Debris
«chaque notaire porte en soi les débris d’un poète.»Archive for labor
German & U.S. unions join forces for T-Mobile representation
This is a great example of trans-national labor solidarity
:
U.S. and German labor leaders announced a transatlantic alliance on Wednesday aimed at persuading Germany’s giant Deutsche Telekom AG to allow collective bargaining at its subsidiary, T-Mobile USA.
Under the agreement, which U.S. labor officials called unprecedented, German trade union Ver.di will represent T-Mobile USA workers and the Communications Workers of America in talks with Deutsche Telekom managers in Bonn.
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Under the agreement, Ver.di will use its seats on Deutsche Telekom’s supervisory board to press German managers to accept union representation at T-Mobile USA and then coordinate any bargaining that follows.
As a long-time T-mobile customer, I applaud this move. As an even longer-time supporter of the labor movement, I hope we see more efforts like this.
Union Busting 101
A great resource exposing the nasty and often illegal tactics of the real “labor thugs”: corporations and their hired lackeys who block workers from exercising their legal and human right to organize for their mutual aid and protection.
Butchers and barbers and rats from the harbors
In a recent post at Concurring Opinions, Tulane law professor Elizabeth Nowicki addresses the issue of whether racist or sexist slurs made by law students should weigh in their character and fitness evaluation for bar admission. In the subsequent comments, the discussion turns to the broader issue of foul language among lawyers. One commenter suggests that “law students who lack sufficient tact and imagination” to refrain from coarse epithets might better consider alternative occupations like “longshoreperson, sea captain, drill sergeant, and rap artist”.
The comment reminded me of my own experience as a lawyer who represented longshorepersons (though my clients would have laughed at me if I’d used that term), Teamsters, cops, fire fighters, and workers in other occupations reserved for those lacking in tact and imagination. Shortly after I started, I was speaking with my parents, who asked how I liked the job. “It’s great,” I replied, “I get paid to wear a suit and say motherfucker.”
The real issue in the debate over EFCA
In an interview with the Washington Post a week before his inauguration, Barack Obama addressed the Employee Free Choice Act and the idea of card-check recognition for labor unions (emphasis added):
I think the basic principal of making it easier and fairer for workers who want to join a union, join a union is important. And the basic outline of the Employee Fair Choice are ones that I agree with. But I will certainly listen to all parties involved including from labor and the business community which I know considers this to be the devil incarnate. I will listen to parties involved and see if there are ways that we can bring those parties together and restore some balance.
You know, now if the business community’s argument against the Employee Free Choice Act is simply that it will make it easier for people to join unions and we think that is damaging to the economy then they probably won’t get too far with me. If their arguments are we think there are more elegant ways of doing this or here are some modifications or tweaks to the general concept that we would like to see. Then I think that’s a conversation that not only myself but folks in labor would be willing to have.
These comments are significant, not so much because they reaffirm Obama’s support for the EFCA, but because they indicate that he recognizes the real issue at stake in the debate over the bill. It is not–as opponents misleadingly suggest–a disagreement over means (card-check v. secret ballots), but a fundamental dispute about ends: whether federal law should make it easier for workers to join unions.
For nearly 75 years, it has been the stated public policy of the United States–as declared in Section 1 of the National Labor Relations Act–that union representation is beneficial for workers, for labor-management relations, and for the economy as a whole:
It is declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.
For just as long, management interests have fought tooth and nail to place stumbling blocks in the way of workers who seek to exercise the rights enshrined in law. In recent decades, increasingly strident management opposition, combined with a weakened more pro-management NLRB, has resulted in a steep decline in union representation among private-sector workers. To put it quite simply, the existing system for establishing union representation through NLRB-supervised elections is broken. Employers, backed by high-paid “union avoidance” consultants, engage in high-pressure tactics to intimidate workers who attempt to organize, in many cases flagrantly violating the law, confident that they will face no serious consequences.
It is against this background that the labor movement has pressed for legal reform, to restore the NLRA’s promise to “protect[] the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing”. The card-check provision of the EFCA, which has generated so much controversy, is but a means to that end. Most labor advocates would indeed be quite willing to engage in a good-faith discussion and examination of other ways to enable workers to exercise the right to organize. The problem is that the opponents of the EFCA and card-check are not arguing in good faith.
Opponents of the EFCA purport to care about protecting workers freedom of choice; what they really care about is preventing workers from choosing to join unions. While opponents of card-check tout the supposed democratic virtues of “secret ballots”, the reality is that the existing system of NRLB elections–under which employers are able to dominate and manipulate the process, and thwart workers’ desire for representation–is fundamentally undemocratic. For management, the undemocratic nature of the current system is a feature, not a bug. Regardless of what means labor advocates were to propose, management interests would object to any change that might make it easier for workers to organize.
Consequently, whatever theoretical merit there may be to pragmatist arguments in favor of compromise on card-check, there is no real prospect of compromise on this issue, so long as one side refuses to accept the principle that workers should be able to decide for themselves, without interference or intimidation by employers, whether to join a union.
(Thanks to WorkplaceProf Blog for the tip.)
“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”
My trip to eastern North Carolina this weekend wasn’t all fun and games and pirates. I came out here to meet with a group of truckers who are organizing a union after growing fed up with having their livlihoods left to the whim of the bosses. This is a remarkable group in many ways. In a region where the Klan not too long ago paraded openly (we’re only a short drive from where a sign along Highway 301 once proclaimed “The Klan welcomes you to Smithfield. Help fight communism and integration.”), and where Confederate flags are still a common sight, this is a group of African-American and White workers joining together in solidarity. And in a state with the lowest rate of union membership in the U.S., they are doing so under the banner of an explicitly radical and militant union: the Industrial Workers of the World. The meeting — in what my son described as a “rickety old” community center — was almost like taking a step back in time; yet, for these workers, the effort represents a great leap forward. If there really is to be a revival of unions in this country, it won’t come from the top down, nor through legislative grants. It will come from the workers themselves, asserting their own collective interests and collective power.
It was in support of another such group of workers that Dr. King was in Memphis in April 1968. That’s why these North Carolina truckers chose this weekend to formally launch their union. I can think of no better way that I might have honored Dr. King’s legacy than by coming here to meet with these workers and support their effort.
Tomorrow, Dr. King’s famous dream will come one step closer to fruition, as the United States witnesses the inauguration of our first African-American President. I have plenty of reservations about Barack Obama, and little hope that his Presidency really signals a fundamental change in this nation’s politics or policy in a radical-democratic direction. Yet, his inauguration does undeniably represent an important and joyful moment. There will be plenty of time for critique and cyncism after tomorrow. For now, I’m happy to join in celebration.
Victory for IWW-affiliated workers in Starbucks case
An administrative law judge for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled that Starbucks committed multiple violations of federal law in its effort to squelch a union campaign. The case was initiated by Starbucks workers in Manhattan, who were part of an organizing effort by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
In an 88-page decision, the NLRB judge found that Starbucks had committed numerous unfair labor practices, including illegally prohibiting workers from discussing the union and their working conditions, and illegally disciplining and firing workers who were involved in the union effort.
Business, Labor & Double-Standards
As the U.S. labor movement shows signs of revitalization — with the recent union victories at Smithfield Packing and Republic Windows, and the prospect of greater legal protection for union organizing under the Employee Free Choice Act — the drumbeat of anti-union lies and distortion grows louder. Two traditional themes remain prominent in anti-union discourse: inaccurate assertions about the economic impact of unionization, and exaggerated allegations of union corruption. Recent news highlights both the fallacy of these arguments and the duplicity in the portrayal of unions versus corporations.
The first distortion is that unions are economically harmful because they raise the cost of hiring workers. It is true, of course, that union-represented workers are paid more and enjoy more favorable health coverage, retirement, and other benefits. Contrary to what anti-union critics suggest, however, this fact is a feature, not a bug. As author and activist Kim Bobo explained in a recent NPR interview, unionization benefits not only workers who are themselves represented, but all workers — meaning the majority of people — by raising employment and living standards.
The “burdensome cost” argument has been especially prominent in the recent debate over government assistance for the U.S. auto industry. Senate Republicans last week scuttled a plan because the United Auto Workers would not cave in to their demand for immediate wage and benefit concessions. The contrast with the response to the financial industry’s woes is staggering. While compensation for autoworkers accounts for less than 10% of manufacturing costs in that industry, compensation in the financial sector represents the lion’s share of expenses — an average of 60% of total revenue for the seven largest financial-services firms in New York and a whopping 70% of total operating expenses for Goldman Sachs. Yet, despite some mild expressions of populist ire, there has been little effort to pin the blame for the financial crisis on the eye-popping salaries and bonuses that Wall Street executives have reaped as their firms and investors lost money, and even less of an effort to claw-back and restrict such self-dealing largesse in the future. To the contrary, Congress rushed to pass the $700 billion financial industry bailout with “shockingly little oversight” and without “any serious limits on executive pay“. And now, at least one TARP beneficiary, Goldman Sachs, is reportedly using part of its $10 billion share of the TARP bailout to pay executive bonuses.
The second distortion is that unions are so tainted with corruption as to render the entire labor movement suspect. To be sure, there have been too many serious instances of corruption within unions. No advocate for labor can ignore the real cost of these instances to individual workers and to the labor movement as a whole. Indeed, the most vocal and vital opponants of corruption have been those within the labor movement itself, who understand that unions can only advance workers’ interests when they are clean and democratic.
But, however serious the individual instances have been, the actual extent and impact of union corruption pales in comparison to the extent and impact of corporate corruption. The saga of disgraced Wall Street trader Bernard Madoff is a perfect case in point. Madoff reportedly defrauded his clients out of a staggering $50 billion. The sum total of all union-related racketeering and corruption over the past century would not approach even a fraction of that amount. And Madoff is but the latest in a long line of business and financial swindlers — BCCI, Enron, Global Crossing, Adelphia, WorldCom, just to name a few of the most prominant examples in recent years — compared to whom Jimmy Hoffa and his ilk look like pikers. Yet, even rampant and widespread corporate corruption is routinely portrayed as a problem of a few bad actors, while every isolated instance of union corruption is held up as an indictment of the entire labor movement.
Somewhat to my surprise, neither of these issues came up today during my radio appearance on WUNC’s “The State of Things”. I was on the show as part of a discussion about recent labor activity in North Carolina, including the Smithfield election and the Moncure Plywood strike. I enjoyed the opportunity to disucss these issues, and was very interested in and impressed with the contributions of the other guests: David Zonderman, Professor of History at N.C. State University; Roxanne Newton, Director of Humanities and Fine Arts at Mitchell Community College; and Vernal Coleman, a writer for the Independent Weekly newspaper.
The state of labor in North Carolina
I will be on North Carolina Public Radio’s “The State of Things” this Thursday, December 18th, to discuss the state of the U.S. labor movement (with particular reference to North Carolina, including the recent vote in favor of the UFCW at Smithfield’s Tar Heel plant at the IWW work-stoppage at Weyerhaeuser). The program airs live at Noon, and will also be available online.
