Archive for the Organized Labor Category

A Nation of Cowards

Posted in Automobile Industry, Organized Labor, Social Security with tags on February 20, 2009 by John Stodder
lalalalalalala

lalalalalalala

I was reading Wall Street Journal reporter Paul Ingrassia’s latest piece about the never-ending bailouts of Detroit automakers.  Halfway down, he wrote this:

So why were these problems allowed to fester, when smart people recognized them all along? The answer is that the solutions were painful, requiring not just brains but considerable amounts of courage. UAW officials weren’t brave enough to risk re-election defeat by agreeing to curtail the 30-and-out plan. Detroit executives weren’t about to take on the union and risk a strike that could cost them billions. GM likewise felt hamstrung on Saturn and Saab by state dealer-franchise laws, especially after they spent $1.3 billion to shut down Oldsmobile a few years ago.

Perhaps the best analogy, and one that Washington will understand, is Social Security. Everybody in Congress and the White House has known for years that it’s a ticking time bomb, thanks to actuarial trends and inadequate funding. But when President George W. Bush tried to reform the system early in his second term, he was handed a crippling defeat.

We are a nation of political cowards.   No one wants to pay the price consequences of real honesty, especially once they’ve ascended to power. Whether it’s a political office, or a CEO position, or the presidency of a labor union; whether we’re talking about a Democrat or a Republican; the underlying cause for the meltdown we’re experiencing now, and the meltdowns soon to come is cowardice.

Not just fear of taking a stand.  Our leaders have conditioned themselves to be afraid to speak the truth.  They pay millions to PR helpers for assistance in drilling them within an inch of their lives so they won’t accidentally acknowledge certain problems, because acknowledging something implies the requirement to act. Read more »

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Is 1930’s Nostalgia Really The Best Way To Sell “Card Check?”

Posted in Automobile Industry, Organized Labor, Recession/Depression with tags , , , , on November 29, 2008 by John Stodder
Andy Stern

Andy Stern

Some in the labor movement are sensing nostalgia for a distant decade as they try to combat a concerted business push to derail the Employee Free Choice Act, a.ka. “card check.”

“We’re looking to restore the law the way it was in 1935,” Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern said in a recent meeting with reporters, referring to the current card-check debate.

Did any of SEIU’s lobbyists or PR people take a survey about how the public thinks about 1935?  Most of us think of 1935 as one of those grim years of the 1930s before the Great Depression ended.  And if Stern is saying labor law went to hell after 1935, he’s overlooking the fact that labor’s glory days were, by most estimations, in the 1950s — despite labor’s bugaboo, Taft-Hartley.

Another way to argue for card check that doesn’t seem too bright is to argue that black is white:

But James Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas at Austin, said “unionization and competitiveness are not incompatible.” He cited the aerospace and oil industries as examples where the two coexist. “You can’t say the decline of the auto industry is due to the strength of the UAW,” he added.

You can’t?

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Steelworkers Say Paulson Overpaid — By A Lot

Posted in Bush Administration, Mortgage/Housing Crisis, Organized Labor, Wall Street with tags , , , , , on October 28, 2008 by John Stodder

Leo W. Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers (USW), told Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson he paid twice as much for the U.S. Treasury’s investment in Goldman Sachs and other financial institutions as the shares were really worth.

In an invective-filled letter, Gerard claims investor Warren Buffet — who some say might succeed Paulson, especially if Sen. Barack Obama is elected — made an investment in Goldman Sachs stock that, on a per-dollar basis, was half as pricey and at much better terms. Buffet made his buy just three weeks before Treasury did.  The USW international chief attaches an analysis comparing the Buffet and Treasury purchases — click the link to the letter to see it.

Gerard accuses Paulson of overpaying “as a gift to the firms’ shareholders,” according to the Steelworkers’ news release.

“This behavior is simply outrageous,” said Gerard. “Half the money is invested and the other half of the public’s money is gifted to institutions after they paid out hundreds of billions in undeserved bonuses and shareholder dividends and engaged in reckless speculation.”
“This is no different than if you paid me $10,000 for a car for which no one else would pay more than $5,000,” writes Gerard. “You bought it for $5,000 and gifted me the other $5,000.”
“In my world such gifts are rarely offered to working people.”

Martin Manley, a former assistant secretary of labor under President Clinton and founder of Alibris and Reputation Networks, Inc., says “good for the Steelworkers for doing the math.” On his blog, “Jam Side Down,” Manley writes:

Paulson should renegotiate the terms if the deals turn out to be as either as self-serving or as financially lame as their analysis suggests.

Manley said the union’s math was done by Ron Bloom, a former investment banker with Lazard Freres. So far, no response from Treasury, but that’s just a matter of time.

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The Chamber’s Campaign is For the Senate

Posted in Congress, Democratic Party, Lobbying, Organized Labor, Republican Party, regulation on October 24, 2008 by John Stodder

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is defying the Democratic tide, perhaps at the business community’s peril, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel.  Starting from the assumption that Obama will win the presidency, the chamber

has, for months, been defending the 60-vote wall, fully engaged in nearly every competitive Senate race. It may well spend $40 million this cycle, or double its 2006 effort. In many Senate races, the Chamber is proving the only outside help to underfunded Republicans.

The “60-vote wall” refers to the number of senate votes required to stop a filibuster; in this case, a filibuster against anti-business policies a Democratic supermajority would presumably sponsor.

In Kentucky, the group has blasted Democratic candidate Bruce Lunsford for his antienergy stance. In Minnesota, it is beating on Al Franken for failing to carry workers’ comp coverage for his employees. It has tagged New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen as a “taxing machine.” It has praised Oregon Republican Gordon Smith for his work on health care.

It also unveiled the season’s most humorous ad, entitled “Meet Bill.” It features real-life union boss, Bill, caught assaulting a cameraman (“I’m gonna’ take this camera and stick it somewhere you don’t want it!”). It points out that it would be Bill who, under card check, would get to monitor votes in a union drive.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D.-NY) has blasted the chamber’s involvement in these campaigns, claiming the officially non-partisan organization is acting like “a wing of the GOP.” He promises unfriendly legislation in revenge.  But the chamber’s Bill Miller, head of political efforts, isn’t fazed.  He tells Strassel:

“What if we became lambs instead of lions? Would the legislative agenda be less beholden to trial lawyers and labor unions? Maybe this is a shot at K Street, but the lobbying mentality of too many is to go up and be solicitous, and hope to get some crumbs from the table. That is not our deal. Our deal is to be the last line of defense for the business community. And while we always work collaboratively, that’s what we’ll continue to be.”

Whether or not there will be 60 Democrats in the next Senate, you have to figure not all 60 would be liberals.  The party’s growth has mostly been at the expense of moderate Republicans dragged down by their association with the Bush Administration and the social and religious right. There are likely to be many “blue dog” Democrats in the Senate next year whose votes will be available to the business community at some price.

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Boeing, Boeing: Labor in the Spotlight *(updated and bumped up)

Posted in Barack Obama, Organized Labor, transportation with tags , , , on September 6, 2008 by John Stodder
Boeings Dreamliner 787

Boeing's Dreamliner 787

UPDATE, 9/05:  It’s a strike, apparently.

At 7:14 EDT, Boeing put out a press release announcing “the differences were too great to close.” It then said the International Association of Machinists “has called for a strike to begin” at 12:01 Saturday morning, Pacific Time.  The union’s release includes this quote:

“The absence of job security language was a key reason why members rejected the company’s earlier offer and it is why Boeing is now facing the second major strike in three years,” said International President Tom Buffenbarger. “We’ve learned it’s not enough to have a good-paying job if that job can disappear at any time.”

This was a prominent theme of the Democratic National Convention, and it came up in John McCain’s acceptance speech, too.   But will the candidates get involved?

What follows is the earlier post from yesterday.

————-

In a matter of hours, the largest aircaft manufacturer in the world, Boeing, might be hit with a strike. Many of its 27,000 workers are impatient to hit the bricks:

Less than a day after voting to strike, Boeing workers expressed frustration and anger on Thursday at the decision by (Machinist Union) leaders to postpone a walkout and negotiate further with the company.

Factory employees who showed up to work said about half of the workers did not come in for their assigned shifts and one mechanic reported that there was damage to bathroom fixtures and cash machines inside the production facility.

A Boeing Co spokesman declined to comment on activity at its plants on Thursday, but he said the company believed a resolution was possible by Friday at midnight when the 48-hour deadline extension lapses.

Machinists in Everett, WA Ready to Walk

Machinists in Everett, WA Ready to Walk

In the past, a strike brought out the Democratic politicians around the country, especially where the company is headquartered.  And we all know that Boeing recently moved its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago — Barack Obama’s home state. In fact, after Obama secured the nomination last week, Boeing paid for a full-page ad to congratulate him (which certainly had more to do with the firm’s efforts to wrest the $35 billion aerial refueling tanker contract from Northrup Grumman.)

If Boeing can’t settle the strike by midnight Friday, will Obama walk the picket line?  Will Mayor Daley?  As I recall, Chicago put on quite a show to lure Boeing.What’s the account status of the favor bank?

In the 1970s, industrial strikes were far more commonplace and, as a result, organized labor lost the position of political power to which it had become accustomed.  In 2008, labor is making a major play at getting it back, working toward the election of Obama plus a filibuster-proof Senate majority that will pass its long-sought card check bill.

Will a Boeing strike upset labor’s patient strategy? Read more »

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A Stealth War Between Business and Labor

Posted in Lobbying, Organized Labor with tags , , , , , , on August 27, 2008 by John Stodder

There is a lot of money and power on the line in the 2008 election, and a stealth war between business and labor over an issue voters don’t know much about: Card check.

Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus makes the business case in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal. His language is designed to get attention:

I recently said that America “would become France” if a certain bill now in Congress — which would virtually guarantee that every company becomes unionized — ever became law. Deceptively named the Employee Free Choice Act, this bill would in most cases take away an employee’s right to a secret ballot in a union election and give unions the option to have federal arbitrators set the wages, benefits, hours and all other terms and conditions of employment.

The consequences, according to Marcus:

America’s competitiveness, jobs and right to a secret ballot are at stake. CEOs, employees who want to keep their jobs in America — and those retirees like me who would not be where we are today but for our system of free enterprise — must stop this anti-democratic legislation.

Labor’s explanations for its support are, by contrast, calm and legalistic.  For example, a UAW site describes the Employee Free Choice Act this way:

The UAW believes that the right to form a union is fundamental human right and that it is an essential element of a free and democratic society. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA) is the federal law that protects the rights of workers to join unions and to bargain collectively with their employers. Unfortunately, over the years these rights have been severely weakened because of Republican appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), aggressive employer anti-union campaigns that walk the line between legal and illegal activities, ineffective NLRA penalties for employers who violate worker rights, and lengthy employer appeals of NLRB cases in the courts. As a result, it is now very difficult for workers to successfully organize by going through an NLRB-conducted election. When workers do choose to be represented by a union, moreover, employers use a variety of legal and illegal tactics to keep the union from obtaining a first contract.

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