Holding onto the kingmaking card

Labor unions are always an important constituency and power broker in the Democratic Presidential primary, but with the rising tide of populism nationally and especially within the party, organized labor will have even more muscle to flex than usual.

To this end, they're being patient, waiting as each of the major candidates makes their respective pitches to leaders and their ever growing public pro-worker pronouncements. Most publicized (though perhaps not as important as all the union hall stump speeches that will occur over the next months) will be the AFL-CIO sponsored debate, hosted by Keith Olbermann and featuring questions from (gasp) actual union members and not mainstream media infotainment blowhards.

As per today's NY Times, AFL-CIO and Change to Win national leadership aren't rushing to make any endorsements:

The A.F.L.-C.I.O. is unlikely to endorse Mr. Edwards or anyone else before the primaries, several labor leaders said last week, because unions are so divided over the candidates.

Several unions that like Mr. Edwards are wary of endorsing him because he lags well behind Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama in the polls.

“There’s a pretty strong sentiment across the labor movement for Edwards,” Steve Rosenthal, a former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said. “But I think some unions are a little leery of endorsing him without more evidence that he can win.”

Another reason many unions are hesitating to endorse a candidate is their overall happiness with the eight hopefuls. Several back universal health coverage, a major union goal. All have endorsed labor’s main legislative priority, a bill that would make it easier to unionize workers.

“This is a pro-worker field of dreams,” said Bruce Raynor, president of Unite Here, which represents hotel, restaurant and apparel workers. “The field is much better from a worker’s standpoint than it was four years ago.”

Putting aside the actual candidates for a moment (though I'll get back to them), there are a few pros and cons to this approach. On the pro side, it pushes campaign rhetoric more and more pro-worker and populist, and extracts some campaign promises you may not have heard otherwise. This was the case when the AFL-CIO made Al Gore sweat in the lead up to the 2000 primaries. It also prevents the union for casting their lot with someone who doesn't get the nomination, potentially putting them in a tail between legs situation for a brief moment before the person who does win the nomination realizes how badly they need unions' organizing and get out the vote efforts, regardless of any animosity created by supporting someone else in the primaries.

The latter situation arose with a number of unions backing Howard Dean early, and feeling a bit foolish when he flamed out after Iowa. The AFL-CIO as a whole didn't endorse anyone until way late in the game, when it was pretty likely Kerry would beat out the only challenger left, John Edwards.

My question is, what's an endorsement good for if it comes after the dust has largely cleared? I'd imagine backing a winner from the start would pay off much more than backing one when they've virtually won the primary, and the risk-reward on backing the wrong guy is slanted significantly towards the reward.

We talk about the candidates vying for support from this big game-changing machine, but for all the might and muscle the unions could provide, especially in early voting states (in addition to Nevada, 1/3 of Iowa Dem. caucus goers are union members, as are 1/4 of NH primary voters), why would candidates bother to work for endorsement if there is none coming? Soon enough, they'll be playing their hand for too long.

And it's not just pure political gamesmanship. If the unions believe their organizations are so powerful and game changing (and I agree that they are, I have seen it first hand), why not emphatically endorse and go all out for the candidate you like best and feel will support your cause the most? Why end up settling for whomever everyone else picks, when most of the time that candidate will be less populist than they'd like because labor, the real working persons' voice in the party, is sitting out?

There is no clearer picture of this than what is happening in this race.

Mr. Edwards has been by far the most aggressive in wooing labor. He spent a day in April working alongside a nursing home worker at the behest of the Service Employees International Union, and he has marched alongside striking Goodyear workers.

“If our board voted today, it would be leaning toward Edwards,” Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, said. “He showed up at a Goodyear picket line. He just called and said, ‘I’ll be there.’ That kind of stuff really rings home with our members.”

Unite Here, the Teamsters and the steelworkers were leaning toward Mr. Edwards. A Unite Here endorsement would be a boon in Nevada, because its Las Vegas local has 40,000 members and could dominate that state’s Democratic caucuses.

Edwards has been on this since January 1st, 2005, and not just rhetorically. He fought alongside minimum wage campaigns, walked picket lines, full throatedly backs labor in all his speeches and has the most detailed, populist plans to help rejuvenate the working economy. And, as the quotes show, that's not just coming from me.

I don't think there is any more vocal proponent of labor and workers than John Edwards. And regardless of my personal feelings about the candidates, which I am still sorting out, how labor could not throw their full weight behind him is beyond me. This isn't Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel. John Edwards is third nationally, creeping up on Obama; and winning Iowa as Clinton and Obama fade a bit. And with Nevada and New Hampshire so unionized, as well, this is a chance for labor to really flex its muscles and push their top choice to the nomination. Why just sit around and wait to see what shakes out and then serve as a huge volunteer network and ATM for whomever the nominee is, regardless of whether they like him/her or not?

Bush threatens to sign endorsement of discrimination

Of all the ballsy things the President likes to do and say, this may take the fuckin' cake (and reflects his "let them eat cake" attitude).

Last month, Rep. George Miller and 93 co-sponsors introduced the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It would restore anti-discrimination protection for workers after the Supreme Court spit in the eye of established law and blatantly lied to further a class warfare ideology when they handed down its decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.; they unashamedly misinterpreted and reversed the intent of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The Court ruled that Ledbetter, 19-year employee of Goodyear that was systematically discriminated against, was ineligible for compensation because she had not filed suit within 180 days of the actual decision to discriminate against her. This was a blatant distortion of the intent of Congress when it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and a disregard of thirty three years of its application. Why did they bother even pretending to interpret the law? It was clear to everyone how they were going to decide the case.

In his continued ideological assault on workers’ and civil rights, President Bush has threatened to veto the bipartisan Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act if passed into law. And while his hand picked Supreme Court has already exposed his ideological bias against worker protections like Title VII, the President’s statement of explanation of his threat brazenly misrepresents the bill while contradicting itself within the same paragraph.

President Bush said in his statement:

…H.R. 2831 purports to undo the Supreme Court’s decision of May 29, 2007, in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. by permitting pay discrimination claims to be brought within 180 days not of a discriminatory pay decision, which is the rule under current law, but rather within 180 days of receiving any paycheck affected by such a decision, no matter how far in the past the underlying act of discrimination allegedly occurred. As a result, this legislation effectively eliminates any time requirement for filing a claim involving compensation discrimination. Allegations from thirty years ago or more could be resurrected and filed in federal courts.

President Bush’s representation of the bill is patently false and misleading. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is intended to close an apparent loophole that, until this recent Supreme Court decision, had never been used, let alone recognized, in the 33 year history of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The new bill would simply and explicitly state that a discriminated employee may file a grievance within 180 days of the issuance of a paycheck that is impacted in part or in full by a previous decision to discriminate.

The bill also calls for the awarding of, at most, two years worth of back pay to those who have proven to be discriminated against for a long period of time. No where in the bill is there a provision for an unlimited statute of limitations on the period of time that can elapse between the discriminatory act and the filing of a grievance. The assertion that “allegations from thirty years ago or more could be resurrected and filed in federal courts” is flatly false, and he no doubt knows it. But that's no surprise, given his ability to stare truth or facts in the face and, all the while with a big smile on his face, do whatever the hell it is he wants, anyways.

A veto of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act would signal support for a broken labor market that is more and more unfriendly to working families, minorities and especially women. Wielding the veto pen on this law would be a written endorsement of a job market that pays women just 77 cents for equal work at equal positions as men.

It's really hard for me to grasp the sheer audacity of his consistent, full bore dismantling of our entire history's worth of social progress and hard earned rights. In eight short years he has not just stopped the path towards a more fair and just society in its path, he has used his faux cowboy boot to kick it backwards to the Hoover administration.

Clearly, his statement is filled with bold mouth lies, but still, I can't imagine how he can pretend to justify this. He should really just come out with the truth for once and say, "I don't give a shit about workers, women, minorities, children, the sick or the needy. Or brown people." I'd really honestly prefer that to the constant vertigo spin his administration puts on things.

Ford's double edged Q2 profits

Having lost $12.6 billion last year, conventional wisdom saw Ford as the most suffering and needing of concessions from workers in the contract talks that began this week. So while executives and shareholders may be celebrating, the timing of this news may just shift the entire context of negotiations:

Ford Motor Co. today reported a net profit of 31 cents per share, or $750 million, for the April-June period — a stunning improvement from the net loss of 17 cents per share or $317 million during the same second-quarter period a year ago.

The surprise second-quarter profit ends seven quarters of losses, with improvements in all of the company’s core automotive operations. Ford’s total results for the first half of the year now stand in the black, at $458 million.

Talk about bittersweet news for a company looking to close plants, cut jobs and wages and massively reduce retiree healthcare benefits. And even the press, stenographers of Big Three press releases of late, put two and two together:

The positive performance suggests Ford could be much further along in its Way Forward turnaround plan than many believed. That plan is slated to close 16 plants, eliminate 44,000 jobs and revamp the company’s lineup in the crucial North American unit, with a goal of profitability in 2009.

The report notes that Ford was able to "get consumers to pay more", which is probably not sustainable. But they added a cool two billion to their cash reserves, and they are looking to sell their Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo brands, each of which should net a pretty penny. And after the gold calf they build for Alan Mullaly, there should be plenty of left over dosh to invest in research and development -- it might take a lot of high powered scientists to realize that you need to offer hybrid vehicles in more than just SUV form, like Ford does with the Escape.

Look, this doesn't put the UAW in the clear; there is still a long way to go for a company that took out $20 billion in loans last year. But all that premature talk about the necessity of huge huge concessions may look a bit foolish.

Also of note:

DaimlerChrysler AG’s Mercedes Car Group saw its earnings improve by 72% in the past three months compared to the second quarter of 2006, the company announced this morning.

The luxury automaker earned nearly 1.2 billion euros ($1.65 billion) in the second quarter of this year and has posted earnings of 2 billion euros for the first half of this year.

Coincides nicely with the rise in CEO pay.

Local News Roundup

See the dams we can burst by electing just one pro-labor executive in a red state?

More than 10,000 child care providers in Kansas and Pennsylvania won collective bargaining rights this month when the states’ governors signed executive orders guaranteeing the workers a voice on the job.In Kansas, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) signed the executive order granting bargaining rights to some 7,000 state licensed and regulated home child care providers. The state then certified the workers’ choice to join Child Care Providers Together Kansas/AFSCME, capping off their six-month drive for a voice at work.

This continues the trend of executive orders to guarantee service workers representation, especially child care workers. As the AFL-CIO pointed out, it happened in PA for 4,000 under Gov. Rendell's orders; in NY for 60,000 child care workers in May under orders from Gov. Spitzer; in December for 40,000 in Michigan; and also in Oregon, NJ, Iowa, alifornia, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin. (Coincidentally, or probably not, al of those states but one, Minnesota, have Democratic governors).

Specifically, those working in child care jobs are absolutely crucial to the nation's future, and deserve the respect, fair pay and guarantees that should come with such a vital role in society. On a larger scale, as economy moves more and more in the direction of interpersonal "service" jobs, we've got to break down the walls early or face a forever-long struggle.

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Fremont school district employees looking for improved contract:

On behalf of 371 district employees, Service Employees International Union Local 1021 — which represents bus drivers, groundskeepers, cooks and other classified workers — is asking for unspecified raises, health benefit changes, an extra floating holiday and increased time off for various reasons.

Other requests include increasing the mileage reimbursement rate, cutting the length of time it takes to qualify for longevity pay and increasing the amount of that pay, and reducing from three to two the number of years a disciplinary action remains on an employee's record.

The union also is asking the district to pay the full premium on a health plan for an employee and his or her spouse if the worker retires early. The arrangement would continue until the employee reached age 65.

I know from personal experience that oftentimes devious education entities like to try to bilk workers by calling them academic employees, when the reality is that, as much as individuals may enjoy working in the educational environment, for financial and contract purposes, they are workers who happen to be in an academic setting. This comes up oftentimes in the fight for employers to contribute to an unemployment fund for summer vacation, when workers are mainly off (though they are required to come in often at random times) but not off long enough to find a job to make up for loss of income. This may not be the case here, but it's really just an example of things schools try to pull.

To be fair, oftentimes schools don't have a real steady flow of income to lavish on workers, so in many ways they are set apart from big business in the selfishness category, but I don't know that that is the case in Fremont.

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Always active Minnesota Labor Scene (it's even in the name of the party, Democratic Farmer and Laborers) applauds minimum wage increase, but correctly points out that much more is needed:

"It's a long overdue first step," said Eliot Seide, executive director of AFSCME Council 5. "But someone who earns $5.85 an hour brings home only $12,168. That person is still poor."

If the minimum wage was adjusted for inflation, it would be $9.27 an hour today, said Kris Jacobs, director of the JOBS NOW Coalition. And that wage would still not be enough for many people to make ends meet, according to the organization's annual "Job Gap" study.

Many of the working poor, she noted, live in greater Minnesota, where more than one out of four jobs pay less than $9.27 per hour.

....

Patricia Wingo, co-chair of ACORN in the Frogtown neighborhood, said her organization's members will benefit from the wage increase, but want to see more.

"There is no middle class anymore – only rich and poor," she declared. Families are struggling with higher health care costs and food and gas prices. They work longer hours and spend less time with their families, she said.

"We can eliminate poverty in a generation by lifting the minimum wage to a livable wage," said Seide. "We can eliminate the phrase 'working poor.' Everyone who puts in an honest day's work should receive a fair day's pay. Full-time workers should earn enough to feed, clothe and shelter their families. We are the richest nation on the face of the planet and we can do better."

Damn straight. Check this out (thanks to Center for American Progress):

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While UAW struck an agreement with Delphi, the IUE-CWA, with fewer members, isn't taking things lying down:

The IUE-CWA union said it has filed a contract termination notice with automotive-parts supplier Delphi Corp., the first step in allowing its employees there to strike if no deal with the company is reached.

The IUE-CWA represents about 2,000 Delphi employees. Delphi already has finalized a deal with the United Auto Workers union, which represents the vast majority -- about 17,000 -- of its hourly workers.

Steelworkers and some other smaller unions, adding up to 3,000 employees along with IUE-CWA, are probably not getting the same kind of offers that the larger UAW got, a theory supported here:

Past union bargainers have noted GM typically is reluctant to give the union and other unions the same terms it negotiated with the larger UAW, forcing the smaller unions to take steps to push the issue.

And all this comes amid a tempest over temporary workers, otherwise known as unfortunate and abused pawns in forcing unions to make big concessions:

Besides roughly 240 temporary workers getting about $10 an hour with no benefits, Delphi Packard has a handful of former workers who returned at the lower rate after taking buyouts, plus a number of skilled trades workers.

John Fisher, a temp from Warren, said Plant 14, where he makes spark plug wires for General Motors Corp. and other automakers, is virtually all temporary workers, as is Plant 10, both in the North River Road Complex.

‘‘Does the company realize the plant will be shut down?’’ he said. ‘‘We’re bargaining chips.’’

Ohio stepping it up, and other action

I'll readily admit that I am a true blue Democrat, but the big D is not the only thing I care about when I'm looking to support a candidate. As we saw throughout the 90's and early 2000's, populist, pro-worker messages can be misleading; look no further than the DLC-backed Clinton era.

Slick Willy could talk up a storm about "workers getting the shaft" (actual line from his '92 convention acceptance speech), and while he a few things for working families (and his record is magnified by the pure hatred of workers of this administration), the whole Robert Rubin-Hamilton Project nexus did a lot of things that ended up giving workers the same shaft they decried, in the name of fiscal responsibility and whatever other centrist buzzwords they used. And a whole generation of Democratic Senators did the same.

Of course, unions turned out big for these candidates, because they were promised big things, and anyways they were better than Republican alternatives. But for all the work labor did in fundraising and GOTV, from NAFTA to welfare reform, the return on investment wasn't very high. And soon enough, triangulation and corporate trade policies and giveaways to insurance companies led to voters tuning out the faux-populism of Democrats, not believing a word they said, and voting angry (and Republican). Words without deeds do not make for a lasting majority.

Enter 2006 and a new wave of populism sweeping the nation after six dismal years of a Bush administration whose Secretary of Labor sees workers as lazy and dirty -- literally. This time around, it was more important than ever to have right candidates; candidates that would really stand with labor, so to speak. For a perfect microcosm of this, check out Ohio 2006.

The two major candidates for office in Ohio, Reps. Ted Strickland for Governor and Sherrod Brown for Senator, both entered Congress in 1993. Every year since taking office, both put together 100% voting records on the AFL-CIO yearly report card, while voting against the most recent free trade giveaways, giving them veritable fair-trade records (though that's treated as a bad thing by CATO, the one doing the scoring on this particular issue). They both had 100% from the American Public Health Association, advocating for better Medicare benefits and, in Brown's case, stumping for healthcare as a right way back in the 90's. In short, these were real pro-worker Democrats.

The populist Democrat is that once rare species in the midwest and American heartland, for a long time replaced, at least in Senate and Governor campaigns, with the cautious, triangulating Democrat the DLC thought had the best chance of winning, if they could only blur the lines and smear the colors a bit between red and blue. Like I said, given the horrible state of the economy under King George II, as well as a particularly toxic environment for Republicans in a state that had given re-election to Bush just two years before, there was a huge opening for Democrats to reassert themselves, if only they could show some backbone. Strickland got 60% of the vote against veritable nutbag J. Kenneth Blackwell (he of voter discrimination and chairing the Bush campaign in Ohio while serving as Secretary of State, in charge of Ohio elections), while Brown took down incumbent Mike DeWine 56-44.

Labor has been longtime supporters of Brown and Strickland, and that certainly didn't change this past fall. And finally, a mixture of that toxic environment and some actually ballsy, populist candidates produced a long-awaited pro-worker generation of state-wide officials. And it's already producing dividends. First, from Senator Brown:

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio introduced a bill last night to reform a 19-year-old federal law designed to give notice to workers losing their jobs.

Mr. Brown took action a day after a Blade investigation found the law is so full of loopholes and flaws that employers repeatedly skirt it with little or no penalty.

The Worker Adjustment Retraining and Notification Act, or WARN, requires many employers to notify workers 60 days before they close a plant or lay off dozens of employees.

•Increase the notice period under the WARN Act from 60 days to 90 days.
•Require companies to abide by the WARN Act if 25 or more workers lose their jobs in a plant closing. The current trigger is at least 50 workers.
•Require employers to provide notice if 50 to 99 workers are laid off, and those who lose their jobs represent one-third of the full-time work force.
•Mandate notice if 100 or more workers are laid off. Currently, companies that lay off 500 or more workers must provide notice.

•Give the U.S. Department of Labor and state attorneys general authority to enforce the WARN Act.

•Increase the penalty for violating the law. Workers who did not receive a 90-day notice would receive benefits and double the amount of back pay for the 90 days. The current penalty is up to 60 days.

•Require employers to provide written notification to the Labor secretary of major layoffs and plant closings.

This is something many worker advocates have been agitating for for years, and is a simple act that returns fairness to a law that has sliced and diced by unfriendly courts and rich companies that decide to pack up and ship jobs overseas every single day. And now Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, opportunist as ever, are signing onto the bill; having a guy like Sherrod Brown in the Senate is proving crucial in moving the debate back towards what's good for the vast majority of working Americans.

And as for Strickland, among other things:

With a wave of his pen this week, Gov. Ted Strickland handed the increasingly powerful Service Employees International Union a golden opportunity -- the chance to increase its Ohio membership by about 25 percent.

The SEIU, which doled out $134,800 to the Democratic governor during his successful campaign in 2006, will now have the chance to organize about 7,000 home health care workers working as independent contractors for state government.

That's thanks to a Strickland executive order handed down Tuesday, giving those workers the ability to unionize should they choose to do so. Previously, those workers had no right to collectively bargain under Ohio law.

During remarks at an impromptu Statehouse news conference yesterday, Strickland shrugged off those questioning his motives.

"I'm just doing what I think makes sense, [what] is the right thing to do for my value system and my point of view and I can't control what others may say my motives are," Strickland said.

The governor framed the issue as a matter of fairness.

"The people who provide these in-home services deserve the same opportunity to have representation that the workers who work in the nursing home facilities have," Strickland said. "I think this can actually contribute to increased quality, training standards and the like and will lead to good outcomes.

And, as a WaPo E.J Dionne Jr. column out today shows, this kind of down-home populist Democratic politics wins:

At a moment of festering polarization in national politics, Strickland is Mr. Consensus. He doesn't hide his progressive views -- he calls himself "pro-choice, pro-labor and pro-universal health care" -- and yet just about everyone thinks of this ordained Methodist minister as a moderate because he spends a lot of time in places where Democrats don't dare venture, offering soothing sentiments you're unlikely to run into on talk radio or the Internet.

...snip....

What might Democratic presidential candidates learn from Ohio? As a matter of style, Strickland suggests they must understand that "people are desperately wanting to believe that political leaders understand them and that they are trying to deal with their day-to-day lives." Memo to overly cautious candidates: Strickland also thinks that "the display of genuine emotion is important."

Substantively, Strickland says the economy matters most, although he has been a strong opponent of the Iraq war from the beginning. "The foreclosure problem is huge," Strickland says. "The people are desperate for jobs." He sees health care and education as central -- they were the key issues in his recent budget. These questions "ought to give Democrats a leg up," but only if they can "talk about these things in a way that gets people to believe you will do something about them."

As David Sirota often hints at and I've been screaming, real populism wins elections, especially in places like Ohio, where corporate trade policies as well as 1% of the population tax breaks have ravaged the economy. If we can find and support candidates that stand up for workers and those struggling to make a living in this new economy, there is absolutely no reason at all for anyone in states like Ohio and Kentucky to vote for a Republican. If we triangulate and allow the impression that we're floundering, weak and stand for nothing, people might just say screw it and start to vote their "values", which get defined by candidates taking advantage of Democratic impotency.

Let's hope the Strickland/Brown election provides a guide for the party nationwide.

Another Big Week

This is the crux of this coming week's battle:

The Detroit automakers' U.S. market-share declines against Toyota, Honda and other overseas companies contributed to a combined $15 billion in losses at the three automakers last year. Most of the deficit has been in North America.

Industry leaders such as GM Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner say the health-care gap puts his products at a cost disadvantage against the Japanese. Gettelfinger has said the Detroit automakers are losing share because they've failed to design attractive products.

As I've mused before, I'm just curious as to how many car buyers go into a dealership and decide to be a Japanese car because Toyota's labor costs are lower?

(It's actually amazing to see this rare mention of the union's side of the story, not buying the whole line about healthcare costs being the reason why the company's sales are so way down And given the more than generous rare mid-contract concession in 2005, this is outrageous:

Under those agreements, UAW-represented employees at GM and Ford diverted pay increases to fund retiree health care. Also, retirees were required to pay as much as $752 a year for family medical coverage.

At GM, 60 percent of UAW members voted to ratify the accord. Only 51 percent did so at Ford. Ford's UAW Local 862 in Louisville, Kentucky, Gettelfinger's home local union, rejected the agreement. The UAW declined to extend similar concessions to Chrysler in 2006. That issue will now be part of the negotiations for a new contract.

The 2005 health-care agreements aren't likely to be the last word on the subject. Mulally said in April that health care will be on the table again in the talks that start today.

Here's the thing about labor costs. The only legitimate reason to want to lower your labor costs is to be able to invest in innovation and massive change. But that doesn't seem to be on the radar of the big three; increased stock price and a less damaged profit is.

Regarding innovation, this hits it on the head:

It's all about SUVs and hybrids of course (yes, it is also about legacy health care costs to pensioners as well). Both Ford and GM made so much money on gas-guzzling SUVs--because consumers loved them when gas was cheap--that it lulled them into falling behind in innovating new gas-saving engines. Toyota took some old battery and engine technology, souped it up and started producing real cars with hybrids. Ford and GM didn't because, as Bob Lutz put it, he didn't see a "business model" in the hybrids.

Sure, but business models for innovative products and technologies don't always present themselves at first. Selling books on the internet was the breakthrough application for Amazon. Who knew? Selling ads on search engines? Google just announced that its third quarter profits zoomed sevenfold. Old fashioned mainstream media on Yahoo and other portals? That's what's happening.

The Detroit car companies are failing at product innovation in a big way. Yes, there are some great cars coming out of Detroit (the Pontiac Solstice is terrific). And there is innovation in services--GM's OnStar makes millions for the car company. But the mindset is clearly not one of taking chances on new technology or radically new products. Business models are never clear at the start of something new. They evolve in the process of innovating. But you first must take reasoned and resonable chances--and have some forward-looking ideas. Oil prices have bounced up and down over the past four decades. It was reasonable to assume, as Toyota and Honda did, that gas prices would one day bounce up sharply. And they prepared. Toyota is on its third generation hybrid. Ford is on its first. The Prius is the hottest car off the lot these days, according to J.D. Power.

But of course, they'll go back to the well, go back on promises and ruin communities instead of actually trying to compete. Here's a reminder that their workers are real people:

Michigan Truck is down to one shift and has about 1,400 hourly employees, producing about half of the 1,000 SUVs it made daily back in the good times. Ford has fared about the same, borrowing billions to restructure as gas prices rose and consumers shifted from its SUVs and trucks to more fuel efficient models.

At the age of 40, Giles is confident in the vehicles his plant turns out, but he has worries. He's afraid the trucks the plant make will end with the 2009 model year, although Ford isn't saying anything about their future. Giles isn't totally sure about his pension like he once was, and yes, it bothers him that his company is living on loans.

"Whenever we have to borrow money, that kind of scares us," Giles said.

That's why he urges fellow workers to keep track of costs, because he says it's necessary to help the company.

When he started with Ford 19 years ago, Giles said he knew it was a good, stable job that would help support his family. Giles, who is married and has three children ages 21, 18 and 17, lives in a nice community near a lake about 60 miles north of the plant.

He now makes around $30 per hour plus overtime. Early on, it was always reassuring to him that he'd have a secure pension, but with Ford's financial troubles, he's not so sure any more.

"I didn't think I'd ever have to worry about that," he said.

Deja vu, Concessions and John Mellencamp

The UAW and the big three Detroit automakers sit down tomorrow (now Monday, thanks to an agreed on delay) to begin negotiations of a new collective bargaining agreement, and the superlatives are already being tossed around left and right. The big three automakers are losing money hand over fist, and want to re-negotiate the promises they made to many now-elderly lifelong employees. The NYT summarizes it well:

The union is trying to protect a signature feature of the middle-class lifestyle that its blue-collar members have enjoyed. The retirees, roughly 600,000 of them, risk seeing an erosion of benefits that they had assumed would be secure when their working days ended.

“This is what we were promised,” said Jim Ziomek, who retired in 2002 from a Ford Motor parts distribution center in Livonia, Mich., after working for the company for 34 years. “You’re going to have a pension, you’re going to have health care. Well, now all of a sudden things have changed and they want to take it away.” G.M., Ford Motor and the Chrysler Group say these so-called legacy costs have hampered their fight against surging foreign competitors. Health care and pension benefits cost them $1,000 for each vehicle they sell, they say, compared with a few hundred dollars for companies like Toyota, Honda and Nissan.

No doubt, the big three are struggling; combined, they lost over $16 billion last year. And right now the UAW has more retirees than active employees, and those retirees are receiving good benefits. So, to try to make up for some of the losses, the companies target their employees, especially the retirees.

But here's the thing. It's not that simple. In the last 20 years, the American market share for the big three has gone from 70 to just about 50 percent, thanks to the rise of Japanese and Korean automakers... Japanese and Korean automakers that have, for a long time now, made lighter, more fuel efficient and affordable cars, while American automakers have constantly pushed big, clunky SUV's and trucks.

For a while, those were pretty popular, but companies like Toyota, Honda and Hyundai were smart: they anticipated the shift in consumer interest and demand, and geared production and development towards the vastly superior product they put on the road today. This had nothing to do with any inherent advantage; they just planned better.

The writing was on the wall for years, and anyone who has ever had to suffer through the car buying process could see why these new Asian cars were so much more appealing. So, one would think, the big three would see this and start shifting their development and production towards these types of fuel efficient cars. In the face of a public that was obviously demanding a different product, wouldn't it be fucking clear as day that something would have to change?

Instead, GM, Chrysler and Ford all decided that it'd be a much better idea to keep pumping out the gas guzzling behemoths that have marked the last two decades of their fleet. In the face of a shifting market, they decided to dress up their shittier product in an American flag, film it with some burly men at construction sites and running through wheat fields, track in some John Mellencamp songs and hope people are suddenly compelled to buy their productive despite its relative shittiness.

Sure, they've introduced hybrid and E-85 vehicles, but they've barely marketed them, and, in addition, cars don't have to be hybrid or E-85 to get better gas mileage and thus be more popular; "regular" cars all over the world have higher fuel standards, and that more than anything is what Americans are clamoring for right now.

Now, they're $16 billion in the red this year, and using their massive PR teams to put pressure on the unions to take huge hits to clean up their mess. But, wait, haven't we seen this before, when it came to job cuts?

An unprecedented program of buyouts and early retirements has slashed 34,000 jobs at GM since last year, and Ford is in the process of cutting 38,000 positions. Chrysler, which went through a major restructuring in 2001, is trimming another 9,000 UAW jobs.

A steady erosion of market share has also forced the shutdowns of some of the domestic auto industry's most productive assembly plants, such as GM's Oklahoma City factory and Ford's midsize car plant in Atlanta.

Company insiders said this round of talks won't focus on job cuts simply because the tidal wave of buyouts has already pared staffing levels to the bone. "We can't cut any more because we still need to run the plants," said one executive.

Instead, the 2007 negotiations are expected to target health care, the single biggest component of the growing disparity in labor costs between the domestic automakers and foreign manufacturers.

And it's not like those employees that still have jobs haven't felt the pain, especially on healthcare, which is the next target:

In 2003, Gettelfinger took a hard stance against any givebacks on health care.
"Make no mistake about this: We are not going to shift health care costs in negotiations with the Big Three," he told reporters before the talks opened.

But two years later, the UAW agreed to rare, mid-contract changes in health care coverage at GM and Ford. The decision came after Gettelfinger and other UAW leaders were given access to confidential data on the precarious financial conditions of the two automakers.

So, four years later, the automakers, having made no changes or adjustments, are coming back to the trough of workers' hard earned benefits, trying to take the healthcare of the people who did the back breaking work for them for 40+ years.

And let's get another thing straight. I understand that it hampers the bottomline a bit when you're paying out (promised and well-earned) retiree benefits, but it doesn't change whether or not your car is viable in the market and if people want to buy it. I'm not gonna compare a Toyota and a GM and say, shit, GM has to pay out a few hundred more dollars per car, no way am I purchasing that one. Yes, less of a benefit burden could free up R&D costs, but given their relative naivety and stubbornness and love for huge executive pay packages, does anything think that'll be the case?

But I'm pragmatic; there's no way that the union is going to come away from this without giving up something. But like I've advocated before, it can't just be another drastic cut that allows the big three to go along their merry way and embrace ol glory in their ads without making any actual changes to their product.

There has to be some acknowledgment from the big three that yes, what we've been doing sucks, and we're going to change as you make these sacrifices, so that our sales will go up and we don't have to come to you again (at that point, they'd be asking for slave labor because without, they just couldn't survive). One solution could be insisting that some of the money the companies would save would have to be invested in R&D on hybrid vehicles and raising CAFE standards; they prattle on to Congress about how expensive that would be, and now here's their chance to show they are dedicated to making the change if they just get the help they need to do it.

AFL-CIO to host debate on MSNBC

Hot off the presses:

Keith Olbermann, whose biting, pull-no-punches commentaries on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” have been known to spike the blood pressure of their targets—ask Fox News’ belligerent right-winger Bill O’Reilly—will moderate the AFL-CIO Presidential Candidates Forum in Chicago on Aug. 7. The forum, with the seven leading Democratic candidates, will be broadcast live from 6 p.m.-7:30 p.m. CDT (7 p.m.-8:30 p.m. EDT) on MSNBC and XM Satellite Radio.

Along with questions from Olbermann, candidates also will face questions from union members in the audience and from union members who submitted questions to the Working Families Vote 2008 “Ask the Candidates” contest. So far, union members have submitted more than 1,200 questions, and health care is the biggest issue. Other questions focus on education, the war in Iraq, immigration, jobs and wages and campaign finance.

I can't tell you how excited I am for this. Election coverage so far has focused on the cult of personality, fundraising numbers, trivial matters and just about everything else the media has been able to grasp on to in order to "sell" this election as a pop culture infotainment reality show.

Olbermann, whose journalism credentials include several Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award for his coverage of the events and aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, says he is “honored” for the

…opportunity to question the leading Democratic presidential candidates about the key issues of this race. This is a critical time in our nation’s history and I look forward to helping our viewers better understand where each of the candidates stand on the issues.

The forum, says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, will give working families in the Chicago audience and those watching and listening at home the chance to hear

…exactly how these candidates, after eight years of anti-worker policies, plan to return the promise of the American dream to working people….Keith’s wit and political savvy will ensure a lively and substantive discussion about the issues working families care about most.

To paraphrase and add on to what Sweeney said, after eight years of anti-worker, pro-corporate policies that have fucked 99% of the nation, especially those with blue collars, we need to turn our attention to how we right the ship. We need candidates to discuss ideas and plans to decide who truly has workers' and mainstream America at large's backs, who can help "return the promise of the American dream" with true universal healthcare, fair taxes, better schools, trade agreements that benefit everyone and not just CEO's and shareholders, ways to lift people out of poverty, etc etc.

With union members asking the questions, candidates are going to be forced to address these issues. And I hope that those who ask the questions, along with moderator Olbermann (whom I trust the most out of anyone in the MSM to ask real questions and not take bullshit for as answer), press for real answers, not some fucking stock line from a corporatist parading around in populist clothing, or candidates so vague you don't know what the fuck they stand for.

Maybe my criticism isn't so veiled, and you can see right through the generalizations I'm making, but the point is this: politicians get away with this vagueness, this faking of authentic caring, because the media allows them to. They don't ask tough questions about tough issues, because a. it actually takes some work and b. it goes against their corporate ownership's interests. Now that we'll have a direct line of questioning from the people, maybe we can really see where candidates stand and what they propose. Maybe the frontrunners will produce some great ideas and show us something they previously hadn't. I just hope we get the opportunity to actually find out.

I'm for damn sure that the leadoff question won't be about $400 haircuts (ahem, Brian Williams) and the healthcare question won't frame the issue as one of cost and not benefit and differences in specific plans.

CW-Eh?

Amongst a flurry of activity and spotlight, the CWA opens its annual convention tomorrow. And in a parallel to the growing importance of international workers in the union, the Communications Workers of America will actually be meeting in Toronto, Canada.

The CWA is actually a broad coalition of workers in various communications fields, with the past two decades seeing massive expansion in the fields represented. Per their website, here are the fields the CWA has unions in:

• Airlines
• Broadcast Media
• Cable TV
• Communications & Technologies
• Customer Service & Marketing
• General Electric
• Health Care Workers
• High Tech
• Higher Education
• Manufacturing
• Newspapers
• Printing & Publishing
• Public Workers
• Public Safety Officers
• Telecommunications

Given the healthcare workers, public workers, higher education workers and public safety workers involved, it's clear this isn't purely a communications workers union, and it's interesting that groups from these industries have decided to go CWA and not SEIU, AFSCME, NEA, etc. But that's neither here nor there.

The CWA has been hit hard by outsourcing of telecom jobs and big media mergers, among other things. There's been a few big headlines recently:
Dow Jones and its subsidiary Wall Street Journal being potentially bought by News Corp. The WSJ writers, among the 2000 Dow Jones employee members of The IAPE Local 1096 of The Newspaper Guild, are worried that News Corp's reputation of meddling in the journalistic affairs of its properties will destroy the integrity of the world's financial paper of record (the editorial board is already on the side of Fox News, News Corp's "journalism" flagship, but news reporting at the WSJ remains independent of bias). And they're not going down without a fight:

Wall Street Journal reporters skipped work Thursday morning to demonstrate the need for editorial independence as owner Dow Jones & Co. weighs a $5 billion offer from Rupert Murdoch, the employees' union said.

Some Wall Street Journal employees across the country didn't show up for work, the IAPE-CWA union said Thursday in a prepared statement, also citing languishing pay talks...

...Employees also are protesting New York-based Dow Jones' proposal to cut health benefits and limit pay.

I can't imagine how Dow Jones, a company with absolutely no competition, could justify cutting healthcare benefits, but I suppose they've just gotten cheeky given the current new hot summer corporate fad of slashing benefits to increase profit. Dow Jones is working to find an alternate bidder, so it'll be interesting to see where that goes.

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NABET-CWA, the broadcast workers union, is teaming up with Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa to fight back against Disney-ABC's plan of freezing worker pensions under the faulty "Pension Protection Act of 2006".

The bill, introduced last week by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), could impact ABC's scheme to freeze the pensions of NABET-CWA members. The network sprang the pension demand on NABET several weeks into contract talks in March, prompting members to vote strike authorization.

"'ABC wants to take our healthy, successful, well-funded pension plan and freeze it, and they're using the current Pension Protection Act as an excuse to do it," NABET-CWA President John Clark said. "This law needs to be changed and we commend Senator Harkin for his efforts in that direction.

Clark and other critics of the 2006 pension legislation say that rather than ensure a secure retirement for workers, the law has led even hugely profitable companies such as ABC-Disney, Lockheed Martin and IBM to freeze their defined benefit plans; Verizon froze its defined benefit plan for non-union employees. The problem is that under the bill's funding requirements, many companies would have to make large contributions to their pension funds in a short period of time. Instead, some are simply dumping their plans.

"This is just plain wrong," Harkin said. "If a company is profitable enough to afford gold-plated pensions for executives, then it can provide a pension for workers who generated the profits by paying for those pensions."

CWA research economist, Bob Patrician, who spoke about the ABC situation at a news conference with Harkin on June 28, said the threatened freeze "would reduce the benefits that our members will receive by 25 percent - a minimum of $18,000 per year at age 65."

Another Orwellian-named bill that, in effect, does the opposite of what its name implies. Although it didn't end up working with the EFCA, I like the strategy of engaging the senators that labor works so hard for, and asking them to create legislation that will eliminate doubt that undoubtedly corporations and the slanted NLRB will exploit. The article also mentions Disney-ABC's $35 billion in revenue and $6 billion in profit, as well as Robert Iger's near million dollar pension starting at age 65, in addition to his insane current salary.

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And as always, the fight to get Verizon to allow their wireless and business workers to unionize, which, if you take a step back, looks and sounds absolutely ridiculous. Let them unionize? This is THE best example of the huge changes the EFCA would bring.

Trying to get Verizon, formerly MCI, to allow in unions, has been a long term struggle that has created an powerful and coordinated wave of union action. While Verizon promised in 2000 to stay neutral in unionizing efforts, they have systematically interfered and punished worker-organizers. While they aren't above firing people, one of their most effective strategies has been walling off their traditional, landline workers, a breed that is dying, and not allowing unionization to spread to the growing wireless and business divisions.

So what's Verizon to do? Verizon Inc. CEO Ivan Seidenberg is attempting to restructure the telecommunications industry, or at least where Verizon fits into that industry. Verizon's approach to the future is to grow the business while lessening the impact of unionization. How? By quarantining already the unionized technicians, sales people, and service reps of core Verizon from the rest of the growing employee population by building cordon sanitaires around their unit. The end result: unionized Verizon lacks the density that ideas need to spread effectively.

As it stands now, unionization at core Verizon is concentrated to workers who handle POTS -- that's Plain Old Telephone Service. The Seidenberg approach is to not let that high rate of unionization in core Verizon infect the rest of the company as it grows or acquires new units. Verizon has long tried to keep the unions out of Verizon Wireless. Now it's attempting to do the same with other units as they are added to the amalgamation. Case in point is Verizon Business, aka VZB. VZB used to be part of MCI until last year or so, and is now operated as a separate, non-unionized business unit under the umbrella of Verizon Inc. Verizon is moving more and more services and clients and accounts to VZB -- so rather than getting rid of existing union jobs exactly, they're just growing the areas where non-union jobs currently thrive.

And like politicians and corporate behemoths, the CWA is using the power of cheap, internet video to spread its message:



Cingular is really organizing-neutral, and as a result, 80% of its workforce, or 38,000 workers, are labor-represented. And AT&T workers, long given a hard time when trying to organize, are now union represented after Cingular's buyout of the fellow telecom giant. If you're one of 700,000 CWA members, make the Cingular Switch and receive 5% off, a nice touch by the CWA to show how labor is willing to work with employers for a shared profitable destiny.

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So the conference starts tomorrow, and as speeches are given and news breaks, I'll be all over it.

Renewing old Friendships

UAW chief Ron Gettelfinger spoke yesterday at the national NAACP conference, and two important things came out of it.

First, the fact that the leader of perhaps the most prominent single union was featured so prominently and spoke so forcefully at the NAACP conference is, in itself, a big deal. Historically, labor and civil rights activists have worked together for equality and social justice, and in many ways, that bond has stayed intact.

But now, with a President and unchecked corporate powers conspiring to keep down anyone that tries to earn an honest living without sitting in a boardroom or $1000 a plate fundraisers, it is more important than ever that coalitions of people who seek to even the playing field and restore fairness to our society band together. Here's the gist:

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger used the solidarity between labor and civil rights groups to urge NAACP delegates Wednesday to fight against labor practices at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and for universal health care.

Gettelfinger said the union and the civil rights organization should use their long history of pursuing common interests to help workers...

... He urged delegates to the National Association of Colored People's 98th annual convention to help expose what he said were unfair labor conditions at Wal-Mart and to promote a single-payer health care system.

More and more, with a government embracing class warfare and the corporate-sponsored legislation that: under the guise of providing affordable healthcare, lines the pockets of private insurers; under the guise of "growing the economy", sends good American jobs to pennies on the dollar exploited employees abroad; under the guise of "welfare reform", pulls the ladder rungs out from beneath people just starting their climb back; more and more, under these conditions, labor and its allies will be fighting not just to keep wages and benefits for employees, but to stop and then reverse this fuck-the-bottom-99% of citizens path the American public has been forced to ride shotgun on.

This is where the NAACP and other social justice groups come in. As unions adjust and broaden their horizons, they will continue to fight more and more for all workers, union or not. And unlike the media and a few conscientious politicians, I don't think most people needed Hurricane Katrina to realize that among the inequalities in this country, the stratification of wealth between races is amongst the most egregious. Fighting that injustice is no doubt a shared value.

The other significant thing to take away from Gettelfinger's speech was the continuance of fighting words in advance of big three negotiations next week. I'll blog more about this tomorrow, but basically, the UAW chief made it clear his team was not in a conciliatory mood.

Making Rodney Dangerfield Proud

While there are a multitude of ways big-business sponsored Republicans can do to deny working people the right to organize; for a recent example, see: filibustering of the EFCA.

But what often goes unreported is the real heart of the labor-crushing movement: ideologically anti-labor members of the National Labor Relations Board. That body oversees and decides employer-employee disputes, with an original FDR-era mission of protecting workers from exploitive and unfair employer practices. In much the same way the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is supposed to be the overseer and protector of minority rights from race, religion and economic-driven tyranny, the NLRB is there to make sure the workers' rights are protected.

So it's no surprise that the current administration, just as they did to the Civil Rights, the FCC and SEC, to name a few, the NLRB has been filled with a pro-big business, anti-labor commissioner majority. And the fruits of their labor (ironic, huh?) have provided a feast for employers looking to keep their workers from organizing and, gasp, being paid fair wages and benefits and provided safe and clean working places.

Perhaps the must substantial decision they made was in the Oakwood Healthcare, Inc. case, where they essentially gave a silver bullet to employers all over the country who want to deny their employees unions. Basically, they said that employers, in this specific case hospitals, can classify their workers as "supervisors", as analyzed by the AFL-CIO, if he or she spends as little as 10 percent to 15 percent of his or her time overseeing the work of others. That breaks down to less than an hour a day or one full shift every two weeks.

The consequences of this ruling are vast:

Although two of the three cases involved only nurses, the expanded definition applies to workers in every industry and means up to 8 million workers, including nurses, building trades workers, newspaper and television employees and others, may be classified as supervisors and barred from joining unions. Under federal labor law, supervisors are not protected against retaliation for forming unions...

And the two people on the NLRB that actually believe in workers' rights said this:

In their dissent, NLRB members Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh said the decision:

threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law—workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees.

Liebman and Walsh wrote that most professionals and other workers could fall under the new definition of supervisor, “who by 2012 could number almost 34 million, accounting for 23.3 percent of the workforce.” They went on to say the Republican majority did not follow what Congress intended in applying the National Labor Relations Act.

It's instructive to look at the actual clause in the law that the NLRB is insisting blows such a hole in the right for millions of workers to organize:

any individual having the authority, in the interest of the employer, to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action, if in connection with the foregoing the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment.

While that's not completely clear, here's what the NLRB itself said before it handed down its decision:

Both the drafters of the original amendment and Senator Ralph E. Flanders, who proposed adding the term “responsibly to direct” to the definition of supervisor, agreed that the definition sought to distinguish two classes of workers: true supervisors vested with “genuine management prerogatives,” and employees such as “straw bosses, lead men, and set-up men” who are protected by the Act even though they perform “minor supervisory duties.”

So it seems this NLRB stared right in the face of this clear distinction and did what it wanted anyways. Enter the RESPECT Act.

Formally the Re-Empowerment of Skilled and Professional Employees and Construction Tradeworkers Act, it would restore the right to organize to a long list of workers that have some supervisory responsibilities. In the house, it is HR 1644 and was introduced by Reps. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) and Don Young (R-Alaska) and in the Senate, where it is S. 969, it is sponsored by Chris Dodd (D-CT).

It will no doubt pass the House; let's just hope the Senate sticks it to one of those appropriations bills it has coming up so it doesn't suffer the same needless fate as the EFCA.

USW News Flurry

Amongst the unions hit hardest by outsourcing, worker-replacing technology and the impact of the outrageous cost of healthcare, the USW is dominating the news this week as it tries to adapt to the changing economy and flex its still potent political muscle for worker-friendly change.

Headlines today focus on its deal with Dana Corp, the bankrupt autoparts maker. They reached a tentative agreement with two main points: a one-time mega payment to a trust fund that will manage retiree healthcare, and a two-tier wage system for new workers.

The company expects to save more than $100 million per year by shifting the responsibility of retiree healthcare to a union-controlled trust fund and establishing a two-tier wage system. Dana will put a one-time payment of $800 million into the trust fund and says retirees and the unions should not need to put any more money toward the plan...

...Dana's deals, reached with the Steelworkers and UAW, will require a contribution of $700 million along with $80 million in stock to the trusts, which will take over obligations for retiree healthcare and long-term disability coverage for employees...

... The settlements also include four-year extensions of Dana's contracts with the two unions at its plants in the U.S. They cover about 8,000 workers, or half of its union employees.

While analysts constantly speculate that the newest labor deal "could serve as a template", it seems like this model might actually gain some widespread traction:

The automakers also are studying a new contract between Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and the United Steelworkers union with a similar healthcare trust fund.

Goodyear estimated it would save $275 million over the next three years by setting up the trust fund. The company made a one-time $1-billion contribution to the fund.

The trust funds are relatively new and untested. Some Goodyear union workers have criticized the idea, saying they fear the trust fund is underfunded.

That last point is critical. With healthcare prices skyrocketing, it's not hard to imagine that lump sum not being enough to cover the needs of long-time workers dealing with normal aging as well as the repercussions of physically taxing jobs. Hopefully smart investment can help to counteract that.

With all these deals centering on healthcare, companies' inability to pay for it (let's forget for a moment the huge bonuses they pay out to their executives) and the shift in responsibility to employees, what happens if/when we get some kind of at least partially government funded universal healthcare? Granted that a kind of payroll tax on employers and high earners would be instated to help pay for it, but that payroll tax would be much smaller than what they pay today, especially as costs go down as pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies can't price gouge. What happens to these deals? Massive renegotiations? So much of the money spent on healthcare, especially retiree healthcare, will now be available for higher wages and more job creation. It'll be a huge fight, I'm sure, to get companies to use the new funds for that, though their efforts to fight for some kind of universal insurance is potentially promising.

Speaking of union forays into the fight for universal healthcare, the USW held a candidates forum this week in Ohio. Edwards, Biden and hometown boy Kucinich spoke the first day.

I'm soon going to give a much more detailed analysis of each candidate on labor, but for now, here's a little taste.

Edwards: Talks about real labor and environmental standards in trade agreements that are actually enforced, explained how outsourcing and labor are so important to him because his father and his larger community lost their jobs when their textile mills closed and outsourced. Questions false promise of "re-education" of long time workers. Mentions Green Blue Alliance, a Sierra Club and USW environmental jobs initiative. And as a feather in the cap of this blog, says American people deserve a President that will "stand with working people".



Biden doesn't provide video, but he talks about the importance of labor in building the middle class, and manufacturing can be revived by investing in infrastructure such as bridge building. Says Democratic politicians need to replace "working people" with "union" in their rhetoric (I understand the intention, but it's of questionable strategy in many ways)

Kucinich: "We hafta cancel NAFTA". Kucinich talked in his hometown of canceling NAFTA and the WTO and creating fair trade deals. He's long had labor's back, coming from Cleveland. The next day, he also ripped into Hillary for this set of miscalculations:

Clinton said any trade agreement that passes should be strictly enforced. She didn't mention the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a controversial trade pact that her husband backed.

After Clinton's remarks, she did not answer questions from the audience, although the other candidates did -- a fact that caused quite a stir. Depending on the person asked, the explanation was either that she didn't have enough time or she had already answered most of the expected questions with her remarks.

Some union members were disappointed.

"I don't think she's really a pro-labor candidate,'' said Peter Stamich, president of USW Local 2 in Akron. "I think she would have gotten grenades dropped.''

Jack Hefner, Local 2's vice president, said Clinton said the right things, but he was not sure whether she meant them.

Yikes.

Also, RESPECT act post coming tomorrow. I just thought this was more timely.

Ya Fired and other local news

Because the heartbeat of labor comes from local organizing and activity, it behooves us to always keep our eyes on the pulse of the worker movement. Some local news:

Trump Plaza loses appeal to stop dealers union:

Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino has lost its appeal to overturn the results of a spring election where more than two-thirds of dealers voted to join the United Auto Workers union.

Last Friday, a National Labor Relations Board judge declined to overturn the elections results, saying the casino had not met its burden of proof, the Press of Atlantic City reported in Wednesday newspapers.

Shortly after the spring election, the casino asked the NLRB to set aside election results, alleging that the union tainted conditions for a fair election.

The casino claimed that the UAW worked with government officials to falsely imply that the union was already their representative and that the labor board supported the union.

... In a six-page ruling, administrative law Judge Robert Giannasi said the rally didn't imply that it was the equivalent of a board certification of election results and that the casino didn't show that employees had a limited understanding of the role the NLRB plays in board elections.

... The UAW has sought to organize dealers at all 11 Atlantic City casinos this year, winning elections at Bally's Atlantic City, Trump Plaza and Caesars Atlantic City. It has lost elections at Atlantic City Hilton and Trump Marina Hotel Casino.

Basically, Trump was saying that the union misrepresented itself as having already represented the workers, and also accused Rep. Rob Andrews of tampering with the election when he held a rally where workers counted signed cards (that oh so insidious card check) saying they wanted a union. So which was it? Workers thought they were represented, or celebrated voting to be represented? Not even the corporatist NLRB could buy into that logic. On goes the march to unionize new industries and employees as the traditional base of union workers continue to have their jobs eliminated and the traditionally undercompensated service industry continues to grow.

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Feds OKs union election at FedEx in Wilmington (Mass):

In a victory for drivers in two Wilmington depots, the National Labor Relations Board's last week certified a vote taken by FedEx Home Delivery drivers took last October.

But it is unlikely FedEx will simply allow the union to take it’s place at the bargaining table anytime soon.

In last week’s ruling, the NLRB said in a release issued by that it agreed with drivers that they were not independent contractors as the package delivery service contend but, actually employees.

“Because the Teamsters do not have the best interest of our contractors in mind, we will continue to work with our contractors to protect their investments so they can run their businesses without third party interference,” said Maury Lane, a FedEx spokesman, in press reports.

Right. Obviously, unionized drivers are sooo much worse off. I mean, take this, for instance:

Currently, Fed Ex drivers are paid by the package delivered as opposed to UPS drivers who make approximately $26 an hour and $21 an hour for DHL drivers. Those union drivers also have significant benefit packages that include health plans and holiday and vacation time.

This is potentially huge, because FedEx has been fighting unionization for their 15,000 drivers for two decades. Imagine if the EFCA had passed last month... FedEx would be forced to negotiate or go to arbitration. For now, the hard work of fighting these vast disadvantages continues.

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Judge orders hotel to reinstate 'Rochester 19'

In a rare move, a federal judge has ordered the Holiday Inn Express to reinstate 19 workers fired just before Christmas and recognize and bargain with their union.
The workers, who've come to be known as the "Rochester 19" were fired when new owners took over the hotel and proclaimed their opposition to unions. UNITE HERE Local 21, which represented the hotel's workers for more than two decades, sought recognition by the new owners, CPMJ Enterprises, but was rejected.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis issued an injunction ordering the Holiday Inn Express to offer the 19 workers reinstatement to their jobs and ordering the hotel to recognize and bargain with Local 21. In doing so, Davis took advantage of a rarely used part of the National Labor Relations Act – the 10J injunction – to provide immediate protection when irreparable harm may occur.

In his ruling, Davis noted "substantial evidence demonstrating anti-union sentiment on the part of" the hotel owners.

Insert [but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night] joke. By the way, Workday Minnesota is just about the best state-wide labor site in the country. While they concentrate on Minnesota issues, what happens there is a good representation of what is going on nationally.

Tomorrow I'm going to talk about the RESPECT Act. I just need to think of enough puns to do it properly.

Going Global on Independence Day

As we celebrate the 226th anniversary of the symbolic founding of our nation, waving our flags and talking about how great America is, I want to buck the tradition of national introspection and instead look outward, examining free trade: the philosophy, and its impact on workers.

For generations now we have been inundated with the perceived virtues of free trade, the most basic being a vast national net gain in wealth. And when put to that litmus test, free trade has delivered. But cast aside the vague and overarching numbers, and a different story begins to take shape.

While there is generally no better weapon that numbers when in an argument (and the numbers for American workers are sickening: in 2004 there were 68,000 jobs being outsourced per month, which is undoubtedly much higher now; and ardent free trade advocate Alan Blinder estimates 30 to 40 million jobs will be in danger of being outsourced in the next two decades), I want to delve into economic philosophy of it all, and why it's failing us.

Paul Craig Roberts penned one of the best rebukes of the long-held free trade gospel, pertaining to the mobility of capital:

Economists mistake the free movement of factors of production for free trade. Raised on the theory of comparative advantage, economists know that free trade is mutually beneficial. They dismiss without thought any concerns that seem to call free trade into question. The case for free trade has been unassailable for so long that economists have overlooked that today's circumstances do not comply with the assumptions of the theory.

The gains from trade flow from each country focusing on what it can do best and trading for other goods. The idea that there are comparative advantages in production is based on countries having different endowments of immobile factors of production. When the theory was developed, agricultural output was an important component of Gross Domestic Product, and a country's advantages resided in its climate and geography.

Unlike the prevailing "wisdom" that has kept free trade the prevailing economic policy, current global conditions support what Roberts is explaining:

Climate and geography cannot migrate, but capital and technology can. Today, absolute advantage resides in an abundant supply of cheap and willing labor. Now that Asia is safe for capitalism, capital and technology flow to countries where labor costs are lowest.

The global mobility of factors of production is a new development. Until recent years, it was not safe for capital and technology to migrate outside North America, Western Europe and Japan. No first-world country had an absolute advantage in labor cost.

The collapse of world socialism changed circumstances overnight. U.S. labor now faces direct competition in global labor markets. The excess supply of labor in these markets will drive down wages, salaries and employment in the United States. As the dollar is likely to lose value under pressure from our growing trade deficit, the decline in wages will not be compensated by a decline in prices, and U.S. living standards will fall.

It is irresponsible for economists to dismiss these concerns by citing empirical evidence from historical correlations. New developments are not reflected in historical data.

And it's not just manufacturing jobs that are being sent out of the country. Estimates have 3.3 million white collar jobs being outsourced by 2015, and the most common example, call-center customer service jobs that have been sent to India, are just the tip of the iceberg. Rapidly advancing education systems in much poorer countries mean that software engineers, medical analysts and every other high education job under the sun can be outsourced to a country where labor is just so much cheaper. Roberts and Senator Schumer wrote a piece in the NY Times about just this very aspect:

Two recent examples illustrate this concern. Over the next three years, a major New York securities firm plans to replace its team of 800 American software engineers, who each earns about $150,000 per year, with an equally competent team in India earning an average of only $20,000. Second, within five years the number of radiologists in this country is expected to decline significantly because M.R.I. data can be sent over the Internet to Asian radiologists capable of diagnosing the problem at a small fraction of the cost.

These anecdotes suggest a seismic shift in the world economy brought on by three major developments. First, new political stability is allowing capital and technology to flow far more freely around the world. Second, strong educational systems are producing tens of millions of intelligent, motivated workers in the developing world, particularly in India and China, who are as capable as the most highly educated workers in the developed world but available to work at a tiny fraction of the cost. Last, inexpensive, high-bandwidth communications make it feasible for large work forces to be located and effectively managed anywhere.

So this is where the neo-liberal insistence on better education and retraining falls short; people with years of education are in danger of seeing their jobs go overseas to cheaper foreign workers, as well.

But still we hear things like "globalization is inevitable" and the future is in free trade. Well, of course we'll hear that, because there ARE some people who benefit from free trade, and they make up a majority of political fundraisers and media ownership. Despite that, the harms our corporate written free trade laws have caused American workers have been made clear to the American people, if only because so many people are feeling them. Now the goal has to be challenging the prevailing wisdom and philosophy that make these deals seem inevitable and part and parcel to the future of business. It's time to make FAIR trade the buzzword.

Andy Stern: Visionary or Short Sighted?

Since SEIU and a number of other unions broke away from the AFL-CIO to form the Change to Win coalition in 2005, there's been heated debate over the ambitious agenda of SEIU President Andy Stern. Some will tell you he's a visionary; other's say that while he's a labor leader first and foremost, he's he's driven in part by ulterior motives (and some of those others would be so brash as to suggest ego or politics may be one of those ulterior motives).

You can't argue with the SEIU's success in organizing, when it comes to sheer numbers: while most unions continue to suffer losses in members, SEIU has added nearly a million since he took over. This is in part thanks to the growth in service industry jobs as traditional union jobs such as manufacturing and construction continue to be outsourced or given to lower paid immigrants of questionable legal status, but in interests of fairness, you have to give Stern credit for emphasizing the unionization of new as well as expanded fields. Then again, the way he's gone about it has been part of the problem in the eyes of many critics.

The Nation has a long feature on the complex and intricate vision and personal leadership style of Stern. The way he has gone about extending representation to so many workers is a source of debate in labor circles, and one of the topics the article tackles:

More controversially, he believes the only way to reverse this sorry state of affairs is to sign up more members by just about any means necessary. Many within SEIU worry that this near-exclusive focus on growth is hampering the union's ability to serve its existing members; they observe that with more resources directed to organizing, and more emphasis on consolidating small locals into larger organizations, it's becoming harder for workers to find their union rep or file a simple grievance. If union members don't feel the union is serving them, organizers say, they begin to ask why they are paying dues.

These are legitimate concerns, no doubt. There is always a delicate balance in working to represent more workers and actually effectively representing the ones you have, especially in an environment dominated by business and mostly toxic to unions (the Employee Free Choice Act, not coincidentally, would have helped more evenly split resources because it would make it easier for workers to join a union).

But the rift goes further than that, and in some ways embodies a main concern that many have with Stern: his seeming over friendliness to business (the article begins with an anecdote about unhappy workers that protested Stern's meeting with businesses, primarily Wal-Mart, to form an alliance to fight for better healthcare, a move many thought benefited Wal-Mart's PR efforts much more than it helped labor).

But there's an even more controversial aspect to Stern's commitment to "partnerships." In his book, Stern writes that unions should "add value" to companies and assist "employers in overcoming unnecessary legislative and political obstacles to their success." These ideas have played out in recent contracts. Internal memos -- obtained by SF Weekly -- show that two large SEIU locals had made a deal with a group of California nursing homes, in which SEIU agreed that workers would not speak out publicly against abuse of patients, or health code violations, and would lobby for limiting patients' right to sue. (SEIU later backed out of its commitment to tort reform.) In exchange, the union could organize a certain number of nursing homes without interference. The SF Weekly story was based in part on an internal report from one of the largest locals involved in the deal, United Healthcare Workers West (UHW-West).

I think they went too far on this particular contract, but then I ask myself: does concessions now, in exchange for recognition of a union, mean better future contracts? It's hard to say, as one contract is often seen as a precedent for the next. That's something autoworkers are dealing with right now, after the UAW membership said yes the Delphi contract, with 66.7% of workers voting their approval.

As for the aforementioned healthcare issue, there is seemingly no bigger political issue for unions other than the bread and butter EFCA and globalization/outsourcing. Stern has been coy about his intentions, which also raises flags to some:

to be continued...