Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiTony Blair's Real Legacy — Minimum Wage and Union Recognition
On June 27th Tony Blair will stand down after a decade as Britain's Prime Minister. Unfortunately for Mr. Blair, he is now far more likely to win popularity contests on this side of the Atlantic, and most Britons consider the Iraq War to be the outstanding legacy of his period in office. One can understand why the voters who put Blair into office feel disillusioned with his foreign policy adventures and his government's mixed record on improving public services. But Blair's critics should not dismiss the significant policy achievements of the past ten years, notably on two issues that are currently being debated in the United States — the national minimum wage and union recognition. Both of these flagship policies in Blair's first administration where designed to create a new social contract, after eighteen years of conservative hostility to such a concept, and both have succeeded.
The 1998 National Minimum Wage Act created the Low Pay Commission, an independent body to advise the government on the minimum wage. The country's first national minimum wage has lifted out of poverty tens of thousands of low-paid workers and — according to recent research by Professor David Metcalf of the London School of Economics — has had no detrimental impact on job creation. The UK minimum wage currently stands at about $11 per hour for adult workers, well above the $7.25 by 2009 currently being proposed by Congress.
The 2000 Employment Relations Act, meanwhile, established a "card check" system for trade union recognition. Over the past seven years, the law has enabled thousands of British workers to choose a union in an environment that is free from the employer intimidation that poisons organizing campaigns in the United States. A five-year study on the Future of Unions in Modern Britain conducted by researchers at the London School of Economics found that the ERA has helped move employers and unions beyond the aggressive industrial relations which characterized the Thatcher and Major years, producing concrete benefits for both groups and for employees in the process. (I had a peripheral involvement with this LSE group.)
The Senate will soon consider a bill that would establish a system of union recognition similar to the one that has operated successfully in the UK for the past seven years. The Employee Free Choice Act -- which was passed by the House on March 1st by a vote of 263-146 -- would impose greater penalties on employers who discriminate against union supporters, provide for mediation and arbitration when employers and unions fail to negotiate first contracts, and, most controversially, allow employees to form a union when over 50 percent sign union authorization cards. Employers claim that this card check provision, in particular, represents a blatant power grab by "Big Labor" that would expose employees to coercion by unscrupulous union organizers. But numerous academic studies have concluded exactly the opposite — i.e., that the principal problem with the existing system is coercion by employers, not coercion by union organizers.
So why are American employers so implacably opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act? One employer gave the game away at a recent meeting of the National Association of Wholesalers-Distributors. The basic problem, he explained, was that under card check recognition, employers have "no chance to retaliate." And American employers do plenty of retaliating. The National Labor Relations Board Annual Report for 2005 cites 31,000 cases in which employers provided back pay for alleged violations of federally protected labor law rights. Nor is there any great mystery as to why American employers violate the National Labor Relations Act with such regularity -- they consider the law's paltry sanctions a small price to pay to prevent unionization.
Tony Blair received a rapturous reception when he addressed Congress in July 2003. If American lawmakers truly admire Mr. Blair, they could do worse than copy his successful policies on the minimum wage and union recognition. A good next step towards creating a new social contract in the United States would be for the Senate to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
John Logan teaches in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics.
8 Comments so far
Show AllTony Blair is the worst British prime minister and a damn war criminal collaborator with the fascist nut case in the White House. British public services which have become so privatized are the worst they've ever been. Maggie Thatcher was a liberal by comparison to Blair her illegitimate son, which we know she doesn't claim, and who can blame her.
The only decent hope for the British people today is that Gordon Brown if he does, as seems likely move into Number 10, will upon becoming prime minister realize that Blair has been just damn the worst and reverse his foreign and domestic policies which have so wrecked Britain as country.
England didn't invent Oligarchy but the governments Oligarchys own always serve them and their spawn, no one else. In a society owned by an Oligarchy, a majority middle class is always the First Enemy that must be anihilated so that they may RULE without demur.
We can argue policies all day long. At the end of the day the only interests that will be served are the interests of Oligarchy. For 4000 years Oligarchies only want one thing: Everything, Forever.
In the US they have retaken their country from us and are well along in restoring "debt bondage" for 10s of millions of us.
In Britain, well, their Oligarchy laments the loss of a proper "servant class" and they are working very hard to bring back that essential core of 19th Century England. Some of you may have read Dickens. These are the good old days for English richfilth. Given a bit more time, they'll bring it back, in spades. Then I'm sure they'll put a bit of stick about concerning "the colored problem". Aryan Supremacy hasn't changed either.
Peace.
Who killed David Kelly?
Tony Blair reserved the exclusive right to define 'moderate' Islam for Muslims - on behalf of Christians like himself. Acceptable Islam is Islam that Tony Blair accepts. This is a right that the West has secured by way of its manifest "decency".
As Blair glides through his last few days in office, two major corruption scandals - both of which he is personally implicated in - swirl malodorously around him.
He spent 10 years touting his baffling contention that virulent neo-liberal free market economics was not an ideology. He made millions of Brits feel that there was no point in voting in elections.
His closest ally in Europe was Silvio Berlusconi. He set up a whole raft of Public Enquiries into his own government's malfeasance, each of which had laughably restricted terms of reference, designed to absolve and vindicate. His only defence of his palpable lies in the build up to the Iraq war seems to be just plaintive assertions that he, er... wasn't lying and he declines to make reference to the specific and detailed substance of the accustaions against him.
He was a stout defender of the globalism project exactly at the time when it was becoming crystal clear that the globalism project is failing and its true nature - the raw facilitation of corporate interests - was plain to see.
He reserved the exclusive right to define 'moderate' Islam for Muslims - on behalf of Christians like himself. Acceptable Islam is Islam that Tony Blair accepts. This is a right that the West has secured by way of its manifest "decency".
He waffled endlessly about Britain and America's "shared values" when for millions of decent and distinct British people it is patently obvious that that many "American values" as exhibited by its government and elites, strike Brits as vile, dangerous and utterly alien (although I recognize that U.S. and U.K. corporate interests do, indeed, have pretty inseparable "values" but if that's what he meant, why didn't he say that?).
In the end, he gave Britain little or no 'leadership' per se. Just facilitation.
"Tony Blair received a rapturous reception when he addressed Congress in July 2003."
~ by whom?
Certainly not the mass of Brits who have come to loathe this turncoat, this utter traitor called Blair.
No matter what he may (or mostly may not) have achieved, this scurrilous egomaniac has *mostly* achieved endangering the lives of thousands of people in the UK, and been wholly, stupidly complicit in the needless, fatuous, insane murder of ... well, ~ just how many Iraqi men, women and innocent kids?
We don't know exactly because those Houdinis in BuSh's maniacal government refuses to let the public know just how many they have ruthlessly slaughtered. Only 'Christian' deaths seem to matter to these disgusting individuals.
This article is an empty media 'puff' for a mass murderer.
How do Bliar's (supposed) achievements rate, when compared with slaughtering of umpteen thousands of fellow human beings in Iraq et al?
What a myopic load of blather we have here!
So what if this latter-day Mussolini helped trains to run on time - or whatever?
I'd rather have untimely trains and no blood on my hands, thankyou very much!
His real legacy is the total disarming of the British subject, the absolutely predictable corresponding rise in crime, National ID Cards, and an Orwellian society of cameras on every corner. He will not be missed.
Blair strikes me now as similar to Lyndon Johnson. Just as LBJ was undone by Vietnam, Blair has been undone by Iraq. As a Brit, my impression is that Johnson's real legacy was civil rights legislation, which cost the Democrats the South, and arguably led to the near hegemony of the Republican right for the last 35 years, but was unquestionably morally right.
Pace John Logan, Blair's real legacy is probably devolved government (a sort of vague federalising of the way the United Kingdom is governed). It will cost the Labour party dearly, but will also stymie the worst instincts of the Conservatives, and probably open up politics to more parties and points of view than the two big parties that have dominated politics for too long over here.