Card Check Already Getting A Post Mortem?
Thursday, August 6th, 2009 by adminThe Minnesota Independent is already doing an autopsy of the campaign by union officials to push the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. Two caveats: the paper is obviously sympathetic to the misguided legislation and the bill is actually far from dead. But the look at union efforts is interesting. A couple tidbits:
“It’d be really really nice if the Democrats would grow a little bit of a backbone,” said Martin Goff, organizing director for UNITE HERE Local 17. “We have the House, the Senate and the presidency. Yet these guys start going to their second, third and fourth positions before the Republicans even ask for it. I’m disgusted actually.”
Bernie Hesse, an organizer with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789, is similarly put off by the backpedaling from Democrats.
“Why did we do all this work?” Hesse asked. “That’s kind of a weird way to bargain, to start taking stuff away before they even start marking up the bill.”
And…
Rachleff is not at all surprised that Democrats appear to be backing away from the most controversial element of the legislation and believes that labor leaders are complicit in the decision to drop card check.
“Various union leaders signaled to the Democrats that it was OK,” he said. “It’s just a sorry-ass situation. The leaders of the existing labor organizations, they have to find things to make it look like they’re doing something. Pushing the Employee Free Choice Act became something very convenient for them to look like they were spending their members’ dues on good things.”
Just thought we’d pass it along.
Tags: EFCA Autopsy
August 7th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Jamie Hanson says:You forgot these inportant parts of the story in the MN Independent:
Union organizers blame this decline [in union membership]in part on increasingly aggressive campaigns by employers to fight organizing efforts and weak labor laws that only offer a slap on the wrist to companies that break the law. Indeed, according to a study released in May by Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, companies have become more brazen in their anti-union tactics. The study found that more than half of the companies examined threatened employees with wage cuts or shuttered work sites, and roughly one third fired workers for pro-union activities. Even when workers did vote to organize, the study found that more than half were without an initial labor contract after a year.
“What’s happened under the existing labor laws is that employers and their attorneys have figured out where the holes are,” said Peter Rachleff, a labor historian at Macalester College. “They’re able to intimidate workers, they’re able to create a climate of fear, they’re able to discourage workers from availing themselves of their right to organize.”
The Employee Free Choice Act is designed to make such anti-union tactics more difficult for companies to utilize. In addition to the card-check provision, it would also force binding arbitration on companies if they fail to reach agreement on a labor contract after a year — a provision that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business interests are equally alarmed by. The legislation would also provide tougher punishments — including fines — for companies that flout the laws…
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Calling this website “The Truth about the EFCA” is a blatant lie in itself. You are not telling the truth here or in any of the smear ads you did against candidates in the last election, or anywhere else you try to propagate misunderstandings of the EFCA. You have a vested interest in keeping our weak labor laws so you can continue to prevent workers from organizing and demanding to be treated as human beings who deserve respect and safe working conditions.
The card-check feature of this legislation doesn’t FORCE employees to have a non-private vote, it gives them the option to vote in one manner or the other. And it’s employers (managers and owners) who do the intimidating (and firing and harassing) of employees during union votes, not union personnel.
I’m surprised that you all can live with yourselves while telling all these lies.