Earlier this week I posted a tirade that the local Associated General Contractors Association posted about the Free Choice Act.

I found an article that goes into why they are so scared. It is because labor, with 250,000 volunteers, did the hard pick and shovel work of turning out the vote all around the country. This includes in targeted congressional seats. This is a big change from focusing on the base. Having these grassroots activists in competitive districts can help ensure that the candidates that campaign on labor's issues follow through at the policy level.

This is how the San Francisco Chronicle sums it up:

Under the proposed law, if a majority of employees at a workplace approve by signing authorization cards, a union will represent the group.

An Obama win meant everything to labor, because Sen. John McCain is an ardent opponent of the legislation, and labor's ground game was impressive: Unions spent about $450 million in the election, and the effort was particularly helpful in battleground states. In all, union members connected with 13 million voters in 24 states, in the process selling the Employee Free Choice Act along with the Democratic ticket.

However, the Democrats did not get a filibuster proof majority. Democrats currently have 58 Senators. In order to get the bill through the Senate, the bill's proponents must be able to stop a filibuster and that requires 60 votes.

Here is a link to the AFL-CIOs Free Employment Act Page.

"Not until we return dignity and respect to our workplace will our nation ever live up to the great ideals upon which it was founded." - Mike McMahon

->Click the image to the right for large printable card you can take with you when you vote

What can I say, we had many years of Republican Vito Fosella as our Congressman, and while there were a few items I agreed upon with him, for the most part he didn't see the same picture as me. He ignored my stance on media consolidation, stating in a mass generated e-mail that if corporations owned more TV, radio and newspapers, it would be better for all of us. He also did not respond to my offer to do anything in my power to help keep my local hospital, Victory Memorial, open. So I was a bit discouraged, but that was then, this is a new day.

First let me explain a bit about my Congressional district

My district, the 13th. Congressional district of New York, which encompasses all of Staten Island and the southern part of Brooklyn, has the highest density of any Congressional district in the entire United States, with over 92,000 union households. For too long we had a person in office at the Congressional level that didn't quite understand what difficulties workers face on a daily basis. Now we have a chance to elect someone who knows who his neighbors are, so here's what Mr. McMahon has to say about labor, in excerpt:

My neighbors and friends in both Staten Island and Brooklyn leave their homes and families early each morning to put in a hard day’s work, helping our City function and supporting their families. As a child I learned from them the values that continue to guide me today – the honor of hard work, the importance of family, and the power that we have when we stand together.

The great American ideals of justice and fairness demand that we treat each and every hard working man and woman - from fire fighters to teachers, from police office officers to sanitation workers, from construction workers to nurses, and so many other important but often overlooked jobs -, with dignity and respect. First and foremost this means a fair wage for a fair days work, appropriate benefits so that they and their family have health care access, financial security, and time off to spend as a family.

Employee Free Choice Act:

Sadly the fight for dignity and respect on the job has never been more difficult then today. Far too often, when workers courageously stand up and demand union representation , unscrupulous employers respond with illegal threats and intimidation. Firing workers, changing shift times, and even threatening to close places of work are becoming all the more common in union organizing campaigns. The nation’s foremost enforcer of labor law, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), is simply ill-equipped and unable to decide these cases in a timely fashion. This means that even when illegal acts are found, the ruling often comes years after workers have been intimidated from voting for union representation, and the atmosphere for union organizing has been poisoned beyond the point when a free and fair election is possible. This, clearly, is not what was envisioned by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he and Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act over 70 years ago. As Americans, we must stand together to say that this type of harassment is unacceptable anywhere in the world, let alone in our nation’s own work places.

It is for these reasons that I strongly and proudly support the Employee Free Choice Act. This vital legislation will return the decision about union representation to the rightful decision makers – the workers. Once this most important piece of legislation is enacted into law, workers will be able to declare their desire for union representation through the signing of union authorization cards. The union will be able to hold those cards until a majority have been signed, at which time they will be submitted to the NLRB. No longer will employers be able to hire union busting law firms that employ vicious campaigns of threat and intimidation in preparation for a union election date. No longer will workers’ votes be cast under the watchful eye of their employer. The Employee Free Choice Act will finally begin to return democracy and fairness to our nation’s workplaces.

I am proud to have stood with the hardworking men and women of my City to protect their jobs and living conditions. When the sons and daughters of our City were called up to active military duty and temporarily forced to leave their families and municipal jobs to proudly serve our country in the War on Terror, I fought to make sure that the housing and food compensation that they received with their deployment was not subtracted from their City pay checks. Before I and my colleagues on the City Council demanded this change in City policy, City employees that were called up to active duty were required to return to the City the lesser of their City salary or their military compensation, including the cost of housing and food.

Just as I successfully fought in 2003 to save nearly two hundred good paying Teamster jobs at the City’s Department of Sanitation, I will fight with equal vigor for:

• Labor and Environmental Standards in all International Trade Agreements. Our country needs fair trade that raises the wages and standards of all workers, not trade that makes it free for employers to export jobs and exploit workers.
• Increased funding for the Occupational Safety & Health Administration and other Similar Federal Agencies. Federal agencies charged with enforcement of our nation’s labor laws need to be sufficiently resourced and empowered to do their jobs. Needless and senseless workplace accidents must be stopped before they happen, and when they do, employers that are at fault must be held accountable for their actions. In this day and age workers should not be dying on our construction sites -as has tragically been the recent case in New York City - or in our nation’s mines. We have the technology and ability to do this work safely and we owe it to the hard working men and women of our nation and their families to ensure their safety.
• Increasing the National Minimum Wage. The legal minimum wage needs to be raised further and we must ensure that all levels of government are vigorously enforcing the law and prosecuting those who violate it. Men and woman should be paid equal and fair wages for a fair days work, and in order to support their families these wages must keep pace with inflation and the rising cost of living.
• Ensuring that all Government Funded Projects Pay a Prevailing Wage for All Construction Work. If there is a single dollar of federal funding in a development project, all construction should be done at the prevailing wage rate. The practice of segregating Federal and local government funding and structuring the project to minimize the work done at a prevailing rate, as is far too often the case in New York City, simply must come to an end. As a member of the New York City Council I fought to end this practice by introducing legislation, Introduction 733, requiring that all City subsidized projects, whether directly or indirectly funded, pay a prevailing wage rate. I will continue this fight once elected to the United States Congress.

Not until we return dignity and respect to our workplace will our nation ever live up to the great ideals upon which it was founded. I will work hand and hand with my partners in organized labor in the fight for economic justice both here at home and abroad.

Every single labor union in the New York City area is endorsing Mike McMahon, his stance on our returning veterans and infrastructure are also top notch, and from some friends and colleagues of mine, he is the real deal. Mike McMahon can also be voted under the Working Families Party, Line E.

More info on Mike McMahon can be found on Mike McMahon For Congress
More info on who Working Families supports and their issues can be found at WFP.org

Sign the Health Care Petition

Our goal is to win secure, high-quality health care for all. We are mobilizing a 1 million-member army of activists to keep health care reform at the top of the 2008 political agenda—and to put our health care system on the road to recovery after the elections. Sign the petition for secure, high-quality health care for all today.

Learn More | Take Action

Support the Employee Free Choice Act

The Employee Free Choice Act would restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain—without management interference. Our goal is to present the next president and Congress with 1 million signatures urging them to enact the Employee Free Choice Act. Sign the Online Card to show your support today.

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Stop the U.S.-Colombia Trade Deal

In Colombia, dozens of unionists are killed and attacked every year, while the Colombian government systematically undermines union members’ rights. Tell your representative to oppose a trade deal with Colombia until its government makes real progress in protecting the lives and rights of union members.

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End Unfair Trade Practices

The U.S. House is preparing legislation to address unfair and unsafe trade practices by China and other nations. We need your help to ensure the legislation they come up with contains strong and effective remedies to make certain these countries play by the rules. Tell your representative to fight for working families and put an end to these unfair trade practices.

Learn More | Take Action

This is a bit of a modified version of the one which I received from the New York Central Labor Council

with over 700,000 signatures, we have to get to the million mark.

Just click the image below and print it

We have run it throughout the jobsites here in New York, and I am happy to say we have gotten quite a response, I haven't picked them up from the hall in recent weeks, but last i checked, we had over 600, I will be picking them up this Wednesday and dropping them off at the AFL-CIO office some time next week.

You can do this too, get the number of your local AFL-CIO, CTW or Labor Federation or Council and send them there, I'm sure the internationals would also accept them.

Just do something

Direct Image Link

So what's the fact's?

Here's some recent fact's I wrote on The Employee Free Choice Act to a user over at UnionReview who asked in the story "Don't get fooled by McGovern's anti- Employee Free Choice Act ad's during the debate tonight":

Secret Ballot?
Submitted by NYCElectrician3 on Mon, 10/13/2008 - 6:55pm.

Can somebody explain the whole loss of a secret vote thing to me I have searched and searched but my brain is having trouble filtering fact from made up stuff.

To which I responded:

currently, if a group want's to get out of a union: Let's say that more than half of your local want's to get out of your union, and be non-union, all they would have to do now is get a petition signed by more than half the work force that states that they want to get out of the union and send it to the NLRB. Then all of the workers would no longer be in a union.

You don't need a secret ballot to decertify a union!

OK, so we got that out of the way.

Currently if a group of workers, let's say 100, wants to be in a union, they will have to seek out an organizer, if one is not currently working on the case, then get at least 30%+1 of the grroup to sign cards that state their intention.

Now the fun begins, because after the workers sign the cards and the organizer sends them to the NLRB to set a date for a "secret ballot" election, most companies will get themselves a union-avoidance firm to figure out what steps to take to make sure the workers will not become unionized. Usually, from what I have read, the interim is roughly about a month and a half.

Under the advice of said firms and anti-union lawyers, the company will then do everything possible to stop their workers from becoming union. This includes, even though it is illegal, firing pro-union workers, creating an atmosphere of worker against worker, showing movies that are against unions, having closed door meetings with each employee one on one, threaten to leave the country if they decide to become union, in a recent case here in NY with the Carpenter's trying to organize the workers at a nonunion site they threaten the employees with guns and destroying records of employment if they vote yes to union.

If it's illegal, how do they get away with it? Because in the past 30 years, the NLRB has been underfunded and torn to ribbons by politico's who get their backing from corporations. Currently it takes months, sometimes years to go through all the back log's of NLRB complaints. Not to mention the penalties are usually extremely low if any at all.

Here's some food for thought, if the current "secret ballot" election was even moderately fair to employees, how could anyone possibly explain all the Wal-Mart's, Target's, McDonald's and Home Depot's that are a predominant fixture of America landscape, and not one of them has a single union employee?

The Employee Free Choice Act would change that, it would make it so that if 51 of those 100 employees mentioned above were to sign a "union authorization" card, they would be in a union.

Hence the union avoidance and anti-union lawyers, who are contributing enourmously against the legislation, would lose their bread and butter. That, my friend is a billion dollar industry and they aren't gonna give up so easy.

Another tidbit in the legislation is the increase in fines against unscropulous employers who break the law during an organizing drive and a time frame where the first contract must be negotiated or an independent board will create one.

Currently, even if the employees were to get through the gauntlet of everything stacked against the and "secret-ballot" vote in a union, theres no reason to believe that the employer will ever recognize their union.

For instance the employees of Goya foods, who voted to be union in 1998, I think have finally got their first contract in 2008:

Ten years later, workers are still waiting.

NEW YORK, April 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On April 24th, a three-judge
panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled that Goya
Foods must negotiate a contract with Goya warehouse and sales workers in Miami
seeking better wages and working conditions. UNITE, a predecessor union of
UNITE HERE, won National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections to organize
these workers in 1998. But a decade later, the workers still do not have the
benefits of a union contract.

During the organizing campaign, Goya used a host of tactics - including
harassing workers who supported the union, threatening workers, and holding
mandatory meetings full of anti-union diatribes - in an effort to avoid
unionization. After the workers voted overwhelmingly for union representation,
Goya worked to frustrate the workers' desires. The company had weak
enforcement of federal labor laws on its side as it sought to weaken and
divide the workers to the point at which they would give up on forming a
union. UNITE filed charges with the NLRB, challenging Goya's recalcitrance
during bargaining, their unilateral changes in working conditions, and their
discriminatory treatment of those who openly supported the union.

In 1999, the NLRB's General Counsel charged Goya with at least twenty-three
violations of U.S. labor law, including threats of job loss, plant closings,
interrogation, discrimination in work assignments, and the firing of at least
three union supporters. Later in 1999, Goya stopped bargaining with UNITE and
illegally withdrew recognition of the union.

So now you know a few of the fact's about The Employee Free Choice Act, it would turn the tide against the oppressors of the American worker, it could actually bring back the middle class, or at least stop us from paying for the subsidized medical that all those nonunion employee's at the Wal-Mart's and Target's need to get now. It might actually give a few people in this country a couple of disposable income dollars that they could reinvest into businesses.

Remember also, that it wasn't until business interests changed the way people organized into a union that a "secret ballot" was created, the card check was the way the labor movement started. AT&T uses the card check for it's wireless employees, they seem to be doing well, so do H&M clothing stores and they are expanding across the island of Manhattan. There are others, but it's late.

Hope that explained a bit of it. If you get a chance sign the petition, it's the One Million Strong button on the side of the site,

heres more from my site, a must view video is at the link "Video: Massive corporations against The Employee Free Choice Act", it can explain it better than me.

The Employee Free Choice Act

• Employee Free Choice Act- cutting through the suffocating atmosphere of threats, intimidation and illegal firings...
• Retired Pipefitter speaks up for the Employee Free Choice Act
• Video: Barack Obama on issues that matter to American workers
• Video: SEIU President Andy Stern discusses The Employee Free Choice Act
• What's Wal-Mart so afraid of? Four words- Employee Free Choice Act
• Employee Free Choice Act - Take back the American dream
• Video: Massive corporations against The Employee Free Choice Act
• 550,000 sign Employee Free Choice Act petition
• Home Depot needs unions, the Employee Free Choice Act and a labor relations firm
• More blatant discrimination against construction workers comes to light, this time prevailing wage violations across America
• Mike Fishman. President of 32BJ, speaks of whats wrong and what must be done to avert the collapse of the middle class in America
• Joe's Union Review welcomes another Labor blog, a letter to the editor that made my day, SEIU performs ABBA at John McCain camp
• Telling our veterans about the Employee Free Choice Act and John McCain's record
• Labor bloggers to promote Employee Free Choice Act at NYC Labor Day parade? Strike updates, got a Joe's MySpace, and HR676 US National Health Care Act
• Con-Ed to workers: Take your 0.5%, give us a 2-tier and shut up
• NY nonunion construction: With guns, threats and empty promises this modern day gangster keeps his workers from joining a union
• Tell the next president, we want the right to be in a union without employer coercion
• Get 1 million signatures to Congress, sign the Employee Free Choice Act petition
• NY: Bloomingdale's flagship store, workers authorize strike
• If you work in the USA, voting for McCain is a vote against your own interests

What do I know, I'm just 1 of the 7% of American's in the private sector who are in a union, so I may have missed a point or 2, as with everything else I write, if anyone out there see's an error, I'm willing to learn.

That's the facts brother, spread it around the job, get more signatures.

If more people were union in this country, it would bring up the standard for all workers, except those lawyers and lobbyist I mentioned above.

There's no room for us to be bamboozled anymore

Peace,

Joe

PS: Just rethinking about the "democracy of a secret ballot", I don't remember voting for Secretary Treasurer Paulson, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters...

They have beaten the balls off the middle-class and the American Worker for quite some time, how about that guy Bush sent to head the NLRB, in the campaign against the American worker, Robert Batista, he just resigned to work for the biggest anti-union law firm in the United States, didn't vote for him either. Shit I didn't even get a chance to sign a card...

UnionGal, point's out in her article Not so fast CNN

Take this op-ed in the Hill by Gordon Lafer, a political scientist at the University of Oregon and the author of Free and Fair? How Labor Law Fails U.S. Democratic Election Standards:

For instance, in elections for Congress or the president, it is illegal for a private corporation to tell its employees anything that favors one candidate or the other. But in workplace elections, it is standard practice for supervisors to hold repeated one-on-one conversations with the individuals they oversee. Here, the person who has the most direct control over hiring and firing, promotion, raises, hours and duties tells their subordinates in no uncertain terms why a union would be bad for them. The message is clear: If you ever want a raise, or a day off to take your kid to a doctor, you better not support the union.

Many of the tactics used to intimidate employees are legal. However, because federal labor law contains no possibility of punitive fines, prison or any other type of sanction, employers break the law at will. Last year, approximately 15,000 Americans were illegally fired, suspended or otherwise financially punished for trying to form a union in their workplace.

An election where one party controls the media, requires voters to attend its rallies, enforces a gag order on opponents and fires voters for backing the opposition is undemocratic and un-American. The Employee Free Choice Act would reform the current system to guarantee that Americans who want to form a union are able to do so in part by ending the charade that we call a Labor Board election by giving workers a second option: the choice to form a union by a majority sign-up process

Kirsten's article is a great read
.

This video has been out for over a year, the facts are the same



To read a nice new article about he Employee Free Choice Act, check out our friend Decision List blog, for the story entitled "Employee Free Choice Act"

The Employee Free Choice Act will benefit average working Americans to help form unions and stand off the attacks of the merchants of division and the peddlers of doom. Our values are solidly American, values rooted in a sense of fair play, cooperation and the rule of law.

Wow, the union avoidance firms are spending millions against the Employee Free Choice Act, tonight they are digging even deeper in their wallet's using their newest front man, turncoat George McGovern, to spread their misleading venom onto the American public.

I believe the ad will be featured in the following states:
Senatorial election states :MN, NH, MS, NC, OR
Swing states: LA, KY, ME

Here's the YouTube video

From Michael Whitney, at the Oxdown Gazette:

Don’t Be Fooled Tonight

In August former Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern wrote a fretful op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he cautioned "fellow" Democrats against supporting the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would make it easier for workers to form unions. At the time Ian Welsh concluded McGovern was "out of step" with mainstream views.

Tonight McGovern will cross yet another line at the behest of business interests - during the Presidential debate, an ad featuring George McGovern will air in which he "condemns his own party" for supporting legislation that makes it easier for workers to join unions. McGovern's ad is part of a $120 million campaign by business groups and wealthy special interests who are trying to confuse & divide pro-worker leaders who support the Employee Free Choice Act.

Don't be fooled. Here's why.

First things first. McGovern is the *only* major Democratic figure who doesn't support the Employee Free Choice Act. Every single Democrat in the Senate and all but two in the House voted for the Employee Free Choice Act in 2007, excluding Tim Johnson, who was hospitalized. Even Joe Lieberman joined the Democratic caucus on this vote, and 1 Republican Senator and 13 GOP House members supported it as well. McGovern is virtually alone in his opposition to this bill.

Second, McGovern's claim - that the Employee Free Choice Act takes away "secret ballots" for union elections - is not true. The Employee Free Choice Act gives workers the choice to form a union, taking away businesses' veto power on the matter. Basically, once 50% +1 of workers in a workplace say they want a union, they get their union if the Employee Free Choice Act becomes law. But today, even if 100% of workers want a union, the employer can veto it. Rick Perlstein explains the situation well, via economist Dean Baker:

"The only change with the Employee Free Choice Act is whether card check recognition is at the discretion of the employer of the worker. In other words, it changes absolutely ZERO about whether the right of workers to organize is determined by secret ballot or not. The only thing it changes is who gets to decide the manner of certification, workers or employers."

Why is it a good thing if it's easier for workers to form unions? Take a look around. Do you think it's any surprise that the worst economic crisis in decades comes when the fewest workers are organized in unions?

When workers are able to form or join a union, workplaces across the country are more fair, giving people the chance to earn better wages and benefits - and protecting against excesses like we're seeing in corporate America today.

Look at what kind of a difference unions make:

• Union members earn 30% more than non-union workers.
• Workers in unions are 59% more likely be covered by employer-provided health insurance.
• A large union presence in an industry or region can raise wages even for non-union workers.
• Patients suffering heart attacks have a 5.5% greater chance of survival if their nurses are union members.

For months now, business groups like the one running McGovern's ad have poured literally tens of millions of dollars into 8 Senate races and national TV advertisements, even hiring some guy to dress up as Death and chase Senate candidates around their campaign events. This is for whom George McGovern now speaks.

Wealthy interests are running scared that workers can soon have their voice at work. The Employee Free Choice Act will restore the Middle Class and bring balance back to our country - something these groups just can't stand.

So, don't be fooled tonight - George McGovern and the Employee Freedom Action Committee speak only for themselves and their wealthy funders, not for anyone else in the country. The remainder of the Democratic Party, and a good chunk of the GOP, supports Free Choice for workers. And in January, we'll have the chance to make that choice.

Here's a great article I read at Campaign For America's Future

Education Is Great, But We Need More Unions
By Amy Traub, September 18th, 2008

The American Dream is a middle-class dream. We occasionally fantasize about striking it rich or becoming famous, but Americans mostly aim to achieve and hold onto a middle-class standard of living. When the fundamentals of middle-class life — jobs that pay enough to support a family, access to health care, a safe and stable home, time off work for vacation and major life events, a good education for our children, and a dignified retirement — are within the reach of most Americans, the nation is stronger economically, culturally and democratically.

Today the nation’s middle class is squeezed between rising prices for staples like gasoline, food and health care, and stagnant wages that don’t keep up. Plummeting housing prices have undermined the value of the single biggest asset most middle-class families own and millions risk losing their homes to foreclosure. The time-honored middle-class survival strategies: send more family members into the workforce, work longer hours, borrow more, and save less, are reaching their limits. Middle-class families are forced to tap into their retirement savings to afford a college education for their children. It is harder to get ahead, most Americans say, and easier to fall behind. We are moving away from an economy that enables working people to enjoy a middle-class standard of living. How can we reverse course?

We need to create an economy in which more American jobs support a middle-class standard of living. To do that, working people – from janitors to journalists – need more power in the labor market.

Some offer increased access to education and (re)training as a solution to securing middle-class jobs in competitive global labor markets. And yes, the public sector should increase support for public colleges and provide more generous grants to students so that young people can more easily attend college and older workers can acquire new skills. But education alone won’t solve the economic problems underlying the middle-class squeeze.

If it were, college graduates would be doing better. And while educated workers are more likely than those without a degree to enjoy a middle-class standard of living, wages for most college graduates have grown sluggishly in recent years and their access to employer-provided health care and pensions has dropped.

And then there are the tens of millions of Americans who work at jobs that don’t require a college degree. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that retail sales, food service, home health aides, janitors, laborers and landscapers will be among the occupations with the most available jobs by 2016. These occupations, as much as financial analysts or software engineers, are the jobs of the future. What are we doing to ensure that these jobs can enable working people to live the American Dream?

Today, if you are a child-care worker or security guard (both also among the next decade’s most in-demand occupations), you are likely receiving low pay and poor benefits. But history tells us that it doesn’t have to be that way. In the early 20th century, when the booming manufacturing sector offered dangerous, low-paid work on assembly lines and factory floors, a wave of union organizing and bargaining lifted wages and improved benefits and working conditions. Those formerly awful manufacturing jobs have become the good jobs we now lament losing to overseas competition. To a large extent, today’s modern middle class is a legacy of those union advances, which set the standard for gains like employer-sponsored health coverage, pensions and paid vacation.

Economists at the Economic Policy Institute point out that event though productivity grew briskly in the most recent economic recovery, hourly compensation didn’t keep up – even for those with a college degree. Instead, corporate profits ate up a record share of the nation’s gross domestic product. Despite relatively low unemployment, employees don’t have enough power in the labor market to secure wages and salaries commensurate with the economic growth they help create. This is largely because today’s labor movement is a shadow of its former strength – representing a mere 7.5 percent of private sector employees. Unions have historically been a potent vehicle for working people to exert labor market leverage. To make the economy work for working people and rebuild the middle class, they must become one again.

No public policy would do more to revitalize the labor movement than the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 2007 and killed by a Senate filibuster. The legislation would streamline the process for organizing unions and bargaining a first contract, cutting through the suffocating atmosphere of threats, intimidation and illegal firings that prevent so many working people from joining a union today.

The Employee Free Choice Act is a game-changer, directly attacking the systemic problem of employees’ lack of power in the labor market. The impact would boost low-wage service employees struggling to gain a middle-class standard of living as well as college-educated professionals trying to hold onto it. We can legislate universal health care, mandate paid sick days, raise the minimum wage or subsidize take-home pay with the earned income tax credit, but empowering people to join unions directly redistributes economic power back to working people, enabling Americans to win gains for themselves in the workplace. This isn’t to say that some or all of these benefits shouldn’t be written into law as well – in fact, a strengthened labor movement might also help build political will for those reforms – but rather that this legislation changes the balance of power in a way that many other reforms don’t.

Globalization is the elephant in the parlor. International competition poses a formidable challenge to workers’ ability to exercise power in the labor market. Some are rightly concerned that raising wages and improving American jobs will encourage employers to move even more jobs overseas. But accepting ever-declining standards in a desperate bid to hold onto employment is a losing game for everyone. Instead, strengthening and expanding the middle class will ultimately require changing the balance of power worldwide – using international alliances and trade agreements to improve workplace standards everywhere. This isn’t an easy proposition. But reclaiming some power in our own workplaces is the necessary first step.

Thanks Amy, I spotted this when I got a link to another important story at Campaign For America's Future, entitled "Where's Our Bailout?". Big thanks to The Man Common for squeezing out all the great sites for stories that matter, and opening our eyes to them.

---

Be one in a million

There are now over 690,000 signatures that will be handed to our new President and Congress when they take office, be one in a million, click the image on the right and add your signature

Who's Against American workers and The Employee Free Choice Act
Wow, there's a lot, click the image below to find out who.

Originally posted by Richard Negri at Union Review

I caught this on the AFL-CIO Now blog, I have about 600 more physical signature to turn into the AFL-CIO, and more being added everyday, the Building Trades members are taking this legislation very seriously.

An injury to one American worker is an injury to all.

From "Pipe Fitter Speaks Out for Employee Free Choice Act"

On Sept. 1, Michael Day, a retired member of the Plumbers and Pipe Fitters, wrote a letter to the Baton Rouge (La.) Advocate in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Another reader, Kyle Johnston, wrote to criticize Day’s position. This is Day’s response, which was published in the Advocate Sept. 16.

Mr. Kyle Johnston should read my Sept. 1 letter, “Union pipe fitter defends bill,” again. Mr. Johnston seems to be confused about the Employee Free Choice Act, among other things. Cards for union recognition by law can be handed out and signed by interested workers now.

The company the employees are working for doesn’t have to recognize the will of the majority of employees.

The Employee Free Choice Act empowers the majority of employees to decide on whether to have representation or not. The Employee Free Choice Act has oversight. The bill is a fast, fair and seamless way to join a union or not.

The Employee Free Choice Act only takes away a private ballot from an intimidating employer.

I never wrote that all corporations were thugs. I stand by my words as far as Wal-Mart being corporate thugs. Wal-Mart has produced a manual outlining tactics for store managers to use to stop their employees from joining a union.

The manual and current labor law have served Wal-Mart well. Why doesn’t one Wal-Mart out of the thousands of Wal-Marts in the United States have a union contract?

Answer, because of current labor laws that are open to employer intimidation and lawsuits that go on for years after an overwhelming vote for a union shop by the employees.

How many times must Wal-Mart thumb its nose at labor laws before it’s OK to call Wal-Mart what it is: a corporate thug?

As long as there are corporations like Wal-Mart, there is a need for unions, one collective voice of employees to speak to the world’s largest retailer.

The Employee Free Choice Act makes that voice easier to gain.

It seems for Mr. Johnston as long as he can go to Wal-Mart and buy his high-quality goods at a low price he’ll be happy, and silly me for thinking Wal-Mart was the place to buy Christmas gifts for family members I’m not getting along with.

Michael D. Day
union pipe fitter
Baton Rouge

(As part of the AFL-CIO’s Million Member Mobilization, more than 669,000 people have signed postcards to present to the new president and Congress to let them know that working families across America want them to immediately enact the Employee Free Choice Act. You can show your support for the Employee Free Choice Act by clicking here to sign our online card.)

Andy Stern, the President of The Service Employees International Union discusses the Employee Free Act with Meet The Bloggers host, Cenk Uygur, from 9/12/08.

Wanted to do a write up and show our readers the new pro-Employee Free Choice Act video released by Brave New Films, luckily enough, Robert Greenwald, the director/producer of "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" and "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism", has already done it for me.

From Alternet (9/12/08):

What's Wal-Mart So Afraid of? Four words: Employee Free Choice Act

What's Wal-Mart so afraid of? They're up to their old tricks, using scare tactics to intimidate employees against supporting pro-worker candidates. So what's got them backed into a corner? Four words: Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

EFCA would effectively enable workers to unionize and secure contracts without fear of being fired or reprisals from union-busting companies like Wal-Mart. It's a crucial bill for workers' rights. It could single-handedly restore the middle class. And it's the reason we've partnered with American Rights at Work to bring you our latest video.

Send this video to every person who cares about fairness and wants a middle class in America, and get them to sign the petition to ensure that EFCA passes. And while you're at it, let your friends know about Meet the Bloggers because today at 1pm ET/10am PT, our special guests SEIU President Andy Stern and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney will be discussing the importance of EFCA with bloggers Baratunde Thurston (JackandJillPolitics.com) and Michael Whitney (American Rights at Work).

Check out the articles below on EFCA, get informed, and join us on the show's live blog at 1pm ET/10 am PT, when we'll stand up to Wal-Mart, and stand up for workers' rights.

• The Law that Could Give Labor Some Brawn -- Moira Herbst, Business Week
• Happy Labor Day. Drop Dead. -- Thomas Frank, Wall Street Journal
• In Fight Over Law Securing Workers' Right to Organize, Corporations Bill Themselves as Underdogs -- David Sirota, AlterNet
  
• Wal-Mart Warns of Democratic Win -- Kris Maher, Wall Street Journal
• Inside the Mind of Union Busters -- Art Levine, Today's Workplace Blog
• Wal-Mart's Desperate War Against Unionization -- ZP Heller, Brave New Films
• Employee Free Choice Act Summary -- American Rights at Work

And if you missed any episode of Meet the Bloggers, you can also watch them in the archives.

The non-profit group American Rights At Work has released an ad promoting The Employee Free Choice Act, today, Labor Day 2008, is as good a day as any to learn about the act and get involved, help bring back the American Dream.

You can learn more about the history of how people used to be able to get into a union and how that has changed in the many years of union decline, in my recent article "Video: Massive corporations against The Employee Free Choice Act"

They don't want you to know the facts, so this Labor Day commit to learn about the legislation and commit to spreading the word, to your friend, your family and neighbors, that the American worker is not going to take it anymore.

Then take a moment to sign the petition that will be handed to our next Congress and President stating that we demand The Employee Free Choice Act.

The who, what, where, when, how and why, of the forces against the American worker.

Wow, everything I speak about, and even more, this fantastic video that explains better than I can, about the opponents of The Employee Free Choice Act, and a bit of history in the process.



A huge thanks to NoahKunin at The Uptake for posting this video

You can read more about Myth Vs. Fact about the Employee Free Choice Act at The US House Of Representative's Committee Of Labor and Education "Employee Free Choice Act: Myth vs. Fact "

Wow, I haven't even submitted the physical signatures from my own home local yet, this is great news, I gathered a few from the union hall last week and noticed that the membership is taking this serious, not only have the union members signed, but there is also family members and friends signatures for the measure, here's the latest info from AFL-CIO now

550,000 Sign on in Million-Member Effort for Employee Free Choice
The union movement’s nationwide drive to get at least 1 million signatures in support of the Employee Free Choice Act is past the halfway mark and is growing rapidly.

In just five months, more than 550,000 people have signed postcards to tell the new president and Congress that working families across America want them to immediately enact the legislation.

The cards will be presented to the new Congress after the November elections in a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. (You can show your support for the Employee Free Choice Act by clicking here to sign our online card.)

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) is among the most active groups building support for the bill. As of Aug. 20, some 37,101 CWA members had signed the postcards, as local unions and activists gear up for actions centered around the final two months of the 2008 elections.

This week, members of IUE-CWA Local 83761 sent more than 900 cards. Local union stewards had distributed the cards among members at a GE appliance plant in Louisville, Ky., where employers have threatened to close the plant. More than 40 percent of the local’s members have signed up.

Says William Spires, president of Local 83761:

Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act is key to helping us organize and build bargaining strength in our troubled industry. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow workers to decide freely how they want to choose a union without employer interference.

The AFL-CIO Executive Council voted in March to launch the Million-Member Mobilization. In a statement, the council lays out the urgent need to pass the bill:

America’s workers must regain their bargaining power to maintain and expand the middle class. The American middle class was created by the ability of workers to form unions and bargain collectively after the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935.

More and more Americans are beginning to understand that collective bargaining can promote broadly shared economic growth and prosperity, higher wages, better jobs, better and more extensive health care coverage, retirement security and respect for workers on the job.

You can sign the petition by clicking the image below

I took a look at the RSS feed which I got from the US Chamber Of Congress, this one searches the term "employee free choice" when it's posted on blogs, while the organization is vehemently against The Employee Free Choice Act they have given me a great RSS feed. Thanks US Chamber Of Commerce.

So one of the latest blog entries which used the term was by one of a a pair of labor management experts who run a blog about many issues at hand, The Contended Cows Blog, it's actually a great read. When checking their actual web page, The Contended Cow, I read that they are in the employee relations business, and their aim is to create a great workplace for employees to make better returns for the company. Well I certainly can agree with that, they have a ton of info, and while they might not be favorable to unions, I really don't see much against them.

But, I was a bit taken aback by the same old rhetoric used against the Employee Free Choice Act which I see on less scrupulous sites, the misinformation which is being perpetrated by many union avoidance firms around the net which state that the Bill will "take away secret-ballot" elections for workers wishing to join a union. That's just not true, I really wish they didn't play into that BS. At a quick glance of their site, it really seems that they sincerely want to create good jobs for workers, have good workers for the employers and have a means to retain those employees.

So I read through the article, which was written by Bill Catlette, I would guess is 1/2 of the Contended Cows, and while some of it isn't exactly clear in the message in which the author is trying to convey, the part that Bill made clear is that he is opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act and unfortunately in his explaining that he used the "scripted" untruths about the bill, I'm saddened as this looks like a blog I would really like to hang around, so here's what he said in the article entitled "Employee Free Choice Act isn’t Free, Fair, or Necessary":

The proposed legislation would overturn a 43 year old system in which union representation elections are conducted via a federally overseen secret ballot process, and replace it with a less formal “card check” procedure where the rules are enforced not by an unbiased federal representative, but a decidedly partisan union organizer. In essence, it is designed to do one thing and one thing only - to make it easier for labor unions to shore up their shrinking membership rolls, ‘er bank accounts.

And continues...

As one who for thirty years has been more than a casual student of employee relations, I can attest with some certainty that there is nothing about this bill that is good for American business or its employees. Moreover, as with many of the other labels (e.g., conservative, liberal, values voter) that seem to float unchallenged through our conversation these days, I am totally and completely perplexed by the name of this bill. How in the world can something that actually reduces freedom and eviscerates a scrupulously fair process be known as “employee free choice?”

So I had to reply, and it gave me a chance to explain why Home Depot could use a union

Let's be realistic, it would enormously benefit American employees and as far as the spin-doctored idea of "losing freedom", the Bill actually would let the workers decide if they would like a "secret ballot" election. Obviously the current system is completely in favor of the employers and is the cash cow for quite a few law firms who rely on "the fear of a unionized" work force to make a living. The true difference is that those union avoidance law firms would need to find new areas to make themselves needed. As far as helping American companies, it sure would, imagine if we had some more people with a little disposable income, that's a huge help for businesses, maybe people could actually afford to buy more stuff, consumerism at it's best.

Plus there is a huge benefit to have a work force that has something to work for, like keeping a good union job as opposed to a the fly by night minimum wagers who couldn't care less.

Take for instance the local Home Depot, where there is no union and it has a huge "us against them" worker attitude, the last time I shopped in the store I needed a small part for a shelving system, now without delving into the "if it were a mom and pop" there would have been an employee who went into a back room and came back to me within 2 minutes with the parts needed part of my story, lets focus on what happened.

I walked into the store, around 7:00PM, noticed there was a lot of people on line, around 12 with all sorts of stuff to purchase, with only one cash register opened, that's fine, I know the policy of big box stores, if they spent all that time shopping and they have no alternatives they will wait forever if they have to, but lets continue, I went to the area that the shelves are stored and noticed that the shelving I use was in short supply, sorta like Home Depot was phasing it out, which would be a shame because I see the same shelving in stores all over the place, so I have been in this store for around 15 minutes already, locating exactly where the shelving is as they tend to move stuff around frequently, and notice that the pieces I need are not displayed with the shelving, so I look around and see a worker and I ask the fellow if he could help me and I was told immediately that it was not his section and I need to push an assistance button located every 5 racks or so and wait.

I waited, then I waited some more, having been in the store for over a 1/2 an hour I was kinda getting a little peeved, so I grabbed a young fella and asked him if the button thing actually works and he said "it's supposed to" and explained that if the customer service personnel isn't extremely busy they are to stock shelves in different departments, that sounded fine as I can understand not paying someone for nothing, but if that's the case, make sure the button system works AND make sure you have employees who are willing to do what is needed to attend to the customers needs. I of course asked him if he knew where I could find the part needed, he said that they only let him learn a few aisles and he stated that he wanted o learn some more, but it was against their policy. I asked the kid if he was in a union, he said that Home Depot had one, the managers union, and I laughed, I told him not to mention the word or he would lose his job and he told me he didn't care as they were only being payed a touch above minimum wage and were treated like garbage. He did however find the person who was supposed to be covering the area and then he came over and did not have a clue what I was asking for, he said that maybe I should go to the "hardware" section and seek assistance. Now I'm in Home Depot, a bit angry for the fact that I had already spoken to 3 employees and been in the store for about 45 minutes already, I started making my 1/4 mile trek to the hardware section.

Once in the 'hardware section" I started searching for assistance, aside from the 3 people who asked me for assistance, I wound up figuring after roaming around the 3 aisles of 'hardware' that there was no store employees at all in the section, now it's more than an hour, I decide that I'm a little more than peeved at this point and noticed a desk in the middle of the store which would likely have someone who could get me assistance in a matter of seconds with a phone call, I approached and noticed that the fellow just sitting there BS'ing on the phone, yes he was laughing away, was a part of their management team.

Surely when seeing a customer heading towards him, he would end the call ASAP, but NO, he just waved his hand up with 2 fingers pointing up and mouthed the word "2 seconds" and gave a nod of assurance that he would be right with me. I would guess that his actions are supposed to have me feel as if I'm a friend that should understand his neglect and not a cash paying customer, when I was a kid working in stores, the customer came first, but I guess like pricing merchandise that went the way of the dinosaur too.

Eventually after about 3 minutes, Mr. Manager had decided he laughed enough and hung up the phone and asked me "What do you need?", I said I needed some help finding a certain part, he stated assuredly "I know exactly what you need and where to find it". I was thrilled and said lets get it and he said that he was busy, I guess someone need to keep the seat warm at the Home Depot desk, and that would get someone to meet me in the aisle immediately. There was a call over the store PA system for someone to come to my aid so I made the trek back to "hardware".

I was thrilled, not only did the store have it, but someone was going to help me right away, it may have taken an hour and a half, but if I got the parts I needed it was worth it.

I wait, and wait, and wait some more, it's now past 8:30 and I've been in Home Depot almost 2 hours when an employee walks down the aisle, i think "here she is, I'll be out of here in a few minutes, once again I'm disappointed, she doesn't work in the section and she is on her break, BUT she goes the extra mile and knows exactly where the fellow who works the aisle is and feels really bad for what I've been going through, she tells me it's nothing new and it happens all the time, she further explains that they don't even want the employees to help the customers as that takes too much time and the management feels that the customers will help one another without the company paying for it. I feel like this corporation is really mismanaged and with it's short sided nature will eventually go out of business, but that's another story for another day.

She feels so bad in fact for my plight that she takes me to the section where the guy who knows hardware is working, hes within a football field's distance, so she takes me to the "tool section", mind you, she did this on her own time, to meet the fellow. He's on a giant ladder getting cases of merchandise to stock the shelves, he doesn't hesitate to put down the boxes and assist me, maybe he though I was a friend of the other employee, maybe he was just a person with the old idea that a customer comes first, whatever the case he finds out what i need and without a shadow of a doubt informs me that Home Depot does not carry the hardware components for that particular shelving unit. He explains to me that I should just buy another one and open it, take out the parts I need and return it.

This is what my experience at the local Home Depot was like, and I know for a fact that Home Depot is a huge lobbyist against the Employee Free Choice Act. The would rather spend 10 times the money than it would cost them if they had a conscientious unionized work staff. They could have a union that actually trains employees at the trade of being a hardware store employee, they could have a dedicated staff who really wants to learn and be a part of a corporation that could have workers who believe that there is a real reason to do a good job, to make money for a business that hires union workers, that creates jobs that have a living wage and a sense of responsibility to get the job done each working day, so that job will still be there tomorrow. The current system at Home Depot is a failure to anyone who invests in it for the long term, for their employees and for the United States of America.

One only need to look towards a company that has the right progressive ideals and has a wonderful customer service and employees who work with enthusiasm, take a walk into a COSTCO, where their open to unionization policies have just a fraction of their stores unionized. They treat their workers with respect, it shows when shopping there, the workers in the store by me do not stop unless they are on a break, they know where everything is and they smile when you speak to them. The local Brooklyn store is not unionized, and if there were more employers like COSTCO, they might not need unions in Big Box stores at all. They start their employees with a bit more than $11 an hour. They have something to work for and it shows. They don't want to lose their job. They want customers to come back.

Remember employees are your first line of offense, they can get people to come back and be dedicated consumers, when you have the us against them attitude and the false ideas that when someone who cannot afford to eat is a partner of a major corporation, it is doomed to failure. Starbucks, Home Depot are closing stores by the hundreds. Their anti-union policies and their mistreatment of their workers, along with their short-sightedness and the economic downturn are all a major factor.

Thanks for reading,
Joe

My comment is awaiting moderation over at the Cow's, I anxiously await the response by Home Depot, um, probably wont say a word, but at least their investors will read it and think.

Kinda, sorta follow up to "Blatant discrimination! Another disposable worker death in New York's underground sweatshop construction industry" from Jan. 2007


ow do you under bid the union contractors?

By using a work force that does not understand the law of the land. This construction company forced it's largely Cantonese workers to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no overtime pay, no breaks and massive safety violations, on jobs that were publicly funded. That's right, if you live in Oakland, California, there's a good chance that the school you send your kids to was built with the help of the criminal activity of a few at the top, who profited on the backs of their workers, while screwing the contracting firms who obey the laws, the public who didn't get what they paid for and the workers who worked in pre-1900 conditions.

I thought the abuses of Chinese workers here in the United States sorta ended after the railroads were built, yes for those of you not well versed in history, from the "end of slavery" years of 1864 to 1867, on just one leg of the transcontinental railroad construction it is estimated that 1200-1300 Chinese workers died in that three year span. For more information on the atrocities against Chinese workers on the railroads there's a book written by William F. Chew, who is the grandson of two of the railroad workers. His book is called "Nameless Builders of the Transcontinental Railroad". Mr. Chew isn't just a bump on a log, he's a pretty smart fella, in his 45 year career as an aerospace engineer he created components that were critical for spacecraft travel.

So now back to our story, here in New York the homelands might be different but the story is the same, get workers new to the country and cheat the workers and the public out of their legally bound responsibility. Capitalism at it's finest. Screw everyone to get ahead.

Just two weeks ago it came to light that a local scumbag General Contractor pocketed $550,000 of public money which was supposed to go to his employees, according to The New York Times article from July 31st. entitled "Officials of Building Firm Accused of Cheating Workers and City ":

The officials, Yuly Aronson, owner of the May Construction Company, and Anthony Branca, the company’s accountant, ran their scheme from April 2005 through November 2006 during work on two dozen city buildings and courthouses, according to Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo.

They were charged in Manhattan Criminal Court with falsifying payroll filings to receive roughly $2 million from the Department of Citywide Administrative Services for employee wages and withholdings, of which Mr. Aronson, 46, and Mr. Branca, 50, ended up pocketing about $550,000 that was supposed to go toward the salaries of 84 workers, the attorney general said.

Here's the how to screw your work force part:

May Construction lured many of its employees with an advertisement in the Polish-language newspaper Nowy Dziennik, according to the attorney general’s office. Most of the company’s workers were secured through those advertisements and were each paid the minimum of the prevailing wage, even though the jobs they were doing required they be paid higher wages, the attorney general’s office said.

The good news, if convicted, according to New York State's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo:

“Contractors on public works projects should be warned: Obey the law and pay the prevailing wage, or face the consequences,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement.

Mr. Aronson and Mr. Branca face several charges including grand larceny. If convicted, they could spend up to 15 years in prison.

So that's the story of how Polish immigrants are getting screwed on prevailing wage violations here in New York, let's get back to what transpired in Oakland, California, it took a Cantonese speaking organizer working with the International Brotherhood Of Electrical Workers (IBEW Local 595) to bring the violations to light and that's a good thing. Here's some snips from the East Bay Business Times, from the August 12th. story entitled "Former employees sue Oakland contractor NBC General":

NBC General Contractors Corp., an Oakland construction company that is working on several publicly funded projects in the city’s downtown, has been hit with a lawsuit filed by former employees seeking millions of dollars for prevailing-wage, overtime, meal break and safety violations.

Sounds like your average non-union construction company nowadays, sometimes it's Chinese, sometimes it's Guatemalan's, Mexican's, whoever they can screw and threaten the best. The less they are allowed to speak up, the less they know about US labor law, the more they can be screwed, but enough of my ranting, the story continues:

NBC General became the subject of the organization’s scrutiny because some contractors perceived its bids on projects were often lower than others and that prompted questions about whether its books truly reflected hours worked, said the partnership’s Alameda County compliance officer, Andreas Cluver. The union group wasn’t able to investigate efficiently, however, until it made contact with a Cantonese-speaking organizer who understood the language and culture of many of the NBC General workers.

That's the way to do it fellas, IBEW did exactly what needs to be done, just because the workers did not speak English, did not mean they were stupid, they just needed someone to explain to them their rights. How bad were these workers treated, heres more:

The suit filed July 17 in Alameda Superior Court seeks to represent a group of what is probably about 150 workers who worked on NBC General projects for a period of four years, from July 2004 to the present, said plaintiff attorney Sharon Seidenstein. A judge would have to grant class-action status.

“The company is working on prevailing-wage jobs and they are not paying the prevailing wage,” said Seidenstein. “They are also working them extremely long hours; for instance, during the summer the workers are alleged to be working 12-hour days, seven-day weeks, with no overtime.”

Also named in the complaint is J.H. Fitzmaurice Inc., the Emeryville-based firm that is the general contractor for the Fox Courts housing project.

It is unclear how much plaintiffs will recoup if they prevail, although Seidenstein said it could be “millions.”

Cluver stated that he had calculated about $6.6 million in underpayments to workers, based solely on his calculations and not taking into account any penalties a court might issue.

Monica Mui Ung, president and CEO of Oakland-based NBC General, and J.H. Fitzmaurice, did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment on Tuesday.

I just hope the owners of these companies in NY and CA see the inside of jail, they really deserve it. One can only wonder how badly they treat workers on non-prevailing wage jobs, but you can see that in my first article entitled "Blatant discrimination! Another disposable worker death in New York's underground sweatshop construction industry"

Immigration: the wedge issue of the labor movement

This country is delving deeper into the 3rd. world as anyone is allowed to enter here illegally without penalty, and until recently one of the only times ICE, our Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, has raided a work place it was in the middle of a union organizing drive. Here's just a few facts to ponder.

In Iowa, ICE raided AgriProcessors, the countries largest Kosher meat packing plant and found almost 400 illegal alien workers, reports of weapons and get this, a Crystal Meth lab! There were over 60 underage workers at the plant, the youngest of which was 13 years old.

In California, a pregnant Mexican teenager died on a California vineyard, she wasn't allowed to have water! 5 more immigrant farmworkers in California have died in the fields since.

In New York, undocumented immigrant construction workers were threatened with guns if they decided to join a union. On other sites workers are told to say that if hurt at work, they are to report the injury as happening on the soccer field. On a nearby house getting remodeled I asked the owner of a construction company why he only gave his Guatemalan workers doing siding one plank for each teir of the 32 foot high scaffold, he told me they were like monkeys, they would be OK. I could go on about New York, about how when Fresh Direct, the internet supermarket was raided by ICE right in the middle of a NLRB wait period for a unionization vote. But lets get to the legal issues that are encouraging more illegal immigration, the laws against working rights and the laws that are helping to fracture labor protections. Here's two I reported on recently. Oh yeah, by the way they are both in Right to work states.

Kansas, a state in this United States, has passed a bill through it's Senate that will exclude punishment for the employers of undocumented workers, but would fine a union who lets the worker into it's ranks. You got that? They do not blame the employers and they want to stop anyone from helping the workers.

Utah, there is now a law which will exclude an injured worker from getting Workmans Compensation who has committed any crime, BUT the law does not hold the company responsible for hiring the illegal immigrant, nor will their premimum go up. Now theres a couple of great places to open up business.

To Be Continued, what I've been up to lately

I can continue with this but I really need some rest, you may have noticed I have been writing scarcely recently at Joe's Union Review, there's just so much to write about and so little time lately, I too have a full time job and I'm teaching an apprentice in my trade, it's an honor and a privilege to help her in her career, I was a little concerned that I might not have been ready to train someone, but I'm doing my best, she is my union brother (talk about a weird line) and it's important.

Something you may want to check out

Just in case you don't read Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, you may have missed the news of the meeting they had with their workers that threatened that if Obama were to be elected President, that there would be almost nothing standing in the way of the Employee Free Choice Act getting passed, which would of course pave the way for those damned unions to corrupt the wonderful working environment that their workers currently enjoy by giving them a fighting chance to seek collective bargaining representation. Was it illegal what they did? Was Wal-Mart being a good employer and informing their workers about the candidates or did they threaten them as to how they should vote?

Here's a little fact that slipped through the media unreported, Wal-Mart was recently sued by none other than the US Dept. Of Justice, why would you ask? They refused to rehire a returning veteran in their Florida store. That's right, Wal-Mart, that great American franchise said a big F you to someone who went out and risked their life for them. They of course settled for $12,000 out of court.

Wal-Mart is most likely a big contributor to the organizations against The Employee Free Choice Act, but I'll have more on that soon. As American Right's At Work puts it:

What Wal-Mart is doing for November's political elections is what it, and hundreds of other anti-union companies, do all the time when workers say they want a union: intimidating them to go against their own self-interests.

The most ironic part of this news is that Wal-Mart's political ally, the Chamber of Commerce, sees itself as "David" versus the supposed "Goliath" of unions in the fight for the Employee Free Choice Act.

"This is a David-and-Goliath confrontation, but we believe we'll have enough stones in the sling to knock this out," said Mr. Steven Law, chief legal officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Maybe, if David first set up a front group to defame Goliath with a $30 million television advertising campaign before he loaded up his slingshot.

I'll write some more on this soon, but for now,

Peace, have a great weekend

Joe

Just trying to put everything together. Please if you have some time, check out the other stories I tagged on this subject, while they're not the only related articles, I learned a lot of how we got here, and what it's going to take to get us out of this mess.

• The collapse of the middle class part 1: Letters from Vermont
• Video: The collapse of the middle class Part 2: Revealing lecture by Elizabeth Warren
• Ed Ott, Executive Director of NY Central Labor Council: Lifting the bottom can avert the collapse of the middle class
• Bill Moyers on LA Labor, the march and what it takes to get bye in today's America
  

Here again we have some more honest writing on the matter in an opinion piece by Mike Fishman(President 32/BJ), from City Limits entitled "Low wages, High wages and nothing in between" (7/28/08):

America must correct its vast earnings gap, or the 'working poor' will continue to include far too many of us.
Last week’s national minimum wage bump to $6.55 an hour didn’t affect New Yorkers who were already earning a higher $7.15 minimum set by the state. But the extra income does little for those who had been earning the previous federal minimum of $5.85 an hour – or the 6.1 million residents of New York state who are struggling to cover the skyrocketing prices of milk, bread and gas with low wages.

Today, nearly one-third of all Americans are trying to make ends meet on low wages. And the number of low-wage jobs – primarily service jobs in hotels, food prep, home health care and office cleaning – is growing. In the next decade, 5 million new jobs will pay poverty-level wages unless something is done.

Valentino Stronza, a security officer working at a Midtown office building owned by the Paramount Group, lives this struggle daily. He's doing his best to make ends meet, but earning only $10 an hour from Apollo Security isn't enough for him to provide the home he wants his son to have. To keep costs down, he and his son share a bedroom in his sister's apartment. He works overnight three days a week trying to put money aside so he and his son can move into their own place, but so far, the extra money has gone to paying off past medical expenses.

Valentino’s not alone – according to Mayor Bloomberg’s new poverty measurement, nearly one in four New Yorkers lives in poverty. Despite working hard to create better futures for their families, they are making little headway in an economy that's producing low-wage jobs like there's no tomorrow.

At the same time, this past year marked the fifth straight year in which the number of millionaires in our country grew – now at 10 million. The top 1 percent of households take home 21.8 percent of all income – more than double the 9 percent rate of 30 years ago. This is the highest concentration of income in the hands of the wealthiest 1 percent since 1928, a year before the great stock market crash.

At no time in our history has the disparity in income been so wide and in no other industrialized country does the disparity come close. CEO compensation is more than 400 times the take-home pay of an average American worker. For an industrialized country, there is no parallel to this growing income divide between the highest- and lowest-paid workers. Corporate executives in England make half as much as those in America, while the lowest-paid workers there earn a higher wage than their American counterparts.

As we look toward the upcoming election, which will put the fate of our country in new hands, we must demand national policies to change the direction of our economy. Pegging the minimum wage to a percentage of median income would raise it and then keep the lowest paid workers on pace with future increases of the rest of the workforce. Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit – a cost that would be offset by closing tax loopholes for the very wealthy – would also help those low-income families teetering on the brink of poverty.

Locally, a citywide policy requiring publicly financed development projects to pay prevailing wages and benefits to the workers who build and maintain the sites would ensure that newly created jobs provide what New York families need to get by. At Willets Point and Greenpoint-Williamsburg developments where these provisions have already been set in motion, hundreds of good jobs will be created for working New Yorkers.

Aside from government action, companies, particularly those benefiting from tax breaks, must raise pay in low-wage industries if we are to make an immediate and wide-scale impact on poverty. Government programs alone will fall short of the mark, and unions have shown they can work with business responsibly to bring low-wage workers out of poverty.

In New York, low-wage union workers make 16 percent more in wages than their non-union counterparts and are 25 percent more likely to get employer-paid health care and a pension. But joining a union can be hard for many workers who fear employer retribution. Federal passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, a bipartisan bill which would create a more neutral environment for workers to decide on union membership, would help low-wage workers join a union and get the raises they need.

Americans have long held to the notion that having a job means you can make ends meet. But unless steps are taken to address the growing imbalance in our economy, we could wake up one day in a city of just the very rich and the working poor.

- Mike Fishman

Mike Fishman is president of SEIU Local 32BJ, with more than 100,000 members, including 70,000 in New York City, making it the largest private sector union on the East Coast.