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TechnoratiHistory books teem with six-word phrases, from the comforting ("Nothing to fear but fear itself") to the inspiring ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall") to the embarrassing ("Read my lips, no new taxes"). But the six words "on the basis of union membership" could be more momentous than any of those. Though hardly Roosevelt's rhetoric, Reagan's bluster or Bush's clumsiness, the phrase could solve America's wage crisis.
Of course, when Tom Geoghegan told me this in a Chicago park two weeks ago, I almost snarfed my coffee through my nose. Solving major social problems typically demands more than six words. But as the longtime labor lawyer and author explained his idea to me on a muggy afternoon, it started making sense.
Geoghegan reminded me that data show the more union members in an economy, the better workers' pay. The problem, he said, is that weakened labor laws are allowing companies to bully and fire union-sympathetic workers, thus driving down union membership and wages.
Enter Geoghegan's six words. If the Civil Rights Act was amended to prevent discrimination "on the basis of union membership," it would curtail corporations' anti-labor assault by making the right to join a union an official civil right.
"Hang on," I interrupted. "Joining a union isn't a civil right?"
Correct.
Under current law, if you are fired for union activity, you can only take your grievance to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) -- a byzantine agency deliberately made more Kafkaesque by right-wing appointees and budget cuts. Today, the NLRB takes years to rule on labor law violations, often granting victims only their back pay -- a tiny cost of doing business.
Union leaders are now focused on reforming the NLRB -- an admirable goal -- but Geoghegan's plan implies that workers are harmed by being legally leashed to Washington in the first place. His proposal says rather than being forced to rely on an unreliable bureaucracy for protection, workers should be empowered to defend themselves.
The six words would do just that. Regardless of whether the NLRB is strengthened or further weakened, persecuted workers would be able to haul union-busting thugs into court. There -- unlike at the NLRB -- plaintiffs can subpoena company records and win costly punitive damages.
Bolstering his argument, Geoghegan told me to consider variations in corporate behavior.
For example, because the Civil Rights Act bars racial discrimination, businesses are motivated to try to prevent bigotry: They want to avoid being sued. This is why no company brags about being racist.
But when it comes to unions, there is no such deterrent. The lack of civil rights protection effectively encourages businesses to punish pro-union employees -- and publicize the abuse to intimidate their work force. By making the six words law, the dynamic would shift. Companies would have a reason -- fear of litigation -- to respect workers' rights.
When Geoghegan and I finished chatting, I remembered why I believe he is America's most talented writer and thinker on labor issues. His relative anonymity is a tragicomic commentary on the media and the American Left. The Milton Friedmans are celebrated by pundits and cast in bronze by conservative think tanks, while the Geoghegans are dismissed by the chattering class and ignored by a progressive movement that regularly venerates Hollywood celebrities as its heroes.
Perhaps, though, this proposal will change things. In developing a way to shift incentives, Geoghegan has discovered a solution that both unionists and economists can love. It cribs the best from liberals' pro-union sympathies and conservatives' distrust of Big Government, and should make him famous (or at least a Cabinet secretary). After all, anyone who can bring such disparate ideologies and adversaries together is worthy of serious consideration -- as is his six-word stroke of genius.
David Sirota is a best-selling author whose newest book, "The Uprising," was released in June. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network, both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.
© 2008 Creators Syndicate Inc.
40 Comments so far
Show AllAnd just which unions are you going to protect David Sirota
The Writers Guild?
All of the true LABOR unions are gone along with the industries.the only thing remaining are government unions (which should be illegal) public servants shouldn't be allowed to organize to rob those of us that work in the private sector.
Sports unions fine I can choose not to support them ,but when the government is robbing one sector of the population and handing it over to another the ones be robbed (private sector) have no say in the matter.
I went to Tech school to perfect my TIG welding skills when I was young . My father had worked at Piper Aircraft for 25 years and was going to see if he couldn't get me in the door.
by the time I got my training Piper had folded up and moved to Vero Beech FL. You see the Union went on strike many times threw the years even though Piper was the best paying shop in the area.In the end the THUGS that ran the union did nothing to save those mens jobs.
Now we have NAFTA ,Cafta ,NAU ,EU ,NWO and the jobs are all going to the lowest bidding slave state and you want to save the union by pushing some communist bullshit .
Yeah sounds great.
Jessethumb, or whatever,
Wrongo, me boy! The decimation of jobs is not the unions but their lack of political power to change labor laws to pre-Raygun Puppethead. Now most jobs, as in construction, that are no longer under the protection of a union are paid a third of what they would make under that union.
And, by the way, they are standing around because of executive directives, safety procedures, awaiting action by another responsible agency before proceeding, etc. Yes, and they are Union.
You want their job or do you want somebody to give you money? I guarantee you ANY government employee, in any agency, earns every dime of their salary. They not only have to do their job better than everyone else, they have to suffer the constant political in-fighting that magnifies every little mis-step.
Hell, all this time I thought Unions were a right. Then Raygun Puppethead fired every single air controller. And not one Court ruled against that. Get the picture?
Ever wonder why Western Europe has outpaced the USA in such things as voter participation, medical insurance coverage, & pay? One word: UNIONS!
Poet: Excellent post!
"This might be a propitious time to try adding this to the Civil Rights Law."
It might be a propitious time to try and take back the Rights we used to have as guaranteed under the actual Bill of Rights!! If we don't do that, I doubt the Civil Rights Law, or any other law pertaining to freedom and rights will be possible.
Laws or even amending civil rights legislation is not nearly as effective as orgasnizing workers in solidarity with one another. In Poland it led to the ovewrthrow of the puppet totalitarian Communist government.
The great economic gains of union membership in the 30's through 50's (including the appointment of Frances Perkinis as labor secretary and the establishment of the NLRB was largly built on the beaten heads and backs of union membership the previous 50 years.
Speaking of words, Frederik Douglass famously observed:
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning."
"Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. Show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person and I will show you the exact amount of words endured by these people."
The men and women who are robbing you blind have names and addresses and when they realize that labor knows who they are and where they live and that "business as usual" cannot continue, then change will happen.
It takes guts and the willingness to confront security goons (why do you think organized labor and organized crime were so close?--because the police were the bought and paid for "muscle" of the bosses that's why.
"If the Civil Rights Act was amended to prevent discrimination "on the basis of union membership," it would curtail corporations' anti-labor assault by making the right to join a union an official civil right."
Translation: Wal-Mart would have their ass handed to them in civil suits.
Not seeing that happeen in USA, Inc. Anytime soon.
Sirota is a talented writer and a decent journalist. But it'd be nice if he'd reach out to rank-and-file people and Union Presidents that were elected by real grassroots movements instead of regurgitating ideas wealthy lawyers and status quo-oriented union leaders have.
Mass corruption, inbred Bush-style cronyism and a lack of democracy (with the use of outdated garbage like "Robert's Rule of Order" to run meetings and many unions not posting time and dates where membership meetings where be held) exists in many of our unions. Lapdog telecom unions like the CWA need a lot of reform before workers can look to them for leadership on workers rights.
Lawyer Tom Geoghegan has a good idea, but just as important as making union activity a "civil right" so workers don't have to rely on the corrupt, business oriented bureaucratic NLRB are protecting members who lead rank-and-file reform efforts from political retaliation by corrupt union staffers. All one needs to do is go to labornotes.org to read of the many reform efforts by union members in various unions and the corrupt, status quo-attacks by their union's leadership.
The answer doesn't just lie in making "assisting a union" a civil right - it lies in Mother Mary Jones' plea to "fight like hell for the living and pray for the dead." Organize, organize, organize...educate members of their rights and get them to membership meetings - where the rank-and-file have the ability to undue and create their local's policies - by the busloads. That's where ordinary workers have their strength. By building, electing and re-establishing strong member-led local unions that will defend their members' rights and shake up the Corporate and pro-business Union Status Quo.
I just don't know that I trust unions enough to give them that power. As noted above, there has been much abuse of power in the unions.
Protections from Union busting yes. There is certainly abuse by business. A civil right. I think we'd have to be very careful that this isn't an idea that sounds better than it is.
Even now Unions abuse their members by cooperating with business to replace them with lower paid labor.
'Six Little Words' is good, and David Sirota is on top of Labor's problems.
I'll just add 'Seven Little Words' for my comment.
"Withhold your labor, take to the streets!" (peacefully)
RE "THE PROBLEM" - CLUELESS WORKERS, CORRUPT UNIONS?
tj July 25th, 2008 6:24 pm
"The problem is that the U.S. working class is collectively clueless...and U.S. labor leadership is collectively too gutless, corrupt and stupid to discover movements...and then ORGANIZE unions and political parties that represent [their class] interests."
I sympathize with this view, but cannot agree that it is all due to clueless workers and stupid etc. unions. Marx conceived that class consciousness was generated by industrial capitalism. Workers in a postindustrial economy are not simply "clueless," but socially atomized. Thus organizing in a service industry economy is harder - most successful on the West Coast, e.g., where it was assisted by strong ethnic solidarity and local politicians.
Nonetheless, I do think that - in contrast with the Washington/big politics focus of many - progressives should work with service sector movements.
Good job mr.David. These six words have a very deep meaning in themselves.
__________________________
antra
Addiction Recovery Wisconsin
The class war requires leadership that is committed to overthrowing capitalism, not just getting better wages for their branch of labor. History tells us that the leadership that can do this is necessarily a Leninist political party. If you want a brilliant future for all, there is no ethical choice but to build that party.
Government solution to Unions? Taft-Hartley Act (1947), Right to work laws in several states, MOST enacted during the Reagan/Bush years. Remember the Air Traffic Controllers? They were all replaced when they went on strike....Basically, the only union that has done anything for working people (actual 'blue collar' working people) in the last 25 years is the SEIU.
How nice not to see Nader's name: Is that because RALPH BUSTED UP HIS OWN WORKER'S ATTEMPTS TO ORGANIZE? OH, YES IT IS.
So working for a 'big time progressive' when unions were strong did not help-nothing did (hint, look in the mirror Mr. American Worker)
The only thing that would help would be doubling and enforcing the minimum wage laws; the slaves could pay rent AND eat-this would stimlulate the economy.
But let's hear a 'union lawyer' speak up for unions.
This article is Stupid.
I think our Rights should be enumerated more carefully, full stop.
The right to join unions should be amongst them.
It seems "life, liberty, property" and even the "Bill of Rights" was just to vague, leaving too much room for manipulation and confusion.
If only the People weren't so Ignorant!
VOTE KUCINICH FOR LABOR!
So?
susanparker:
You are absolutely correct that attacks on trade unionists and union sympathizers are rampant in the United States. And you are also correct that red-baiting, despite "the end of the Cold War" remains a common practice.
Unfortunately, a significant proportion of the red-baiting comes from within organized labor itself: both George Meany and Lane Kirkland were anti-communist government agents, as was Tom Donahue. Even Walter Reuther took a huge grant from the CIA to do work in the former Soviet Union.
The AFL-CIO international affairs departments (under various names) have directly received the bulk of their funding from the U.S. government and government security agencies.
A quasi-political cult called Social Democrats USA (SDUSA) has controlled many key staff positions in organized labor and associated organizations since the early 1970s. They have vacillated between neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism, but there's really not a whole lot of difference, is there?
Despite saying all that, there remains a small window in the U.S. before things get even worse. By-and-large, even though blacklisting in many forms is alive and well, we are not generally being killed, tortured and imprisoned in the U.S. for attempting to exercise labor rights. That small window is, however, closing.
Geohegan has some stones, I'll say. I saw him years ago on C-span at a low level congressional hearing on labor union issues. His opponents were not corporadoes but Teamster middle management who hated him. They spent their whole testimony making snide ad hominem attacks about how he was "not even a member of the labor union movement". They were somewhat inarticulate tough guys, straight out of central casting, full of swagger and menace. I think the issue was the kind of sweetheart deals the Teamsters have always been (in)famous for. Geohegan calmly took them apart without calling names or impugning their dignity, rights and standing to testify. I don't know how the issue was resolved. And I don't know how a guy like Geohegan keeps going, taking crap from all sides. Can't be easy.
As for his idea, I don't think Barack Obama will touch it with somebody else's 10 foot pole. He owes his contributors too much.
Geoghegan's six words are largely irrelevant. The problem is not that workers' rights are not enshrined in law (though that would help focus some people).
The problem is that the U.S. working class is collectively clueless about its own class interests and U.S. labor leadership is collectively too gutless, corrupt and stupid to discover movements among the working class, form those movements into a movement and then ORGANIZE unions and political parties that represent the interests of the membership and working-class people.
Geoghegan is a heck of a lawyer. I've seen him in action. But he's not an organizer or leader. Competent organizers and leaders are in extremely short supply. Nice words though. They really are
Yeah, the scare tactics, like Obama is a muslim, and blacks are more racist than whites, and on and on,
to bad the benefits of the few come at the expense of the many, we founded a country on protest to the elite, and even jefferson complained about the corporations then as connjiving no good dirty rotten piles of shit, agents of EMPIRE, ie ruling class---Slaves, it takes many slaves to relize that is where we are headed in this country for change to EXPLODE
High time for the Democratic Brass, former
Senators, Congressmen etc..to stop worshipping
the Clintons. Time for the Democrats to get their act together. Do they represent the working classes or not? With Bill Clinton playing games with the Arabs and Corporate
America, and his introduction of "Nafta",
and his moneytary involvement all over the
world for private gain, time for us, the working classes to gain control of the Democratic party,
and remake the rules for the common good of the working classes. Obama should be made to write
his intentions before the election.
Yes, just another way that the United States lags behind the rest of the world (and not just the industrialized, affluent world either).
Many many people are justifiably afraid to be seen as union sympathizers as a carry over from the red scare "commie sympathizers" -- this carries over into a paranoia strong enough to discourage even expressign an interest in or information regarding unions.
Oh, those blacklists people fear -- too often they are quite real.
Part of the national brainwah.
This is a good, credible proposal. And another proposal is also good, and is much more important:
1.) Federalize any large corporation which engages in interstate commerce.
2. Require by all federal charters to support the public interest. This can be done with 28 words:
"The pursuit of profits must not come at the expense of the environment, human rights, public health and safety, the dignity of employees or the welfare of communities".
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0726-11.htm
3.) Require by all federal charters to comprise its boards of directors with a 35 to 50 percent composition by elected employees.
This second provision is routine in Europe, Germany for example. It is well known. It is becoming the EU standard. It is called economic co-determination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-determination
Nader has been proposing this for over 15 years.
ClassAct has a great illustration there. The corporation brings organization to its side of the produce and labor exchanges, thereby winning the upper hand in these exchanges against unorganized people.
But in this most gilded of gilded ages instead of labor organization we need to smash up these corporate hulks that dictate our public policies. We need to build local small independent enterprises to bring the economic and political power and all the many benefits of a relatively classless society to the people.
If you value civic democracy over monarchy then you have to value economic democracy as well. Let's expand the scope of the labor union to include independent small businesses with the ideal that all labor should be an independent economic enterprise that supports the individual's civic responsibility to help suppress power concentration/abuse.
Excuse my ignorance, but why isn't the right to union membership guaranteed under freedom of assembly?
From the UN 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
But then when has the American Corporate Government ever cared about Human Rights?
I understand unions may of had a noble beginning and intention, But nowadays they suck. Hardworking Americans are forced off job sites by elitist union members who believe the rest of the workers should just roll over and starve while they take the best jobs. If you decide to join the union, you get jerked around by the higher ups who make the newbies work part time and take the crap jobs. Then you got teachers making twice as much money as me, but they picket and refuse to teach so American citizens have to take off work or hire a babysitter, and the population gets dumber. I dont know about in other states, but the PA department of trasportation is incompetent and slow and the union workers stand around all day and do nothing and nothing is ever fixed right. Why do we need to pay money to an organization in order to have rights as workers and citizens?
Tom Geoghegan has a brilliant idea there. He should be offered the post of Labor Secretary by President Obama.
"Joining a union isn't a civil right?"
It was a matter of debate amongst the founders as to whether to include the Bill of Rights. Some felt that unalienable rights were self-evident. Unfortunately not. Certainly, the rights of equal opportunity, fair representation and collective bargaining factor in.
It is refreshing to have more core issues identified and presented and discussed here.
What is often missing from the conservative viewpoint is that government must indeed serve as progenitor and protector of civil rights, social equality and the common welfare, for each and of all. What often escapes the liberal perspective is the need for self-determination, individual fortitude and personal responsibility, of each and for all.
In looking for how these are not opposing but rather resonating ideals, we may find the common ground needed for realizing our common dreams.
If any of you expect President Obama to support labor unions, prepare to be thoroughly disappointed.
re FrederickJohnson July 25th, 2008 2:05 pm
the person in question may or may not know history. that doesn't matter.
but he definitely hopes that you and i don't.
Look Foul-Mouth Freddie, you either care about the issue of the article or you don't. You want the law passed? Who do you think is going to pass it?
If Daniel David had read history, he would have found out that back in the 1980s, lots of Democrats turned their back and joined RAYGUN in union busting policies. Hell, Clinton even moved to the right of RAYGUN and Obama supports more NAFTAs. So electing more "Democrats" will help? What a FUCKING joke ?!?!?
Since I've never gotten the edit feature to work on this board, let me add that there should be a quotation mark at the end of my 1:39 post -- all the info is from McClatchey (the last newspaper group, to my knowledge, that consistently does investigative reporting).
While the conservative legislators and media often tell the public that the market is a democratic institution, the facts are very much the opposite. In the matter of production, it is supply that is able to actively determine all the criteria for sale: the price, working conditions, environmental and health impact, and all other conditions based on its premise of profits regardless. Demand has only the passive role of choosing among those items offered by supply, its judgment being hindered by disinformation offered by supply to characterize its products.
On the labor side of the question, demand has the active voice in determining how much it will offer, what will be the working conditions, and what environmental and health considerations will be met. Supply is only an undifferentiated mass of persons who must concede to whatever demand offers.
What makes supply of production and demand for labor the active voice in the transactions is organization. The companies and corporations that populate those sides of the economic transaction are sanctioned and chartered by the state. Unions are the organization that can change the position of the public from its purely passive position in the market. It must be made the responsibility of government to foster the growth of unions to democratize the marketplace and to eliminate laws that obstruct the growth and advantages accruing to unions and union membership.
This might be a propitious time to try adding this to the Civil Rights Law. The drastic decline in union membership since the '80s surely accounts for the following facts, which appear in the McClatchey newspapers yesterday:
"The new $6.55 minimum wage is ... way lower than the inflation-adjusted $9.86 minimum wage of 1968 [which] for full-time workers translates into $20,509 a year at the 1968 rate (compared with just $13,624 at the current hourly rate of $6.55).
The minimum wage does not provide a minimally adequate living standard — and it still won't when the last raise to $7.25 takes place next July.
It wasn't always this way. Workers used to share in the gains of rising worker productivity. Between 1947 and 1973, worker productivity rose 104 percent and the minimum wage rose 101 percent, adjusting for inflation. The middle class grew.
Between 1973 and 2007, productivity rose 83 percent and the minimum wage fell 22 percent, adjusting for inflation. Average worker wages fell 10 percent while domestic corporate profits rose 219 percent, and profits in the disproportionately low-wage retail industry jumped 346 percent. More jobs paid poverty wages.
You want this as law? You had better have Democrats ar far as the eye can see---because no one else is gonna pass it.
You also had better be sure you don't lose any more Supreme Court seats either. The five Catholics (aka conservatives) already there have proven themselves to be quite opposed to workers vs. "entities". (See the Ledbetter and Engquist cases and note who jammed them down your throat.)
Great article David. This is a much needed civil right.
Sometimes labor unions are not entirely benign because they come to be led by vocal, corrupt conservatives who tend to fall for the right wing's flag waving:
"Throughout much of its history, the AFL-CIO and other U.S. labor organizations have worked with CIA and multi-national corporations to overthrow democratically-elected governments, collaborated with dictators against progressive labor movements, supported reactionary labor movements against progressive governments, worked with corporate America to organize racist and protectionist campaigns against foreign countries, and encouraged racist campaigns against immigrant workers."
Lee Siu Hin