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MAY 2008
TWO MAJOR UNIONS MAKE SECRET AGREEMENTS
WITH CORPORATIONS
KRIS MAHER, WALL STREET JOURNAL Two of
the nation's largest labor unions have struck confidential agreements
with large employers that give the companies the right to designate
which of their locations, and how many workers, the unions can
seek to organize.
The agreements are raising questions about
union transparency and workers' rights. A summary document put
together by the unions says it is critical to the success of
the partnership "that we honor the confidentiality and not
publicly disclose the existence of these agreements." That
includes not disclosing them to union members.
The agreements involve workers who provide
food, laundry and housekeeping services on an outsourced basis.
The employers are Sodexho Inc. and the Compass Group USA unit
of London-based Compass Group PLC. The unions are the 1.7 million-member
Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, and Unite Here.
The unions say they negotiated a similar agreement with Aramark
Corp. but that Aramark broke the deal last year, and they're
trying to reach a new one. An Aramark spokesman declined to comment
on that.
The unions defend the agreements and their
secrecy, saying they've helped workers join unions in growing
industries at a time of declining union membership in many sectors.
Last year, 7.5% of private-sector workers belonged to unions,
compared with 17% 25 years ago. The agreements have "resulted
in tens of thousands of workers getting unions" and been
a major advance for the labor movement, said the president of
Unite Here, Bruce Raynor.
He defended keeping them confidential,
saying the companies involved insisted on that for competitive
reasons. . .
Labor experts said agreements such as those
the SEIU and Unite Here reached open a window on a big debate
within organized labor: what kind of tradeoffs to make . . .
A key question in the agreements is determining
at which sites a union can organize. Unite Here's Mr. Raynor
said specific sites where unions can organize are selected jointly
by the companies and the unions.
The unions gave up the right to strike
and to post derogatory language about the companies on bulletin
boards. With Compass, the unions agreed to these restrictions
"anywhere in the world." In exchange, the companies
agree not to oppose union organizing at the designated locations.
But limits are also set. "Local unions
are not free to engage in organizing activities at any Compass
or Sodexho locations unless the sites have been designated,"
says the confidential summary.
APRIL 2008
THE BIG SQUEEZE
Steven Greenhouse
STEVEN GREENHOUSE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
- Some people ask me why I called my new book, "The Big
Squeeze." The answer is simple: The nation's corporations
have been squeezing workers every which way in their drive to
push down labor costs. This, unfortunately, has left the nation's
workers (and consumers) weakened and weary even before we feel
the full brunt of a recession that will inevitably mean unemployment
and lower paychecks for many Americans.
This squeeze has taken one especially disturbing
form: many corporations have cut costs by violating wage-and-
hour laws. Managers at Wal-Mart, Pep Boys and Family Dollar,
told me that they secretly erased hours from employees' time
records because of fierce pressures to minimize costs. At many
companies, managers strong-arm employees into working off the
clock; hourly employees who clock out at, say, 5 p.m., are ordered
to work an hour or two extra unpaid. Swift & Company, Smithfield
Foods and Wal-Mart each employed, directly or through contractors,
more than 1,000 illegal immigrants, who often accept lower wages
than native-born workers.
In my research, I found that many companies
also squeeze workers by treating them with a shocking lack of
dignity. A Wal-Mart cashier in Kansas City told me that managers
were so stingy about bathroom breaks that some cashiers ended
up soiling themselves. RadioShack had the gall to fire 400 workers
at its Fort Worth headquarters by e-mail, the message saying,
"Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated."
Corporate executives told Myra Bronstein, a software engineer
in Seattle, that as long as the company did well and she worked
hard - she put in many 14-hour days - she would have a job. But
one day the company suddenly fired Bronstein and 17 other engineers,
telling them that if they wanted any severance pay, they had
to spend the next four weeks training the workers from India
who would be replacing them.
The biggest squeeze has been on wages and
benefits. During the economic expansion that began in November
2001, corporate profits soared, while productivity per worker
rose more than 15 percent. Nonetheless, hourly wages for the
typical worker have inched up by just 1 percent since then, after
inflation, while median income for working-age households has
fallen nearly $2,400 to $54,726 since 2000, according to the
most recent Census Bureau report on poverty and income.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation,
employee premiums for family-health insurance coverage have doubled
in seven years, rising by $1,650 on average. And the number of
Americans without health insurance has jumped by 8.6 million
since 1999, to 47 million. Many young people just starting work
are finding it surprisingly tough, because entry-level wages
have slid since 2001, after inflation, while the percentage of
entry-level jobs offering health or pension coverage has fallen
as well.
For millions of Americans, the up escalator
toward the American dream has stalled, although those at the
very top have thrived. Income for the middle-fifth of Americans
has risen a modest 21 percent since 1979 (largely because both
spouses, taken together, are working far more hours than before).
Meanwhile, income for the top 1 percent has more than tripled.
One study found that the top 1 percent has 22 percent of all
reported income, up from 9 percent in 1980. The top 1 percent
earns more after tax than the bottom 40 percent of Americans.
Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury secretary and Harvard president,
has calculated that if income inequality had remained unchanged
since 1979, the bottom 80 percent of Americans would be earning
$670 billion more per year - or $8,000 more per household.
ORDER
MANY
ON FORTUNE TOP 50 AT BOTTOM OF LIST FOR EMPLOYEES
PHIL MATTERA, DIRT DIGGERS DIGEST Fortune
magazine has come out with the latest edition of its list of
the 500 largest publicly traded U.S. corporations, and all the
attention will be paid to which companies rank higher or lower
based on revenue. For the average person, another measure of
the performance of those giant corporations may be more relevant:
the extent to which they are depressing wage rates by getting
rid of unions or continuing to keep them out of their operations.
. .
One way to gauge this is to look at the
new 10-K filings that companies have been issuing in recent weeks.
Each of those documents-annual reports submitted to the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission-has a section on employees
in which companies have traditionally given an indication of
the extent to which their workforce is unionized.
I decided to look at these sections for
the top 50 on the new Fortune list. I found that, of that group,
only five reported that a majority of their U.S. employees are
covered by a collective bargaining agreement: General Motors,
Ford, AT&T, Kroger and UPS. An additional half dozen reported
that a minority of their U.S. workers have union protection:
Verizon (40%), Boeing (36%), General Electric (15%), Costco (11%),
AmerisourceBergen (4%) and Wellpoint ("a small portion").
Two companies-United Technologies and Marathon Oil-mention unions
but don't indicate the extent of their presence. The remaining
35 companies (State Farm and Freddie Mac don't file 10-Ks) make
no reference to unions or declare they are union free.
MARCH 2008
CALIFORINIA JUDGE ORDER STARBUCKS
TO PAY MORE THAN $100 MILLION IN BACK TIPS
CNN A Superior Court judge on Thursday
ordered Starbucks to pay its California baristas more than $100
million in back tips and interest that the coffee chain paid
to shift supervisors. San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia
Cowett also issued an injunction that prevents Starbucks' shift
supervisors from sharing in future tips, saying state law prohibits
managers and supervisors from sharing in employee gratuities.
Starbucks spokeswoman Valerie O'Neil said
the company planned an immediate appeal of the ruling, calling
it "fundamentally unfair and beyond all common sense and
reason." The lawsuit was filed in October 2004 by Jou Chou,
a former Starbucks barista in La Jolla, who complained shift
supervisors were sharing in employee tips. The lawsuit gained
ground in 2006 when it was granted class-action status, allowing
the suit to go forward for as many as 100,000 former and current
baristas in the coffee chain's California stores.
QWEST SUPERVISOR TELLS WORKES TO USE URINE BAGS
TO SAVE BATHROOM RUNS
AP- Union officials in Colorado say a Qwest
supervisor tried to cut down on lengthy bathroom breaks by telling
workmen to use disposable urinal bags in the field. The manager
distributed the bags to 25 male field technicians, telling them
not to waste time leaving a job site to search for a public bathroom,
the Rocky Mountain News reported. "We deal with a lot of
silliness in corporate America, but you've got to admit, it takes
the freakin' cake," Reed Roberts, an administrative director
at the Communications Workers of America District 7, told the
newspaper. . . Qwest spokeswoman Jennifer Barton said, "There's
no policy whatsoever" requiring field technicians to use
the bags. . . Roberts said he had complained to Qwest's corporate
labor relations department. He said the company has made an issue
of the amount of time wasted by workers returning to the garage
or central office for bathroom breaks. But he said it appears
this manager "took it upon himself to cut down on the time
technicians spend to go to the bathroom."
BANANA REPUBLIC BECOMES SWEATSHOP TARGET
GUARDIAN, UK One of the biggest fashion
retailers in the US last night began an investigation into allegations
that workers in India who make its clothes are being forced to
work more than 70 hours a week for as little as 15p an hour.
Ahead of today's high-profile opening of its three-story European
store in London, Banana Republic said it was "deeply concerned"
by the claims and insisted it made frequent factory visits to
check that suppliers complied with the law and with the company's
ethical code. . . The alleged plight of the Indian workers who
are making Banana Republic's clothes will be publicized by the
charity War on Want, which plans a demonstration at the opening
of the London store. . . Garment workers interviewed by the Guardian
near Delhi claimed they were verbally abused if they complained,
saying they could be docked money for petty disputes. Other workers
said they had been "coached" to lie about the amount
of overtime they had to do; the overtime is meant to be capped
at two hours a day.
ENFORCING FUN IN THE WORKPLACE
MATT LABASH, WSEEKLY STANDARD - Wilmington,
Del. If you're a loyal employee like me, you occasionally check
your company's Vision Statement to make sure all the T's in "empowerment"
have been crossed, and the I's in "mission" have been
dotted. But if you come across buzzwords like "excellence"
and "leadership," you should know that your corporate
culture is sadly behind the curve--those terms are as '90s as
Reebok Pumps, Zima, and Total Quality Management. There's a new
core value on the loose, and it goes by the name of "Fun."
Maybe you assumed the fun stopped when
the tech bubble burst. Or at least you hoped it did. After all,
who could stand to read yet another profile of the ubiquitous
IPO-enriched dot-commissar, who'd get the toe of his footie-pajamas
(which he wore in his nonhierarchical workspace) caught in the
brake of his indoor Razor scooter, causing him to bump into the
Pachinko-machine/copier, making him spill his Tazoberry Crème
Frappuccino all over the conference-room foosball table? Ahhhh,
the boyish hijinks of it all. With the benefit of hindsight,
we can all now agree that the real fun was watching dot-com execs
ride their Segways to the unemployment line.
But if you thought the fun stopped there,
you're sadly mistaken. Like a diseased appendix bursting and
spreading infectious bacteria throughout the abdomen, fun is
insinuating itself everywhere, into even the un-hippest workplaces.
Witness the August issue of Inc. magazine, the self-declared
"Handbook of the American Entrepreneur." Emblazoned
on its cover was "Fun! It's the New Core Value." Beneath
that was a photo of Jonathan Bush, the CEO of athenahealth, which
helps medical practices interact with insurers. Bush was tearing
his shirt apart to reveal a Batman costume underneath, the same
costume in which he gave a full presentation to a prospective
client after making a deal with one of his employees that if
the latter lost 70 pounds, the management team would dress as
superheroes for a day.
But that's just the beginning. There are
18 pages of similar stories to instruct and inspire employers
to keep their employees happy at all costs, because happy employees
make for happy customers. There are rubber chickens, Frisbee
tosses, mustache-growing contests, pet psychics, interoffice
memos alligator-clipped to toy cars, and ceremonies that honor
employees for such accomplishments as having "the most animated
hand gestures." Perks include on-campus wallyball courts,
indoor soccer fields, air hockey, ping pong, billiards, yoga
and aerobics classes, company pools and hot tubs, and Native-American
themed nap rooms so that employees can sleep (sleep!) at work.
And that's all at just one company--Aquascape, a supplier to
pond-builders based in St. Charles, Illinois. . .
JANUARY 2008
HOW THE LABOR UNIONS BLEW THIS ELECTION
IAN WELSH, HUFFINGTON POST - Unions in
America have been in a decline for over 60 years. Union membership
has dropped from almost 35% of all workers in 1945 to less than
15% today. In fact, union membership has declined to almost exactly
the same percentage as it was in 1930 before FDR took power and
encouraged the growth of unions. . . The mainline old unions
centered around industrial concerns like GM and Ford have shrunk
to a tiny fraction of their former self; and despite the efforts
of the SEIU unions and others, new economy workers mostly have
not been organized.
The National Labor Relations Board, created
by the Wagner Act in 1935 as independent agency of United States
Governments holds the official mandate to conduct elections for
labor union representation and to investigate and remedy unfair
labor practices. Under the Bush administration, the NLRB has:
- made it impossible for large numbers
of workers to join unions;
- potentially reclassified many workers
as supervisors (including many nurses) in order to remove them
from unions;
- passed numerous rulings which treat employers
in one way, and unions in another.
The union movement, it is fair to say,
is in many respects in its weakest position in over 60 years.
Another 4 or 8 years of a Republican presidency
could doom American unions, pushing them below 10% and subjecting
them to more and more hostile NLRB rulings, which will cripple
what ability they have to organize. Even a moderate Democratic
president who halts the slide at the NLRB but doesn't reverse
it will leave unions in a shaky situation. . .
Amongst the Democratic candidates it's
safe to say that Hilary Clinton, who has as her main advisor
a union buster and whose husband did very little for unions,
would be a largely status quo President. Her board would be decent,
she'd be bad but not awful on trade, and she wouldn't sink a
lot of personal capital into union issues.
As with many things with Obama, it's hard
to determine how good or bad he'd be, but one has to have their
doubts about a Democratic candidate who argued that union advertisements
in Iowa were unacceptable, and who acted as if union money were
the equivalent of corporate money. Certainly there are those
who see unions and corporation as little different--but they
aren't friends of unions.
John Edwards has spent the last four years
working with unions, walking their picket lines and making their
cause his. He's clearly the most pro-union of the three remaining
candidates; his primary issue is economic justice and he believes
that corporations have too much power. His campaign, from the
very beginning, was predicated on union support.
But unions didn't reciprocate.
Lists of major union endorsements make
this clear. AFL-CIO unions predominantly endorsed Clinton, and
in fact more major unions endorsed Clinton than anyone else,
with Edwards coming in second in the endorsement stakes. Most
recently Nevada's largest union, the culinary union endorsed
Obama and is working hard for him in that key swing state.
Now let's imagine a world in which labor
had taken a strong stand and endorsed the candidate who was most
pro-labor, John Edwards. Edwards came in second in Iowa, behind
Obama by 8%. It is hard to believe that if unions had come in,
say 4 months ago, and used their ground machine (still, even
today, probably the best organizing machine in the Democratic
party) that they couldn't have swung the election 8 points. .
.
And here's the thing--neither Clinton nor
Obama, should they win now, will feel a massive debt to Labor.
The endorsements were useful and appreciated, and they helped.
But they weren't desperately needed. The payback will be a slightly
better NLRB, but not enough to save American labor. . .
I can only assume that labor read too many
polls and made too many political calculations. . . The irony
here is that if labor had taken a strong stand and put their
own best interests first instead of triangulating and currying
political favor, the strongest pro-labor candidate would be in
the lead today.
DECEMBER 2007
WHAT HAPPENED TO LABOR UNIONS
PAUL KRUGMAN, NY TIMES - Once upon a time,
back when America had a strong middle class, it also had a strong
union movement. These two facts were connected. Unions negotiated
good wages and benefits for their workers, gains that often ended
up being matched even by nonunion employers. They also provided
an important counterbalance to the political influence of corporations
and the economic elite.
Today, however, the American union movement
is a shadow of its former self, except among government workers.
In 1973, almost a quarter of private-sector employees were union
members, but last year the figure was down to a mere 7.4 percent.
. .
It's often assumed that the U.S. labor
movement died a natural death, that it was made obsolete by globalization
and technological change. But what really happened is that beginning
in the 1970s, corporate America, which had previously had a largely
cooperative relationship with unions, in effect declared war
on organized labor.
Don't take my word for it; read Business
Week, which published an article in 2002 titled How Wal-Mart
Keeps Unions at Bay. The article explained that "over the
past two decades, Corporate America has perfected its ability
to fend off labor groups." It then described the tactics
- some legal, some illegal, all involving a healthy dose of intimidation
- that Wal-Mart and other giant firms use to block organizing
drives.
These hardball tactics have been enabled
by a political environment that has been deeply hostile to organized
labor, both because politicians favored employers' interests
and because conservatives sought to weaken the Democratic Party.
"We're going to crush labor as a political entity,"
Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist, once declared.
GOVERNMENT SAYS CORPORATIONS BAN BAR
UNION-RELATED E-MAIL
RAW STORY - Employers have the right to
bar employees from sending union-related E-mails using company
servers, the New York Times reports. The National Labor Relations
Board ruled 3-2 that an employer, using internal company policy,
has the right to classify a union-related communication as a
"non-job-related solicitation." The two dissenting
board members noted that E-mail has become a major form of communication
in the workplace, and disagreed with the majority's assertion
that a company's "property rights" trump an employee's
right to organize and discuss workplace-related issues with other
workers.
The ruling involved The Register-Guard,
a newspaper in Eugene, Ore., and e-mail messages sent in 2000
by Susi Prozanski, a newspaper employee who was president of
the Newspaper Guild's unit there. She sent an e-mail message
about a union rally and two others urging employees to wear green
to show support for the union's position in contract negotiations.
. .
"Anyone with e-mail knows that this
is how employees communicate with each other in today's workplace,"
said Jonathan Hiatt, general counsel for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. "Outrageously
in allowing employers to ban such communications for union purposes,
the Bush labor board has again struck at the heart of what the
nation's labor laws were intended to protect - the right of employees
to discuss working conditions and other matters of mutual concern."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3086937.ece
NOVEMBER 2007
'OFFICE' STAFF EXPLAIN WRITERS' STRIKE
AUGUST 2007
GREAT MOMENTS IN BRITISH LABOR DISPUTES
TIMES UK - Last week, the Employment Appeal
Tribunal celebrated its 30th anniversary. We marked the occasion
by trawling the archives and dusting off some of the more colorful
UK employment disputes from the past few years.
- Tony Price, the managing director of
WStore UK, an IT company based in Surrey, demanded that his 80
staff submit to a DNA test after a piece of chewing gum got stuck
to a directors' suit trousers. When his global e-mail pointing
out the firm's chewing gum ban leaked to the media, Price cheekily
suggested he would force staff to take lie detector tests to
flush out the culprit. . .
- The cliche of men in the armed serves
cheering themselves up with top-shelf literature is well established,
but it was too much for the Reverend Mark Sharpe, 37. The trainee
chaplain left the Royal Navy declaring himself "horrified"
by the amount of pornography below decks and issued a claim for
sexual harassment and discrimination on the ground of his religious
beliefs. At a tribunal in Exeter, the Navy admitted sexual harassment
but denied the religious discrimination charge. Reverend Sharpe
accepted an undisclosed sum in damages and is now a rural rector.
- Sally Bing, a 31-year-old town clerk,
won her claim for sexual discrimination and victimisation against
the mayor of Chard, Tony Prior, after the 67-year-old putative
lothario became infatuated with her. "We were standing shoulder
to shoulder looking at a wall map of Chard," the mayor explained.
"When she stood close to me, it sent a sexual thrill through
me. That was possibly when I wondered whether she had sexual
feelings towards me." The married Prior invited Bing on
a walking tour of Andorra, and his advances eventually became
so bad she rearranged the furniture in her office to create an
escape route in case he appeared. . .
- Wayne Simpson, an EDF Energy salesman,
lost his L28,000-a-year job after he sent a customer a picture
of himself sitting naked drinking whisky in a bubble bath. Simpson
had met the female customer while selling door-to-door on Tyneside;
he obtained her number and later sent the picture with a message
saying, "Fancy going out for a drink sometime?" The
woman didn't and instead reported him to the company and the
police. Simpson accused EDF of lacking a sense of humor. "I
wasn't even showing off my naughty bits," he said.
- Sue Storer, a 48-year-old teacher at
Bedminster Down Secondary School in Bristol, sought damages of
L1 million for sex discrimination and constructive dismissal
claiming she had been forced to sit in a chair that made embarrassing
sounds every time she moved. . . Requests for a new chair had
been repeatedly ignored while male colleagues were given sleek,
executive-style chairs, she said. Her claim was thrown out.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article2047646.ece
JULY 2007
WHAT WORKERS DON'T LIKE ABOUT MEETINGS
Disorganization tops the list as the biggest
frustration for meeting attendees, according to a new "Ouch
Point" study by Opinion Research USA that measured the tolerance
thresholds of U.S. workers at business meetings.
Of 1,037 full or part-time workers polled,
27 percent ranked disorganized, rambling meetings as their top
frustration, followed by 17 percent who said they were annoyed
by peers who interrupt and try to dominate meetings.
Respondents considered Black Berry use
less intrusive than people falling asleep during a meeting --
9 percent of respondents were bothered by co-workers nodding
off, compared to just 5 percent who said they get frustrated
by others checking e-mail. Respondents also cited cell-phone
interruptions (16 percent) and meetings without refreshments
(6 percent) as more annoying than the much-maligned Black Berry.
Among the other "ouch points"
ranked by respondents were: meetings without bathroom breaks
(8 percent) and people leaving the meeting early or arriving
late (5 percent). Only 4 percent of respondents said they were
most frustrated by meetings that start late and those that end
without distributing a written recap.
Respondents from the Northeast were less
bothered by disorganized meetings than those from other parts
of the country. Additionally, respondents over the age of 55
considered meetings without a bathroom break a significant issue,
and for respondents ages 18 to 24, serving food is a priority
at meetings.
http://www.inc.com/news/articles/200705/meetings.html
MAY 2007
DC LABOR - Unionized professional women
receive better wages and benefits than women in the non-union
sector but women still make less than their male counterparts
according to a new fact sheet. "The union difference is
quite apparent when you look at the median weekly wages"
for professional women, according to Professional Women: Vital
Statistics, a fact sheet just published by the Department of
Professional Employees (DPE), AFL-CIO. Examples include "union
preschool and kindergarten teachers earned a whopping 56.7% more
than their non-union counterparts…union librarians earned
almost 29% more than their non-union counterparts, while union
social workers and counselors earned 27 and 26.4% more, respectively."
But the wage gap "still plagues the American workforce,"
says the report. In 2006, the "median weekly earnings for
women were 80.8% those of men."
http://www.dclabor.org/
L.A. GANG MEMBERS FIND NEW HOME IN LABOR
UNIONS
SAM QUINONES, LA TIMES -
A large and growing number of Southern California gang members
. . . have joined building-trade unions over the last decade
as construction work has boomed. These good-paying jobs were
once reserved for those with family connections, as fathers recruited
sons. But today, beset by nonunion competition and an aging membership,
unions have stepped up recruitment in minority enclaves where
many young men have criminal pasts. Now homeboy recruits homeboy.
Members of Dog-patch, in Bellflower, and
West Side Wilmas, in Wilmington, are in the Ironworker Union
Locals 416 and 433. Members of the 204th Street gang in the Harbor
Gateway area of Los Angeles are in the Sheet Metal Workers Local
105. And members of the South Side 18th Street Tiny Diablos are
Teamsters.
"We probably make up the majority
of the workforce now," said Albert Frey, once a Crip and
crack dealer, now an apprentice with the Steam-Refrigeration-Air
Conditioning-Pipefitters Union Local 250. . .
For decades, membership in the building
trades was tightly restricted. Unions controlled most of the
work sites throughout Southern California and kept their numbers
low. Most members were white. But even that wasn't enough to
get into a union. . .
By the early 1990s, veteran union members
were retiring and membership fell, while work and nonunion contractors
flourished.
WHY WORKING LESS IS BETTER FOR THE GLOBE
DARA COLWELL, ALTERNET - Americans are
working harder than ever before. The dogged pursuit of the paycheck
coupled with a 24/7 economy has thrust many of us onto a never-ending
treadmill. But of workaholism's growing wounded, its greatest
casualty has been practically ignored -- the planet. . .
Americans work more hours than anyone else
in the industrialized world. According to the United Nations'
International Labor Organization, we work 250 hours, or five
weeks, more than the Brits, and a whopping 500 hours, or 12 and
a half weeks, more than the Germans. So how does ecological damage
figure in to the 40-plus workweek?
Do the math: Longer hours plus labor-saving
technology equals ever-increasing productivity. Without high
annual growth to match productivity, there's unemployment. Maintaining
growth means using more energy and resources, both in manpower
and raw materials, which results in increased waste and pollution.
Unsurprisingly, the United States is the
world's largest polluter. Housing a mere 5 percent of the world's
population, it accounts for 22 percent of its fossil fuel consumption,
50 percent of its solid waste, and, on average, each citizen
consumes 53 times more goods than a person in China, according
to the environmental nonprofit, Sierra Club.
When people work longer hours, they rely
increasingly on convenience items such as fast food, disposable
diapers, or bottled water. Built-in obsolescence has become standard
business practice -- just throw it away and make more -- leaving
mountainous landfills in its wake. "Earning more often means
spending money in ways that are environmentally detrimental.
We're finding that to compensate for lack of time, you actually
need more money to work those extra hours," says Monique
Tilford, acting executive director of the Centre for a New American
Dream, a Maryland group promoting environmentally and socially
responsible consumption. "When people are time-starved they
don't have enough time to be conscious consumers. The overarching
theme of our organization is to remind Americans that every single
dollar they spend has a carbon impact, to make the connection."
If the world started clocking American
hours, then it would be detrimental to its environmental health.
According to a paper issued by the Center for Economic and Policy
Research in Washington, D.C., if Europe moved towards a U.S.-based
economic model, it would consume 15-30 percent more energy by
2050. This would impact fuel prices worldwide and boost carbon
emissions, resulting in additional global warming of 1-2 degrees
Celsius. Any reductions in greenhouse gas emissions made through
conservation, cleaner fuels or green technology would be overwhelmed
by increased industrial output.
"Productivity normally increases every
year, but we haven't seen massive productivity gains reflected
in our working hours," says Mark Weisbrot, CEPR's co-director,
who also authored the study "Are Shorter Work Hours Good
for the Environment?" "Because there's no limit to
what we can consume, a change of values has to take place if
the planet stands a chance of survival."
http://www.alternet.org/environment/52077/
MARCH 2007
NETFLIX LETS EMPLOYEES CHOOSE HOW MUCH
VACATION THEY TAKE
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS - When it comes to
vacation, Netflix has a simple policy: take as much as you'd
like. Just make sure your work is done.
Employees at the online movie retailer often leave for three,
four, even five weeks at a time and never clock in or out. Vacation
limits and face-time requirements, says Netflix Chief Executive
Reed Hastings, are "a relic of the industrial age."
"The worst thing is for a manager
to come in and tell me: 'Let's give Susie a huge raise because
she's always in the office.' What do I care? I want managers
to come to me and say: 'Let's give a really big raise to Sally
because she's getting a lot done' - not because she's chained
to her desk.". . .
Netflix's time off rules - or lack thereof
- are part of a broad culture of employee autonomy instilled
in the company when Hastings founded it a decade ago. The executives
trust staffers to make their own decisions on everything - from
whether to bring their dog to the office to how much of their
salary they want in cash and how much in stock options. Workers
are treated, as chief talent Officer Patty McCord likes to say,
as adults.
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_5493698
FEBRUARY 2007
UNION MEMBERSHIP DROPS TO 12 PERCENT
WILL LESTER, ASSOCIATED PRESS - The number of wage and salary workers who were
union members dropped to 12 percent of the work force last year,
the lowest percentage since the government started tracking that
number over two decades ago. The number of workers in a union
was 20 percent in 1983, when Bureau of Labor Statistics first
provided such comparable numbers, and that number has been declining
steadily. More than a third of American workers, about 35 percent,
were union members in the mid-1950s.
JANUARY 2007
SOME SEE IMMIGRANT RAIDS PART OF RIGHTWING
ATTACK ON LABOR UNIONS
AMY TAYLOR, DRUM MAJOR INSTITUTE
- Is there another agenda behind the recent surge in workplace
raids? Some commentators argue that in addition to a pre-holiday
show of force on the issue of illegal immigration, the raids
are part of a larger conservative agenda aimed at creating a
climate of fear to undermine union organizing efforts.
Union membership is at an all
time low at 12.5%, and not because workers are uninterested in
joining them. Union members and potential members face real challenges
to organizing in the workplace. A recent commentator cites a
"long-standing conservative political objective to eradicate
unions" which has led to 30% of employers terminating pro-union
workers when faced with an organizing drive. Even more employers
will threaten to close a worksite or attempt to use bribery and
favoritism to convince workers to oppose the unions. Furthermore,
the governmental agency charged with addressing unfair labor
practices is the supposedly independent National Labor Relations
Board, notoriously bureaucratic and run by anti-union presidential
appointees. Suffice it to say that it is no coincidence that
union membership is down. And as membership levels have gone
down, wages have stagnated and employee benefits have been slashed
across entire industries.
The reasons for such anti-union
fervor are obvious. Union members had wage increases that were
double the rate of non-union members in 2005. Employers work
hard to keep union membership down to save their own costs.
This is where immigrant workers
come in. The great organizing power of immigrant communities
have often been viewed as fringe movements and placed outside
of the progressive agenda. This has been viewed as a great failure
of the progressive movement. In order for working Americans to
protect their livelihood, they must join hands with the new face
of workers in the U.S., and that includes immigrant workers.
Unions are, for the most part,
already on board and have been outspoken supporters of legislation
creating a pathway to legalization for undocumented workers.
Union leaders understand the connection between immigration reform
and the future of organized labor -- if immigrants did not face
daily threats from their employers because of their immigration
status, they would be more likely to join the ranks of organized
labor fearlessly. . .
If immigrant workers are threatened
underground even more than they already are through the use of
scare tactics such as workplace raids, it will not only be their
families who have less in the bank at the end of the year. The
power of organized labor will continue to decline if unions cannot
join hands with immigrant workers to fight for a living wage
and better working conditions.
http://www.dmiblog.com/
BOSSES RECEIVE LOW RATINGS FROM EMPLOYEES
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY - The
abusive boss has been well documented in movies and even the
Internet. Now, a Florida State University professor and two of
his doctoral students have conducted a study that shines some
light on the magnitude of the problem and documents its effects
on employee health and job performance. . .
Working with doctoral students
Paul Harvey and Jason Stoner, Hochwarter surveyed more than 700
people who work in a variety of jobs about their opinions of
supervisor treatment on the job. The survey generated the following
results:
- Thirty-one percent of respondents
reported that their supervisor gave them the "silent treatment"
in the past year.
- Thirty-seven percent reported
that their supervisor failed to give credit when due.
- Thirty-nine percent noted that
their supervisor failed to keep promises.
- Twenty-seven percent noted
that their supervisor made negative comments about them to other
employees or managers.
- Twenty-four percent reported
that their supervisor invaded their privacy.
- Twenty-three percent indicated
that their supervisor blames others to cover up mistakes or to
minimize embarrassment. . .
http://www.fsu.com/pages/2006/12/04/BigBadBoss.html
OCTOBER 2006
GOP RUN LABOR BOARD MOVES
TO KICK MILLIONS OF WORKERS OUT OF ITS PROTECTION
DALE RUSSAKOFF WASHINGTON POST - The National Labor Relations Board
ruled yesterday that nurses with full-time responsibility for
assigning fellow hospital workers to particular tasks are supervisors
under federal labor law and thus not eligible to be represented
by unions. . . Labor leaders decried the ruling, with AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney saying it "welcomes employers to
strip millions of workers of their right to have a union by reclassifying
them as 'supervisors' in name only." The labor-backed Economic
Policy Institute said the new definition could affect 8 million
workers who give direction to fellow workers in fields ranging
from construction to accounting. . .
The ruling defines workers as
supervisors if they give assignments to other workers, if they
are held responsible for the performance of those assignments
and if they exercise independent judgment rather than follow
an employer's detailed instructions. NLRB members Wilma B. Liebman
and Dennis P. Walsh, the only Democrats on the board, argued
in dissent that the definition was so broad it "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."
AUGUST 2006
AMERICANS THINK MORE HIGHLY OF WAL-MART
THAN OF LABOR UNIONS
RASMUSSEN - Fifty-eight percent
of Americans have at least a somewhat favorable opinion of labor
unions while 33% disagree and have an unfavorable view. . . By
way of comparison, 69% of Americans have a favorable opinion
of a company the unions love to hate-Walmart. Twenty-nine percent
have an unfavorable opinion of the retail giant. Forty-eight
percent (48%) have a favorable opinion of General Motors while
21% hold the opposite view. The volunteer Minutemen who organized
patrols of the Mexican border are viewed favorably by 54% and
unfavorably by 22%.
Fifty-three percent (53%) of
men have a favorable opinion of labor unions along with 61% of
women. White Americans are less likely to have a favorable opinion
of unions than others. Thirty-and-forty-somethings have less
favorable views than those under 30 and over 50.
This year, 38% of Americans say
they celebrate Labor Day as a time to honor the contributions
of workers in society. Forty-five percent celebrate the holiday
as the unofficial end of summer.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2006/August/laborUnions.htm
AMERICAN FAMILIES WORKING 500 HOURS
MORE ANNUALLY THAN 30 YEARS AGO
ROBERT KUTTNER, BOSTON GLOBE - Labor was created by the machinists
union in New York in 1882 as a "workingmen's holiday."
Unions all over America adopted the idea. By 1894, Congress passed
legislation making Labor Day an official holiday. The day also
celebrated the act of organizing, politically and in the workplace,
to improve livelihoods and lives. Today, the politics have largely
been leached out of it. Labor Day is a long weekend that marks
summer's end. And that extra day of rest is needed more than
ever. Government statistics show that the typical family works
about 500 more hours a year than families did 30 years ago, because
it takes two incomes to make it. Even so, family incomes are
failing to keep pace with the cost of living.
This past week, these items have
been in the news:
- The Census Bureau reported
that median incomes for working-age families were down again,
for the fifth straight year. Real median income for households
under age 65 is down by 5.4 percent since 2000, even though the
economy has grown every year. All of that gain has gone to upper-bracket
people and corporate profits.
- The Pew Research Center released
an extensive survey on public attitudes about the economy. Pew
reported, "The public thinks that workers were better off
a generation ago on every key dimension of worker life -- be
it wages, benefits, retirement plans, on-the-job stress, the
loyalty they are shown by employers." And, statistically,
the public is right.
- The Globe recently reported
that chief executives of nonprofit hospitals now routinely make
more than $1 million. University presidents are not far behind.
- The Economic Policy Institute
(on whose board I serve) has released its annual, encyclopedic
report, "The State of Working America." Among its findings:
. . . Employer-provided health coverage declined from 69 percent
in 1979 to 56 percent in 2004. The top 1 percent's share of interest,
dividends, and capital gains has risen from 37.8 percent in 1979
to 57.5 percent in 2003.
40% OF AMERICANS WORKERS TAKING
NO VACATION THIS SUMMER
GUARDIAN, UK - It is already
common knowledge, on the beaches and in the cafes of mainland
Europe, that Americans work too hard - just as it is well known
on the other side of the Atlantic that Europeans, above all the
French and the Germans, are slackers who could do with a bit
of America's vigorous work ethic. But a new survey suggests that
even those vacations American employees do take are rapidly vanishing,
to the extent that 40% of workers questioned at the start of
the summer said they had no plans to take any holiday at all
for the next six months, more than at any time since the late
1970s. . .
The survey by the Conference
Board research group, along with other recent statistics, suggests
an epidemic of overwork among ordinary Americans. A quarter of
people employed in the private sector in the US get no paid vacation
at all, according to government figures. Unlike almost all other
industrialized nations, including Britain, American employers
do not have to give paid holidays.
The average American gets a little
less than four weeks of paid time off, including public holidays,
compared with 6.6 weeks in the UK - where the law requires a
minimum of four weeks off for full-time workers - and 7.9 weeks
for Italy. One study showed that people employed by the US subsidiary
of a London-based bank would have to work there for 10 years
just to be entitled to the same vacation time as colleagues in
Britain who had just started their jobs. . .
Even when they do take vacations,
overworked Americans find it hard to switch off. One in three
find not checking their email and voicemail more stressful than
working, according to a study by the Travelocity website, while
the traumas of travel take their own toll. . .
Left to themselves, Americans
fail to take an average of four days of their vacation entitlement
- an annual national total of 574m unclaimed days.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1854765,00.html
LABOR UNION FORMED AT CHINESE WAL-MART
KFSM - An official Chinese news
agency says the first labor union at a Wal-Mart store in China
has been formed following a lobbying campaign by the country's
official union group. The official Xinhua News Agency reported
today that 30 employees at a Wal-Mart store in the southeastern
city of Quanzhou, in Fujian province, voted Saturday to form
a union.
http://www.kfsm.com/Global/story.asp?S=5216647
APRIL 2006
TRANSIT UNION CHIEF CHEERED AS HE GOES
TO JAIL
ZITA ALLEN, AMSTERDAM NEWS - TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint
turned himself in Monday, April 24 at the Manhattan jail known
as the Tombs, to begin serving a 10-day sentence for leading
the city's first transit strike in 25 years, but not before getting
a hero's send off.
Thousands gathered for a kick-off
rally in front of the Brooklyn courthouse where, only days before,
Judge Theodore Jones had fined the union millions, suspended
its dues check-off and handed down Toussaint's sentence. Labor,
political and community leaders sang his praises before marching
across the Brooklyn Bridge. At one point, marchers chanted his
name so loudly it rumbled like thunder as they passed through
the concrete canyons near City Hall. "Toussaint! Toussaint!
Toussaint!"
For many, Toussaint was following
in the footsteps of freedom fighters like the Haitian hero whose
name he shares, Toussaint L'Overture. In a speech delivered just
before entering jail, Toussaint shied away from comparisons with
those who faced jails and bullets to overcome oppression, but
said, "I stand on their shoulders and I can see by their
light. I am inspired by the example, in our own union and elsewhere,
of leaders who understood that if the cause is just then the
penalty must be borne."
At the pre-march Brooklyn rally,
speaker after speaker said Toussaint's imprisonment is about
more than just the transit strike.
New York State AFL-CIO head Denis
Hughes said it was about an unjust Taylor Law that slaps public
employee unions and their leaders with huge penalties if they
fight for their right to decent wages and benefits while an uncooperative
management gets off "scot-free." Hughes pledged to
fight to make the Taylor Law "a thing of the past."
Stuart Appelbaum, head of the
Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, challenged the
MTA "to do their part and accept the contract" offered
in December and overwhelmingly ratified recently by TWU Local
100 members.
Congressman Major Owens saw this
as a "life and death struggle" for the labor movement.
Accusing Republicans of trying to wipe out the movement, Owens
said "swindlers" and "butchers" in Washington
are already greedily eyeing their pension funds. Pointing to
Enron and other corporations hit by pension scandals, he warned,
"They must not be allowed to touch public pension funds."
Declaring solidarity with Toussaint
and members of TWU Local 100, Patrick Lynch, head of the policemen's
union, stood with his father, a veteran of historic TWU strikes
of 1966 and 1980, and said, "When my father walked the picket
line he was not a criminal and neither are you. When you walked
out you were fighting for the pensions of every person in this
city--union and non-union alike.". . .
Just as he prepared to enter
the jail, Toussaint declared, "The entire labor movement
is being forced to abandon the idea that a militant trade union
can fight back if necessary to protect the lives and security
of our membership. All over the U.S. workers are being asked
to accept declining standard of living, an end of pensions, reductions
in health care and speed-ups in productivity. At the same time
the pay and benefits for corporate managers are exploding. The
era of relative equality in America is ending. Should we sit
still and watch as the gap widens between the rich and the mass
of working poor?"
THE COST OF DEPENDING ON TIPS
TALIA BERMAN, WIRETAP - Last
Monday at lunch in a Spanish restaurant in New York City, server
#228 earned $12. Tuesday at lunch, $14. Thursday night and Friday
night: $480 total. On Saturday morning at lunch, she made $75.
Last summer, in August, the slowest restaurant month of the year
(except in vacation towns), she made less than $500 -- and didn't
make rent.
Thanks to tipping, restaurant
service is one of the most erratically paid professions in the
United States. In some states, tips comprise 100 percent of a
server's income, and all but seven have separate, decreased minimum
wages for tipped employees. On the federal level, the minimum
hourly wage for tipped employees is $2.15. In Kansas, it's $1.59.
With a wage this low, most or
all of it is diverted to payroll taxes, leaving servers and often
table bussers and food runners to survive on the whims of their
wining and dining guests.
So how do servers survive? As
it turns out, many of them don't -- servers have a greater turnover
rate than virtually any other profession. Tipping is part of
the problem, according to Michael Lynn, associate professor of
Consumer Behavior at Cornell University's Hotel School and an
expert on tipping norms and practices, "Part of it has to
do with tipping itself. It's an unsure source of income. If you
are a professional server making money on tips, it is difficult
to establish credit ratings and to buy a house.". . .
http://www.alternet.org/wiretap/34988/
MARCH 2006
THE MEDIA'S WAR ON LABOR
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT and
least covered aspects of media bias is the dislike of labor by
the corporate press. From public radio's board room-sucking Marketplace
to the lack of labor beat reporters on the staffs of newspapers
and the networks, and from labor stories being ignored or buried
on the business pages to a consistent pro-business bias in stories
involving workers, it is hard to find a greater example of the
fraud of media "objectivity."
In keeping with our tradition
of quantifying what you can't reform, we are launching a business
bias rating service on major labor stories. Our standard is simple:
how many paragraphs do you have to read before you find out labor's
side of the story?
Since we obviously can't analyze
every story, we hope readers will provide us with particularly
admirable or egregious examples.
The get started, here are the
number of paragraphs you had to go through to get the union's
side of the story in the matter of the Delphi buyouts:
NEW YORK TIMES: 26
DETROIT NEWS: 22
WASHINGTON POST: 11 in the news section, 27 in the business section
FEBRUARY 2006
TODAY IN HISTORY
1864 -- The Collar Laundry Union
forms in Troy, New York. Led by Kate Mullaney, a National Labor
Union activist, the union successfully increases earnings for
laundresses from 2 dollars to 14 dollars a week. In May 1869,
the women strike for a wage increase with support of the whole
city. Seven thousand attend a mass rally. As the strike drags
on with no end in sight, Mullaney and the union organize a cooperative
called the "Union Linen Collar & Cuff Manufactory."
The co-op provides work for members and combat employer attempts
to starve them out. But the strike ended in defeat when the companies
eliminate their jobs by putting a new paper collar on the market.
The union breaks up and the cooperative is closed
http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/0201.htm
JANUARY 2006
APPROVAL OF LABOR unions has
certainly declined since 1936 - from 72% to 58% says Gallup.
But over the past quarter century the figures have been remarkably
stable - almost the same today as in 1978 (58% vs 59%)
DECEMBER 2005
THE DISAPPEARING PENSION
PROGRESS REPORT - In a move the
company called a "restructuring" that "reflects
the realities of our changing world," Verizon Communications
announced that it will be cutting pension benefits for 50,000
of their managers. "Verizon is the latest in a long line
of U.S. companies that have phased out defined-benefit [pension]
plans." Under such a plan, the employer assumes the risk
and workers are guaranteed a set monthly payment in their retirement
based on length of service, age, and other factors. As USA Today
warns, "The traditional pension, once considered a bedrock
of retirement, is eroding for many American workers -- and working
for a financially strong company is no guarantee a full pension
will be there at retirement." Verizon's move may signal
the beginning of the end of traditional pensions in yet another
industry.
Around 50,000 managers will no
longer earn pension credits after June 30, 2006, and next year's
managerial hires will receive no credits at all; current retirees
will retain their full pensions. In exchange for the pension
freeze, managers will be eligible to invest in 401(k) plans.
In words similar to those used by President Bush to sell his
"ownership society," Verizon's chairman said, "The
changes will also provide employees a transition to a retirement
plan more in line with current trends, allowing employees to
have greater accountability in managing their own finances and
for companies to offer greater portability through personal savings
accounts." Said Pension Rights Center director Karen Friedman:
"If a company as large as Verizon goes in this direction
it could encourage others to do likewise to the detriment of
the retirement security of millions of American workers."
Many big telecom firms have already
taken such steps, with Verizon being only "the latest in
a long string of companies to decide to halt the growth of its
pension plan either to remain competitive, save money or reduce
exposure to regulatory uncertainty." Verizon competitors
AT&T and BellSouth are considering cutting pensions costs
as well. "Chances are, when they see this they'll all be
huddling up," tech analyst Robert Rosenberg said. "This
most likely will be the first of several similar announcements
that we'll see." Both Motorola and Hewlett-Packard have
already "embarked on similar overhauls, switching emphasis
from a defined-benefit plan to 401(k)s and shifting the burden
for saving and investing to employees."
The Pension Benefit Guaranty
Corp., a federal corporation that insures pension benefits and
is financed by employers, reported an accumulated shortfall of
$22.8 billion over the past several years. According to Labor
Department figures, the 29,651 companies that offer single employer
private pension plans underfunded their pension liabilities last
year by $450 billion. This is especially prevalent in the airline
and automotive industries, with Delta, Northwest, and others
dumping their pension liabilities onto PBGC as part of bankruptcy
proceedings. Pension legislation has failed to address much of
the problem and what reform proposals exist have stalled in Congress.
. .
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/prarchives
NOVEMBER 2005
LABOR CONFLICT INCREASING
ZNET - [Wall Street Journal]
reporter Kris Maher [writes that] strikes are spreading along
with other employer-labor fights and company-sponsored lockouts.
These are so far largely defensive battles against management
efforts to cut wages and benefits, but they could be more. And
it's not just graduate assistants taking on greedy NYU and Radio
City Music Hall musicians battling with Cablevision. It's Verizon
Wireless workers and telecom workers at Sprint Corp. and copper
workers at Asarco LLC, too. Labor action is back in the news,
big time. . .
Maher cites Bureau of National
Affairs statistics showing "231 work stoppages initiated
through the end of August, compared with 202 in the same period
last year, with the vast majority being strikes." . . .
Strikers seem to be getting results, too.. Boeing machinists
got a better health-care package after striking, though the outcome
is unclear at Delphi Corp., where the nation's largest car-parts
manufacturer refuses to back away from King Kong sized takeaways
in wages, health care and pensions.
One thing that helps militant
job actions sprout and succeed is that the economy is in recovery,
at least statistically. Historically, it's during economic recoveries,
when the labor market tightens, that unions do best, both on
the picket line and at the bargaining table. It's also why conservative
economists value a degree of unemployment, as a way of tempering
wage demands. The real growth in labor organizing in the mid-1930s
came on the heels of a mini-recovery, and the nation's largest
strike wave hit after World War II, when the economy boomed even
as workers salaries stayed frozen at war levels.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=19&ItemID=9138
OCTOBER 2005
FIRST THEY GO FOR YOUR PENSION, THEN
YOUR RESTROOM BREAK
LOUIS AGUILAR, DETROIT NEWS -
In a memo that was distributed Tuesday to workers at Ford's Michigan
Truck plant in Wayne, plant managers said too many of the factory's
3,500 hourly workers are spending more than the 48 minutes allotted
per shift to use the bathroom. The extra-long breaks are slowing
production of the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator sport
utility vehicles that are built there, the company said.
"In today's competitive
environment, it is important that Michigan Truck plant immediately
address this concern to avoid the risks associated with safety,
quality, delivery, cost and morale," the memo said. . .
Ford supervisors will begin collecting
weekly data on the amount of time workers spend on bathroom breaks
and "respond appropriately," the memo said. Several
workers are crying foul. They say the real issue is that sales
of the Expedition and Navigator have been plummeting for much
of the year as high gasoline prices prompt consumers to switch
to more fuel-efficient models.
When times get tough, some managers
at Michigan Truck get "petty," said Jody Caruana, a
Michigan Truck hourly worker and a committee member for United
Auto Workers Local 900, which represents workers at the plant.
. .
Bathroom monitoring is just one
of a number of "incredibly stupid ideas" being floated
by automakers, said Sandy Munro, CEO of Munro & Associates,
a manufacturing consulting firm in Troy. . . "It's a giant
throwback to the bad old days of the '70s and '80s, when you
squeezed the guy at the bottom of the heap any way you could,"
Munro said. "That only causes lots of discontent, and only
someone from Harvard could think of something as stupid as monitoring
bathroom time." . . .
The memo ends on an upbeat note:
"We look forward to putting this concern behind us as we
obtain your personal commitment in supporting our joint focus
on embracing change."
http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0510/27/A01-363210.htm
BLACK UNION MEMBERS DISAPPEARING
LOUIS UCHITELLE, NY TIMES - Despite a growing economy, the number
of African-Americans in unions has fallen by 14.4 percent since
2000, while white membership is down 5.4 percent. For a while
in the 1980's, one out of every four black workers was a union
member; now it is closer to one in seven. This loss of better-paying
jobs helps to explain why blacks are doing worse than any other
group in the current recovery. Labor leaders have acknowledged
the disproportionate damage to African-Americans, but they decline
to make special efforts to organize blacks and offset the decrease,
saying that all groups need help. That lack of priority angers
one prominent black scholar.
"The future of black workers
is very bleak indeed if they lose their place in the union movement,"
said William Julius Wilson, a professor of sociology and social
policy at Harvard. "I would hope there would be an effort
on the part of union leaders, white and black, to address this
very important issue. They haven't done so as yet."
The decline was particularly
sharp last year. Overall union membership fell by 304,000, and
blacks accounted for 55 percent of that drop, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics reports, even though whites outnumber blacks six to
one in unions (12.4 million to 2.1 million). The trend seems
likely to continue and perhaps accelerate as General Motors and
its principal parts supplier, Delphi, cut costs in their struggle
to be profitable.
"We have lost 20,000 members
since the end of 2000 in Detroit and its suburbs alone,"
said Linda Ewing, director of research for the United Auto Workers,
"and a large number of the workers in the auto and parts
plants in this area are black."
MAY 2005. . .
THE WAL-MART ALTERNATIVE: COSTCO
MOIRA HERBST, LABOR RESEARCH
- These days, the story goes, consumers demand low prices, meaning
goods must be produced and sold cheaply - and retail wages must
be kept as low as possible. Companies like Wal-Mart insist they're
feeling the squeeze and must pay workers poverty wages - even
while netting $10.5 billion in annual profits and awarding millions
to top executives.
But there's another company that
is breaking the Wal- Mart mold: Costco Wholesale Corp., now the
fifth - largest retailer in the U.S. While Wal-Mart pays an average
of $9.68 an hour, the average hourly wage of employees of the
Issaquah, Wash.-based warehouse club operator is $16. After three
years a typical full-time Costco worker makes about $42,000,
and the company foots 92% of its workers' health insurance tab.
How does Costco pull it off?
How can a discount retail chain pay middle-class wages and still
bring in over $880 million in net revenues? And, a cynic may
ask, with Wal-Mart wages becoming the norm, why does it bother?
A number of factors explain Costco's
success at building a retail chain both profitable and fair to
its workers. But the basic formula is one the labor movement
has been advocating for decades: a loyal, well-compensated workforce
means a more efficient and productive one.
Though only about 18% of Costco's
total workforce is unionized, union representation creates a
ripple effect and helps determine labor standards in all stores.
. .
A 2004 Business Week study ran
the numbers to test Costco's business model against that of Wal-Mart.
The study confirmed that Costco's well-compensated employees
are more productive. The study shows that Costco's employees
sell more: $795 of sales per square foot, versus only $516 at
Sam's Club, a division of Wal-Mart (which, like Costco, operates
as a members-only warehouse club). Consequently Costco pulls
in more revenue per employee; U.S. operating profit per hourly
employee was $13,647 at Costco versus $11,039 at Sam's Club.
The study also revealed that
Costco's labor costs are actually lower than Wal-Mart's as a
percentage of sales. Its labor and overhead costs (classed as
SG&A, or selling, general and administrative expenses) are
9.8% of revenues, compared to Wal-Mart's 17%.
http://www.laborresearch.org/print.php?id=391
CORPORADO SUES BECAUSE LIBRARY
WANTS TO USE UNION LABOR
DENNIS YUSKO, ALBANY TIMES UNION - An Albany company sued the Clifton
Park-Halfmoon library's Board of Trustees, claiming the board's
decision to use union labor for its new $15 million facility
discriminates against nonunion workers. The suit -- filed by
attorney Joel Howard in state Supreme Court on behalf of E.W.
Tompkins Inc., a nonunion shop -- seeks a restraining order against
the library board to stop it from awarding contracts for the
project until the matter is settled.
"By including this union-only
project labor agreement with the bid project, the trustees will
not allow me to use my own workers if I win the bid," E.W.
Tompkins President Tom Colloton said.
Project Labor Agreements, or PLAs, do not prevent nonunion companies
from bidding on work, but they guarantee bid winners use mostly
union labor on a job.
 LABOR'S
RIGHTWING FOREIGN POLICY
LABOR DIVIDE GROWS SHARPER
THOMAS B. EDSALL, WASHINGTON POST - Four dissident union presidents have
demanded that their members' names be removed from the AFL-CIO's
master list of 13 million households, attacking what many consider
to be organized labor's most important tool to influence political
campaigns and legislative proceedings on Capitol Hill. "It's
the heart and soul of labor," said an official at the AFL-CIO
who is worried about the growing hostilities within the labor
movement. Top Democrats in the House and Senate have privately
voiced concern over the latest development in the split between
federation President John J. Sweeney and four major unions determined
to force him out of office. . .
The action by the presidents
of the Service Employees International Union, Teamsters, Laborers
and Unite Here is the most serious attack on Sweeney's administration.
The membership of the four unions exceeds 4 million, a third
of the AFL-CIO total. John Wilhelm, who runs the hospitality
industry division of Unite Here, is considering challenging Sweeney
for the presidency of the federation when the AFL-CIO meets in
Chicago in July. In addition, SEIU President Andrew Stern has
threatened to pull out of the AFL-CIO unless major policy and
program changes are made.
APRIL 2005
JOHN SWEENEY'S TIES TO WAR
HAWKS
http://www.laboreducator.org/sweenhawk.htm
HARRY KELBER, LABOR NOTES - AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney has declined to explain why his name and
title appear on a list of supporters of the Project for the New
American Century, an organization whose prime activity is to
promote the establishment of an American global empire through
the use of military and economic power.
On the list of "people associated"
with the Project, besides Sweeney, are: Vice President Dick Cheney,
a founder; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Florida Governor
Jeb Bush, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and
a gallery of neo-conservatives, many from the American Enterprise
Institute and the Heritage Foundation. The list is "current
to Dec. 2004."
The Project for a New American
Century is a think tank, founded in 1997, whose principles are
now the governing foreign and military policies of the Bush administration.
In September 2000, the Project released a "grand plan"
that called for sufficient combat forces to fight and win multiple
major wars and be equipped for "constabulary duties"
around the world, with American rather than U.N. leadership.
The Project supports the doctrine of pre-emptive war and the
development of a new generation of nuclear weapons.
Union members are entitled to
know what, exactly, is Sweeney's relations with the PNAC? What
prompted him to collaborate with an organization that, to say
the least, is hardly a friend of organized labor?
Sweeney is a member of the Council
on Foreign Relations, regarded as the most influential think
tank on foreign and economic policy, whose recommendations are
often adopted by the government. Executives from 200 "international
companies representing a range of sectors" participate in
special Council programs. They include the largest commercial
banks, insurance companies and strategic planning corporations.
Petroleum, military and media companies are also well represented.
How is Sweeney's presence on
the Council of any benefit to the 13 million union members he
represents? Doesn't his name on the Council imply support for
its activities?
BLACKS LEFT OUT OF LABOR REFORM
http://www.blackcommentator.com/128/128_cover_labor.html
BLACK COMMENTATOR - Far from
ameliorating the crisis afflicting what's left of organized labor
in the United States, a number of 'reforms' proposed by some
of the nation's largest unions appear as attempted rollbacks
of historic gains won by Blacks, Latinos and women unionists
a decade ago. Simply put, the vast changes in AFL-CIO structures
demanded by the giant (and heavily minority) Service Employees
International Union, the Teamsters and others, contain no formal
mechanisms to ensure that core labor constituencies have a voice
remotely commensurate with their numbers and strategic importance.
. .
'If the ten largest unions will
comprise the Executive Committee, no Black that I'm aware of,
or woman that I'm aware of, heads up a union of that size,' said
William Lucy, President of the 33-year-old Coalition of Black
Trade Unionists. 'How does our voice get in that decision making
process? How do we talk about the value of organizing as a community
empowerment process? Who do we discuss that with?'
FEBRUARY 2005
PROPOSAL FOR LABOR: SPEND
MONEY ON ORGANIZING, NOT CAMPAIGNS
JONATHAN TASINI, PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF
THE NATIONAL WRITERS UNION
- For the last 25 years, employers have broken labor laws with
impunity and fired tens of thousands of workers trying to organize.
By every measure, life for most workers has become more difficult.
Few politicians challenge the right of corporations to run the
workplace like a dictatorship. . .
I admire the fire and dedication
of the labor people who pour their souls into campaigns. But
we've been acting on the belief that the political arena could
make up for our declining numbers and weakness in the workplace.
Our money and troops have squeezed out a few victories for Democrats.
But we've remained passengers, not drivers of the political vehicle.
. .
So my proposal is simple: During
the coming two-year election cycle, labor should not write a
single check to a federal candidate or a political party. Let's
take the money - and, more important, our focus and energy -
and pour it into organizing new workers, kicking the stuffing
out of the Wal-Mart family, pushing a national campaign for healthcare
for all and advancing the labor-environment-sponsored Apollo
Alliance, a brilliant idea to pour billions of dollars into good-paying
jobs through new sustainable-energy projects. . .
Given that virtually every incumbent
is reelected in Congress, there is no chance the Democrats will
be in a position to retake either the House or Senate in the
next cycle - nor will Democratic incumbents lose. And, if by
some miracle the Democrats recapture Congress, the chances are
less than zero that they would attain a filibuster-proof margin
in the Senate. Serious labor law reform is a pipe dream for a
long time to come - even if we could get full Democratic Party
support, which is doubtful.
NUMBER OF UNION WORKERS IN
MARYLAND PLUMMET
http://wtop.com/index.php?nid=25&sid=419382
I-WEI J. CHANG CAPITAL NEWS SERVICE
Union membership in Maryland dropped by 82,000 people from 2003
to 2004, a reflection of the continuing "demise of the industrial
base" in the state, said labor and business officials. The
U.S. Department of Labor said in late January that union membership
in Maryland fell from an estimated 354,000 to 272,000, while
the share of state workers who were union members fell from 14.3
percent of the work force to 10.9 percent. . .
"Nationwide, sectors in
which unions have been stronger are losing jobs for various reasons,"
said Fred Feinstein, a visiting professor at the university's
School of Public Policy. "We've heard about outsourcing
and globalization and companies moving overseas to take advantage
of lower wages." . . .
One labor observer said the declining
union numbers point to "a challenge" for unions to
rethink their strategy of the last 70 years. Unions should start
organizing internationally, since many U.S. companies and businesses
operate overseas, said Bill Barry, director of labor studies
at the Community College of Baltimore County. "Building
global unions is an essential part of the 21st century,"
he said.
THE CASE FOR A LABOR DAILY
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff02082005.html
[As we have pointed out, there
have been some 2,000 labor newspapers published in America in
the past and Lindorff joins us in urging a revival of the tradition
that helped to build the labor movement]
DAVE LINDORFF, COUNTERPUNCH -
The union leadership continues to squander untold millions of
dollars on publicity campaigns and publicity departments, trying
to get its story told in [a] biased and uninterested media.
It's time to take at least some
of that money and put it to much better use, by subsidizing the
creation of an independent but pro-labor daily newspaper - a
publication that would have its own reporters in Washington,
D.C., New York, and key labor areas like Detroit, St. Louis,
Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and that would cover
all the news in the country and the world from a perspective
that takes working people and their viewpoints into account.
I propose that such a paper be
published on-line, not on paper. Why? The cost of printing a
newspaper, and of getting it delivered to millions of homes across
the country, would be prohibitive, and the money would be better
spend on having a crack staff of reporters and editors. These
days, working families for the most part have computers and online
access, so there's really no need for paper. An added advantage
is that if the publication obtained a mass list of union members'
email addresses, members could receive a brief news summary of
the day's headlines each morning as an alert message, with a
link to the publication.
Having the seed money for such
a daily news journal come from the labor movement would free
the publication from the constraints that have sapped the will
and integrity of the corporate press. A few million dollars might
seem like a lot of money to the unions, but since the many millions
more spent on publicity for the most part just go into media
office wastebaskets, it's really not a big new expense-just a
shifting of funds to a much more productive use.
The key to the success of such
a publication would be its independence. It would have to move
way beyond the traditional captive labor media, and even be ready
and able to write critically about the labor movement when necessary.
If there were not this independence, the venture would be doomed
from the start.
SEIU TRIES ORGANIZING IN THE
SOUTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/national/06janitors.html
STEVEN GREENHOUSE, NY TIMES -
The Service Employees International Union, the nation's fastest-growing
labor union, is undertaking one of the largest private-sector
organizing drives in the South in decades, seeking to represent
7,000 condominium workers, mostly immigrants, in the Miami area:
janitors, concierges, parking valets, security guards and building
engineers.
Not since 1963, when the textile
workers' union began an ultimately successful 17-year battle
to organize 4,000 Carolina millworkers with J. P. Stevens, has
labor undertaken such a far-reaching effort in the South, a region
known for its hostility to unions.
The president of the service
employees' union, Andrew Stern, is leading a campaign to remake
the labor movement, and his aides assert that if unions are serious
about reversing their decline and helping low-wage workers nationwide,
they need to expand below the Mason-Dixon line. . .
Union officials also acknowledge
a secondary motive: to try to transform the politics of the region
and the nation by creating conditions in which labor-friendly
candidates can be elected here.
The service employees are spending
hundreds of thousands of dollars on this campaign, using 14 full-time
organizers, starting a Web site and running advertisements. The
union's underlying message is simple: immigrant janitors and
concierges who earn $7 to $11 an hour, often with modest benefits,
can do far better if they band together and unionize. The labor
pitchmen are quick to point out that unionized janitors and doormen
in New York, Chicago and San Francisco earn $15 to $19 an hour.
BLACK UNIONISTS QUESTION SEUI-TEAMSTERS
PLAN
http://www.blackcommentator.com/124/124_cover_black_unionists_pf.html
BLACK COMMENTATOR - The push
to 'streamline' and consolidate the structures of the AFL-CIO
threatens to diminish the influence of Blacks in the labor movement.
'They want bigger unions,' said Bill Lucy, head of the Coalition
of Black Trade Unionists, referring to leaders of the Service
Employees International Union, the Teamsters, the Communications
Workers of America and others. 'They want power players, big
unions in charge. The end result is diminution of community power.'
Blacks make up about 30 percent
of organized labor, concentrated in the urban centers, says Lucy,
who is also Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of
State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). However, the
proposed AFL-CIO restructuring would concentrate power and resources
in the headquarters of a few large union chiefs, and away from
the metropolitan area Central Labor Councils. 'Our fortunes lie
at the local level. Most of the national leaders are talking
about getting a bigger bang for the buck.' We lose out on this.'
The driving force behind revamping
the AFL-CIO is Andrew Stern, president of SEIU, the nation's
largest and fastest growing union, with 1.6 million members.
Stern has threatened to pull out of the labor federation if it
does not essentially replicate the measures he has taken in his
own union, where many locals have been forced to merge and the
Washington headquarters maintains tight reins on resources and
decision making. Stern's plan ­ which many in labor consider
to be a kind of ultimatum ­ would rationalize union activity
by grouping members according to trade and, ultimately, eliminate
all but 20 of the AFL-CIO's 60 unions, altogether. . . .
Lucy is the first to point out
that 'the structure of the AFL-CIO is nonproductive in the areas
of political action and community outreach,' but views the Stern-
Hoffa alternatives as even more inimical to Black interests.
LABOR'S NEW BOSS, ANDY STERN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/magazine/30STERN.html
MATT BAI, NY TIMES MAGAZINE -
The S.E.I.U. is a different kind of union, rooted in the new
service economy. Its members aren't truck drivers or assembly-line
workers but janitors and nurses and home health care aides, roughly
a third of whom are black, Asian or Latino. While the old-line
industrial unions have been shrinking every year, Stern's union
has been organizing low-wage workers, many of whom have never
belonged to a union, at a torrid pace, to the point where the
S.E.I.U. is now the largest and fastest-growing trade union in
North America. . .
All of this makes Andy Stern
-- a charismatic 54-year- old former social-service worker --
a very powerful man in labor, and also in Democratic politics.
The job of running a union in America, even the biggest union
around, isn't what it once was. The age of automation and globalization,
with its ''race to the bottom'' among companies searching for
lower wages overseas, has savaged organized labor. Fifty years
ago, a third of workers in the United States carried union cards
in their wallets; now it's barely one in 10. An estimated 21
million service-industry workers have never belonged to a union,
and between most employers' antipathy to unions and federal laws
that discourage workers from demanding one, chances are that
the vast majority of them never will.
Over the years, union bosses
have grown comfortable blaming everyone else -- timid politicians,
corrupt C.E.O.'s, greedy shareholders -- for their inexorable
decline. But last year, Andy Stern did something heretical: he
started pointing the finger back at his fellow union leaders.
Of course workers had been punished by forces outside their control,
Stern said. But what had big labor done to adapt? Union bosses,
Stern scolded, had been too busy flying around with senators
and riding around in chauffeur-driven cars to figure out how
to counter the effects of globalization, which have cost millions
of Americans their jobs and their pensions. Faced with declining
union rolls, the bosses made things worse by raiding one another's
industries, which only diluted the power of their workers. The
nation's flight attendants, for instance, are now divided among
several different unions, making it difficult, if not impossible,
for them to wield any leverage over an entire industry.
Stern put the union movement's
eroding stature in business terms: if any other $6.5 billion
corporation had insisted on clinging to the same decades-old
business plan despite losing customers every year, its executives
would have been fired long ago.
''Our movement is going out of
existence, and yet too many labor leaders go and shake their
heads and say they'll do something, and then they go back and
do the same thing the next day,'' Stern told me recently.
WHAT'S GOING ON IN AMERICAN
LABOR?
http://www.alternet.org/story/21073/
[A summary of the struggle now
going on in the labor movement]
CHRISTOPHER HAYES, IN THESE TIMES
- It's a concrete possibility we will wake up one morning and
there won't be a single American labor union left. For 30 straight
years, American organized labor has been hemorrhaging members,
power and influence. [Fifty years ago, 35 percent of workers
belonged to unions, today just 12 percent do (and only 9 percent
in the public sector).] There are already 22 states in which
"right-to-work" rules effectively outlaw collective
bargaining; the National Labor Relations Board, entrusted with
the sacred duty of protecting the human right to organize, has
been turned into just another way station for GOP corporatist
hacks; and the American manufacturing sector, once the backbone
of the movement, has been eviscerated by globalization.
Faced with the possibility of
permanent irrelevance, different factions of the AFL-CIO have
recently been engaged in a knock-down, drag-out fight over what
is to be done. Despite occasional coverage in the mainstream
media, this has drawn just a smattering of attention in liberal
publications and the blogosphere. But progressives everywhere
need to realize that they have a powerful stake in its outcome:
Without the American labor movement there is no American left,
and the debate taking place right now could very well determine
if the movement survives.
THIS CHART, prepared
by David Swanson gives an example of why the federal government
isn't the political salvation that many liberals think. Shown
in dark green are states with a minimum wage higher than the
federal standard and have an inflation index; light green states
are higher than the federal law and blue are states considering
action. In addtion 123 cities and counties have passed living
wage laws. In other areas, including the enviroment, smoking
laws, and gay and women's rights state and localities have also
led the way. FULL STORY
DECEMBER 2004
HOFFA AND STEIN UNITE AGAINST
SWEENEY
http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak20.html
ROBERT NOVAK, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
- The barons of the American labor movement gathered Jan. 10
at the AFL-CIO fortress across Lafayette Park from the White
House, with doors closed to the public as usual. The AFL-CIO
Executive Committee's agenda prepared by President John Sweeney
allotted 30 minutes for reform of the labor federation. But James
P. Hoffa of the Teamsters insisted much more time was needed
to debate badly needed changes.
As Hoffa desired, more than two
hours were spent on proposals by him and Andrew Stern of the
Service Employees International Union. They would diminish the
influence of the AFL-CIO, returning power to individual unions.
Hoffa would cut in half money the unions give to Sweeney, suggesting
that his presidency has failed in the basic task of signing up
new workers.
No final decisions were made,
but Sweeney cannot stand up to the Teamsters and the SEIU --
the federation's two largest unions. Preferring to operate by
consensus, Sweeney is unlikely to resist. Decentralization of
power would mark labor's most important organizational change
since the AFL and the CIO merged in 1955. Whether it ends the
movement's long decline, it means Jim Hoffa and Andy Stern will
eclipse Sweeney or whoever succeeds him.
NOVEMBER 2004
OFF THE CLOCK WORK COMING UNDER FIRE
STEVEN GREENHOUSE, NY TIMES -
In interviews and in affidavits supporting employee lawsuits,
more than 50 workers from a dozen companies said they were required
to do unpaid work despite federal and state laws that prohibit
it and despite recent lawsuits against Wal-Mart and other companies
that have highlighted the problem. "It is prevalent,"
said Alfred Robinson, director of the wage and hour division
of the Labor Department. "It is one of the more common violations
of the Fair Labor Standards Act."
Though there have been no formal
studies of the practice or of its overall cost to employees,
the workers interviewed said off-the-clock work took place at
a variety of companies: A&P, J. P. Morgan Chase, Pep Boys,
Ryan's Family Steakhouses, TGF Precision HairCutters and Ms.
LeBlue's company, SmartStyle, which is part of the Regis Corporation,
the nation's largest chain of hairstylists. SmartStyle and many
of the other companies say they bar off-the-clock work, and they
are fighting the lawsuits. . .
Off-the-clock work can take many
forms. Employees are sometimes told that it is the way people
advance in a company, and other times they are forced to show
up early or stay late under threat of losing their jobs. Although
many employees fear retribution, a number of workers said they
were now willing to talk because they were angry and involved
in lawsuits seeking back pay.
THE FORGOTTEN SELF-EMPLOYED
SELF EMPLOLYED UNITE - There
are over twenty million self-employed Americans. They account
for nearly 3/4 of American businesses. The labors of the self-employed
are as old as agriculture, and as new as computer programming.
Unfortunately, Democratic politicians, like Republican politicians,
have little history of supporting legislation that would help
the self-employed. In fact, most politicians have so little respect
for the self-employed, that they seldom refer to this producer
group by name, 'self-employed'. Usually, the self-employed only
see their name on tax forms, or hear their name when their accountants
give them the bad news concerning the Self-Employment Tax.
Democratic and Republican politicians
indirectly refer to them as 'small business', but the term 'small
business' is code to the self-employed for being ignored. The
Small Business Administration gives the self-employed less than
1/10th of 1% of SBA loans.
No other income group in the
nation pays a draconian flat tax anything like the Self-Employment
Tax. It exists because the self-employed have virtually no representation
in Congress-- despite the fact that they make up about 15% of
the work force in the United States, and are the backbone of
rural and many local urban economies. 90% of farmers are self-employed:
to save the family farm, the self-employed must be saved.
About 30% of the self-employed
have no health insurance. This is primarily because the current
market approach to the purchase of health insurance reflects
a market economy in which the econ |