UnionBook

From the current issue of UNITY & INDEPENDENCE
Supplement to The Organizer Newspaper
P.O. Box 40009
San Francisco, CA 94140
Email: ilcinfo@earthlink.net
Website: www.owcinfo.org
PLEASE EXCUSE DUPLICATE POSTINGS
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Dear Sisters and Brothers:

President Obama now says that card check is dead. [See Reuters article below.] He says he regrets that it may be necessary to find a compromise on labor reform that does not include card check, "as the votes aren't there." The fact is that the interview Obama granted to the Washington Post on Jan. 16, six days before he was sworn into office, was aimed consciously at trying to bury EFCA and card check.

By urging the political establishment to consider "an alternative" that would be more palatable to Big Business than EFCA, as he did in this interview with the Washington Post, Obama sent a signal to Arlen Specter, Dianne Feinstein and all the other politicians that he would not uphold his promise to labor and use the power of his presidency and his massive support among working people to fight for EFCA. His about-face began six days before he took his oath of office. It shows how hard the Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street must have leaned on Obama on this burning question for the entire labor movement -- and for working people as a whole.

But does the labor movement have to accept this pre-mature burial of EFCA? Hell No!

It ain't over till, till it's over -- and it ain't over! This last phase of the fight to win card check is only beginning. There must be no turning back.

Labor has to return to its roots -- mobilizing its members independently in mass actions and protests of all sorts (including those proposed by Mark Brenner below) to fight tooth and nail for card check -- for a real EFCA -- not a watered-down and close-to-useless EFCA without card check. Yes, it's time to fight back and remind President Obama and all the politicians that labor isn't going to stand by and allow them to renege on their promises. No way!

It's time to build a powerful movement in the streets that will compel Obama to put card check back on the table and that will compel 60 senators -- or more -- to do the right thing by voting for EFCA with card check. We cannot, and we must not, accept anything less!

-- Alan Benjamin
Co-Editor
Unity & Independence

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Obama Pronounces 'Card Check' Dead"

Reuters -- Friday, May 22

On Thursday, President Obama pronounced "card check" dead, saying that the current Employee Free Choice Act didn't have the votes to pass but that a "compromise" could work. By compromise, the president meant a version of the bill without card check, the provision obliging employers to recognize unions after a majority of workers have signed cards, rather than after an election. On the same day, Sen. Arlen Specter, newly "D"-Pa., a key swing vote, said that he, too, would support a "compromise" on EFCA: card-check-free, of course.

 These twin announcements sealed what most observers had understood for a while: Card check isn't happening. The provision has always been imperfect, but its death is a sure sign that the labor movement needs a more effective approach to politics.

 Card check was devised as a solution to a simple yet intractable problem: Workers who want to join unions do not get a fair shake. Elections take too long, giving employers plenty of time to hire high-priced union-busting law firms, fire union sympathizers, intimidate and spy upon workers, and do whatever they can do, legally or illegally, to keep the union out. Many people now work for companies like Home Depot (HD), Rite Aid (RAD), or Wal-Mart (WMT) that have plenty of resources to wear unions down and every incentive to do so since their business models depend on underpaid, short-term labor. Specter opposes card check but does support speeding up elections, allowing workers to campaign at their work sites without retaliation, and imposing stiffer penalties for violations of organizing rights.

 Not everyone committed to labor-law reform is mourning card check.

Columbia economist Jagdish Bhagwati, one of EFCA's most prominent sympathizers, told TBM earlier this spring that he regretted the card-check provision of the bill: "I think that it was a mistake for us who are supporters of unions and unionization to go for card check. I agree that some employers intimidate workers who wish to unionize, but those who do not wish to unionize can also be intimidated by union organizers." Bhagwati strongly supports secret ballots and thinks it would have been better to try to reform enforcement mechanisms to ensure that illegal intimidation by employers would be punished. Bhagwati also points out that U.S. labor law makes it cripplingly difficult for unions to strike: "If unions cannot strike effectively they become paper tigers, more or less. I would have concentrated on this rather than get diverted into the card-check provision." He adds, "The card-check provision has unnecessarily cost us some credibility and also some votes, I fear."

 Sandy Pope, president of Teamsters Local 805, which is headquartered in Long Island City, Queens, thinks labor law reform is needed but says she's "not sad about card check going away." Pope explains: "I would prefer an expedited election to card check. It's important for workers to do something as a group. In order to go into bargaining in the strongest possible way, you have to campaign. You have to really want" the union. Pope argues that if unions "treat people like babies" by bypassing the election process, workers won't build effective organizations that can stand up to the employers' aggressive behavior at the bargaining table. A shorter election would bypass much of the employers' current strategy of intimidation and firings, Pope thinks, while preserving the possibility of debate in the workplace and allowing employees to organize, if they choose to do so, rather than passively assent to a visiting bureaucrat.

 The business lobby has been running numerous ads emphasizing that "card check kills the secret ballot" with pictures of Jimmy Hoffa and other easy symbols of union corruption. The whole concept reinforces stereotypes of union leaders as intimidating thugs, an image opponents have enthusiastically exploited, with one business coalition even using the comically corrupt visage of Johnny Sack from The Sopranos. "There are unscrupulous unions out there who will just go in the backdoor, sign cards without the employees really knowing who they are," says Sandy Pope. "Some of the accusations of the right wing are true." (Most union leaders are, of course, neither as corrupt nor as effective as David Chase's imaginary mob bosses, but her point is important.)

 Worthy as such concerns about card check are, they are not the major reasons for its death. Most politicians are posturing when they decry EFCA as "undemocratic." It's much more likely that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., doesn't like EFCA because of campaign contributors like Kindred Healthcare, which has been involved in bitter struggles to stay union-free (as well as, attractively, opposing workers' attempts to improve the quality of care). Others in Congress are similarly compromised (including Democrats like Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, a former friend of card check and a major recipient of Wal-Mart campaign largesse).

 Business interests vigorously oppose serious labor-law reform, and the labor movement isn't as serious as it needs to be in defending it. Serious divisions within the labor movement hampered unions from working together. Some have argued that Obama's November victory created an atmosphere of complacency, allowing unions to not push card check as hard as they needed to. Even without the unwieldy baggage of card check, unions will need to get more aggressive to win labor-law reform: After all, even the emerging EFCA-decaf-lite compromises supported by Starbucks (SBUX) are opposed by the most politically active business interests. The anti-EFCA lobby flatly rejects even Specter's compromise, despite having based its campaign on opposition to card check.

 New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse, in a recent essay on why Americans don't protest, paraphrases United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard saying that demonstrations are less needed in the United States than in Europe "because often all that is needed is some expert lobbying in Washington to line up the support of a half-dozen senators." This approach has plainly failed with the Employee Free Choice Act. To get labor-law reform, card check or no, rather than "just sitting around and lobbying," Sandy Pope points out, "we have to talk to our members. We have to get into the streets."

 Mark Brenner, a labor activist and editor of Labor Notes, agrees, observing: "The labor movement is turning its back on its own history. Every major legislative advance has come about because of street protests, civil disobedience, by our turning up the heat."

 Explaining why it's important for labor to return to the organizing and protesting strategies of the past, Brenner says: "We're never going to win the inside game. Wal-Mart and Home Depot will always have more money. Our strength is that we have millions of members ... and millions more people who would like to be in a union." Winning labor-law reform will take organizing to make all those people more visible. "Why no civil disobedience in Arlen Specter's office?" Brenner asks. "Why aren't we picketing in front of every Republican's house? Why aren't we bird-dogging them? If this is [labor's] most important campaign, let's act like it is."

UNITY & INDEPENDENCE
P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140
Tel. (415) 641-8616; fax: (415) 626-1217
email: ilcinfo@earthlink.net
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Dear Sisters and Brothers:

At a time when labor needs to be united to send a clear and unmistakable message to President Obama that we will not accept anything less than card check and the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), at a time when all the main unions have regrouped to say to the Obama administration that we will not accept having EFCA taken off the table (as Dianne Feinstein, Arlen Specter and Larry Summers have argued vociferously) ... at this crucial juncture, Andy Stern of SEIU has jumped ship and dealt a body blow to labor's united stand by abandoning card check and saying that labor should "consider alternatives" to EFCA. (The article below from the Washington Post speaks for itself.)

This is more than a body blow. It is a stab in the back.

Labor put Obama in office. It has every right to tell the new president that he MUST carry forth on his promise, repeated time after time at labor rallies all across the country, that he would fight tooth and nail for EFCA -- not just sign it when it came before him. He promised to advocate for it and fight for it once in office. Labor must hold him and the new administration accountable!

Labor should be mobilizing in the streets to let the Obama administration know that we aren't backing off. We are going to fight to make EFCA the law of the land. It is a life-and-death question for millions of working people. It is a vital step in implementing a real stimulus of the economy -- and not one like we have at present, which just keeps bailing out the banks and the war profiteers.

Our labor council here in San Francisco condemned in no uncertain terms the raid organized by Andy Stern and the leadership of SEIU against UNITE HERE, one of its own Change to Win affiliates. Other central labor councils across the country have taken a similar stance.

But this kind of raiding isn't just one more case of an overzealous union leader impinging on another union's jurisdiction. This is raiding carried out on behalf of the employers, and with the employers' help, to weaken the labor movement by imposing sweatheart contracts, undermining standards, and destroying all rank-and-file democracy.

This is why Stern had to go after, and attempt to destroy, SEIU UHW in Northern California, something he has not been able to achieve -- and will not be able to achieve -- thanks to the stubborn resistance and combativity of Brother Sal Rosselli and the membership of that union, which has now launched the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).

The politics of Andy Stern are a serious threat to the entire labor movement. No one in labor is immune from this offensive. It takes the form of attacking a major component of his own union, in the case of SEIU-UHW. It takes the form of raiding, brazenly on behalf of the employers, the UNITE HERE union. It takes the form of undermining labor's united front in support of EFCA, right when we have the real possibility of winning card check. The list goes on.

Defeating this threat from Stern, however, is inseparable from charting an independent fightback perspective to win passage of EFCA, to ensure that serious and fundamental NAFTA revisions are on the table, to ensure that we win single-payer healthcare, to ensure that our unions do not bail out corporations (as they are doing in Chrysler and GM), and the list goes on.

The November 4 election has placed the labor movement in a unique role to champion the fight for change that the majority of the American people want and expect from the new president.

Over a month ago, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis came to San Francisco and met with many of us on the executive committee of the San Francisco Labor Council. When asked by someone in the audience what it would take to win EFCA given all the resistance from the Chamber of Commerce and all the hesitation and backsliding from politicians who claim to be labor's friends, Ms. Solis responded, "For labor to win the Employee Free Choice Act, you are going to have to build a movement."

Simple and to the point!

Building a movement means not accepting so-called "alternatives" that are more accommodating to the employers. It means organizing labor-community coalitions to do what the San Francisco Labor Council is doing on May 6-7 with its 24-hour vigil at the Federal Building in San Francisco to demand that Dianne Feinstein get back on board with EFCA. It means taking on the openly "company union" orientation of Andy Stern, which is at the root of his drive to raid and destroy his own union and other unions.

And it means affirming that labor's role, its only role, is to defend the interests of its members by remaining entirely independent of the bosses and the government. This means saying that labor's role is not to use union funds to bail out corporations, as this makes the union a partner and accomplice in the bosses' decisions to lay off workers, impose speed-up, take away holiday pay and overtime pay, and ultimately to put the union's funds (and therefore the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of retirees) at great risk.

These are challenging times for the labor movement. They could be the best of times. People are full of hope and energy to take action. They have been emboldened by the results of the November 4th election. They want change and they expect to get it -- not in some distant future, but now. Any opening for united struggle is immediately seized upon to fight back.

But this could also be the worst of times, as unions are turning inward against each other, using funds to bail out corporations, fighting against each other for the crumbs from the table.

The only way out is for the labor movement to reclaim its independent voice, its backbone and its tradition of mobilizing its members to win its heartfelt demands -- which are the demands of the working class majority in this country.

In solidarity,

Alan Benjamin
Exec. Bd. member, SF Labor Council
(note written in a personal capacity)

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(reprinted from April 20 Washington Post)

Stern Considers Alternatives to EFCA
By Alec MacGillis

As key senators have announced that they are not planning to support the Employee Free Choice Act, labor leaders put on a brave face, saying they have every intention of finding the needed 60 votes and that it is premature to start talking about alternatives to the bill.

But in an interview today, Andy Stern, head of the influential Service Employees International Union, stepped gently away from that unified front, raising the prospect of reforms that would overhaul union elections without giving workers the option of organizing sans secret ballot elections.

The legislation now before Congress, dubbed "card check," would let workers organize if a majority in a workplace sign pro-union cards; as it stands, employers require secret ballot elections. Unions say elections are marred by employer intimidation; employers say going with card-check -- what the unions call "majority sign up" -- would expose workers to union pressure.

Speaking to The Post's editorial board, Stern noted that there are ways to try to level the playing field in union elections without giving workers a way around the secret ballot requirement, such as shortening the window before elections are held -- thus giving employers less time to pressure workers -- and stiffening penalties for employer violations.

"We are on the hunt for a solution," he said. "No matter what you do, you have to change the election process. Whether it's majority sign up or not, workers have to have a choice about having an election. The bill has to address ... fast elections, eliminating employer behavior and what happens if there are employer violations. Regardless, that needs to be done."

He even suggested that the card-check bill had been introduced as it is in the Senate only in order to have the same language as the bill that is in the House, and that this may not have been the right way to go. "We sort of have a bill that talks a lot about majority signup and nothing about the problems of the election system," he said. "That was probably a decision made in the House to have the same bill come up and potentially pass the same bill -- which is not going to be a logical way to follow through now that we know ... what the situation is."

Stern and SEIU secretary treasurer Anna Burger said they have not given up on getting 60 votes for card-check, saying that they still hold out hope that Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the only Republican to support the bill in 2007, could yet reverse his declaration against the bill last month. "Oh sure," Burger said about the chances of Specter flipping back. "This is Arlen Specter we're talking about."

But they also acknowledged that, for now, they are having to search for their 60 votes without any help from President Obama, who has expressed support for card-check but not made it a priority.

"The President has said he has a series of things -- that we agree that he needs to get done -- which are major for every man woman and child, like health care, like the budget, like financial regulation," Stern said. "We respect that we have a job to do to line up enough votes without him. I don't think there's any question that he says there will be a vote, that this bill's time has arrived and he will do whatever is in his power to bring this home. We just aren't there yet."

Then Stern signaled one last time that if card-check does prove to be unrealistic, he believes that unions must get behind some other substantive reform, instead of waiting until 2011 in hopes of a bigger Democratic majority after the next election. "We need to get something that's significant done," he said.