A couple of bones to pick

Most folks have heard, at least in passing, about the the Employee Free Choice Act, or “card check,” working its way through Congress this week. And most of what we seem to hear is basically negative. Lies, even.

If you tell the truth you may not get what you want, I guess.

So here we have this great hullabaloo of worry about secret ballots, something the worriers know the American public cherishes above practically everything else. But it’s all a fraud.

What are the worriers worried about? They say they are worried about the process by which employees of a business decide whether they want to bargain as a group for things like hours, wages and benefits.

Who’s doing the worrying? The employers. That should tell you something.

But the employers aren’t worried about the outcome, not at all. They say they are just trying to be sure that their poor dumb employees aren’t denied the right to a secret ballot.

That argument is what’s dumb. The legislation in Congress right now, the Employee Free Choice Act, or “card-check,” provides for each and every employee to receive a card with the following choices:

The employee can sign up in favor of joining a union, or not. Or he can choose to have a secret ballot on the matter. The employees get to choose.

Secret ballot. There it is, right there. If the majority of the cards come back with the secret ballot choice checked, there you are, it’ll be a secret ballot.

But if 50%-plus-one come back checked in favor of having a union, the employees get to have a union. That’s a majority, but it would appear the employers who are fighting this are afraid a majority of their workers might actually want to have a union. The dirty little secret is that employers don’t want it to be simple.

Gotta wonder why.

* * *

Good ol’ Newt Gingrich is back, maybe getting a good start on 2012, and has been on various TV shows holding forth on just about everything under the sun, or at least everything Barack Obama is doing. Which he opposes.

In the context of the leadership struggles within the Republican party, Newt comes across as the sane elder statesman, according to some.

So, last week he suggested that Obama should have taken out the North Korean rocket test with some kind of laser weapon, an idea perhaps intended to show how high-tech he thinks; “high” might be the operative word here because we don’t seem to have such in our arsenal.

On at least one Sunday show he shared his opinion on health care reform, or at least what he perceives as Obama’s plan taking us down the road to “putting everyone on Medicaid.”

Now, I can’t be sure he meant to say “Medicaid,” though he said it several times, because I know the comparison that’s been drawn to one of the options being proposed for a national health care solution is “Medicare,” a very different breed of cat.

Medicaid, a form of health care coverage for the working poor, might as well be unavailable so far as Ellis County residents are concerned. Most doctors can’t afford to offer it because it pays so poorly.

Medicare, on the other hand, which most senior citizens have, is agreed by all but the unfeeling to be good coverage, cost-effective and efficient. A government plan that lets you choose your own doctor and make your own decisions, by the way.

And no, Obama’s plan is not “socialized” medicine, nor is Medicare for that matter; however, that’s the favorite term of argument for those who prefer that private insurance companies continue to make your decisions, choose your doctor, deny coverage when you most need it, and make lots of money in the process.


Originally published in the Waxahachie Daily Light April 13, 2009.

What kind of man would break his word?

Just imagine yourself back a few years, back when a job wasn’t that hard to find and you could usually have a choice of job offers. Imagine that you chose to work for a local company that offered good benefits — health coverage, sick pay, paid holidaysand vacation time, plus a retirement plan.

Way back in the day, of course, most employers offered these things. But let’s say you chose a job that appealed to you because of the benefits.

So you started work, settled in, got married, bought a house, started raising kids, became a contributing member of your community.

In that way-back day, a job usually lasted until retirement age if you wanted it to, and so you worked hard, saved a little money, and when the time came you retired, ready to do a little traveling, visit the grandkids, all that good stuff.

But what if you then discovered that your old company now has financial troubles and needs a loan to make it through the next few months, but the bank won’t do it unless you give back a big chunk of your hard-earned benefits?

The way I see it, those benefits were promised as part of your compensation; you accepted that job based in part on those promises and your wages and benefits were earned over many years of hard work. To demand years later that you give any of them back makes a mockery of those promises.

There is a small group of Republican senators in Washington who would seem to have no respect for promises or the contracts that contain them. Despite pleas from their own President, despite widely acknowledged dire consequences if the American auto manufacturers fail for want of a $15 billion loan agreed to by the House of Representatives and the President of the United States, those senators have blocked passage of the enabling legislation in the Senate.

Why would they put their own party — and President — in position to be blamed for an economic catastrophe that would make previous bailouts look like small potatoes?

Here’s the deal they offer: If the auto companies will break their promises to their workers, who happen to be members of the United Auto Workers union, these honorable men will agree to allow the companies to borrow money to get through the next three or four months.

Generous to a fault, you say?

Notwithstanding that the union has, over the past four difficult years, made significant wage and benefit concessions to help the auto manufacturers stay profitable, the senators want more this time around.

They already got the unions to accept workers’ wages being reduced to that paid workers in foreign-owned non-union plants (located, interestingly, in the states represented by said senators); the unions already agreed to accept reductions in pension benefits. But the senators now want those reductions put in place this coming year (drill here! drill now!).

According to a report in The New York Times,

In a statement Thursday night, the union said it was "prepared to agree that any restructuring plan should ensure that the wages and benefits of workers at the domestic automakers should be competitive with those paid by the foreign transplants. But we also recognized that this would take time to work out and implement" using programs like buyouts and early retirement offers to bring in new workers at lower rates.

Of course the whole gambit is dishonest.

First of all, while the senators have every right to try to impose conditions on the auto manufacturers who need the loan, they have absolutely no business, so far as I can see, inserting themselves into a company-union relationship. Labor negotiations should involve management and labor, period.

Second, let’s face it: In the end, it’s all about breaking up the union. As even the famously understated pundit David Gergen said recently, there has always been “a tension” between unions and the Republican party, but this is going way too far.

Why, I wanted to know, do Republicans hate unions? I thought it was as simple as wanting cheaper labor. The anti-UAW folks are fond of insisting that auto workers are paid over $70 an hour. That would be, well, a lie.

Here’s how they figure it: Take all the wages paid and add the cost to the company of all the benefits, and then add the cost of all the pensions and benefits being paid to retirees and divide by the number of active workers. Presto.

So it can’t be about making current labor cheaper, though a case could certainly be made that they want to get rid of workers’ pensions and benefits.

U.S. Senators are paid a decent salary — over $188,000 plus benefits that include state of the art health care — and are entitled to full retirement at age 62 after five years of service. Nice.

Of course, they are much more important than factory workers.

No, I really do think it’s all about getting rid of those pesky unions.

Now, you could argue that union power has been on the wane for several years, but I’d point out that American wages have been on the wane for the same period; make of that what you like.

A very knowledgeable political historian friend insists it’s more complex, as follows: Unions are a significant force in the Democratic party, notably providing fundraising and manpower during elections, and thus help the Democrats win; ergo, if unions can be eliminated the Republicans have a better chance.

I wonder.

Whatever may be motivating those who would get rid of unions, we now know this: Promises don’t mean a thing to them.

Play It Again, Joe Hill!

Labor Day is here, and with it another wonderful three-day holiday. It’s time for family get-togethers, backyard cookouts and, for the politically addicted, speeches and rallies. But somewhere between parades and picnics I hope folks will give a moment’s thought to what Labor Day means.

It’s more than a day off for workers. It is a day to celebrate unions, and especially the American worker for whom they have toiled for over a century.

Not surprisingly, employers have tried to get rid of unions ever since they became a force to be reckoned with. With the help of Congress, they finally dealt organized labor a massive blow in the mid-20th century, selling us the idea that a “right to work” was antithetical to collective bargaining. Sort of like the Healthy Skies Initiative actually relaxed controls on polluters. It was pretty much downhill from there.

From time to time over the last couple of decades, as unions have struggled to remain a force in our economic dialogue, there have been speculations about their possible resurgence. Unfortunately for folks at levels lower than management, in most cases that is still a dream.

In fact, sad to say, some people question whether unions are any longer relevant.

No doubt it has something to do with the globalization of the economy, which at the end of the last century and since has really affected what Americans buy and sell, the way we manufacture and distribute goods, the ways we are employed—or not, and of course our quality of life.

Labor unions came into being in the 1880’s because workers were being exploited by their employers, more so in some industries than in others—the Pullman Railroad Company and the coal mines come to mind as among the worst. Then someone figured out that there was strength in unity, and as collective bargaining for wage increases and benefits went forward, working conditions gradually improved.

After laws were passed to protect workers from abuse, to abolish sweatshops and in particular to eliminate the use of children as laborers, matters such as wages, benefits and job security were addressed.

There is no doubt that all working Americans have benefited from union accomplishments, whether or not they belong to a union themselves. Although many trades, such as secretaries and bookkeepers, were never able to organize themselves effectively in the private sector, the laws that were passed because of union effort were to their advantage as well: more and more frequently, employers began to offer sick leave, periodic pay raises, paid holidays and annual vacations, and other benefits that have trickled into the mainstream.

Unions became a powerful force in America, and often set the pace for improved working conditions in other parts of the world. But after awhile, when it seemed to some that certain unions were asking too much, demanding raises when people in non-union jobs were barely holding their own, it didn’t go down well. And it didn’t help matters whenever a union flexed its muscle in defiance—as in the case of the Teamsters’ threat to bring the whole country to a standstill unless they got what they wanted. And here and there corruption surfaced, giving the whole movement a bad name.

All along, of course, those who resisted unions from the beginning fought to keep them out of their particular shops were working tirelessly to get rid of them; they would not have succeeded without the unions’ own successes that made them less urgent, and without the self-destructive behavior that power seems to invite.

It seems to me not surprising, given all these circumstances, that unions faded from prominence back then; neither is it surprising, given today’s circumstances, that they have a legitimate function again.

With the globalization of the economy, American workers are confronted once again with low wages, sweatshop conditions and the exploitation of children as laborers. But this time the problems are too far away to be resolved by American workers demanding improved working conditions—it is the worker in a distant land who is being exploited, whose low pay leads to downsizing in an American industry trying to compete. What good is it to complain, or to demand, when the situation is so far out of our control?

The functions of the labor unions, this time around, are vigilance and education, since there is little hope they can get over there and organize the garment workers in China and Thailand, or the rug makers in Pakistan (where UNICEF estimates children aged 4 to 14 make up 90 percent of the carpet workforce). Vigilance can lead to education of the consumer and resulting public pressure on the American importers, which has already shown to be effective in closing down or at least reducing these practices.

Most of us consumers lament the effect of the new economy on America, even as we buy shoes made in Korea, electronics made in China, hats from El Salvador, toys from Romania, and designer garments handcrafted in Thailand. The least we can do for ourselves—and ultimately for the American worker—is to insist on knowing that we are not furthering the exploitation of children and the dehumanization of adults in order to save money. If enough Americans refuse to buy goods made with what amounts to slave labor, we will help to end it.

In the meantime, our labor unions can keep up the pressure on Congress to make trade laws that address these issues, and to change laws that subsidize American companies’ exportation of jobs to other countries into laws that reward companies who choose to keep jobs here.

Back in the day, as they say, we were told that if you want to criticize the farmer, don’t do it with your mouth full.

On this Labor Day I suggest that if you want to complain about labor unions, don’t do it while you’re on your paid holiday!