work, and that our economy cannot be fixed until we pass the Employee Free Choice Act and workers can freely form unions and bargain for better lives for their families, bargain for a way out of poverty and for a stronger, deeper, larger middle class….All the forces of our failed economics and engineers of this recession want to save the status quo and keep things just as they are. The Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers and Grover Norquist and John McCain and all of corrupt corporate America will do anything to stop the Employee Free Choice Act, while they couldn’t move fast enough to shovel $700 billion to bail out the entire financial industry….The Republicans in Congress, for the most part, classically top-down worship the failed free-market fashion and want to save the economy by saving those at the top at the expense of everyone else. The $700 billion bailout for the banks and the rest of the financial industry couldn’t be allocated fast enough without any study or oversight or accountability. Now those same Republicans howl about anything in President Obama’s stimulus plan other than more and more tax cuts while they promise to stop the Employee Free Choice Act, binding working families into poverty, starving and squeezing the middle class.
Economists across the ideological spectrum know that the fundamental crisis in our economy is a lack of demand, the loss of buying and consuming power resulting from 30 years of wage stagnation and decline.
Before we go any further, let’s take a step back. What’s the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear “Employee Free Choice Act?” (EFCA). If you pay cursory attention to the news then no doubt it’s that EFCA will eliminate the secret ballot for forming unions. It’s a talking point that has been reported as fact, unchallenged by the mainstream media.
But consider the source. It’s not the AFL-CIO. Nor is it the SEIU. It’s big business. Have they suddenly embraced en masses the idea of a strong union as loyal opposition? Of course not. The fact is, EFCA will make it easier, not more difficult, for unions to organize. EFCA will benefit the workers, which is exactly why everyone is lying about it.
EFCA is an amendment to the existing National Labor Relations Act. If passed, it would become easier for workers to form unions by putting the decision-making process into their hands. Employers could no longer insist on a secret-ballot election, which has traditionally given them the time and opportunity to threaten and intimidate. Instead, workers would decide which process is used – a secret ballot after a majority signed cards indicating their wish to form a union, or simply using the cards to decide.
And, really, if an employer doesn’t need the permission of their employees to join the Chamber of Commerce, than why should employees need the permission of their employer to join a union?
The good news is that a recent Gallup poll revealed that 53 percent favor a new law that would “make it easier for labor unions to organize workers.” Only 39 percent opposed. Although the name of the legislation wasn’t used in the poll, if labor can get the truth out over the din of Fox New’s lies, then EFCA may have a chance at passing this year.
PS: Not all business owners are against EFCA.
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