Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE Employee free choice? Not exactly Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
There is a bill kicking around Washington that I like very much or at least I like the name of it. It’s the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as HR 800, and the reason I like it is that the name is almost exactly the opposite of the true purpose of the bill. The true purpose of the bill is to limit the free choice of employees by preventing them from voting on whether they want to join a union. It mandates that if more than 50 percent of the employees of a workplace simply sign cards in response to a union organizing effort saying that they want to join, without any oversight of the conditions under which such cards are signed, that would be sufficient to trigger union representation, and the National Labor Relations Board would be forbidden to conduct a secret ballot, as is done now. You will not be surprised to learn that the bill is backed by labor unions and is in fact their top legislative priority. Obviously it would make it much easier for them to expand their ranks. I mean, if you can buttonhole a worker on his front porch and spin him a line on why it’s in his interest to sign this little card here, and then have his signature count as much as a secret ballot, you don’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to see what the result will be. Have in mind that when the United Food and Commercial Workers tried to organize the 683 workers at Price Chopper warehouses in 2001, they readily got the approximately 225 signatures required to force an election, but by secret ballot only some 130 workers voted in favor of unionizing. So obviously signing a card handed to you by a possibly pushy or intimidating organizer is one thing and voting in the privacy of a voting booth is something else. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out. So clearly the Employee Free Choice Act has little to do with employee free choice and very much to do with bolstering the power of labor unions. For the most part it is supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans. Nationally, Barack Obama suports it, because, as he says, “It will make it easier for unions to organize, make it harder for companies to block unionization,” which is surely true enough. John McCain voted in the Senate last year to block it. Locally, Democratic Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand supports it and so do the leading Democrat contenders for the seat now held by Rep. Mike McNulty, they being Paul Tonko, Phil Steck, and Tracey Brooks, all of whom boast of their union endorsements. The Republican candidate for the seat, Jim Buhrmaster, opposes it, and so does Sandy Treadwell, Republican challenger to Gillibrand. “The secret ballot is a longstanding fundamental right,” Treadwell says, stating the obvious. How could anyone take away that right with a straight face and dare to call it “free choice”? I asked one of the bill’s most ardent advocates, Frank Natalie, president of the Schenectady Central Labor Council, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO. He said the supposedly free elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board are undermined and vitiated by the “harrassment and intimidation of workers” perpetrated by employers before the elections. He said employers regularly threaten to close their plants, move to Mexico, or reduce wages in order to scare workers into voting against union representation. Which they might do. I don’t know, though I suppose union organizers might well engage in their own intimidation, harrassment and propaganda, all of which would constitute an election campaign, in my view, to be settled in the secrecy of the voting booth. I asked Natalie how he would feel if the situation were reversed and there were a bill in the hopper that would allow an employer to defeat a union drive by getting his workers to sign cards against the union without taking a vote. “Would you be outraged?” I asked. “Yes, I would,” he acknowledged. In any case, that is the stated reasoning of the unions, which you can study for yourself on the AFL-CIO Web site. Secret-ballot elections aren’t really fair. The employer has the advantage — even though unions win about 60 percent of those elections, which they don’t tell you. I think the true reason is the simple one that unions have been declining in strength and numbers since the 1950s and are desperate to recover. In the 1950s, 36 percent of the American work force was unionized, and today the number is only 12 percent. We get a little different view here in New York, because our unionization rate is the highest in the country, at 25 percent. But even here, you have to remember that the preponderance of union strength is among government workers, who are protected from market forces. We also get a little different view politically, because in our state government Republicans have been as subservient to the public-employee unions as have Democrats, which is not true nationally. “The unions have invested so much in Democrats, and the Democrats owe the unions so much,” says Neil Golub, head of Price Chopper’s parent corporation. “Now they want to totally shift the balance of power.” He contends that Democrats who voted in favor of this bill last year, like Gillibrand and McNulty, “are actually taking away American rights,” by depriving workers of the secret ballot, and I wouldn’t argue. But then politics is politics, and it’s as hard for Democrats to defy organized labor as it is for Republicans to defy big oil companies or backwoods Christian preachers. Anyway, it’s called the Employee Free Choice Act. It passed the House, got filibustered to a halt in the Senate and is now a defining issue between Democrats and Republicans. If you wish to make yourself heard on this subject, you may do so on my blog at www.dailygazette. com.
Americans need to learn---again----that we are pioneering Americans.....we supposedly go the moon, send rovers to Mars, and have nuked Japan then built them up and accepted Godzilla......
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
A labor-union problem looms for Obama Unions want the president-elect to enact rules to make it easier to unionize workplaces. But doing so could alienate business at a crucial time for the economy. By Dan Morain November 16, 2008
Reporting from Minneapolis -- Two months before Barack Obama is to be sworn in as president, opening salvos are being launched over what could become one of the thorniest issues his administration will face next year.
Organized labor, which spent more than $80 million to put Democrats in the White House and Congress, wants Obama to deliver on its priority: new rules to make it easier to unionize workplaces.
A union-backed organization founded by one of Obama's economic advisors plans to start a national ad campaign today calling for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.
Obama and his vice president-elect, Joe Biden, embraced the measure in the Senate last year and on the campaign trail this year, particularly in front of union audiences. (The bill passed the House last year, but in the Senate, Republicans succeeded in blocking it because Democrats lacked the 60 votes necessary to cut off debate.)
But if the president-elect pushes for the legislation, he risks alienating business -- which also contributed heavily to his campaign and his party and will be crucial to his efforts to fix the economy and overhaul the healthcare system.
The bill would take from employers the right to decide between accepting workers' signed union cards or demanding a secret ballot on unionization. Instead, a workplace could unionize if labor persuaded a majority of employees to sign cards -- without all employees voting.
"President-elect Obama needs to think about how much political capital he wants to put behind this," said Glenn Spencer, a Chamber of Commerce executive who is leading the fight to kill the measure. If it is passed in Obama's first 100 days, Spencer said, it is "going to look like a special-interest payback."
The chamber stayed out of the presidential race but still spent $35 million on the election, much of it to try to keep Democrats from attaining the 60 Senate seats needed to block filibusters.
Organized labor's influence has waned from the early 1950s, its height, when it represented about a third of the workforce. Now it represents about an eighth.
Paul Booth, a top official in the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, is quick to say that congressional leaders will decide when to move the bill. But he has his view: "Sooner the better. I'm quite anxious to have it come up."
AFSCME, which had endorsed New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary, spent $50 million on the 2008 election, he estimated.
House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Martinez), who sponsored the bill, said that he was all but certain the measure wouldn't be "the first bill out of the chute," but that it was "not moving to the back of the train" either.
"Not everybody gets to go through the front door of the White House on the first day. That is just the reality of the situation," said Miller.
From Washington to Sacramento, the measure is at the top of labor's wish list.
Teamster lobbyist Barry Broad, a Sacramento attorney, said the future of unions hung in the balance. He was among the tens of thousands of union people who walked door to door for the Obama campaign in battleground states -- in his case in Reno.
"Unions spoke with a nearly unanimous voice: This is their No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 priority in the next administration," said Broad, who believes quick passage is crucial. "For purely political reasons -- the longer you wait in politics the more nervous politicians become. Right now, he is enormously popular and has a mandate to make changes."
The Service Employees International Union, the nation's largest union, posted video of Obama on its website, making clear where he stands: "It's time we had a president who honors organized labor, who's walked on picket lines, who doesn't choke on the word 'union,' who lets our unions do what they do best and organize our workers, and who will finally make the Employee Free Choice Act the law of the land."
SEIU reported knocking on more than 1.8 million doors, making 4.4 million phone calls and spending more than $33 million in the campaign. Its actual amount was far higher, because the union does not have to publicly disclose its spending on communications to its members.
Among beneficiaries of its money is American Rights at Work, the group that plans to start airing the commercial today.
The organization's founder, former Rep. David E. Bonior (D-Mich.), was among the members of Obama's transition team of economic advisors who accompanied Obama at his first postelection news conference.
The bill would take from employers the right to decide between accepting workers' signed union cards or demanding a secret ballot on unionization. Instead, a workplace could unionize if labor persuaded a majority of employees to sign cards -- without all employees voting.
If or when this passes, I predict that Wal-Mart will be unionized in a years time. Which will make the unions the most powerful, influential and rich entities in this country. And Obama can then know that he can secure his 2nd term as president. And not to mention, pissing the non-union businesses and corporations off that also contributed to his campaign.
IF on the other hand, Obama does not pass this proposed way of unionization, he can then kiss his 2nd term as president good-by cause the unions will not support him again. OR, if not careful, we could end up with another RFK.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Now on the subject of the Free Choice Act........... There some downsides of unions. Unions have been one of the main forces driving millions of jobs off shore the last 40 years. Look around the country. Heavily unionized states have the highest unemployment. They forced the jobs overseas never to return.
The UAW demands that forced the automakers labor rate more than 50 percent higher than competitive auto companies are one of the reasons the taxpayers are now required to bail them out. Perhaps that is one of the reasons the auto makers are doing well in other countries but failing in the United States?
The Free Choice Act eliminates the secret ballot now required for a company to be unionized. The card-check system, run by the unions, would allow the unions to know exactly who supports them and who does not so the unions could intimidate and harass people into signing. All workers would then find themselves paying union dues without ever having the chance to vote on it. You could only support this act if you feel that working people in this country should be denied a secret vote on unionization by their government.
There is also the issue of small non-union businesses competing with union businesses that have aquired government mandates to use 'union only' businesses for government construction rate jobs. Combine that with the increase in health and other benefits can bankrupt those small businesses.
The unions basically are now meshed with politics. They are almost like a government of their own by dictating to us! We are in a global economy weather we like it or not. And obviously we can't compete! Unions have lost many jobs through outsourcing. They have lost so many, that they now have unionized 'office workers'. Pallleeezzzz!!
I guess unions can do good for their members, but when they go to excess they wind up destroying the very jobs they are supposed to protect.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
EDITORIALS Give workers free choice via secret ballot
It’s called the Employee Free Choice Act, but a proposed law that has the support of President-elect Obama and many Democrats in Congress would likely wind up being anything but. The law would fundamentally change the way labor unions are allowed to organize workplaces. Traditionally, it’s been by secret ballot only — designed to keep antiunion bosses from knowing which workers want to join, so they can’t intimidate them or retaliate against them later. But under the proposal, workers would lose the protection of the secret ballot; instead, they’d only have to sign pledge cards with their friendly union organizer. If a majority of workers did so, the union would be in. Under such a system, there would still be intimidation tactics; they’d simply come from the other side — the union organizers’. And since there’d be no way for a worker to hide, intimidation would be likely more common. The unions know such a law would make organizing much easier, for obvious reasons. But if their effort still failed, workers who did sign pledge cards would be more easily exposed and face retaliation from their bosses. Yes, there are laws designed to...................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00702
Re Jan. 17 editorial, “Give workers free choice via secret ballot,” which promoted the current ballot system for recognizing a union at a work place and opposed the Employee Free Choice Act: The trouble is those secret ballot elections are about as free as elections were in the Soviet Union. The editorial author needs to dig out “Norma Rae,” the Sally Field movie of decades ago dealing with this very topic. The struggle is as tough now as portrayed in the movie, and was made tougher by the Bush administration. Such is the reason the bill has been pushed by the AFL-CIO over the last year.
RICHARD TERRY Schenectady The writer is a former head of the Schenectady Federation of Teachers.
Reich's Call for Unionization is 'a 1930s Solution to a 2009 Problem,’ Economists Say Thursday, February 19, 2009 By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor
(CNSNews.com) - A former Clinton-era Cabinet member is taking part in a union-backed media offensive that is pushing for increased unionization by having Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
It’s an argument, however, that some economists say comes straight out of the failed policies of the past – the 1930s Depression era, to be exact.
Robert Reich, Clinton’s secretary of labor, told reporters Wednesday that the way to get the economy back on track is to boost the purchasing power of the middle class. One major way to do that, he said, is to “expand the percentage of working Americans in unions.”
“Unionization is not just good for workers in unions, unionization is very, very important for the economy overall, and would create broad benefits for the United States,” the former Harvard-turned-Berkeley public policy professor said.
“With median wages rising slowly or actually dropping, consumers simply don’t have enough money to buy all the goods and services that the economy provides,” Reich said.
“If they can’t borrow any more and have to rely on their sinking wages, the entire economy is in trouble, because there’s just simply not enough demand out there,” he added.
But if workers did have unions, Reich theorized, they would have a wage and benefit premium.
“If they did have higher wages and benefits, they would have purchasing power they need to buy more of the goods and services that this economy produces. That would strengthen the economy overall,” he said.
Reich is working hand-in-hand with a coalition of labor unions and the Center for American Progress Action Fund to call for increased unionization as a means of “saving the economy.”
As part of that, Reich endorsed the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as the "Card Check" bill, which would allow union organizers to get employees of a company to create a union simply by signing union cards -- in lieu of workplace secret-ballot elections.
Labor needs right to form unions BY SANDRA McANANY For The Sunday Gazette
My brother was recently terminated from his factory position after missing two days of work due to a foot injury. He did not have a year with the employer to be protected by the Family Medical Leave Act and, unfortunately, there was no union at the factory to help protect his interests as an employee. There was nothing to prevent the employer from terminating him or other employees for an absence, even though he had a doctor’s excuse. This same story is repeated daily across the country. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual membership data (Jan. 200, only 17,243,000 (13.3 percent) of workers nationwide are protected by unions. In New York, the percentage is higher: 26 percent, or at 2,146,000 workers. This leaves millions of people in New York and across the country at the mercy of their employers, without any protection from adverse actions, without adequate salaries and benefits and without hope for their economic futures. COSTS TO SOCIETY There are costs for society as a whole when employers are not unionized. We pay the price for the 2,130,793 (18 percent) of New York adults, age 19-64, who do not have health insurance. We pay for the health-care costs for the 1,530,564 (32 percent) of New York children enrolled in a Medicaid program. We also pay a price as a society for the 424,798 (9 percent) of New York children with no health insurance coverage at all. Some 51 million people nationwide and 3.7 million in New York are in households under the federal poverty level. Without adequate income and health insurance, life can quickly become a matter of surviving from paycheck to paycheck. Unions within the workplace could help to change these statistics, which would not only help workers and their families but would also indirectly help every New York taxpayer. Under current regulations, when employees want to unionize, an employer can call for a separate election for employees to vote on unionization, even if a majority of the employees have signed union authorization cards. This allows employers the opportunity to intimidate their employees, to force them to attend anti-union sessions and to terminate employees who are active with the unionization efforts. A recent report by the Center for Urban Economic Development, at the University of Chicago, found that 30 percent of employers facing a unionization attempt fire pro-union workers, 51 percent coerce workers with bribery or favoritism, and 49 percent threaten to close the facility. Any employee involved in a unionization attempt under current regulations is taking huge personal and career risks. It’s hard for employees to stand up for their rights when companies can quickly replace them with the next warm body waiting in line. FREE CHOICE ACT If the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) were reintroduced to Congress and the Senate and passed, workers would be able to form a union through a majority sign-up process and employers would have to recognize a union if a majority of employees signed unionization cards. Employers would have less of an opportunity to intimidate, harass and terminate union supporters. There would be stronger penalties if employee rights were violated during the unionization process and there would be a mediation and arbitration program in place for any disputes during the process of developing the first contract. In 2007, a bipartisan majority of the House passed EFCA, but the effort was killed during a Senate filibuster. Two years ago, workers were so close to being able to unionize in a fair manner but today, workers are still facing barriers to unionizing across the country. Each of us can help to make a difference for New York individuals and families and to help raise the bar for employer treatment of workers. If you care about the employees in the area who are one injury away from being fired, about the high number of children and adults without health insurance, about the cost to all taxpayers to provide insurance through Medicaid to children instead of through strong employer plans, and most importantly about the lack of hope so many families have for a better economic future, please consider contacting Sen. Gillibrand, Sen. Schumer and your congressman to encourage them to support the Employee Free Choice Act and the rights of ................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar02502
As a small business owner of 36 years, I am concerned by the so-called Employee Free Choice Act. Below are some concerns: The Employee Free Choice Act is not free if a secret ballet is not allowed. It simply benefits the union. If small businesses are forced out of business, no one — not even the union coffers — stands to benefit, and certainly not the employees. With the automakers in such serious trouble financially, how can an employee benefit by being in the union? Again, there is no gain except to union coffers. What is free if small businesses are forced to close? Large corporations are laying off thousands of employees, so how will dictating to small businesses help improve the economic situation? If union bosses can work to coerce employees to join without employers having a fair chance to speak, is this not only unfair but undemocratic? What is “free” about employees being intimated to sign and then forced to pay high dues? Each employee’s wages need to be based on merit and not by people who don’t know who is working well or not. Please consider these thoughts before voting.
R. J. WHITE Rotterdam The writer is president of Korandance Pool Builders, Ltd.
Keep balloting over unionizing secret as any other election
When you stepped behind the curtain at your local polling place last November to cast your vote in the general election, which candidate did you choose for president? Of course, you did not have to make your choice public. Under federal law, that decision is a personal matter you made by casting a private ballot. However, not all candidates support a worker’s right to a private ballot election when deciding whether or not to unionize. Many of them support the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, a bill pending in Congress. The legislation, also known as “card check,” would replace the well-balanced, federally supervised private-ballot process that exists today. Under the card-check system, union organizers would only have to gather signed authorization cards from a majority of the workers to claim union representation. Without the private ballot, workers who were intimidated or coerced into signing authorization cards would not have the ability to change their vote in private. The workers’ votes are made public to the employer, union organizers and co-workers. There is no private-ballot election. There is no free choice, but a forced choice to benefit special-interest groups. This pending bill is against everything our democracy is based on. All workers, in every industry, deserve the fundamental American right to a federally supervised private-ballot election. This right is guaranteed when workers vote in political elections; there is no reason they should surrender this right in the workplace. Tell Congress to vote against Employee Free Choice Act.
DAVID RAKVICA Gloversville The writer is a member of the regional council for Eastern New York Empire State Chapter Associated Builders and Contractors.
Logged
, only 17,243,000 (13.3 percent) of workers nationwide are protected by unions. In New York, the percentage is higher: 26 percent, or at 2,146,000 workers. This leaves millions of people in New York and across the country at the mercy of their employers, without any protection from adverse actions, without adequate salaries and benefits and without hope for their economic futures. 
