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."