Employee Free Choice Act

Q&A with Veteran Labor Organizer Stewart J. Acuff

Leo Gerard — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:15:39 -0400

Leo W. Gerard: Stewart, you talk about power in a book you’ve written with economist Dr. Richard A. Levins. You called the manual, “Getting America Back to Work.” What’s the relationship between power and getting people back to work?

Stewart J. Acuff: A big part of the problem we have with this economy or the biggest problem is that most of the money has gone to the Financial Elite -- and the power as well. To get America back to work we have to reinvest in our country and our workers. That necessarily means that the Financial Elite get less of the wealth generated by the economy and workers will get more. If you intend to take wealth from the richest people in the history of the world, you have to have enough power to do so.

Gerard: You say in the introduction that there are two kinds of power: “The first is lots of organized money. That is the kind of power the Financial Elite have used to bring the rest of us to our knees. The other source and form of power is lots of people: organized, mobilized, united, and taking action.” Do you really think that organized people can succeed in a wrangle with the financial elites?

Acuff: Absolutely! The economic history of the twentieth century is crystal clear. When unions were strong, working people had the lion's share of income and the economy worked well. When unions were weakened, we have seen the Financial Elite take over and run the economy into the ground.

That’s why passing the Employees Free Choice Act is more important than ever. When we strengthen unions, we strengthen the economy.

Gerard: Now, Stewart, you sound like some kind of Socialist talking about the fact that at times in the nation’s history the financial elite received collectively as little as 9 percent of the total income earned by Americans but at other times – like right now and right before the Great Depression – the financial elite grabbed more than 23 percent of all income. I mean, aren’t you afraid the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck will accuse you of opposing just rewards earned by the barons of capitalism?

Acuff: Well, my friend, those aren’t just rewards. As my friend Jim Hightower said, members of the Financial Elite were born on third base and say they hit a triple. It’s beyond comprehension that the trading of phony financial instruments like derivatives produces rewards. What produces just rewards is manufacturing and producing goods and services that people need and want. The person who needs just rewards today is the hotel maid who cleans rooms for a living or the overstressed nurse who can’t get to all her patients or the skilled but out-of-work construction worker waiting for the chance to earn an honest day’s pay.

Gerard: Okay, but then you start talking about income tax rates. Are you really suggesting that the current maximum of 35 percent be raised to the 90 percent that it was during the 1950s? Would that not just enrage the financial elite?

Acuff: Yes, it would enrage the Financial Elite and Dr. Levins and I haven’t made that case in this book. Certainly the income tax rate for the richest among us is far too low. When Warren Buffet himself says he pays a lower percentage of his income in taxes than does his secretary, that’s a problem.

We wouldn't need to rely on taxes to redistribute income if we had the right mix of union power and corporate power. Instead of a few massive fortunes, we would have millions of working people being productive and using fair wages to stimulate economic growth.

Gerard: Since the days of Reagan, Republicans have told us that taxes on the financial elite should be cut because they need all that money to “re-invest” in the system. That way, the GOP line goes, wealth will trickle down on the “little people.” This hasn’t really worked, has it?

Acuff: No! Not at all! Since the days of Reagan workers wages have stagnated and declined while our productivity has increased. Wealth does not trickle down. Have you seen any of the TARP billions trickling into your pocket lately? I sure haven't. All I saw was obscene bonus payments to those who caused the mess in the first place.

Gerard: Halfway through the book, you suggest working people can have it all – family-supporting jobs, health insurance, even Social Security. Those on the radical right tell us daily that’s impossible because of the national debt. How can you justify such a vision?

Acuff: More income means more tax revenue, more economic growth and economic activity. We lift the economy from the bottom, not from the top.

Gerard: Then you have the audacity to quote some old economists claiming, “An efficient and humane society requires both halves of the mixed system – market and government.” We know, because the right-wing has told us repeatedly, that government is bad, that it should be shrunk and drowned in a bathtub. Where did you and Professor Levins come up with this new-fangled idea that government could help?

Acuff: It’s not a new idea. It says right in the ECON 101 text that Dr. Levins used in his classes that "markets without government is just one hand clapping." From the destruction of 2 trillion dollars of America’s wealth by Wall Street to the incessant pouring of oil from BP’s hole in the bottom of the Gulf, we know that capitalism must be regulated and constrained for the sake of everyone.

Gerard: Which brings us to organized labor. You quote President Kennedy saying, “Those who would destroy or further limit the rights of organized labor – those who would cripple collective bargaining or prevent organization – do a disservice to the cause of democracy.” Isn’t that exactly what has happened since the days of Kennedy, a slow destruction of the labor movement with corporations, union-busters and sometimes government regulators all working together to rob labor unions of the power they built between the 1930s and 1950s?

Acuff: Yes, you’re absolutely right. The results are the mal-distribution of wealth and power and massive recession, a shrinking middle class, a starved consumer demand, and a weaker America.

Gerard: The book was written and published before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig that was drilling for BP in the Gulf of Mexico. Is it somewhat prophetic, then, that you discuss the need to move from a fossil fuel-based economy to one that creates jobs with renewable energy sources?

Acuff: I can’t speak to prophecy though I am a huge fan or both Isaiah and Jeremiah. We’ve long known that America needs to generate its own free energy from free resources like the wind that never stops blowing on Great Plains, the sun that never stops shining in the deserts of Arizona, and incessant pull of the ocean’s tide.

Gerard: I was glad to see the chapter discussing the importance of maintaining and supporting manufacturing in America. For those still unconvinced, why is that so important?

Acuff: Well, we don’t need to maintain just current manufacturing capacity. We need to increase manufacturing capacity. That is how to generate wealth. We create wealth by making things that other people want to buy and that is the best way to build a sound economy.

Gerard: You sound a little bit like a preacher at the end where you state the four values that Americans can believe in. Do you think America can organize around those values and take on the financial elite?

Acuff: Yes, I do! I think what we need is a reinforcement of fundamental human values. We’re all in this together; there is a common good; we are our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers, and workers win and have always won by exercising collective power against the individual power of the Financial Elite.

***

Stewart Acuff is chief of staff for the Utility Workers Union of America. He has organized for 30 years, beginning in 1982 with the SEIU. In 1990, he became president of the Atlanta AFL-CIO. There he led the campaign to organize the 1996 Olympics. A decade later, he went to work for the national AFL-CIO, serving as organizing director from 2001 to 2008. He led the AFL-CIO campaign to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

***

Dr. Richard Levins is professor emeritus of applied economics at the University of Minnesota. He is an award-winning author of books about policy and market power.

Hey, Union-Busters: We’ll Give You Supermajority

Leo Gerard — Thu, 13 May 2010 12:43:53 -0400

Corporate CEOs, union-busting lawyers, and conservative politicians who pander to the rich condemned a National Mediation Board (NMB) Ruling this week.

They complained that the NMB gave railway and airline workers the ability to obtain collective bargaining rights through majority-rule elections. That’s the type of balloting that occurs under universal democratic rules. Everyone qualified to vote is invited to participate, and the outcome is determined by the majority of those who cast ballots.

The anti-worker-rights groups wanted the NMB to retain a different kind of election – one that requires the winner to receive votes from the majority of all of those qualified to participate -- essentially, a supermajority.

This is an exciting new development. Up until now CEOs, union-busters, and particularly conservative Republicans, have actively opposed the Employee Free Choice Act, mainly because of a provision they call “card check.” But card check provides exactly what they now say that they want – a determination made by the majority of all of those qualified to participate. So, clearly, since they’re so upset by the end of supermajority rule for airline and railroad workers, they’d be happy if Congress intervened and instituted it for all workers by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

For a little over 70 years, the NMB, which governs collective bargaining by airline and railroad workers, mandated supermajorities. When a group of workers, let’s say Delta Airline Flight Attendants, sought the right to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions, the NMB conducted an election in which it counted those who voted yes as supporting the proposal; those who voted no as opposing, and all those who didn’t vote as opposing.

The NMB arbitrarily placed the non-voters in the “no” ballot box. To win an election, the NMB required collective bargaining supporters to receive votes from a majority of all those eligible – those who voted combined with those whose ballots the NMB inexplicably stuffed in the “no” box after they did not vote.

Compounding that supermajority obstacle was the NMB practice of permitting employers to determine who was eligible to vote, then excusing them from providing that list to workers seeking collective bargaining. This created an incentive for employers to “accidently” include the names of workers who’d quit or retired -- ineligible voters whose inability to cast ballots created automatic “no” votes. Writing about losing an election in 2008, Delta flight attendant Linda Sorenson said airline officials released its list after the balloting. Among other problems, it included the name of a deceased worker. Sorenson wrote:

“The company acknowledged her death, but the NMB – whose . . . chair had been a Northwest (airline) lobbyist – refused to remove her. She became a vote against representation.”

Airline and railroad workers found the supermajority rule confounding in what is supposed to be a democratic system. Writing the NMB to request the rule change, Jamin B. Raskin, a law professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1937 that a supermajority is not required, partly because established democratic practice is:

“Those who do not participate ‘are presumed to assent to the expressed will of the majority of those voting.’”

The NMB ignored the Supreme Court and continued requiring a supermajority – until Monday. Then it joined the National Labor Relations Board, which complied with the Supreme Court decision and allowed majority-rule elections for the vast majority of U.S. workers whose collective bargaining rights it governs.

The minute the NMB proposed the change to majority-rule elections last fall, anti-worker-rights groups started pitching a fit. Union-busting law firm Winston & Strawn wrote, for example, that the NMB should not change a rule that had been in effect for nearly 75 years. It contended that elections for workers should be different from elections for political candidates and referendums:

“The change would enable unions to obtain representation simply by winning a majority of votes cast, as opposed to a majority of all employees eligible to vote on the issue . . . Under the proposed new rule, a minority of workers could effectively select a union representative on behalf of a much larger potential bargaining unit.”

Conservative Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia agreed, protesting in a news release that Monday’s decision gave workers the same rights as all others in a democratic system:

“The final rule change, which was issued today, would affect companies under the jurisdiction of the Railway Labor Act by allowing union elections to be decided by only a majority of workers who cast ballots, reducing the number of votes it takes for a union to win.”

The solution to Isakson’s complaint is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. That legislation would require consent of a majority of eligible workers for the awarding of collective bargaining rights.

Under the Employee Free Choice Act, workers seeking collective bargaining rights would collect signatures among their co-workers. If more than half of all eligible workers signed cards in support, the NLRB or NMB would recognize the workers as having the right to collectively bargain with the employer for the benefit of all of the workers.

This process would guarantee that a majority of all eligible workers supported collective bargaining before it could occur. It is a process that was routinely used to secure collective bargaining rights in the early days of union organizing in this country. It gives anti-worker-rights groups such as Winston & Strawn exactly what they’re demanding – a supermajority.

The process is not an election. But with secret balloting, requiring a supermajority is undemocratic. No one can be compelled to vote in a democratic system. And counting those who don’t vote as supporters of collective bargaining is just as logical as tallying them as unanimously opposed.

The solution provided in the Employee Free Choice Act is elegant and historically valid. It’s great that Isakson and his fellow conservative Republicans in the U.S. Senate now back the supermajority concept that the Employee Free Choice Act achieves through “card check.”

Harry Alford's Condescension

Isaiah J. Poole — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:49:08 -0400

The right-wing blogosphere is abuzz over the supposed smackdown between Sen. Barbara Boxer and Harry C. Alford, who portrays himself as an "African American and a veteran" who is insulted at Boxer's alleged racism and calls her on it.

Well, as an African American I don't know what the hell Alford was upset about — other than the fact that Alford was shown that his shilling for the right is not appreciated in much of the community he claims to represent.

Alford is the president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, an outfit he and his wife, Kay Debow Alford, run out of a small office in Washington. The Chamber took in about $880,000 in 2006, according to the most recent publicly available Form 990 filed with the IRS, most from membership dues and a $90,000 grant from AT&T (which may have something to do with Alford's opposition to "net neutrality," the idea that broadband providers such as AT&T should not have to right to limit what content people can receive via the Internet).

But what was at the core of Alford's outburst was the reason he was on Capitol Hill testifying before Boxer's Environment and Public Works committee to begin with: to oppose climate change legislation.

Alford's organization had already joined forces with carbon-based fuel interests and conservatives to torpedo the Waxman-Markey climate change bill in the House. It released a study in May from CRA International that asserted that by 2030 Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $350 billion in lost gross domestic product and 2.5 million jobs. The National Resources Defense Council has a detailed dissection of the study's flaws and the disclosure that the NBCC has received $275,000 from ExxonMobil.

In fact, Greenpeace has a page of global-warming-denial comments that Alford has made over the years, which is why ExxonMobil has been so generous with its funding of this relatively obscure organization.

Alford is also an ardent opponent of the Employee Free Choice Act—no surprise, since he also sits on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a leading EFCA opponent. He's been claiming that EFCA would harm African-American-owned businesses. His April op-ed for Roll Call on the issue of enabling workers to form unions is an example of how he is willing to use race to push an anti-labor agenda:

The Employee Free Choice Act would eliminate one of the most fundamental tenets of our democracy: the secret ballot. By eliminating the right to vote in private, workers would not only be deprived of the right to vote their conscience, but would also be more vulnerable to the intimidation and coercion tactics known to be used by
union organizers. ... African-Americans, in particular, have bitter memories of voter intimidation and have a responsibility to stand up against any proposition that will take away their democratic voting rights.

For a man who compares seeking to organize a union through a person-to-person card-check drive to the efforts of Southern segregationists to violently suppress the black vote, a complaint that Boxer citing a resolution by the NAACP on climate change in a climate change hearing is somehow "racial" and something that would "explode" is certainly audacious. Condescending, though, is more apt.

So let's be clear: Harry Alford does not speak for the African-American community. He does not speak for me. He speaks for a cabal of conservative obstructionists who are hell-bent on protecting the old order of oil companies being unaccountable to the environment, employers being unaccountable to their workers—and of African Americans who won't pimp for the interests of corporate America being kept in their place.

Chamber's Paid Expert: No Unions, No Minimum Wage Law Needed

Isaiah J. Poole — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:12:49 -0400

Restore the Middle Class with Employee Free Choice

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:47:48 -0400

Kate Thomas

Kate Thomas2 — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:45:05 -0400

Freedom Of Association

Isaiah J. Poole — Sun, 31 May 2009 23:03:27 -0400

Economic Terrorism

Tula Connell — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:23:23 -0400

Corporate opponents of workers' freedom to form unions repeatedly have shown they are not interested in the welfare of their employees or any of the pseudo-lofty ideals they cite while fighting the Employee Free Choice Act.

Now, they've made clear they will do anything--even destroy jobs, communities and harm the U.S. economy--to ensure that more American workers do not have a voice on the job. (And this just in--they're now using Joe the Plumber as an anti-Employee Free Choice Act spokes-idiot. That guy can't seem to keep a job.)

In Wisconsin, a local economic development official in Eau Claire County said a project was derailed because of the proposed Employee Free Choice Act. According to today's Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, the unnamed project would have brought a

$50 million investment to Eau Claire County in the next five years, along with creating up to 800 full-time jobs, Brian Doudna, executive director of the Eau Claire Area Economic Development Corp., said in a news release Wednesday evening. Construction was expected to begin this year. The first employees were to begin work in early 2010, with about 100 new jobs being created. [snip]

'Proposed federal and state legislation, as shown by this company's decision, can impact location decisions and limit the private sector's ability to create quality jobs for Eau Claire area residents. This is especially disappointing given the condition of our current national, regional and local economies.'

Yo, Brian: What's 'disappointing' is the blackmail screaming out here. The threat by employers to destroy the community they theoretically are invested in just so those employers don't have to actually talk with workers across a bargaining table about what might make for a safe workplace, what they need to support their families and retire without working until they die.

That's bad enough. But here's the kicker:

Doudna said if the bill is approved, the project will not occur--at least not in the U.S.

Blackmail, big time. In short, U.S. corporations are saying: Give us unlimited control over the lives of our workers, or we'll go to another nation where 'human rights' is a dirty phrase and 'workers' rights' even worse.

The local Chamber of Commerce's response is to attack government.

Bob McCoy, president of the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce, said the government essentially is stopping growth in the Chippewa Valley.

'I think it's one of those situations when the state starts trying to generate additional revenue or put certain criteria on business, it can reverse itself,' he said. 'There's a potential for the Employee Free Choice Act, and (businesses) can't afford those types of consequences.

Because the Wall Street way worked so well for us, huh, Bob?

There's a lot to be said about corporate greed fueling the opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. But as the nation's $4 billion annual union-busting industry shows, more than money is involved. When corporations are willing to spend far more to fight unionization than they would spend on a unionized workforce, when they are willing to rip out the economic guts of the community--then something seriously is wrong with the culture of those who call the economic shots in this nation. Because the corporate threat screaming from Eau Claire is not just blackmail. It's anti-worker. Anti-you. Anti-me. Anti-American.

This is a crosspost from Firedoglake.

AIG Shows Why We Need the Employee Free Choice Act

Mike Elk — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:34:12 -0400

At first, it might seem a bit odd that Bank of America and Citigroup paid for a conference call to coordinate a campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act. Why would Bank of America and Citigroup be so interested in hosting efforts against a measure that would allow workers to more easily join unions, since unionization has traditionally had little appeal for financial service workers? As a union organizer, I've never heard of stockbrokers wanting to unionize.

The real interest big banks have in opposing unions and the Employee Free Choice Act lies in the unions' role in preventing corporate greed.

Unions are a countervailing force against corporate greed in a market that has proven incapable of regulating itself. One example is the 2003 dismissal of New York Stock Exchange Chairman Dick Grasso. CalPERS—the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the nation's largest pension fund with assets of over $200 billion dollars—raised red flags when it discovered that Grasso was going to receive a compensation package of nearly $140 million. The compensation package was designed for him by a board of representatives from NYSE-listed companies. Since Grasso was charged with regulating these companies, such a large compensation package represented a clear conflict of interest. Under the threat of pulling their investment out of NYSE-listed companies, CalPERS and other worker-run pension funds forced Grasso to step down as NYSE chairman. That was a major victory for workers and for market accountability.

Corporate greed has gone unchecked recently in part due to the decline of the labor movement. Is it a coincidence that union membership declined dramatically from 20 percent of the private sector workforce in 1980 to just over 7 percent in 2006 while CEO pay has increased from 42 times what the average worker made in 1980 to 364 in 2006? Unions demand an economy that works for all, not just those at the top, such as AIG executives. As William Greider, author of the Soul of Capitalism, told me, "Unions are an honest broker in the economy.”

Through pension and retirement funds, workers can fund companies that invest in communities and in green jobs, promote workers' rights and operate in a transparent manner; and penalize companies that don't. With over $6 trillion of workers' money in retirement plans, pension funds, profit-sharing and stock plans and union reserve funds, the money of workers' plays a large role in fueling the global economy. Through putting workers' representatives on the board of these funds, unions can make sure that "worker investments are managed in workers' best financial interests." By investing in transparent, open and financially healthy companies, unions through stockholder activism can lead the way in ending the culture of reckless corporate short-term profit-seeking, which led to the rise of subprime mortgages and credit-derivative swaps.

Unions have long sought ways to make corporate profits sustainable in the long run in order to both retain and create jobs. It is ironic that the United Auto Workers (UAW) has been unfairly scapegoated as the cause of the demise of the auto industry since, as early as 1949, they have called for the Big Three to make small, more fuel-efficient cars. In 1949, in a pamphlet entitled "A Small Car Named Desire," the UAW cautioned automakers against investing solely in big cars since some consumers would ultimately be interested in cheaper smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. In short, unions have also sought was is best for all— not just for workers, but creating the economic conditions that will allow their companies to thrive.

As President Obama stated, "We know that strong, vibrant, growing unions can exist side by side with strong, vibrant and growing businesses. This isn't a either/or proposition between the interests of workers and the interests of shareholders. That's the old argument. The new argument is that the American economy is not and has never been a zero-sum game. When workers are prospering, they buy products that make businesses prosper."

Indeed, passing the Wagner Act, which allowed unions to collectively bargain for higher wages, in 1935— during the middle of the Great Depression—was crucial to getting the economy going again.

The recent AIG scandal shows why we need an active force to protect us against the greed of Wall Street CEOs. Unions, representing the combined interests of everyday Americans, can be a valuable instrument in fighting for the interests of all, not just those at the top. By passing the Employee Free Choice Act, we would make it easier for workers to advocate for a union without facing the kind of employer intimidation that currently results in one of five workers who attempt to organize a union being fired from their job. The Employee Free Choice Act would not just protect the right of workers to join a union, but would protect us all from the corporate greed of AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup and the rest of their partners in crime.

Scare Tactic Recycled: Unionizing Kills Jobs

Isaiah J. Poole — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:27:05 -0500

Anti-labor forces this week are reprising an old argument about the Employee Free Choice Act: Making it easier for employees to join unions will cost employees their jobs.

The latest entry in this fusillade of propaganda comes from something called the Alliance to Save Main Street Jobs—an alliance that happens to include that bastion of "Main Street," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The author, Anne Layne-Farrar of the consulting firm LECG, writes that "if EFCA passed today and resulted in an increase in unionization from the current rate of about 12% to 15% ... unemployment a year from now would rise by 1.5 million, to 10.4 million."

The report relies on conservative zero-sum logic. If you pay workers higher wages, as Layne-Farrar concedes will happen as unionization increases, employers will respond by displacing workers from the labor force. The author concludes this even though, on page 13 of her report, she also writes, "the literature offers conflicting results with respect to the impact of union density on inflation, employment and unemployment."

Nonetheless, Layne-Farrar won't let conflicting data get in the way of a good right-wing trope. So she wades into Canadian labor data from the 1980s and 1990s, where provinces have used both the card-check system sought in EFCA and the secret ballot that EFCA opponents say they support. She flatly concludes that the provinces where card-check campaigns successfully increased union membership saw higher unemployment.

Economics and statistics students, repeat after me: Correlation is not causation.

There is no evidence in her statistical romp through Canada of any analysis of disparate economic conditions across the provinces, or disparate mixes of types of industries, that would explain rises or falls in unemployment. Without that, an assessment of the impact of the effect of unionization on employment is meaningless.

We do know, however, one way in which unionization costs jobs: Employers firing workers who attempt to lead unionization campaigns.

That's illegal, but that has not stopped the number of union organizers who lost their jobs from increasing since 2000, according to a study released this week by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "The likelihood that a pro-union worker would be fired in a union-election campaign has jumped sharply—to about 1 in every 52 pro-union workers," the study said.

That estimate is drawn from National Labor Relations Board data on "discriminatory discharges." As the report notes:

While the NLRA makes it illegal for employers to fire workers involved in union-organizing campaigns, the penalties associated with “discriminatory discharges” are small: back pay for illegally fired workers minus any earnings that workers had after they were fired. Given these small penalties for illegal firings, the NLRA, in practice, has given employers a powerful anti-union strategy: fire one or more prominent pro-union employees—typically those most involved in organizing the union—with the hope of disrupting the internal workings of the union’s campaign, while intimidating the rest of the potential bargaining unit in advance of the NLRB-supervised election.

Here's the real battle. On one side is real workers on Main Street who are being fired for leading an effort to organize a union, and the millions of other workers who are being denied a chance to decide on their own whether they want the rights that a union would grant them. On the other side, employers who are making the usual threats that if they are compelled to bargain with employees over the terms of their employment, they will pack up their investment capital and take it elsewhere.

Many of these employers have proven their bad faith by bullying employees, and only now are they likely to be called into account now that the Bush Labor Department's wide, bend-over-for-business stance is being wiped aside. You can understand that they would be mad that their free ride on the backs of workers is coming close to an end, and so we need to recognize "studies" like the Layne-Farrar work for what they are—the angry lashing-out of a petulant business community whose anti-union toys are about to be taken away.