Berkeley Worker

This article talks about the idea that “… the more union members in an economy, the better workers’ pay.”

How to Solve America’s Wage Crisis

By David Sirota, Creators Syndicate. Posted July 24, 2008.

When labor rights are protected, wages go up. It’s time to make union-membership a civil right.

History books teem with six-word phrases, from the comforting (”Nothing to fear but fear itself”) to the inspiring (”Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”) to the embarrassing (”Read my lips, no new taxes”). But the six words, “on the basis of union membership” could be more momentous than any of those. Though hardly Roosevelt’s rhetoric, Reagan’s bluster or Bush’s clumsiness, the clause could solve America’s wage crisis.

Of course, when Tom Geoghegan told me this in a Chicago park two weeks ago, I almost snarfed my coffee through my nose. Solving major social problems typically demands more than six words. But as the longtime labor lawyer and author explained his idea to me on a muggy afternoon, it started making sense.

Geoghegan reminded me that data show the more union members in an economy, the better workers’ pay. The problem, he said, is that weakened labor laws are allowing companies to bully and fire union-sympathetic workers, thus driving down union membership and wages.

Enter Geoghegan’s six words. If the Civil Rights Act was amended to prevent discrimination “on the basis of union membership,” it would curtail corporations’ anti-labor assault by making the right to join a union an official civil right.
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… In China of all places.

Wal-Mart in pay deals with Chinese unions

By Tom Mitchell in Hong Kong | Published: July 24 2008 23:42

Wal-Mart, the US retail giant known for fending off organised labour in its home market, has completed collective bargaining agreements with unions in two Chinese cities.

The agreements reached with government-approved unions in Shenyang and Quanzhou come less than two years after the official All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) launched a high-profile campaign to organise workers and mark a new chapter in the development of the China’s labour movement.

The agreement in Shenyang locks in an 8 per cent pay rise both this year and next for Wal-Mart employees, a company spokesman and union officials told the Financial Times on Thursday. By comparison the average hourly wage in Wal-Mart’s US stores, which are not unionised, has risen 12 per cent since January 2005, from $9.68 to $10.86. While a comparative figure for Wal-Mart’s China employees is not available, the minimum wage in Shenyang is Rmb700 ($102) a month.

Employees in Quanzhou, who formed the first Wal-Mart union in August 2006, secured a similar increase in an agreement signed on Wednesday. More than 48,500 people work at 105 Wal-Mart stores across China. All have been unionised over the past two years and their representatives are negotiating collective contracts with management.
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Labor’s aim for this election is to turn-out 13 million labor friendly voters.

Labor’s Foot Soldiers

July 27, 2008 By Dick Meister

Organized labor is making certain Barack Obama and other Democratic candidates will have plenty of foot soldiers to help them round up votes on this year’s campaign trails.

The AFL-CIO has already launched what is likely to be the biggest and most intensive political mobilization in labor history. The federation is hoping to play a major role in electing Obama president and in electing enough other Democrats to create a “worker-friendly Congress.”

Thousands of volunteers, many going door-to-door, are slated to spread the word among union members and others. They’ll be speaking urgently of a need to replace anti-labor President George Bush with pro-labor Obama rather than anti-labor John McCain, and to increase the Democrats’ Senate margin by enough to block Republican filibusters of pro-labor legislation.

Labor aims to turn out more than 13 million voters - union members, their families, retirees and others - in two-dozen key states, where volunteers also will campaign for labor supporters who are seeking state and local offices.
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The Employee Free Choice Act has become the new Willie Horton to the right. The following article talks about how the EFCA is being used to rally Republicans in Nevada.

Ensign finds an ace in Senate election hole: Fear of unions

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“It’s our No. 1 issue to raise money on,” [Senator John] Ensign said last week. “It scares anybody who’s in business to death.”

Indeed, Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson told The Wall Street Journal the union-backed bill was “one of the two fundamental threats to society.” (The other, he said, was radical Islam.)

Ensign has plenty of help. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Freedom’s Watch, an independent group financed in large part by Adelson, among others, have launched multimillion-dollar offensives against the card check legislation, calling it “un-American,” something that, as one chamber official put it, would “Europeanize the American workforce.”

Opponents are casting the bill as an attempt by labor and its Democratic allies to strip workers of the right to a secret ballot. Card check, they say, would allow organizers to intimidate workers into signing union cards and “turn back the clock on our economy.”
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Another commentary in support of EFCA.

Commentary: The Big Lie being spread about EFCA

By Bill McCarthy | 20 July 2008

MINNEAPOLIS - In recent weeks, you may have seen ads on TV or news releases or letters to the editor in your local newspaper bashing “big labor” and the Employee Free Choice Act.

The EFCA is federal legislation — passed by the U.S. House but stalled in the U.S. Senate — that will make it easier for workers to organize unions. Both the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Federation have united to make passing EFCA a priority for the new Congress in 2009.

In attacking the EFCA, opponents distort the facts and charge that the legislation would end secret ballot elections in union organizing drives. Not true.

The foundation of modern labor law, the Wagner Act of 1935, provided a path to union recognition when a majority of workers in a workplace signed union authorization cards — simple and fair.
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This commentary explores that issue in light of anti-union ads.

think it’s easy to form a union? better think again!

i saw the unionfacts.com ads multiple times during the same commercial break while watching the 5 and 6 pm newscast recently in lower arkansas (LA). mary landrieu is up for re-election and thus a target Think it’s easy to form a union? Better think again

19 Jul 2008 | By DON McINTOSH, Associate Editor

Have you seen the ads? Center for Union Facts, a business-funded anti-union group, has been running a pair of television ads in Oregon and several other states. One uses humor, the other sarcasm, but their key message is that “union bosses” are trying to change federal law to force people to join unions without a secret ballot election.

The ads are running in states that have competitive U.S. Senate races this year, because the fate of the bill the group opposes is in the hands of the Senate. It’s called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). It’s a labor law reform that would make it easier for workers to join a union and get a union contract. It passed the U.S. House by a wide margin last year, and a majority of U.S. senators support the bill. But President Bush says he will veto it if it ever reaches his desk. Republicans led a filibuster when EFCA came to the floor of the Senate. It takes 60 votes to end a filibuster, and there weren’t enough votes to do it. Oregon Republican Gordon Smith voted on the side to kill the Employee Free Choice Act.

Federal law gives workers the right to join a union. If you think workers have an easy time exercising that right, you’d be wrong.

Some employers voluntarily sign union contracts in order to get skilled union trades workers. But in most workplaces, employers turn workplaces into war zones when union organizers appear.
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… exploited guest workers, mostly from China and Vietnam. The allegations is that they work “‘… 16 hours a day, seven days a week, while being paid less than half the legal minimum wage.’ Workers are forced to live in company dormitories and deported for complaining about poor treatment, the report finds.”

The Dark Side of the Toyota Prius

Wednesday 16 July 2008 | by: Paul Abowd, In These Times

The National Labor Committee (NLC), a New York-based human rights group, has been investigating working conditions at Toyota Motor Corp., and the labor used to produce its best-selling Prius hybrid cars.

In its 65-page report released in June, NLC includes first-hand testimony of factory conditions in “Toyota City,” outside of Nagoya, Japan - less than 200 miles southwest of Tokyo - where the largest auto company in the world employs some 70,000 people.

The report alleges that Toyota exploits guest workers, mostly shipped in from China and Vietnam. According to the NLC, these workers are “stripped of their passports and often forced to work - including at subcontract plants supplying Toyota - 16 hours a day, seven days a week, while being paid less than half the legal minimum wage.” Workers are forced to live in company dormitories and deported for complaining about poor treatment, the report finds.
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Labor Radio. Always a good source for labor related articles.

Of Note:

Workers rights and anti-LGBT politicking.

Unite Here article:

San Diego Hotel Workers and LGBT Community Boycott Manchester Hyatt!

July 16, 2008

Hotel Workers and LGBT community unite to fight discrimination against gays and lesbians and workers.

On July 10th, UNITE HERE and LGBT leaders announced a full-scale boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego. The coalition is calling for Hyatt to take action to correct a record of discrimination against workers at the hotel. Manchester’s Hyatt forces housekeepers to clean more rooms than housekeepers at other some Hyatt hotels, and workers at the Manchester Hyatt have no job security if the hotel is sold. The owner of the hotel Douglas Manchester, has also funded discrimination against the LGBT community. Manchester donated $125,000 to a political committee supporting Proposition 8, a November ballot initiative in California that seeks to make it illegal for loving gay and lesbian couples to marry. Hyatt should fire Manchester for Discrimination!
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Is this how you win favor — by bashing workers and public education and Barack Obama?

McCain bashes workers, public education at NAACP meet

Author: Joe Sims | People’s Weekly World Newspaper, 07/17/08 05:18

“Bashing workers” was how AFL-CIO executive vice president Arlene Holt-Baker, characterized presumptive Republican nominee John McCain’s speech at the 99th convention of the NAACP in Cincinnati on Wednesday. “He took the opportunity to, quite frankly, bash workers who are in education, our teachers,” she said, according to reporter Jim Provanche of the Toledo Blade. The labor leader continued “I do not believe we should be moving toward discounting public education. Public education should be funded adequately. Teachers should be compensated adequately so we’d see more people coming into the system to teach.” McCain’s speech at the civil rights conference promoted school vouchers and privatization.

Taking a swipe at Obama and the AFT McCain said, “In remarks to the American Federation of Teachers last weekend, Senator Obama dismissed public support for private school vouchers for low-income Americans as “tired rhetoric” about vouchers and school choice. All that went over well with the teachers union, but where does it leave families and their children who are stuck in failing schools?”

A few moments later he ratcheted up the attack, “No entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity,” to attend a charter school.
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