César Chávez, 2.0

In the wake of the immigration disaster, this is very interesting:

A center representing immigrant workers who do temporary jobs announced its affiliation with the AFL-CIO Thursday, becoming the first day labor center to act on an agreement between the largest U.S. federation of unions and a network representing immigrant laborers.

The Centro Legal de la Raza hopes the association with the AFL-CIO's Alameda County Central Labor Council will help improve working conditions for the immigrant workers it represents. Like other day laborers who solicit jobs by standing on corners and waiting for employers to pick them up, these workers often have little recourse when an employer refuses to pay or expects them to work under dangerous conditions.

Fundamentally and abstractly, this is great news; an abused constituency of hard workers are getting protection and a voice. That's at the core of the labor movement. Right now, there are 80 worker centers nationwide with over 140,000 workers, and with no immigration deal in place, there is going to be a growing number of these type of workers, and a growing number of employers looking to abuse and underpay them. Getting them organized can help them end the horrible employer conditions under which they have to work, and it creates a whole new field that unions can organize.

But that growth in workers is also part of why this is such a two-sided proposition. The AFL-CIO opposed the immigration deal that collapsed this week in the Senate, with three main concerns:

It lacks an effective and reliable employment-verification system.

The penalties and sanctions for employers who violate the law are weak.

The new guest worker provisions will provide further incentive for employers to drive down wages and benefit standards for all who work in the U.S. construction industry.

Additionally, they objected to the guest worker provisions that let companies bring in high tech and high skilled workers at wages much below prevailing ones in the area, as they continue to layoff fairly paid American workers. But the first three issues are the ones that apply to this situation.

Basically, the AFL-CIO is taking a stand against the hiring of undocumented immigrants at bottom barrel poverty-level wages, and want greater penalties on employers that do so. However, they are very sure to point out that they are pro-path to citizenship, because it is the right and humane thing to do. So what you have is not opposition to a bigger workforce, but opposition to an unfair work environment, which is where I think a lot of Americans are.

But this unionization of the work center is interesting because until some immigration deal is brought up again and actually agreed on (don't hold your breath on that being any time soon), the AFL-CIO will be accepting and representing the undocumented workers they believe are driving down wages and taking jobs by working for so little. This would be a paradox if not for the fact that the AFL-CIO is apparently taking the stance that it is employers' fault for paying such substandard wages, and they are sympathetic with the workers who are forced to work for them. And I think that is the best way to look at it; after all, despite whatever verbal vomit the right wing echo chamber may spew out, undocumented workers are just trying to do anything they can to better their and their families' economic conditions and lifestyles. And if working for substandard wages is all they can do with their lack of knowledge of the language and the poor to non-existent schools in their home countries, then that's what they'll do.

So here's what I take from this: the AFL-CIO sees that there is no hope of a mass worker registration that would help force employers to pay living wages, nor is there any hope for any real penalties for hiring undocumented workers. So, they are going to take the situation into their own hands and work to represent these workers, fighting to raise their wages while evening the playing field for native born workers, all the while growing the union ranks. Win Win Win.

The King is Dead: Fast Track Expires (without secret trade deal)

When Charlie Rangel and some of his fellow corporate-funded Democrats in the House struck a deal with the White House on free trade in South Korea, Columbia, Peru and Panama, they thought it would be okay to keep the terms of the deal secret and just assure the middle and working class constituents -- constituents that worked so hard to win them their majority -- that there were real labor and environmental protections in the deals.

Too bad those guarantees were a sham:

- Fails to alter the outrageous NAFTA "Chapter 11" foreign investor privileges that create incentives for U.S. firms to move offshore and expose our most basic environmental, health, zoning and other laws – policies strongly advocated for by Democrats – to attack in foreign tribunals.

- Does absolutely nothing to address bans on "Buy America" and anti-offshoring policies that safeguard American jobs and that Democrats have continually fought to expand and preserve.

- Does nothing to fix the Peru FTA terms that would allow Citibank or other U.S. investors providing "private retirement accounts" to sue Peru if the country reverses its failed social security privatization. This deal helps lock Peru into the same privatized social security system that Democrats have been fighting against in the United States.

- Rolls back the most extreme CAFTA-style drug patent rules to NAFTA-era language. However, the NAFTA language itself undermines rights available under World Trade Organization patent rules. Thus, while the amended text is better than CAFTA, it limits developing country trade partners’ rights relative to their status without the new limits that would be imposed by the FTAs, increasing the cost of medicine for our trading partners – costs that Democrats are trying hard to contain for our own healthcare system.

- Fails to change the food import standards as needed so that only food meeting U.S. standards would be allowed.

- Does nothing to address the NAFTA-style farm rules that resulted in 1.3 million Mexican peasant farmers losing their livelihoods. This is predicted to create dislocation and misery for large numbers of people, increase production of cocaine and cause instability in developing country trade partners.

- Does nothing to give unions or environmental groups rights to sue in international court for enforcement of trade laws - rights that corporations currently have.

Thankfully, we have people like David Sirota, who put together an amazing series of articles exposing the truth behind the trade agreements, and strong union leadership that stayed in the ears of the people who benefited so greatly from their massive 2006 election effort. That the new freshman class is made up of a lot of real, populist Democrats has been a major boon to the movement, as well.

All these things paid off on Friday, when Congress did not renew the President's Fast Track Trade Agreement Authority. Here's parts of a fitting obituary:

After a brief, damaging existence, Fast Track was pronounced dead on June 30, 2007.

The demise of Fast Track allowed the U.S. Founding Fathers to stop rolling in their graves over Fast Track's trampling of constitutional checks and balances. As well, victims of Fast Track-enabled trade agreements welcomed the news, given the anomalous procedure's record of damage despite having been locked up and out of commission for blocks of time since its inception.

Fast Track delegated away Congress exclusive constitutional authority over trade -- allowing the executive branch alone to choose trading partners, set the substantive terms of trade policy, and even sign trade agreements, all before Congress ever voted. The controversial delegation mechanism allowed Congress only a yes or no vote on trade agreements after they have been negotiated and signed and by its very design shut out public and congressional oversight.

...

Fast Track's lifelong philosophy was, 'Just trust the president.' Even after being kept in chains for much of its existence, Fast Track's legacy includes millions of peasant farmers who have been displaced by fast-tracked trade deals, workers whose wages have remained stagnant since Fast Track's hatching in 1974, millions of Americans made ill by fast-tracked trade deals that required food imports not meeting U.S. safety standards, the evisceration of the U.S. manufacturing base, and much more damage. Many Americans celebrated Fast Track's long overdue demise and joined a national day of prayer for a better procedure that in the future could replace Fast Track to ensure trade agreements would benefit the majority.

Excuse me as I wipe my tears away... on my handkerchief, proudly stitched in Bangladesh.

Just as important was the lack of action on long term re-authorization of the four trade deals. After short term eight-month extensions for the Andean deals passed through Congress easily, it was time to try to get the secret deals locked in, long-term. That's where they ran into trouble; the new populist caucus was not going to approve those deals without some serious investigating and opportunities to offer amendments. There was no way these agreements were going to be fast tracked.

But as Sirota points out, that doesn't mean some corporate Dems and the White House won't try to jam them through, anyways, just like Bush did with Fast Track in 2002. We've got to stand strong with labor to demand real FAIR trade, not corporate giveaways that destroy communities and pilfer jobs all over the country.

On the UAW and Delphi/GM deal

After two years of rangling, name calling and threats, UAW, Delphi and GM reached a tentative restructuring deal, subject to union member voting and bankruptcy court approval. Here are the details that have been released:

According to paperwork obtained by the AP that the union provided to its members to explain the agreement, the deal would provide three annual payments of $35,000 each to UAW workers who previously had worked at a higher wage at GM before the 1999 Delphi spin-off. It was unclear how many of the 4,000 so-called "legacy workers" would get the payments because skilled trade wages were preserved.

Under the agreement, the legacy workers who are not skilled tradesmen would see their hourly wages cut from around $27 to between $14.50 and $18.50. During the buydown period, those workers also could try to return to GM.

Other incentives include:

• A $140,000 buyout for workers with more than 10 years of service and a $70,000 buyout for those with the company for less than 10 years.
• A $35,000 payment to encourage workers with at least 30 years of service to retire.
• Retirement benefits for workers age 50 and above with at least 10 years of service.
• A program for workers with at least 26 years of service that allows them to stop working but be paid as active workers at the lower rates until they reach 30 years of service and retire.

It always sucks when unions have to take cuts in pay and jobs in negotiations, but the deck was stacked against the UAW negotiators from the start. Look at this scenario:

Refuse to settle and Delphi asks the court to void the contract. Void the contract and the UAW calls a strike. Strike Delphi and you damage the sugar daddy named GM. Without GM, who would honor the financial commitments to the remaining union members or those who've since retired in good faith?

Fact is, Delphi had come in asking for $9 an hour for production workers. UAW got $14.50-$18.50, plus compensation of $105,000 over three years for those who take the pay cuts and had been there prior to 1999. In addition, they helped keep open three extra plants Delphi had planned to close.

Anecdotal evidence early on indicated that UAW workers were mostly happy with the deal:

Even with the concessions, many workers said they were pleased with the way union leaders handled the deal.
"This shows the union still has power and that it still protects its workers," said 20-year Flint East worker Tammy Scofield.
"It would have been a lot worse if it was decided in bankruptcy court," she said.

There's worry that this deal will set a path for other automotive-labor deals, indicating wage cuts and layoffs are inevitable and must be accepted:

But industry observers said the Delphi deal signals that others in Detroit can reach agreements with the union that cut costs, enhance productivity and leave the industry on better footing to compete with Asia-based rivals such as Toyota Motor Corp. That is especially important because Detroit's traditional Big Three kick off labor talks with the UAW in late July.

First of all, this is a special situation: Delphi is in bankruptcy court, and GM has taken larger losses than anyone. Second, this deal is better than anything UAW was expected to get.

But more importantly, that specific paragraph from the Journal highlights a major problem I have with the way this process is being played out. The big three automakers may have less profitability because of worker pay and benefits, but they aren't less competitive than Asian carmakers because of employee commitments. That comes down to a simply inferior product.

After concentrating on huge, gas guzzling SUVs and trucks, fuel efficient Asian cars are in high demand thanks to oil prices and environmentally conscientious consumers. No cut to workers' pay or benefits will all of a sudden start making their inferior product sell better. So in five years, when they still haven't caught up with those carmakers, will unions be forced to bare the brunt of the crappy business decisions made by the suits in charge of the Big Three?

And now the Big Three are wailing over higher CAFE standards, saying it will cost them billions. Was this factored into the new contracts? Will workers have to bear the brunt of those costs, as well?

All in all, it's tough to negotiate with a dinosaur. Despite sacrifices and some members' misgivings, UAW did the best they could. And it's looking like members voted to approve it in elections ending tonight. Full results tomorrow

Employee Free Choice Act: Thoughts on yesterday

Tuesday, a majority of the Senate voted to invoke cloture and bring to the floor a simple majority vote on a bill that seeks to empower people through a simple majority. Ironic and cyclical, I know.

The Employee Free Choice Act went down 51-48. Every Democrat (including Lieberman, perish the thought) voted in favor of this crucial workers' rights bill. Every Republican, save the commendable Arlen Specter, voted against a bill that would do the following:

• Grant union representation to a group of workers that has signaled a majority want that representation, instead of subjecting them to mandatory anti-union indoctrination sessions and termination threats, which they often follow through on
  
• Stiffen the currently laughable fines and penalties on employers who violate NLRB regulations
• Actually force employers to negotiate with recognized unions on first contracts, or face an arbitration panel

So, basically, the Republicans said:

• We only believe in democracy when it benefits our corporate donors, not when it reflects the will of a people we don't care about
• Please, continue to break the laws if you are a corporate constituent. Of course, if you're a poor Mexican trying to better your and your family's lives, then the rule of law is sacred (since you don't give campaign donations)
• When all else fails, just break the law another way

Hyperbole aside, there are a few main points and narratives to take from this:

1. Great job by labor, the AFL-CIO in particular, in drumming up a massive wave of support and news coverage for this bill. They were at the forefront of grassroots and online activism that spawned: 50,000 phone calls to the Senate, 156,000 faxes and e-mail messages and 220,000 postcards, including 120,000 delivered to the Senate last week.

They helped put the EFCA on the national radar, and really draw a line in the sand, and to (holding my nose) quote the Decider himself: either you're with us or you're against us. Purported "moderate Republicans" like Susan Collins and Norm Coleman and Gordon Smith, all facing super tough re-election battles in 2008, just gifted some big issue ads for their opposition next fall.

2. Even though four Democrats didn't sponsor the bill, all of them voted for it. Surely they felt the pressure from the people who help fund their campaigns and get out the vote for them every sixth November. Regardless, it's good to see the aye vote. I'd commend them further, but I'm highly cynical because:

3. As I was angrily pondering while at work and as David Sirota more eloquently put into words, this bill was, for all intents and cloture purposes, dead on arrival. There was no way that the necessary ten Republicans were going to cross the aisle and vote for cloture on this bill. The only way this thing was going to pass was adding it to a spending bill, or a bill that no Republican could oppose without inviting political peril.

Did they want it to fail? Maybe. Why? Perhaps so every corporate Democrat could "vote for" this bill, seemingly add to their populist credentials, with no consequences. It's the best of both worlds. Lobbyist and PACs won't be pissed, because it was largely a procedural vote, and they can ring a hollow populist call on the next campaign trail. Or maybe to help contribute to a larger Democratic populist narrative for 2008.

Now the bill is dead, it seems, until at least the next legislative session, or even 2009. I hope this wasn't a case of cynical politics, because even if it means a few more votes for Democrats, the core mission of the party, the reason why true blue Dems run and people donate and work tirelessly for in the first place... every day, that will be compromised. People will lose their jobs for speaking up, others will live in fear. And sixty million people will be without the union representation that they so crave.

Public Citizen: Secret Trade Deal

The big story out of the Senate today was the failure of cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act... something I'll be writing about in depth as soon as I get the opportunity. Until then, some more depressing news...

Public Citizen came out with a long, depressing press release today about the free trade expansion deal that the White House and some "Democrats" agreed on... the text of which is still not being made available to the public... kudos to David Sirota for pointing out this release:

For Immediate Release: June 25, 2007
Contact: Holly Shulman (202) 454-5108, (202) 674-8757

Opposition Grows As Legal Text of Divisive Trade Deal Is Finally Made Public

Deal Between White House and Some Democratic Leaders Would Facilitate Passage of More Bush NAFTA-Style Trade Pacts by Majority of GOP and Minority of Democratic Majority

WASHINGTON, DC – The legal text of changes to several Bush-negotiated NAFTA expansion agreements released today confirms that the essential changes listed by labor unions, environmental, consumer, faith and family farm groups as necessary to avoid their opposition to the free trade agreements were not made, said Public Citizen today.

“Today’s text release confirms that Congress is about to face a vote on yet another Bush NAFTA expansion agreement, because now we can see that unfortunately none of the core NAFTA-CAFTA provisions linked to offshoring and downward pressure on wages so strongly opposed by most congressional Democrats and the American public have been removed even as improved labor and environmental standards have been added on,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division. “It’s like adding a new roof on a condemned building.”

A framework of changes to various Bush trade agreements announced in late March by some Democratic leaders had failed to address the majority of essential changes to the NAFTA-CAFTA model that Democratic base groups had listed this winter as necessary to avoid their opposition to the Bush-negotiated agreements. Some unions, environmental and other groups had awaited the legal text translating the Democrats’ “ask” and a tentative agreement to it by the administration announced May 10, hoping that the legal text would include more essential changes than had been listed in the limited summaries of the negotiations available.

Not one labor union or environmental, consumer, public health, anti-poverty, small business, faith or family farm group supports the deal. The announcement of the deal underlying today’s text came only 100 days after Democrats reclaimed the majority thanks to election of 37 House and Senate candidates who ran against the Bush trade agenda and replaced NAFTA-supporting incumbents.

“The Democratic majority arrived with a fair trade mandate from a public strongly opposed to staying the course on the failed Bush trade agenda,” said Wallach. “It is incomprehensible why any Democrats would ever prioritize reviving Bush trade deals opposed by their entire base and the majority of congressional Democrats over launching their own proactive trade agenda. They should aim instead at addressing the flood of unsafe imported foods and products, the many incentives to off-shore U.S. jobs, the endless ‘trade’ pact attacks on our environmental and safety laws and the nearly $800 billion trade deficit that is slowing U.S. economic growth and threatening global economic stability.”

The legal text fails to address most of the issues raised early this year by unions and other civil society groups as essential fixes. The text:

- Fails to alter the outrageous NAFTA “Chapter 11″ foreign investor privileges that create incentives for U.S. firms to move offshore and expose our most basic environmental, health, zoning and other laws – policies strongly advocated for by Democrats – to attack in foreign tribunals.

- Does absolutely nothing to address bans on “Buy America” and anti-offshoring policies that safeguard American jobs and that Democrats have continually fought to expand and preserve.

- Does nothing to fix the Peru FTA terms that would allow Citibank or other U.S. investors providing “private retirement accounts” to sue Peru if the country reverses its failed social security privatization. This deal helps lock Peru into the same privatized social security system that Democrats have been fighting against in the United States.

- Rolls back the most extreme CAFTA-style drug patent rules to NAFTA-era language. However, the NAFTA language itself undermines rights available under World Trade Organization patent rules. Thus, while the amended text is better than CAFTA, it limits developing country trade partners’ rights relative to their status without the new limits that would be imposed by the FTAs, increasing the cost of medicine for our trading partners – costs that Democrats are trying hard to contain for our own healthcare system.

- Fails to change the food import standards as needed so that only food meeting U.S. standards would be allowed.

- Does nothing to address the NAFTA-style farm rules that resulted in 1.3 million Mexican peasant farmers losing their livelihoods. This is predicted to create dislocation and misery for large numbers of people, increase production of cocaine and cause instability in developing country trade partners.

###

And as David points out, it doesn't even allow for unions to sue countries for suspected labor abuses... though corporations can feel free to force prosecution for any perceived affront, large or small, to their slave-wages work force empire. Here's an unbelievable run down of the deal's timeline David wrote for TomPaine.com back in May.

Indymedia in Chicago ran down what the deal means for the three major participating countries (Peru, Colombia, South Korea).

A look at the Peru agreement confirms these priorities. According to Oxfam America, the FTA would delay the introduction of generic medicines--benefiting U.S. pharmaceutical companies--and raise drug prices by as much as 55 to 100 percent after five years.

The deal would expose Peru’s agricultural sector--which nearly one-third of the population depends on--to subsidized imports. This could spur a rural crisis, driving more farmers into coca production, and fueling migration to the cities and abroad for work.

Foreign firms in Peru would be able to challenge local environmental regulations. Reportedly, regulations on mining, timber and petroleum investment would also be rolled back, raising profits, lowering wages and undermining working conditions.

That'll help stem the number of undocumented immigrants that come into the country, as well as help end the trans-American cocaine trafficking industry. Right. It's as if the people in Washington complain about one problem, then go do things that would just serve to exacerbate it, then try to solve that problem by fucking up the first problem even further.

South Korea has an unusually large agricultural workforce for an industrialized economy. Even with rice taken out of the agreement, hundreds of thousands of farmers could face ruin if forced to compete with U.S. exports, which benefit from a complex system of subsidies and supports.

Further, the Korean services, banking and financial sectors are, unlike Korean manufacturing, relatively weak, meaning that thousands of workers in those industries could lose their jobs as a result of the FTA.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) argues that the FTA will “benefit a handful of conglomerates only, while pushing workers and the grassroots into the abyss of poverty and agony.” While the deal may be less one-sided than the agreements set up in Latin America, it’s still designed to benefit U.S. and Korean companies--at the expense of U.S. and Korean workers, and Korean farmers.

Hmm. I wonder which American farmers will benefit from this... strange feeling that it isn't small farmers, but the already subsidized corporate behemoths. But that's just a guess.

The Colombian FTA may be the hardest sell of all. Two thousand Colombian trade unionists have been murdered since 1991, and more than 400 have been killed since President Álvaro Uribe took office. As the watchdog group Public Citizen puts it, Colombia is a “country where the murder of union members is their comparative advantage.”

Seemingly oblivious to the murder of Colombian workers, Bush scolded Congress: “It is very important for this nation to stand with democracies that protect human rights and dignity.” But the U.S. is complicit in Colombia’s wholesale killings of unionists. The country is a pillar of U.S. imperialism in South America, receiving billions of dollars in military aid since 2000.

And I don't have to begin to talk about this transparent fuck you to workers all around the world.

The thing is, these deals don't even screw over one population in order to help another. American, Colombian, Korean and Peruvian workers all get screwed over just the same.

D-Day Tomorrow

Employee Free Choice was scheduled for a vote today, but got pushed back to Tuesday. So this is it. The full Senate will vote on the Employee Free Choice Act, an act that, by restoring simple fairness to the system, would help the 60 million workers that want to join a union do just that. It's a bill that would let a workplace gain union representation by having 51% sign a card saying they wanted it, instead of today's corrupt system of delayed votes and employee intimidation and termination by anti-union employers. It's a bill that would force employers to actually negotiate with unions once they are representing a certain group of workers. It's a bill that will finally help rebuild the middle class after years and years of assault by money interests.

Moving on...

SEIU Creates Union for Health Care Workers, Including Nurses, Service Workers at Hospitals, Nursing Homes

The Service Employees International Union, which has about 1.8 million members, on Friday in Baltimore plans to launch a new health care union that will serve about one million members who work in the industry, such as nurses and service workers at hospitals and nursing homes, the Baltimore Sun reports. SEIU Healthcare, which will have an annual budget of about $100 million, will combine financial and personnel resources, as well as political priorities and proposals, from the 38 local SEIU health care unions to improve health care practices and promote universal health insurance. However, the local SEIU health care unions will retain their leaders and authority in local and collective bargaining politics.

Up in New York, SEIU 1199, the healthcare workers union, is a major player in state politics, making donations to both sides of the aisle - Republicans have seemingly forever dominated the state Senate, though that seems poised to change in '08, Democrats having taken over the governorship and the legislature. But the point is that with healthcare being such a big issue in the states, which are overwhelmed with underfunded Medicaid and SCHIP, strong healthcare labor unions can have a big influence.

To go back to the NY example, Governor Spitzer tried to cut $12 billion from healthcare in his first budget this past spring. The money was to go to education, but the healthcare cuts were untenable; he was paring from hospitals, nursing homes and Medicaid, not pharma payments and insurance subsidies. So SEIU 1199 teamed up with the Working Families Party (a fairly influential third-party in NY) and the Greater NY Hospital Association to fight against the cuts. Launching a massive grassroots and media campaign, they were able to beat back $8 billion of the $12 billion in cuts. And that was against a Democrat who had just won with 70% of the vote. Imagine a national network, using locals to fuel a national campaign.

--

Freelancers turn to unions for help on health insurance

While lawmakers play political football with the nation's health insurance dilemma, some unusual alliances have been formed to run interference for a growing but largely overlooked group: freelancers like Giarratano. Freelance, self-employed, consultant, temp and other independent workers account for about a third of the U.S. work force.

This month a New York nonprofit group founded by a recipient of the MacArthur foundation "genius" award began offering health insurance to independent workers and their families in 30 states, including Georgia.

The Freelancers Union already provides insurance to some 15,000 New Yorkers, some of whom became freelancers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"People should be able to do the kind of work they want to do. They shouldn't be making that decision based on getting health insurance," said Sara Horowitz, a New York labor attorney and third-generation union organizer who founded the freelancers' group.

To me, the Freelancer's Union is brilliant in two ways: first, and most importantly, it has the potential to give a voice to millions of people who are not in a trade but have the same economic and social concerns as the working families that fall under traditional union jurisdiction; and, it introduces the vast power and benefits of unions to people who are uneducated and generally wary of the movement. For example:

Dee Giarratano has never had much use for unions.

"I've pretty much been against unions most of my working life," the 48-year-old Atlanta resident said.

"I'm a huge believer in free-market competition. It's been my experience that unions have priced themselves out of the market."

These days, however, the self-employed computer programming consultant has "a different take on unions."

As an independent worker, he's had a tough time finding affordable health insurance. He currently pays about $475 a month in a risk pool run by Blue Cross Blue Shield. That's roughly half of what he pays to rent his condo.

Lately, Giarratano has run across several cases where unions or some semblance of them have teamed with big health insurers to provide health coverage. The concept is intriguing to Giarratano.

"It's an incredibly wise marketing tactic on unions' part," said Giarratano, managing partner of eJobCost LLC, which provides Web-based services and sells software to construction firms.

"Free-market systems aren't gonna cut it. There's going to be more and more people like me turning to collective bargaining entities for some relief from high health insurance," he said.

"I wonder if the health care crisis is going to be the rebirth of unions?"

Unions have been prescient in fighting for this for a long time. Now that it's a crisis, they are organized, equipped and ready to take the lead, injecting themselves into national prominence once again.

--

AT&T to Return 650 More Outsourced Jobs

AT&T announced this week that it will be bringing back from overseas nearly 650 Tier I DSL technical support jobs and locating them in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, later this year. The jobs are coming back to the United States as part of the agreement CWA reached with AT&T last fall to return the tech support work that had been contracted overseas.

Nice. Tech jobs have been decimated by outsourcing, and the new visa plan that would allow employers to import high skilled workers, pay them anything they want and force the workers to leave after five years, is an attempt to outsource within our own borders. On the front page of Dkos today:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/6/25/73229/6647

But the temporary worker program has nothing to do with building American families and American dreams. Under the program, 400,000-600,000 guest workers would enter the country every year on two-year visas. Although the visas can be renewed twice, recipients would be denied any path to permanent residency or citizenship. In fact, the guest workers would be precluded from even applying for permanent residency while here on temporary visas.

-snip-

And those employers won't have to pay their new indentured servants any more than the minimum wage. See, unlike the existing H-2B visa -- the visa that governs most "unskilled" temporary workers in the US today -- the proposed temporary worker program contains no requirements that employers pay their temporary help the federally determined "prevailing wage" for their occupation and the geographic area. Today, if a contractor can't find an qualified electrician to work on a project in Chicago, the contractor can apply for an H-2B visa. But the contractor is required to pay any foreign electrician entering the US on the H-2B no less than $53.57 per hour, including benefits. That's the prevailing wage for an electrician in Chicago, according to the Department of Labor. And by requiring H-2B sponsors to pay their foreign help the prevailing wage, the H-2B program limits the ability of employers to use guest workers as a tool to undermine wage markets. The proposed temporary worker plan changes all that.

Under the proposed plan, there is no wage floor. If the Chicago contractor can't find an electrician in the US to work on his project for $20 per hour, he can import a temporary worker who will. The result will be a swift collapse of wage markets in many industries populated by skilled non-professional workers, like construction. And all of a sudden, we'll be hearing that the work of an electrician is one of those "jobs Americans won't do," like fruit picking. The truth, of course, is that there is no job that an American won't do for the right price. But by creating a steady flow of temporary workers with no ability to stay in the country for more than a couple years, and no practical ability to fight for better wages, the number of jobs that "Americans won't do" will grow dramatically. And they include a host of the jobs that sustain and nourish the middle class. The construction trades. Cosmetology. Culinary arts. These are jobs that take years to master, and consequently pay quite well, because not just anybody can do them. But by busting open the labor markets for these jobs, and opening them with no restrictions to folks from countries with much lower costs of living, we will strangle the middle class lives of the millions of Americans who have proudly earned their paychecks with their skills.

The right uses latent xenophobia to justify their opposition to the immigration bill. I, like many on the left, am all for a path to citizenship, and I don't care if you call it amnesty. Amnesty International is a good group, after all; why smear the word? In my experience, immigrants are among the hardest working, law abiding people living in this country. Anyone who wants to work hard and better themselves should be able to.

Of course, there's the sticky issue of how immigrants impact the labor market for native born workers. Studies show that they help create a lot of economic wealth and give rise to industries that might not exist if not for their labor. It's true that the poor and working class pour so much of their paychecks back into the economy. But it's also true that under the table workers drive down wages for everyone else.

So the solution? Letting immigrants work, too, but not for the wages they currently get paid. Make all employers prove their workers are legal and they aren't running under the table poverty payrolls. Stop the exploitation of immigrant workers, while evening the playing field for native born workers.

There's been some disagreement about the current immigration bill within the labor movement... which I will talk more about tomorrow

Divided We Fail

As a general rule, I'm weary of grand coalitions of diverse organizations, because often times it is unclear who will exert the most influence on the policy and politics of the broad group. Given big business's dominance over our political system, the following is definitely piquing my interest, both in good and bad ways:

Three powerful organizations plan to launch a joint campaign Monday to shape the debate in early primary states, including New Hampshire.

AARP, the Business Roundtable and the Service Employees International Union plan to spend more than $60 million in their 10-state effort, branded Divided We Fail. Leaders plan to meet with presidential campaigns to share polling results from its members. They also plan to dispatch volunteers and members to campaign events to ask questions.

"What we learned in 2004 with Americans for Health Care is that by merely showing up to these events we were able to make all presidential candidates talk about health care as a major issue," said SEIU President Andy Stern. "We aim to do the same thing working with these other groups. The most remarkable thing about Divided We Fail is the fact that these three very different groups are together and that shows how serious these issues have become."

On the one hand, I look to the Medicare Part D debate; both labor and the AARP, along with insurance and pharma companies, were lobbying hard for that to become a reality. And while it's great that seniors now have prescription plans, no one benefits from those more than the insurance and pharma companies... and AARP, who opened their own for-profit prescription plan. Now labor and the Dems are left scrambling to re-write some of the laws, including government negotiating with pharma companies for lower prices, as well as looking to cut subsidies to the Medicare Plus plans, which are overpriced and underperform.

Then again, big business knows better than anyone else what a drain providing employee and retiree healthcare is. Look at the big automakers. So there is a common interest in providing relief there, financed heavily by the government (single-payer would be best). So long as the pirate insurance CEO's don't get their claws too deep into the innerworkings of this coalition, perhaps this can illustrate just how big the problem is, and that people from all over the political spectrum want real solutions. So, stick to a certain few issues, and this could prove very effective.

Local News Roundup

SEIU a growing force in state's politics (Washington State)

In Washington state, the SEIU has raised the profile of long-term health care and is an increasingly powerful player in state politics.

But how is it that janitors, nurses and nursing home workers have built an empire in Washington [state] politics similar to what autoworkers had on the national scene decades ago?

There's so much talk about the demise of labor, and the national numbers don't lie: from 38% of workers represented in the 1950's, down to 12% today. But as new industries emerge, there has been a real effort to organize traditionally low wage jobs, like hotel and other service workers. It's imperative to get these workers organized for a number of reasons. First, obviously, is the social justice issue; paying below the poverty line to workers that clean schools, offices, hotels, restaurants, and all the other institutions that drive our economy; or take care of our sick grandparents at hospitals or at home; that's a sick statement on what we value as a society.

But additionally, as these industries grow and add more and more jobs, it's important to make sure that they start out as unionized jobs; trying to organize afterwards, after years of employers beating down workers.

And it's already starting to make a difference:

Chopp said the benefits the SEIU is fighting for have a clear overlap with basic priorities of the Democratic Party. Though they are among the lowest-paid workers in the service industry, "they are providing some of the most important work," he said.

Janet Rodriguez, a 50-year-old home care worker, agreed.

For more than 10 hours a day, Rodriguez feeds, bathes and cares for a developmentally delayed girl.

"The union helps me hold politicians accountable," she said. "The Legislature actually sets my pay. We had to come together as a force to contend with."

She said the union's lobbying resulted in a 20 percent increase in benefits, including her $9.73-an-hour wage and holiday pay.

Rodriguez said that before the union stepped in she worked for low wages and she felt like there wasn't much she could do about it.

"I believe we should be aggressive because if we stay quiet, we get nothing."

Back to the political influence, that's a self-perpetuating thing. Spend more money, get Democrats elected, and you rack up favors and ideologically similar lawmakers. Of course, after the 1990's, it's important to make sure the Dems you help are pro-labor:

In Washington, the SEIU's home health care workers local, 775, has developed a reputation for aggressive tactics, which includes gunning for powerful lawmakers who don't support their causes.

Notably, House Appropriations Chairwoman Helen Sommers, D-Seattle, narrowly held off an SEIU candidate in the 2004 primary. Though Sommers won and was re-elected, the message was clear -- nobody, no matter how established, is safe.

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Auto-Parts Maker Delphi, Union Reach Tentative Deal

The United Auto Workers and Delphi, the country's largest auto-parts supplier, reached a tentative agreement yesterday on a labor deal that could pull the troubled company out of bankruptcy protection and head off problems at General Motors.

...

Delphi executives have demanded that the company's union workers agree to a $12-an-hour starting wage, far less than the $27 an hour many senior workers had earned since the days when Delphi was the parts arm of GM. GM spun off Delphi in 1999 and is making payments to Delphi under the separation agreement. A labor deal is important to GM because a strike at Delphi could cripple the automaker, Delphi's biggest customer.

Delphi angered organized labor last year by threatening to have a bankruptcy court judge void the union's contract.

Local union leaders were meeting in Detroit late yesterday to hear details of the agreement, which could be put to a vote by UAW members next week. A Delphi spokeswoman said details would not be released until after ratification. The deal is also subject to the approval of bankruptcy court.

Gary N. Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., said the deal could include "buy-down" provisions, or one-time payments to some senior Delphi workers to accept substantial wage cuts. "It's going to be a sweetener to accept the concession or a buyout to leave the company," Chaison said.

UAW has been coming under criticism for being too soft as they try to help preserve the slowly dying US automotive industry, so I would imagine this deal will be pretty good; it's their chance to show dissident members they've got some backbone.

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Contracts for University of Minnesota support staff workers, members of AFSCME, are set to expire, and negotiations are ongoing:

Phyllis Walker, president of AFSCME local 3800, which represents the University's clerical workers, said the union is focused on improving living wages for support staff.

"Our three top priorities are wages, wages and wages," Walker said.

AFSCME represents more than 3,500 technical, clerical and health-care workers on both the Twin Cities and Duluth campuses - every support staff job, from secretaries to laboratory technicians.

"Many, many clerical, technical and health-care employees cannot support their families on what they make at the 'U,' " Walker said. "They have to work second and third jobs to make ends meet."

Walker said she felt it was unfair support staff salaries have fallen 5 percent below the inflation rate in recent years, while administrative salaries, like that of Bruininks, have skyrocketed.

I highlight this story because university workers are near and dear to my heart. In a place that should be a natural source of allies for social justice crusaders, it's amazing how ignorant some students are about it. And some are just assholes:

Toby Madden, University doctoral student and parent to a first-year student, said he felt the budget money could be better spent elsewhere.

"The core mission of the University is teaching, research and public outreach," Madden said. "What does sweeping floors, cleaning windows or fixing boilers have to do with our core mission?"

Okay, okay, so he's a guy in his 40's going back for a doctoral degree, but you'd be surprised how many 20-year olds think this way. Here's a great response:

AFSCME member Greg Knoblauch spoke at the meeting in favor of support staff and their function at the University.

"AFSCME workers perform many vital University functions, working in nearly every University building and laboratory on every campus all over greater Minnesota," Knoblauch said. "The quality and quantity of our work has brought and continues to bring added value to the University. To be fair, the University should be giving some of that value back to the workers who created it."

You think people would go to a University where they couldn't register for class or make appointments with professors, or couldn't use the library because no one was organizing it? Please.

"Early next week"

I'm hearing the Senate will vote to invoke cloture on card check on Monday or Tuesday; the AFL-CIO's site says it should come up "early next week". So it looks like we should know whether this thing will pass by Wednesday morning, latest.

Debate continued in the Senate today, with Sens. Lautenberg (D-NJ, my home state), Webb (D-VA) and Clinton (D-NY), all co-sponsors of the bill (along with 43 other Dems) talking up the measure. I wonder if in this era of party over principle the speeches were meant to get the senators' populist talk on record for a future campaign, especially for Hillary, competing for labor endorsements and votes with John Edwards. I ask this because the money interests in the Republican party have their claws in so deep that I can't imagine any amount of depressing statistics, rhetorical appeals to the greater good or anecdotal evidence featuring a single mother working two jobs and still unable to feed her kids would really change the way their puppets in the upper chamber will vote on this thing.

Meanwhile, that bastion of fair journalism, the Chicago Sun-Times, comes out with this ridiculous statement :

And how do the unions, and union-backed supporters of the egregious Employee Free Choice Act, which is due to be voted on in the Senate today following its passage in the House, propose to protect workers from intimidation and harassment? By overturning employees' right to secret ballots in deciding whether to unionize and replacing that long-ingrained feature of American democracy with a "card check" method by which union organizers collect signatures on cards in public and every employee's choice would be known. Which would . . . mitigate efforts by managers and union organizers to influence the outcome? A public declaration is less open to intimidation than a secret vote? (emphasis mine)

Horseshit. Under the current secret ballot system, employers can force elections off for weeks, leaving ample time to illegally fire organizing workers, make threats on job security, intimidate and indoctrinate workers with mandatory anti-union information sessions.

Chew on this: 92 percent of employers force employees to undergo these closed-door meetings, 72 percent hire private union-busting PR firms, half of employers threaten to shut down operations or fire workers, and a quarter of them actually follow through with their termination of employment threats. To even begin to suggest that these are free and fair elections just goes to show how warped the conservative view of democracy is. Lying, twisting and intimidation to get your way: the modern day conservative's ideal democracy. And given that 60 million people would join a union if they could, I don't think intimidation or coercion by organizers will be much of a problem.

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The NY Times has this little ditty from the world of free, worker exploiting trade:

Despite pressure from U.S. lawmakers and President George W. Bush, Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet said Friday that his country does not need to improve its human rights record.

''It's not a question of improving or not,'' Triet said in an interview with The Associated Press, hours after meeting with Bush. ''Vietnam has its own legal framework, and those who violate the law will be handled.''

Triet, the first president from the communist-led nation to visit the White House since the Vietnam War, acknowledged differences in the countries' positions on the matter and called for more dialogue. He said his talks with Bush were ''frank and open'' and that disagreement over human rights would not stop a thriving trade relationship from getting stronger.

...

''I explained my strong belief that societies are enriched when people are allowed to express themselves freely or worship freely,'' Bush said in the Oval Office after meeting with Triet.

Of course, that belief isn't strong enough to call for any kind of sanctions on a country that we have a $7 billion trade deficit with, nor does stop Bush from calling for more free trade with countries known to exploit their workers. Or President Clinton, for that matter, who is accepting an award soon from the corrupt President Uribe. Stay strong, Congressional Dems.

No EFCA vote

So no card check vote in the Senate today... the energy bill was causing too much trouble to get EFCA on the schedule. Here's the AFL-CIO blog:

In Tampa, Fla., union members delivered more than 500 letters to the office of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) thanking him for co-sponsoring the Employee Free Choice Act. The same members took 500 letters of concern to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), asking him to reconsider his opposition to the legislation.

The Tampa workers ended their day of action by conducting an informational picket outside a Verizon office to highlight the struggle by workers there to form a union. After Verizon bought MCI in 2005, it created a separate business unit, Verizon Business, to wall off the former MCI workers from unionized employees who perform the same job functions, according to union leaders. Union workers have campaigned to “Tear Down the Wall” and help their Verizon Business co-workers win bargaining rights.

It's important to make sure Senators supporting labor know they're appreciated, because it is a lot more lucrative, campaign contribution wise, to side with employers no questions asked.

As for Verizon, their wireless and business units is one of the best examples of just how much impact the EFCA would have. Verizon Wireless workers have been trying for years to get union representation, but have been so far been effectively fought tooth and nail on it. This CNN article about a mass walkout at the unit is from 2000, to give you an idea of how much of a struggle it's been.

Hey, want the fewest drop calls of any network? Join me at the new AT&T (formerly known as Cingular). They at least allow employee representation.

One of the dumber moves of the day goes to Senator Norm Coleman (MN), "George Bush's biggest butt boy", according to Al Franken. In grave danger of losing his seat in '08 and looking to paint himself as moderate, he goes and tells a bunch of union members via video at a rally that the EFCA would take away the right to the secret ballot. First of all, that's bogus. It gives workers a choice between card check (good) and secret ballot (bad). And for a guy looking to stay in office in a heavily organized state, a state whose opposition's party is called the Democrat Farmer Laborer Party... just stupid.

And Why I'm Here, Specifically

So today (or tomorrow, depending on the timestamp and what timezone this is read from), the Senate will consider S. 1041, the Employee Free Choice Act. Without hyperbole, this is the most important piece of labor legislation to be considered by the full Senate in the past sixty years.

The most important part of the legislation would allow workers to decide how they want to decide whether or not they get union representation, choosing between the current flawed, ripe for intimidation and illegal manipulation "secret ballot" vote, or what the bill would put in place: the ability for a group of workers to gain representation by getting over 50% of the workforce to sign a union card. In labor circles, this is known as card check, and it is absolutely crucial to maintaining and growing worker rights, given that nearly 60 million people indicate they would join unions if the option was made available to them.

Whether or not this will survive a Republican filibuster (my money is on not), this is a huge, huge deal. Having worked its ass off in 2006 to help Democrats take back Congress, labor is getting the vote it deserves. I figured this would be huge news to the progressive and populist community. So, being a big blog reader already, I went out in search of labor blogs, to read more about this. AFL-CIO's Now Blog (which is excellent, by the way), along with the once-daily updated Working Life were the only real labor blogs I could find.

With 10 million members, sixty million prospective members and an entire Democratic party that counts on unions to fund, organize and win elections, that is absolutely... I'd say ridiculous, but it's just more strange and bizarre. There needs to be a blog, outside of the AFL-CIO's, that follows and advocates for worker issues, along with following the politics that so affect them. There needs to be an online community that works in this way, similar to the greater netroots us progressives are so proud of. I'm going to try to fill that void. I'll be working hard, and learning a lot along the way. It's an exciting time for labor, and I hope to create a place on the internets to discuss, analyze and promote it all.