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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
EDITORIAL: Discard ‘undemocratic’ card check
President Obama made a great deal of promises to labor groups during his campaign for the White House, but the effort to get Congress to pass economic recovery legislation has put those promises on the back burner. And that’s a good thing when it comes to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
There are two principal methods employees can use to form a union and gain the right to collectively bargain with employers. Company workers who get 30 to 50 percent of their colleagues to sign petition cards requesting representation can send the cards to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and have it oversee a secret ballot election. Or, if more than 50 percent of an employer’s workers sign up for representation, a union is deemed legitimate through “card check” procedures without Labor Relations getting involved at all, but only if the employer does not request a secret-ballot election. Continue reading »
As we reported a few days ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported its newest stats on union membership for 2008. These stats show that union membership has increased for the second straight year. But where it has increased is of key importance.
The report shows a gain of 428,000 members, the largest in the last 25 years and since such statistics have been gathered. Alarmingly, the largest number of union workers are employed by government.
The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.8 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private industry workers (7.6 percent). Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 42.2 percent. This group includes many workers in several heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and fire fighters. Private sector industries with high unionization rates include transportation and utilities (22.2 per-cent), telecommunications (19.3 percent), and construction (15.6 per-cent). In 2008, unionization rates were relatively low in financial activities (1.8 percent) and professional and business services (2.1 percent).
This was a rise from numbers seen in 2007 and previous, as well. State and local government worker unions are steadily on the rise and therein lies the danger to good government. The singular problem with unions and government is that unions do not make for good government.
Let us consider what the role of a union is, here. A union’s job is to get as much for its workers as possible, regardless of good work, regardless of the needs of business or the market place. Unions are not concerned with work, they are concerned with what they can force employers to give away.
Now, couple this unconcern over the quality or outcome of the job with government as the employer. In the case of a union of government workers what we have is an organization that has no interest in what is good for the voter, only in what it can take from him. Worse, this same selfish and unelected power broker can shut down government with the power to strike extorting from the taxpayers endlessly with no accountability to “we the people” that are paying the bills that keep government workers in undue pensions and overly indulgent health care plans.
Unions of government workers are growing at an exponential rate endangering the solvency of state budgets, taking power from the hands of elected officials and every year further eliminating voters from being able to affect their own government at the ballot box.
Unions are antithetical to good government. Its just that simple.
The only other danger more rampant than unfettered unaccountable unions is an activist judiciary.
Michael Richardson of the on-line news group the Examiner wrote recently about some revealing quotes about the modern American Communist Party by a Richard Winger of Ballot Access News.
Speaking about how the Communist Party in the US has for the most part ceased trying to run candidates for office, Winger points out that the CPUSA fully endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008 and has decided it best to focus on Democratic Party politics and union activities.
Communist Party members participate in politics and electoral life mostly by participation in unions, and inside the Democratic Party. The Communist Party’s weekly newspaper supports Democratic presidential nominees…
This says a lot, not about where the CPUSA has gone, but where Democrats and unions have. If CPUSA members have gravitated toward unions and the Democratic Party, this means that those nominally American groups have drifted far enough to the extreme left for even communists to agree to join their efforts.
This is singularly bad news for America.
The BLS Union Member Summary is out. Here are the highlights:
In 2008, union members accounted for 12.4 percent of employed wage
and salary workers, up from 12.1 percent a year earlier, the U.S.
Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The
number of workers belonging to a union rose by 428,000 to 16.1 million.
In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available,
the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million
union workers.
The data on union membership were collected as part of the Current
Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a monthly survey of about 60,000
households that obtains information on employment and unemployment
among the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and
over.
Some highlights from the 2008 data are: Continue reading »
UnionFacts.com has a great compilation of newspapers that stand against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and it’s undemocratic and unAmerican “card check” feature that would eliminate the right of prospective union members the right of a secret vote.
Most editorials note that EFCA would effectively strip workers of their right to a private and secret ballot in voting for the formation of a union. This loss of privacy in the workplace would undoubtedly lead to union intimidation and harassment.
The papers include the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Investor’s Business Daily, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, The Denver Post, and many, many more.
Click on over and read them all. It makes for some great ammo against the passage of the EFCA.
The National Labor Relations Board (nlrb.gov) is a federal agency created to monitor and administer federal laws that govern the relationship between labor unions and business owners and corporations and to this board, Barack Obama has appointed as its chair a woman that does not seem to believe much in individual freedom but seems more interested in collectivism. To you and me that might be considered a communist ideal, but even if she doesn’t take it that far it is certainly an adversarial idea to individual freedom and the rights of business.
Last week, Obama named to the NLRB Wilma Liebman, a Philadelphian that has served on the legal staff of two labor unions: the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (1980-1989) and the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen (1990-1993).
As the NRW’s freedom@work blog points out, Liebman has previously been known to make some rather startling statements.
[A]n exclusive orientation toward an individual-rights regime could have troubling political and social consequences.Workers may view the employment relationship in purely individual terms and may fail to grasp common economic interests and the potential of collective action at work, as well as in the public sphere. Collective action at work encourages engagement in the community and in politics. Without a functioning collective bargaining system, fundamental economic issues are placed off the table: distribution of wealth, control, and direction of economic enterprises. What institution will be as effective in efforts to minimize the randomness of fortune of democratic capitalism? And without a strong independent trade union movement, what institution will stand effectively as a counterweight in our democracy to the growing political influence of corporations? What institution will speak for working people–indeed for the middle class–as effectively?
It is glaringly obvious that Liebman does not think the individual worker is smart enough to be able to deal with his employers. And, worse, it seems that Liebman has no intention of allowing the worker to even have the chance to experience that freedom of individual choice but is rather more interested in supplanting such messy freedoms with total collectivism.
This seems to point to an NLRB chair that will advocate for the side of labor no matter what else is going on, doesn’t it? How can a person that is so blatantly biased in favor of big labor be expected to run an unbiased watchdog agency that is supposed to fairly deal with both sides?
Will Liebman be able to set aside her past activism and close associations with big labor to administer the federal agency to which she has been assigned?
I don’t see how she could, myself.
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston