Solidarity

I'm thinking that of all the states in which conserviative governors are gearing up to try to destroy public sector unions, maybe Wisconsin wasn't the right place to start.

Mahlon Mitchell, president of the Professional Firefighters of Wisconsin, who pledged solidarity with his fellow state workers, even though firefighters and police were spared from Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to bust state unions' bargaining power. Among Mitchell's pledges: The state's safety workers would agree to forgo some of their privileges and benefits to preserve collective bargaining for all the state's union workers. "We have a unique job," he said, "but so does the snow-plow driver, so does the janitor, so does a nurse, so does a teacher at UW college.

Honestly I can't tell what's going to happen here. Russ Feingold is going around describing our time as "the Gilded Age on Steroids," and I'm not sure he's wrong. But I also don't see the antidote, so I'm hoping he's wrong and that we bounce back towards something like the mid-90s status quo.

Also, each worker gets half an acre of swampland and a broken can opener

In the devastating slump that has forced two of Detroit’s automakers to the brink of bankruptcy, the United Automobile Workers union stands to become one of the industry’s few winners.

According to restructuring plans proposed this week, the union will have more than half the stock in Chrysler and a third of General Motors, meaning it will have tremendous influence, with the government, in determining the future of the companies. |NY Times|

Arlen Specter switches parties! But...

... as much as this seems tactically great right now for the Dems, I am skeptical about the actual end results. Let's just say that in no way will Specter be one of the better sort of Democratic Senator.

Also, for the laboristas, he has this to say:

[M]y position on Employees Free Choice (Card Check) will not change...

Holy crap!

Jordan Barab, who ran the workplace safety blog Confined Space -- is the acting head of OSHA! More here, here, and here.

"some concern"

As I wrote in my Employee Free Choice Act piece today, the business side scored a major -- perhaps decisive -- early win by defining the bill as "card check" and as a matter of depriving workers of a "secret ballot" -- which is a hard, poll-tested spin on one aspect of the bill.

Warren Bufftett's remarks on CNBC this morning, where he came out against the legislation, show how effective that tactic was:

“I think the secret ballot’s pretty important in the country," Buffett said. "I’m against card check to make a perfectly flat statement.”

On the other hand, there's some concern in the ranks of business that labor will offer a compromise discarding the provision it refers to as "majority sign-up," take the equally important binding arbitration and other provisions. By this logic, centrist senators can tell business leaders they took care of their most high-profile complaint, while still giving labor game-changing legislation.

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Deep thought

Given what we've learned about economic reality over the last six months, maybe it no longer makes sense to assume during contract negotiations that it is management rather than labor which is most concerned with the long term health of a firm.

The future offers great promise for workers in our common sectors

The new issue of LaborNotes has an interesting, if surprisingly bloodless, article about the struggle for control of UNITE-HERE. In broad strokes, here's the background. UNITE and HERE merged in 2004. UNITE needed the merger because the industries it primarily represented -- textiles -- had shrunk dramatically and continued to shrink. HERE needed the merger because the industries it represented -- hotel and restaurants -- had become increasingly consolidated among a few large corporations, and UNITE's control of Amalgamated Bank meant that the merged organization would have the resources needed to take on those companies. Under the terms of the merger, UNITE President Bruce Raynor took the helm of the new organization, and HERE President John Wilhelm took a back seat. There have been tension all along, but things are coming to a head now because the union is about to have its first leadership election since the merger, and Wilhelm and HERE are poised to take control.

And poised is maybe too weak a work. In point of fact, Wilhelm and his allies are already effectively in control of UNITE-HERE's exec board. At the board's last meeting in December, the board made some decisions that UNITE loyalists strongly opposed, so much so that the UNITE partisans refused to participate in the vote and Raynor followed up with a lawsuit.

Which brings us to SEIU's dear leader, Andy Stern. Following Raynor's lawsuit, Stern made an offer:

Today it is apparent to us that the merger of UNITE and HERE has failed to meet its goals that both unions had hoped for and worked towards.

After four (4) years, we believe it is time as well as necessary for our movement, for both unions to reconsider their future -- including merger into SEIU as UNITE HERE or ending their merger and returning to their previous status and merging into SEIU as separate organizations. |source (pdf!)|

I'm going to go out on a limb here and theorize that the Stern offer was invited by Raynor, who has collaborated with Stern in the past to sign secret "growth agreements" with employers. In any case, it's pretty ballsy.

February 9 my ass

While I wasn't looking, Labornerd launched.

Talking about EFCA

Just saw Chris Wallace and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Fox News Sunday arguing about whether it's okay to call the EFCA process card check. It was surreal. I call it card check. Everybody I know in the labor movement calls it card check. It turns out, however, that 'card check' is now a right wing frame. Update your speech accordingly, I guess.

Or don't.

In EFCA news, Hoyer expressed support for the bill, said he expected it to pass the Senate in more or less the form that it had passed the House, but didn't say it would be an immediate priority and hinted that passage might not come during the first 100 days.

Another interesting thing about the segment was that Chris Wallace delivered the secret ballot spin in a way I hadn't seen before, asking whether there was room for a compromise that would preserve the secret ballot, possibly by modifying the NLRB process so that elections would be guaranteed to occur sooner. Hoyer pointed out that nothing in EFCA precludes the holding of an election, and that's pretty much where they left it. It occurs to me, though, that calling it 'free choice' rather than 'card check' leaves room for an EFCA that doesn't establish card check recognition.

SEIU and Blago

Don't know if you've noticed it, but Blagojevich is making that statement at the UE sit-in. Oh well. That's not nearly as embarrassing as this:

The U.S. attorney's complaint states that Blagojevich mused aloud with his advisers about the possibility that he could seek a high-paying job with Change to Win, the coalition of seven unions -- dominated by SEIU -- that broke away from the AFL-CIO in 2005. Blagojevich and his chief of staff wondered aloud about a "three-way deal" in which he would appoint Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett, a Chicago businesswoman believed to be the woman identified in the complaint as "Candidate 1," to Obama's Senate seat; Blagojevich in return would become Change to Win's executive director; and Obama would reward Change to Win with pro-labor policies. |WaPo|

Even if Blagojevich was just daydreaming, it's still noteworthy that the Governor had that particular fantasy. Why SEIU? Why Change To Win? One suggestion:

The alleged role of the SEIU official was surprising, given that the union had not figured publicly in the investigation into Blagojevich (D). But on another level, the SEIU's apparent involvement is an indication of the extent to which it has, under the leadership of its ambitious and controversial president, Andrew L. Stern, become an omnipresent force in Democratic politics. |WaPo|

This sounds right as a description of what SEIU, Stern, and Change To Win have been up to. One thing to note is that this state of affairs is precisely the opposite of what Stern and his cronies were arguing when he began his campaign to blow up the AFL/CIO four years ago. At that time, Stern was arguing that unions ought not to be so involved in politics, but should instead focus their resources on organizing. He seems to have changed his mind.

A point more clearly: If a crook like Blagojevich^[1] thinks that Executive Director of your labor federation looks like a sweet gig then you've got a problem.

-------------------------
1 - Properly pronounced "bluh GOY-ye vich" in the character of Professor Frink.

It begins

CHICAGO - Laid-off workers at a Chicago factory have occupied the building and are demanding assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay owed to them.

About 200 employees of Republic Windows and Doors are staging the sit-in in shifts after learning earlier this week the plant would close Friday.

Leah Fried (LAY'-uh FREED'), an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, says Republic failed to give 60 days' notice required by law. And, she says, the company claims Bank of America is preventing it from paying wages for those 60 days and earned vacation time.

Bank of America says it's not responsible for Republic's financial obligations. |Chicago Tribune|

Saturday morning cartoon

Empirical data!

For 50 years, from the 40's to the 90's. the province of Ontario had a card-check organizing system....So what was the record there?
....
Arthurs answered that in all of his research about labour law complaints under card check, he could not find a single case where the employer complained of a union intimidating workers to unionize when they didn't want to.

via

Speaking of the bailout

Jonathan Cohn takes an honest look at autoworker compensation.

Well, maybe center-left

A second shock, Barack Obama was the candidate of the Democratic Party. Not of the Peace and Freedom Party. I know it's hard to digest, but true. Third, the American left has failed, let me repeat that, FAILED, to create a credible on-the-ground anti-war movement having initially ceded that task to a gaggle of wack jobs from a sectarian cult known as A.N.S.W.E.R. The payback for that little mistake of 5 years ago has been the evaporation of said movement. So It's not clear to me which instrument the Left is going to use to exert pressure on the new admin to get out of Iraq.

Nor do most good-thinking liberals I know actually do very much, if anything, to actually contribute to a vigorous American union movement except to pay it occasional lip service from afar. After all, union members rarely run in the same social circles as professional activists. [Present readership excluded! -- J]

By contrast, actual real-life union members are not sitting around moping about Rahm Emanuel this weekend, but less than a week after the election they are already ratcheting up their local and nationwide organization to pressure the Democratic congress to pass the much needed Employee Free Choice Act -- a measure that could radically redraw the face of American labor and dramatically expand the organized and progressive electorate. Let's hope we can gin up some "critical support" for this push from the left field bleachers. | Cooper |

Hey Joe

Get a union card you fucking scab.

Relatedly:

Occupational licensing is one of the Leviathan State's biggest scams. Heck, in Mississippi you need a license to be a hair braider. Louisiana licenses florists. And this one takes the cake: Maryland licenses fortune tellers. (See this Reason Foundation report by Adam B. Summers.)

Occupational licenses are often sold as instruments of consumer protection, but their real effect is to strangle entrepreneurship through regulation. When Joe is done making his case against higher taxes, maybe he should make a case against occupational licensing. |The Fever Swamp|

And:

Which to me once again raises the issue of whether or not it really serves the public interest to have so many occupational licensing rules. Like most people, if I needed to hire a plumber, I’d probably look for a recommendation. I don’t have any real confidence that these licensing schemes are tracking quality in any meaningful way, just preventing a certain number of people from earning a living and raising the general cost of plumbing services for everyone else. |Yglesias|

Point the first: It is true enough that one thing licensing schemes do is impose a tax on economic activity. Those of us who do not wish to drown the state in our bathtub are, on general principles, okay with this. Everybody else can take a hike for all I care.

Which still leaves open the question of whether this particular sort of tax is so pernicious that it must be abandoned. In light of the apparent abundance of plumbers and hair braiders, I see no reason to think that the licensing schemes in place now tend to "strangle entrepreneurship."

Point the second: At least in the case of plumbers, the licensing scheme may well be an artifact of labor organizing. Plumbing is similar to trades like bricklaying, carpentry, and electrical work in that it is both a learned skill requiring considerable expertise and a skill which is commonly assumed to be well within reach of most people.

First corollary to point the second: Contra Yglesias, licensing is likely to do something to control quality. It will, at the very least, ensure that a minimum standard is met. Also, insofar as licensing serves as a barrier to entry, it will tend to mean that if you call a plumber at random, that plumber is likely to be experienced at plumbing (where I live, for example, there is a five year apprenticeship).

Second corollary to point the second: While limiting the supply of plumbers increases the cost of plumbing work for consumers, it also increases the wage for plumbers. In my county (which has a high cost of living), the prevailing wage for a plumber is $51.42. Pretty good if you can get your forty, but not so expensive that people forgo plumbing or that economic growth has ground to a halt in face of the prohibative cost of pipes.

Here's a plan that doesn't cost $700 billion

PFNC doesn't intend just to build shelter. It wants to build communities, and McCarthy said the group expects to have the first pilot community on the ground late next year.

"That was our goal, more than just four walls and a roof but to kind of raise the standard of living in Juarez and other places," Nava said.

The shipping containers, which can be hauled by truck, rail or ship, are designed to stack. PFNC envisions a cluster arrangement, eight side by side and four high, with apartment-type balconies and staircases in the corners.

Clusters could be arranged into squares, creating "a safe little plaza in the middle where we hope to build a soccer field or a playground, some safe area for families to be," Nava said.

PFNC wants to set up programs with maquiladoras to offer housing as an employee benefit, helping cut the high rate of worker turnover, now between 7 percent and 10 percent a month, McCarthy said. The company is working with a Mexican law firm that has handled work-to-own housing programs.

"This is not a rental-type situation or free housing while you work here," McCarthy said. "Rather, the employer takes on some of the burden in setting up the financing program to transfer ownership to the employee."

That's important because PFNC needs large orders to keep costs down so low-wage workers can afford the home. The incentive for employers: Studies show housing for employees dramatically increases retention, and having more workers in a given area will reduce the number of buses maquiladoras run to take people to and from their jobs. |CNN|

Gotta say, I can't quite decide whether or not to be horrified by this story. I mean, there's obviously something sketchy about snapping your finger and saying, "I've got an idea, let's house the Mexicans in shipping containers!" On the other hand, the present living conditions of those workers are abominable.

Give 'em hell

The president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Scott E. Carson, said in a written statement: “Over the past two days, Boeing, the union and the federal mediator worked hard in pursuing good-faith explorations of options that could lead to an agreement. Unfortunately, the differences were too great to close.”

Boeing has a backlog of more than 3,600 orders valued at $263 billion in all. The majority of those aircraft are versions of the Boeing 737, a short-range plane that is the world’s most popular.

Boeing, which earned a record $4.1 billion in 2007, could easily withstand a short strike. But a long walkout could cause more delays in the development of the Boeing 787, a long-range jet nicknamed the Dreamline |NY Times|

Palin's constitutional authority

Palin apologists are saying that Palin had the constitutional authority to fire the trooper, and so did nothing improper. There's a whole lot of wrong in there, but focus on the bare assertion. Does Palin have that power?

Wooten, the employee in question, is a an Alaskan State Trooper employed by the Division of Public Safety. Troopers in Alaska aren't covered by a comprehensive collective bargaining agreement, but they do have a union, the PSEA, and it's clear from the PSEA's grievance update (PDF!) that PSEA represents terminated troopers in arbitration proceedings. That says to me that troopers are not at will employees, but can only be fired for cause.

This is confirmed by Title 2 of the Alaska Administrative Code, specifically by Articles 9 and 10 of Chapter 7.

Article 9 sets the rules for separation and demotion of public employees. Section 415 Dismissal says, in part, "The appointing authority may dismiss a permanent employee for just cause only." Section 400 provides that employees may be suspended with pay while alleged misconduct is investigated, and may be suspended without pay as a result of misconduct. Second, Section 420 says that an employee may be involuntarily demoted "for just cause". Article 10, specifically section 440, sets up an elaborate system of hearings to resolve disputes in cases of suspension, demotion, or dismissal.

Now, I'm no lawyer, and I don't know how this compares to other civil service legislation, but to me this reads pretty straightforwardly as a system in which the governor lacks the authority to fire ordinary state employees.

And, in fact, even insta-astronuts agree:

Monegan alleged shortly after his dismissal that it may have been partly due to his reluctance to fire an Alaska State Trooper, Mike Wooten, who had been involved in a divorce and child custody battle with Palin’s sister, Molly McCann.[47] In 2006, before Palin was governor, Wooten was briefly suspended for ten days for threatening to kill McCann’s (and Palin’s) father, tasering his 11-year-old stepson (at the stepson’s request), and violating game laws. After a union protest, the suspension was reduced to five days. |Right Thinking|

North to Alaska

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