Worker's Rights

Ian Mishalove

Ian Mishalove — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:39:32 -0800

I'm currently the Director for Online Communications at the Campaign for America’s Future, where I've been since July 2004. Prior to CAF, I worked for seven years at the National Wildlife Federation, first as their webmaster and then as their technical director for activist development. I received an M.E.S from Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a BA from Princeton University -- and in both places focused research on how to empower progressive social movement networks -- esp. through online technology. Outside of computers and activism, I co-own and help to run Flow Yoga Center with my beautiful wife Debra, play the bass, enjoy mes animeaux -- Carmen, Maggie and Maxie -- and try to spend as much time as possible playing outdoors.

balbert

Brian Albert — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:55:31 -0800

emills

Eric Mills — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:36:07 -0800

I'm currently the Controller at the Campaign for America’s Future, where I've been since March 2005. Prior to CAF, I worked for thirteen years at the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, first as their senior accountant, controller and then as their chief financial officer. I received an B.S from Bowie State University in accounting. I received my CPA in 1989.

Woe is the Worker

OurFuture.org Staff — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 07:51:04 -0800

Free Speech, Fried

OurFuture.org Staff — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 06:55:28 -0800

Dmitri Iglitzin is a labor law attorney in Seattle. Steven Hill is political reform director at the New America Foundation and author of "10 Steps to Repair American Democracy."

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees not only the freedom to speak but also the freedom not to listen. The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that "no one has a right to press even good ideas on an unwilling recipient." Nevertheless, American businesses are increasingly violating what should be the acknowledged free speech rights of their employees.

Frito-Lay Inc., one of the world's largest producers of snack foods, is also one of the country's worst abusers of its employees' right not to listen. It routinely not only compels its employees to listen to anti-union diatribes, on company time and property, but also forces its drivers to allow anti-union advocates to accompany them on their routes, requiring the captive drivers to listen to their anti-union speech.

Frito-Lay sugarcoats what it is doing by portraying this as merely "communicating" with its employees, i.e. exercising its own free speech rights. But an August 6, 2007 letter, which was sent to several hundred Teamster-represented employees in Washington state informing them of Frito-Lay's impending effort to oust the union, had menacing undertones: "We will probably use several methods of communication over the next few weeks, including employee meetings, letters, route rides, and individual discussions." Left unstated, but nonetheless crystal clear to employees, was that listening to these "communications" would not be voluntary. To the contrary, any refusal by an employee to participate in such communications—wherever, whenever and for however long the company wished—would be grounds for discharge.

Unfortunately, this kind of behavior is not unique to Frito-Lay. Many American companies take advantage of the intrinsic vulnerability of their employees at the workplace. A report for the federal government, based on a study of more than 400 union representation election campaigns, found that during 92 percent of union organizing drives, employers forced their employees to attend closed door anti-union meetings. In addition, 78 percent of employers directed supervisors to deliver anti-union messages to employees in one-on-one meetings.

Not surprisingly, employers have never seen fit to grant union representatives the same equal right to address employees. And nothing in federal law requires companies to allow labor representatives onto the employer's property to speak to workers, even if just to give an alternative view to the employer's anti-union speech.

So in many American work sites today, not only are workers' free speech rights being violated on a regular basis, but there's also no free market of ideas. Instead there exists a communication monopoly where workers are subjected to Soviet-like conditions, indoctrinated into the employer's anti-union credo and relentlessly harassed by their employers.

To counter this, a nationwide campaign has been launched to win basic free speech rights for workers. A proposed law, titled the Worker Freedom Act, would make it illegal for an employer to require workers to sit through meetings while the employer lectures on religious or political beliefs, including beliefs about joining a union. This law would not prohibit employers from sharing their opinions with their employees, but it would grant the employees the right to walk away.

The WFA has been introduced into numerous state legislatures and the Michigan, New Hampshire and Oregon houses of representatives all have passed it. It was passed by the Colorado Legislature in 2006 before being vetoed by the governor. Clearly, a lot of people agree with the U.S. Supreme Court that there is a compelling need to "protect listeners from unwanted communication." Whether in situations such as children in school or passengers on a bus, the court wrote that "the First Amendment permits the government to prohibit offensive speech as intrusive when the 'captive' audience cannot avoid the objectionable speech."

If "captive speech" is not permitted to be imposed on students in school, why should it be imposed on workers at their jobs? Should American workers have to forfeit their First Amendment-type freedoms whenever they show up to work?

Free speech is as American as apple pie, so it seems oddly un-American that in the 21st century American workers don't enjoy basic free speech rights in the workplace. The current momentum in favor of the Worker Freedom Act suggests that Americans recognize it is simply wrong that working Americans are denied this basic right. It's past time to support legislation that will give workers and worker representatives free speech rights in the workplace.

Victoria's Trade Secrets

Chris Collins — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:50:52 -0800

Labor Relations Gored

Stewart Acuff — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:32:23 -0800

During the week of November 15, thousands of union members and their allies marched, rallied, handbilled, phoned in, did street theater and otherwise raised hell at the offices of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in more than 20 cities across the the United States.

One thousand people rallied at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington on November 15 and marched to the national headquarters of the NLRB, where they rallied again and demanded that the Labor Board be closed for renovations until a new governing board could be appointed by a new president.

That demand was echoed vigorously from Albuquerque to Albany and from Nashville to Denver.

What caused the uproar?

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is charged with administering the National Labor Relations Act. That act, passed in 1935, regulates workers' rights and labor relations in most of America's private sector.

According to its preamble, the act was passed to encourage collective bargaining, freedom of association and worker organization.

Yet during the last half of September and the first half of October, the NLRB handed down 61 decisions that further restrict and weaken already shamefully weak and ineffective workers rights in America.

First, the decisions make it harder for workers to form a union through a majority sign up. Most workers who form a union in this country these days do so through a majority sign up process. That is because the NLRB elections system is so broken that workers avoid it when they can. The Chamber of Commerce and Big Business are at war against workersâ€™ freedom to form unions through majority sign upâ€”and it looks like they have successfully enlisted the Board on their side. Second, the decisions make it harder for workers who are illegally fired to recover back pay. Third, for workers who come to a job intending to try to form a union, these decisions have created a legalized form of job discrimination. Union supporters who are illegally denied employment are treated as second-class workers.

Finally, Justice delayed is justice denied. The language used by this Labor Board in the Dana decision will be used by the corrupt corporate and radical right-wing forces as arguments against passage of the fair and urgently needed Employee Free Choice Act.

But this is not the first time the Bush Labor Board has gone out of its way to weaken workers' rights, especially the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively. Since Bush was inaugurated, his board has acted regularly to deny collective bargaining and organizing protection to millions of workers across our country and throughout our economy. They took away Labor Board coverage from many disabled workers, university and graduate employees, and others. Then last year, in the infamous Kentucky River and Oakwood cases, they caused as many as 8 million non-supervisory, non-management workers to be inaccurately labeled as supervisors so that they would be denied collective bargaining coverage and any opportunity to form a unionâ€”and so that many who had already organized could have their union busted.

It is now obvious what the Bush board has done and is doing. It is an open and naked power grab.

Knowing that unions, the labor movement and organized workers are the most effective counterweight to corrupt corporate power, they are determined to weaken that counterweight as much as possibleâ€”even as the American people are more distrustful of right-wing than ever.

Knowing that union members regardless of race, gender, region or ethnicity are amongst the most active and loyal voters for progressive politicians, this Bush Labor Board is determined to deny union membership to as many workers as possible.

They realize that absent the union vote the 2006 Congressional landslide would have been dead even.

This Labor Board has consistently reversed 70 years of precedent and established law to make a joke and a mockery of the National Labor Relations Act.

It should not be a surprise to any of us. Radical right-wing Republicans stole the 2000 election. They stole votes from African-Americans in 2004 and they attempted to steal votes in 2006. In tax breaks, single-source contracts, and defense spending they have stolen the Nationâ€™s Treasury to give to the wealthy all over the world.

America needs a strong and vibrant Labor Movement. Workers forming unions in the 20 years after the passage of the National Labor Relations Act from 1935 to 1955 that created the broad and deep middle class that is Americaâ€™s greatest strength.

It is our Labor Movement that is the most effective counterweight to corrupt corporate power.

It is this Labor Movement and the Labor Movement around the world that is the most vigorous and effective opponent of right-wing ideology and its logical end of fascism.

For the United States to have a strong Labor Movement, average workers must be free to join it and to establish new unions in workplaces without unions.

That is not the case today. Though the Bush Labor Board has greatly accelerated the assault, workersâ€™ rights in America have been weakened steadily since the Reagan Administration. For at least 25 years workers in America have been routinely fired and retaliated against for trying to form unions and bargain collectively. Human Rights Watch has documented the assault. Dr. Kate Brofenbrenner has documented the assault. American Rights at Work have documented it.

All this is why our country so desperately needs the worker protection that will be provided by the Employee Free Choice Act. During both House and Senate votes in March and June of this year, the legislation won majority support. But we need a Senate that can win 60 votes to break a corrupt corporate backed Republican filibuster and a Democratic President who will sign itâ€”and use some political capital to pass it in the Senate.

So with December 10, International Human Rights Day, approaching, please remember that they key to our prosperity lies in our most fundamental right -- the right to freely associate, to speak out, and to organize.

National Labor Ruination Board

Terrance Heath — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:21:33 -0800

Relief for Working Women

Alexandra Walker — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 08:39:13 -0800

Martha Burk is a political psychologist and director of the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women's Organizations. This column was distributed by Minuteman Media and is reprinted by permission.

Working women and their allies have been crying "foul" to Congress ever since May, when the Bush Supreme Court delivered what could be a devastating blow to sisters experiencing discrimination in pay and promotion.

After many years of employment at Goodyear, Lilly Ledbetter learned that she had been paid less all along than all of the men at her management level, even those with less seniority. She sued and won in a lower court. But the Supremes said she had no case, because she didn't bring the action within 180 days from the time her discriminatory pay was initially set, even though it had been a tightly held secret in the company for over a decade before she found out about it. In an extremely rare act for her, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read a stinging rebuke of the decision from the bench, saying in effect that the majority of the Court is either clueless about sex discrimination in the workplace, or worse, they don't care.

Congress, notoriously slow to act on everything from money to fix bridges to cutting funds for the biggest war folly in the country's history, is, for once, listening. The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act would put into law what courts had always said prior to the Bush-appointed conservative majority — when someone has been shorted on pay for years, each new paycheck is a new offense. That means women have 180 days to sue from the time they find out about discrimination, not from the time the discrimination initially started. The bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives on July 31, with over 17,000 letters to Congress helping to make it happen. Whether it has anything to do with the presidential campaign is anybody's guess, but the Democratic candidates are giving the bill, S.1843, a push in the Senate, talking about it in the debates and on the stump.

Predictably, right-wing knives are drawn, led by the business lobby and bolstered by fundamentalist religious groups. A barrage of instant mythology that has sprung up about what the bill would do - everything from drastically changing our main employment law (Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act) to giving women workers unlimited time to pursue stale claims. All of this is hogwash, but it doesn't stop the misinformation machine that reaches all the way to the White House. In the eyes of some, anything that helps working women is inherently bad -because they ought to stay home in the first place. Never mind that their families need the money to survive.

Meanwhile, advocates are not waiting for the Almighty to provide relief —a broad coalition of groups is calling on the Senate to do it instead. Urging a vote in the next few weeks, advocates are asking women to contact their Senators to urge that they sign on. In this day of national gridlock on other matters of importance, it's the least they can do for working women.

We Want Our Words' Worth

Chris Collins — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:24:28 -0800

Michael Winship, Writers Guild of America Award winner and former writer with Bill Moyers, writes this weekly column for the Messenger Post Newspapers in upstate New York..

Groucho Marx said, "Who needs writers? Give me a competent director and two intelligent actors, and at the end of eight weeks I'll show you three of the most nervous people you ever saw."

Groucho got it. The Hollywood studios and networks apparently do not.

And so we, the screen and television members of the Writers Guild, East (of which I'm president) and the Writers Guild of America, West (of which my colleague Patric Verrone is president) are on strike, our first in nearly twenty years.

(By the way, Groucho didn't write the lines quoted in the lead paragraph. They were crafted for him by the now 88-year-old Hal Kanter, a proud Writers Guild member. This is why the business needs us.)

The last few weeks leading up to this remarkable and avoidable strike have been unlike any in my life. To be at the center of a major news story as a participant, instead of a journalistic observer looking in from the periphery, is unsettling.

I arrived in Los Angeles for the final negotiations before our contract expired at midnight, October 31, and was quoted in the New York Times describing those last days of formal talks as akin to "jury duty in a bullring." By which I meant long hours of tedium and waiting interrupted by occasional high drama and flashes of fancy capework.

And, of course, a lot of bull.

Over the next three days my negotiating colleagues and I found ourselves in such disparate locales as the nondescript meeting rooms of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the office of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and an arena at the LA Convention Center filled with more than 3000 cheering writers. All part of trying to make a deal and all quite bizarre.

There was and is a staggering amount of misinformation.

Second-guessing. Spin. And outright lies. Rumors become fact. The simple end of a meeting is characterized by the other side as a walkout and then reported as such in the press. Truths are distorted, reshaped.

Phony theatrics abound, gorilla dust is thrown. There was a heated argument about the number of chairs in the meeting room, a trumped up hissy about when the strike was supposed to begin.

Another mindboggling revelation is the depth of the lack of comprehension by studios and networks of how the creative process works. At a level far worse than I imagined, they can't seem to fathom what it takes to write a script, reacting just a few evolutionary notches above the lowest common denominator viewers who think the actors simply make up their lines. No wonder they seek to pay us so little.

Screenwriter Marc Norman ("Shakespeare in Love") has written a new book on the history of the screenplay craft titled "What Happens Next." It demonstrates that not much has changed in studio attitudes toward scenarists since the days Jack Warner would walk by his studio's writers building to make sure he could hear typewriter keys being hammered. The dreaded Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures used to do the same thing, but as he heard the sound of typing would snarl, "Liars!"

At one point during negotiations, it was seriously propositioned to us that writers who base their scripts on history or contemporary real life events should be paid less than those who create an original story because they don't have to use their imaginations as much. I am not making this up.

I was reminded of the old joke about the logic of civil engineers: if it takes a woman nine months to have a baby, they're convinced that gathering nine women together will produce a baby in a month. Come to think of it, studios often throw endless numbers of writers at movies like the Irish were hurled at Scottish warriors in "Braveheart" (written by Guild member Randall Wallace)—all in the hope of getting birth to a single, "Titanic"-like smash. The success rate is about the same.

The crux of what we're striking for is a fair and respectful contract that allows us to share in current and future revenues from the Internet and other new media. They tell us that this cannot be done, that it's too early to have a business model, that they have no idea if there is money to be made.

But money is being made. They simply don't wish to share it any more than they wished to share revenues from VHS tapes or DVD's. They told us then there was no business model, too. Fool us not just once but twice, okay, shame on you. But fool us a third time -- on new media—shame on us. Big time. We can't let it happen again. Our future livelihoods depend on our success. And so we strike.

What we’re down to is a package that will cost the studios and networks around $150-160 million, spread over the three years of the contract.

That's about twice what Viacom paid Tom Freston to buy him out as its CEO. A little less than what Merrill Lynch is paying Stan O'Neal to retire as its chairman and chief executive. Less than what Citigroup was paying incoming chairman Robert Rubin. As a consultant.

Some believe the studios and networks are out to destroy our union, that we are as vulnerable as the rest of organized labor has been since the Reagan years and especially since the tenure of this Bush White House. They seek to portray us as overpaid and self-indulgent, when in fact at any given time, half our members are unemployed. Most of us are part of the middle class that labor fought so hard to build and which others now shortsightedly seem bent on destroying.

And so we turn our pens to picket signs. We march and chant and even have the inflatable giant rat now so familiar at the site of labor protests. We must win, not just for ourselves but the future generations of writers to come. And I find myself saying to myself, as Gregory Peck yelled at David Niven in "The Guns of Navarone" (scripted by the late Writers Guild member and blacklist victim Carl Foreman),"You’re in it now -- up to your neck!"

Help.