Workers Rights?

Workers

by Jonik / June 29th, 2011

Jonik is a long-time contributor of cartoons to National Lampoon, New Yorker, NY Times, Gourmet, Playboy, Cosmopolitan, Audubon, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Wall St. Journal, Mad, and other national publications. He began also doing editorial cartoons the day after Papa Bush started bombing Baghdad. His editorial work has been published in many alternative publications and is not copyrighted so that activists without budgets can "steal this cartoon." Those with budgets, however, are nice about sharing that. Read other articles by Jonik, or visit Jonik's website.

This article was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 at 8:01am and is filed under Cartoon, Human Rights, Labor.

In These Times

NLRB Issues Rule to Prevent Union Busting and Speed Up Elections

By Mike Elk

Tuesday
Jun 21, 2011
11:25 am

Today, the National Labor Relations Board proposed a rule that would dramatically speed up and reduce frivolous challenges to union elections. Companies seeking to stop union drives often delay union elections by months in order to allow more time for extended anti-union intimidation sessions and campaigns, which often times involve firing. By speeding up the timeframe in which elections occur, the NLRB is giving more protections to union workers seeking to join a union.

“Over the decades, the Board has revised its rules periodically, looking for ways to achieve a broadly-shared goal: making the representation process work as well as possible” said NLRB Chairwoman Wilma B. Liebman. “One important result has been to reduce the typical time between the filing of an election petition (which triggers the Board’s procedures) and the actual election. But the current rules still seem to build in unnecessary delays, to encourage wasteful litigation, to reflect old-fashioned communication technologies, and to allow haphazard case-processing, by not adopting best practices.”

The NLRB rule would streamline union elections by allowing for electronic filling of election petitions. The Board is also proposing to require companies to give unions a full list of potential voters’ telephone numbers and email addresses when available—a move that would help unions campaign among workers.

The rule would also crack down on frivolous lawsuits companies often file to delay union elections. Instead of allowing companies to challenge who is eligible to vote in a union representation election before it occurs, the rule would delay most voter eligibility appeals until after the election.

The proposed rules shifting appeals until after the elections are expected to greatly speed up the cycle which can sometimes be delayed for months until all the appeals are heard. Companies often use these delays to bring in union busters and run expensive anti-union intimidation campaigns against workers.

The rule change won quick approval from organized labor. “With the proposal of these new standards, the Board is taking a modest step to remove roadblocks and reduce unnecessary and costly litigation—and that’s good news for employers as well as employees” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a statement. “The proposed rule does not address many of the fundamental problems with our labor laws, but it will help bring critically needed fairness and balance to this part of the process.”

The proposed rule also received quick criticism from the Republican member of the NLRB, Brian Hayes. “Without any attempt to identify particular problems in cases where the process has failed, the majority has announced its intent to provide a more expeditious preelection process and a more limited postelection process that tilts heavily against employers’ rights to engage in legitimate free speech and to petition the government for redress” said Hayes. “The majority acts in apparent furtherance of the interests of a narrow constituency, and at the great expense of undermining public trust in the fairness of Board elections.”

The rule is sure to quickly be attacked in the press by Republicans. Republicans have launched an unprecedented campaign against the NLRB in the wake of the Boeing case—threatening to defund the agency. The International Association of Machinists (IAM) filed ethics charges with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics calling for an investigation into South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham for his role in trying to stop NLRB in the Boeing Case. IAM charged Sen. Graham with violating Senate Rule 43 by trying to stop a law enforcement trial.

Speaking over the weekend at Netroots Nation, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said that the attacks on the NLRB “strike me as un-American”. Despite wide condemnation of Republicans' interference with the independent authority of the NLRB, more attacks on the NLRB are likely to come as the rulemaking process gets underway. The public will have 75 days to comment on the rule before it becomes established law. Over the next 75 days, we can expect to see a full throttled attack on the NLRB from Republicans, corporations, and their allies in the media.

Putting Labor’s Money to Good Use

by David Macaray / June 21st, 2011

The practice known as “union-busting” isn’t limited to goon squads cracking heads, or companies hiring public relations firms that specialize in scare tactics and intimidation. In its broadest sense, union-busting describes what congressional Democrats have been doing since the 1980s—taking labor’s money while voting against workers’ rights, giving tough speeches at union halls, then using weasel words when addressing business groups, and refusing to go on the record as unabashedly “pro-union.”

No matter how much campaign money they’ve received from organized labor, you won’t hear Democrats say publicly what Franklin Roosevelt said publicly in 1935: “If I worked in a factory, the first thing I would do is join a union.” Whatever their reason—whether they simply don’t believe in the labor movement, or they’re too scared to admit they do—very few Democrats are willing to stand on their hind legs and repeat what FDR said.

Which brings us to Grover Norquist, the notorious anti-tax, anti-government zealot. Norquist’s rhetoric has inspired supporters to compare him to Thomas Paine and Samuel Adams, and, conversely, has led detractors to suggest that he’s ever so slightly brain-damaged. But whether he’s a crusading patriot or eccentric crackpot, there’s no denying that Norquist terrifies Democrats and Republicans alike.

He terrifies Republicans because he wields enormous leverage within the conservative-libertarian wing of the Party. He wields it for two reasons: (1) by being able to raise obscene amounts of money for political campaigns, and (2) by requiring candidates to sign an oath promising never, ever to raise taxes… or risk having Norquist and his minions throw their support (money) to another candidate.

In short, you either place your signature on his “no tax increase under any circumstances” document or you get steamrolled by the well-financed, anti-tax juggernaut. While some folks might refer to such strong-arm tactics as “extortion,” Norquist and his crowd regard it as a critical test of ideological purity.

As clumsy and peremptory as Norquist’s approach is, it’s also brilliant — so brilliant that organized labor should immediately adopt it. If labor is serious about building an army of progressive Democratic foot soldiers — Democrats who not only believe that the survival of the American middle-class will be led by the labor movement but are willing to stake their careers on it — it needs to adopt a tactic as equally brutal and uncompromising as Norquist’s.

Instead of trying to convince itself that it can reap a bountiful harvest from the current crop of House and Senate Democrats, organized labor needs to sow the seeds of an entirely new strain of representative by announcing that it will no longer support any candidate unless he or she is willing to sign a Norquist-like oath — a written pledge to make unions a top domestic priority and to work diligently on a pro-labor agenda.

What would that agenda look like? Enacting stronger labor laws, strictly enforcing statutes already on the books, passing the EFCA (card check), raising the minimum wage, leveling the “free trade” playing field, and resuscitating labor’s image by flooding the media with the message that it was organized labor who invented the middle-class, and that the reason we’re in the economic mess we’re in is because the voice of the American worker has been drowned out by corporate interests.

And when Democrats smugly pose their “gotcha” question — Who would you rather have in office, an ineffective, pro-labor Democrat or an openly hostile Republican? — labor’s answer should be, “We don’t spend another dime until we have a candidate worthy of us.” To use a baseball analogy, it makes no difference whether you pop up or hit a line-drive to the centerfielder. Both result in outs.

While Grover Norquist has shown he can raise a ton of cash, the AFL-CIO and CTW (Change to Win) can raise more. Organized labor may be struggling, but one thing it’s not short of is money. And money — tactically spent — is what it will take to whip the Democrats into shape. The message: Support union labor or look for a new career.

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and author (It’s Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor), was a former union rep. He can be reached at: dmacaray@earthlink.net. Read other articles by David.

This article was posted on Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 at 8:01am and is filed under Democrats, Labor, Unions.