Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Labor Pains and the GOP
There’s a joke making the rounds and it goes like this: Big Business, a Tea Partier and Organized Labor are sitting around a table. A dozen cookies arrive on a plate. Big Business takes eleven of them and says to the Tea Partier, "Pssst! That union guy is trying to steal your cookie!"
Radical Islam and global terrorism may have replaced World Communism and the Cold War as the threats lurking under every bed and behind each closet door but organized labor is the conservative bugbear that keeps on giving, no matter which international conspiracy is busily undermining the republic. (Although if the right and the corporate interests behind it could somehow link unions to creeping sharia law, Christmas would come early for those guys -- on several different levels of metaphor.)
The fact remains that labor is nowhere near the nefarious force of iniquity they would have you think it is. And I say this not only as the mild-mannered president of an AFL-CIO affiliated union but also as someone who regularly attends labor-management negotiations that by comparison would make the deliberations of the Bureau of Weights and Measures seem like Chicago in the Roaring Twenties.
Nonetheless, Republican governors, state legislatures and members of Congress are applying the screws, screaming bloody murder at unions -- especially public employee unions -- while continuing to tout bigger corporate tax breaks and looking the other way as Wall Street profiteers rake it in, stealing our collective cookies.
When Barack Obama became president and with Democrats in the majority in Congress, union leaders thought that if nothing else, passage of their long-dreamed of EFCA -- the Employee Free Choice Act, easing the way forward for workers’ unionization -- was pretty much a sure thing, the quid pro quo for labor’s massive electoral support. Instead, not only have EFCA’s chances -- for the immediate future at least -- vanished, but labor has become the GOP’s most prominent target -- especially when noisome Muslim clerics aren’t readily at hand.
The progressive website ThinkProgress declared, "The defining political story three months into 2011 is the spread of anti-union legislation in the states" and last month reported that "pivoting off the myth that public employees are getting paid more than their private sector counterparts, governors and state legislatures are scapegoating public workers for their states’ respective budget woes.” We’ve seen it across the country, from Alaska, Wisconsin and Ohio -- where Governor John Kasich signed anti-union legislation Thursday night -- to New Jersey and Maine.
The website notes that on the federal level at least, according to data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, public employees "actually earn 22 percent less than comparable private sector workers. Research by Harvard economist George Borjas shows that, at the top-end, private sector pay is so much better that the public sector has 'found it increasingly more difficult to attract and retain high-skill workers.'"
Yet Republican Jim DeMint of South Carolina, the C. Montgomery Burns of the United States Senate, told ThinkProgress that he "doesn’t believe collective bargaining has any place in government... including at the federal level." And on Friday, the House passed an amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill that would reverse an earlier National Mediation Board (NMB) decision allowing majority rule when aviation and railway workers vote on union representation.
The amendment would count workers who choose not to vote as a "no" against the union. In the words of Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen, "This may sound complicated, but it's pretty straightforward -- under the status quo, the workers would get together and hold a vote. The majority wins. Under the Republican idea, workers who don't participate in the vote would be counted as 'no' votes."
The White House is threatening a veto of this blatant union-busting and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) issued a report noting that, "If congressional elections proceeded under the proposed rules for the NMB elections, in which non-participants were counted as votes for the opponent, then none of the current Members of Congress would have won election in 2010" (emphasis mine).
Further, not content with roiling the legislative waters, Republicans have extended their attacks on labor into the groves of academe and even decorative art. In Wisconsin, where Governor Scott Walker finally obeyed judicial demands that he suspend that state’s controversial new law undermining public employee unions, the Republican Party has demanded to see the university e-mail records of University of Wisconsin Professor William Cronon, the incoming president of the American Historical Association who just happened to write blog entries and a New York Times op-ed piece critical of Walker’s anti-union tactics.
In Michigan, a conservative think tank, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, funded in part by the Walton Family (as in Wal-Mart) and the ubiquitous Koch brothers, is seeking from the labor relations departments at three in-state universities any and all e-mails that mention anything having to do with the union fight in neighboring Wisconsin, Governor Walker or – wait for it – Rachel Maddow.
Meanwhile, in the great state of Maine, Tea Party Governor Paul LePage is taking heat for removing an eleven-panel mural depicting labor history from the walls at, of all places, the state’s Department of Labor. His office said it had received a complaint comparing the work to North Korean propaganda. LePage also said he wants to change the titles of conference rooms there named after Cesar Chavez and New Deal Labor Secretary Frances Perkins. A spokesman told a local paper that "the message from state agencies needs to be balanced" and that the rooms could be renamed "after mountains... or something."
Hey, in that case, if not mountains, how about "Joe Hill?"
So none of this is truly about slashing deficits and balancing budgets. We know it’s really about smashing labor and its protections, undermining the Democratic Party further and trying to torpedo Obama’s reelection. In a fundraising letter Wisconsin State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald bragged that their goal had been not budget repairs but "to break the power of unions... once and for all." And in an interview with the effervescent Megyn Kelly of Fox News, Fitzgerald said, "If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin."
It’s also about ignoring the advances labor has brought the middle class and using charges of union corruption and financial excess to divert attention from the real culprits. According to Friday’s edition of USA Today, "The heads of the nation’s top companies got the biggest raises in recent memory last year after taking a hiatus during the recession" -- a catastrophe many of them helped create.
"At a time most employees can barely remember their last substantial raise, median CEO pay jumped 27% in 2010 as the executives’ compensation started working its way back to prerecession levels, a USA TODAY analysis of data from GovernanceMetrics International found...
"The sizable pay hikes came even though the economy’s recovery remains frail, unemployment is high and corporate profits last year were roughly flat, up 1.5%, from where they were in 2007 when the stock market peaked."
The raises are based not on growth or the creation of business but on money saved from cutbacks and layoffs. And, as the economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in 1980, "The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself."
Luckily, such news combined with pushback from labor and the public’s angry reaction to Republican overreaching could boomerang.
The next sound you hear may be all their cookies crumbling.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
34 Comments so far
Show All"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
— Robert F. Kennedy
"In capitalist society you are the lower class; the capitalists are the upper class-because they are on your backs; if they were not on your backs, they could not be above you." Eugene V. Debs, from a speech given on Dec. 10, 1905
LABOR-"One of the processes by which A acquires property for B."-a quote from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
America is no longer a functioning country. We are now a struggling Empire. Who’s running the Empire? GE, Boeing, Microsoft, Chevron, Monsanto, and others. Plus they have Wall Street is their banker, and Congress is their lawyer and the Pentagon is their police. Globalization is their God.
What’s happening in America today is an assault on the unions in the war against the middle-class. It’s way beyond the tipping point. The elite now have the government they want, and enough “laws” to legislate the middle-class out of existence. The elite also have the ability to financially destroy the middle-class. It’s a sign how desperate the Empire is. It no longer wants to fund a middle-class. Thanks for building us, but we no longer want or need you. We can do just fine with our international outsourced workers and our privatized work force. They can keep the Empire running much better, and without complaining.
Hoa binh
"What’s happening in America today is an assault on the unions in the war against the middle-class. It’s way beyond the tipping point. The elite now have the government they want, and enough “laws” to legislate the middle-class out of existence. The elite also have the ability to financially destroy the middle-class. It’s a sign how desperate the Empire is. It no longer wants to fund a middle-class. Thanks for building us, but we no longer want or need you. We can do just fine with our international outsourced workers and our privatized work force. They can keep the Empire running much better, and without complaining."
Exactly correct!
Sadly, few USans will hear this, or believe it.
I know. It took me years to understand it.
1492: Excellent comment!
Well, it will only end one way. The rest of the world knows the dollar is essentially worthless.All they have to do is set up some other reserve currency (that has been in process for over a year now), and when that happens, all those US government bonds & treasuries will come back as the useless paper they are, and the US economy will crash! If you can get out of this country, do so. Otherwise, get ready for the ride of your life within the next few years or so, because it's coming, and the total & permanent end of this empire (and most of us, I'm afraid) will be the end result.
"Big Business, a Tea Partier and Organized Labor are sitting around a table. A dozen cookies arrive on a plate. Big Business takes eleven of them and says to the Tea Partier, "Pssst! That union guy is trying to steal your cookie!"
-- I like this joke, but I think it could be expanded to better reflect the political reality of our country.
Here is my expansion (and feel free to add your own expansion):
Big Business, a Tea Partier, a Democrat, and Organized Labor are sitting around a table. A dozen cookies arrive on a plate. Big Business takes eleven of them and says to the Tea Partier, "Pssst! That union guy is trying to steal your cookie!" The Democrat then stands up and delivers an eloquent speech filled with doublespeak and empty slogans about how he will put on his comfortable pair of shoes to defend Organized Labor's right to that last remaining cookie. What nobody seems to notice is that the Democrat's breath reeks of the 2 donated cookies that he already devoured from Big Business' 11 stolen cookies.
The end game: Big Business, a Tea Partier and Organized Labor are sitting around a table. A dozen cookies arrive on a plate. Big Business takes all the cookies and leaves. The Tea partier and organized labor starve to death. I hear this joke has them ROTFLTAF at the US Chamber of Commerce.
The current US president is the cause of this problem. Let's not leave that out.
He's W;s evil twin.
We have to be our own champions, because none of our "leaders" will come to our aid. I wish they could realize that it is labor that creates wealth, but the capitalist claims the prerogative to disregard labor's value. I don't expect a capitalist to ever understand or appreciate anything that could reduce "his" profits. But what I can't understand is why a government that must periodically seek the approval of the people, in order to continue, can disregard our importance to the economy and dismiss our concerns about our diminishing status.
Winship writes: "Nonetheless, Republican governors, state legislatures and members of Congress are applying the screws, screaming bloody murder at unions -- especially public employee unions -- while continuing to tout bigger corporate tax breaks and looking the other way as Wall Street profiteers rake it in, stealing our collective cookies."
The media are often complicit in this widespread assault on organized labor and the working class. Today's Los Angeles Times published an article titled, "Anti-union push gains steam nationwide." The title and virtually the entire article makes it sound like the American people have turned against organized labor. Only in the last paragraph do we learn that "a Gallup poll released Friday shows that 48% of respondents agreed with public employee unions compared with 39% who back the governors."
Since that is the case, shouldn't the article have been titled, "Public support for labor unions strong," or something to that effect?
Also on the front page of the same issue, the Los Angeles Times announces, "Coming Sunday, Grading The Teachers, A new round of value-added scores for Los Angeles Elementary Schools."
Virtually everyone who has ever taught knows these "value added scores" are bogus in evaluating the true worth and influence of a teacher on a child's life. They are part of a much larger strategy to destroy teachers, teachers unions and public education.
By continuing to promote this bogus methodology under the guise of educational reform, the Los Angeles Times reveals itself to be a shill for those corporations that seek to privatize education for personal gain. The major obstacles standing in the way of this takeover are the teachers unions. So they must be demonized.
The assault on the American working class is rampant, and it is everywhere, including our corporate-owned media.
First and foremost let me stand up and cheer the men and women standing up to the anti-unionists and anti- workers of the United States. We are surely under attack by the RIGHT who only think that they own the United States.
What disappoints me is that we Progressives and Liberals need to get more vocal of those who want to send America back to the Depression years.
I say start taxing those who have the most money whether they are the huge corporations or private citizens. Especially put a stop to the lobbyists handing out money to sway bills and how Senators and Congressmen vote.
We are the United States and anybody who really thinks that they are the only owners can and will be voted out of office.
If our leaders and citizens do not stand up to what is home grown tyranny we will all suffer.
In closing no one Party owns this country and enough of us have paid the ultimate price in many WARS to keep the United States and its form of Democracy intact.
We are the United States "WE THE PEOPLE" are really speaking.
PS When ever the GOP gets behind the steering wheel the bus will surely crash.
My father, who survived Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, often lamented that "the American people always forget the terrible things Republicans did to them in the past, and they let them back into power again."
Unfortunately, in today's America the Democrats are about as far to the right as the Republicans were during the Great Depression, and the Republicans are on the fascist fringes of insanity.
My advice to my grandchildren is not to let either of the two major parties back into power again, albeit based on the fascist takeover of America, I'm not too sure my grandhildren will have any say in the matter.
You hit a grand slam HR with this. We on the left need a "Buck Stops Here" leader and nuke metaphorically the RIGHT or we are already doomed to some really bad politics in the United States. POGO said it correctly "WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US." This quote is unfortunately is all to real.
Our current President unfortunately is the enabler of the RIGHT since he is our first Black President.
Hopefully we in the present will give your Grandchildren hope and prosperity.
Big Business, a Tea Partier and Organized Labor are sitting around a table. A million cookies arrive on a plate. Big Business inhales all the cookies in one deep breath, then turns to the tea partier devours him and then noshes on organized labor as if it were an after dinner mint. BELCH!
Warren/Maddow for new Progressive Democratic Party in 2012!
THERE's a pair I could vote for!
You should grow a pair.
The United Nations Human Rights Treaty establishes the workers of the world to Union Rights. There are many ways peacefully that our rights can be enforced and one is by the mighty pen.
Tyranny even here in the end will be defeated.
The "Employee Free Choice Act" (otherwise known more accurately at the Card Check bill) was anything but free choice for employees. It was a bald attempt by the vile and disgusting union bosses to deny workers the right of secret ballots so that, by being required to declare themselves to union thugs telling them to sign cards bypassing secret elections, the workers could be coerced, at risk of their kneecaps, into certifying a union they neither needed nor wanted.
Why would unions, who the mendacious Marxists who post on this site laud as the protectors and saviors of the working man, push for such a anti-democratic and anti-worker thing? Because union membership in the private sector is down to 6% and they fear for their lavish salaries and pensions.
Can you provide the evidence to prove that your claim is true?
Yes. See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_check
That's weak source, and just as I suspected, your claim came from big business (chamber of commerce). But thanks for the effort.
It's not an opinion or a claim. The Card Check legislation has the design and would have the effect of eliminating secret ballots if the union could get enough cards signed. That's what the language of the bill would do; the actual contents of the bill are what they are. I cited Wikipedia as a short cut. The text of the relevant part of the bill follows:
"SEC. 2. STREAMLINING UNION CERTIFICATION.
"(a) In General- Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act (29 U.S.C. 159(c)) is amended by adding at the end the following:
"(6) Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, whenever a petition shall have been filed by an employee or group of employees or any individual or labor organization acting in their behalf alleging that a majority of employees in a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining wish to be represented by an individual or labor organization for such purposes, the [National Labor Relations] Board shall investigate the petition. If the Board finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations designating the individual or labor organization specified in the petition as their bargaining representative and that no other individual or labor organization is currently certified or recognized as the exclusive representative of any of the employees in the unit, the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative described in subsection (a)."
See http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/whatis.cfm.
The effect of that language would be to eliminate the protection of secret elections if
the union or another person can get 50% of the workers to sign cards (or if the labor-friendly NLRB accepts a representation that 50% have signed). That would set workers up for being "encouraged" by union goons to sign the cards. Thus, back to baseball bats and kneecapping the recalcitrants to "set an example".
I assume from your comment that you are a union dupe, or worse. But thanks for the effort to deny the truth.
"I assume from your comment that you are a union dupe, or worse. But thanks for the effort to deny the truth."
-- No, you're assumption is wrong. There is a lot of bullshit that is spread around this website and I prefer to get proper evidence to prove the claims. But thanks for sharing your right-wing claims.
Did you read the statutory excerpt I gave you, or are you simply ineducable?
Actually, Horace, I don't really care about the EFCA. I am only replying to you to waste your time.
Bye.
You were a waste of sperm.
Hahahaha... well, the egg that meet the sperm sure thought I was going to be something special. As for the final outcome... that is yet to be decided, and it surely won't be decided upon by a small dick douche bag like you. But one thing is for sure -- I had lots of fun wasting your time!
tell us something we don't know...this article kinda was a repeat of the last few months...kept waiting for it to tell me something...dang
"doesn’t believe collective bargaining has any place in government... including at the federal level."
that's what the Decider in the Shitehouse is for and why he bypassed the collected bargainers in Congress to attack Libya.
Probably not much else as unsettling for people wanting work but denied to do so. Also unsettling for those who do the denying when people want to work even when they have already shipped jobs out of the country and through some magic or obstinacy refuse to let new business take possession of the old factors so's to employe those wanting and willing to work.
This is part and parcel of what I hope the tea lickers would run up against and that just might be so which will, hopefully, give their slanderous life in politics a short one. Leaving them about the only choice of having to use the department of voter fraud to get re-elected.
Beware the rise and use of automation and robotics.