newsobserver.com projects - Card-check battle warms up - Comments

Re: Saying no to EFCA? Thanks for undermining Democracy!

RichardWhitehead — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:13:04 -0400

Well, I am not going to take your response too seriously. From my experience, people that attack the messenger and not the message are usually diverting attention from the fact that they do not have a worthwhile argument from the outset. You do this in two places: 1) You assume that because I posted the comment last week that I actually spent a month laboring over a response. Get real! Did you even read what I wrote, because you really say nothing about it? 2) You attack the CEPR based on your perception of the institute’s political leaning rather than critics based on the data’s empirical or methodological merits. Furthermore, just because you use the term “liberal” means nothing, since so many see anything to the left of Fox News as a bastion of leftwing liberalism. The term, as you use it, is devoid of anything concrete.

In short, if you’re going to actually respond, maybe you need to be the one to take a few weeks and formulate concrete arguments. The only thing of substance you post is a quote from the Heritage Foundation (and you never quote anything anyway) and the questions about GM and BMW plants, What’s your point with these question? Maybe you should be the one to sort out the argument, rather than relying on me. As far as the legal recourse under the current system, have you ever gone through that process? The fact that you defend it as a viable remedy against management intimidation tells me you never did.

Re: Saying no to EFCA? Thanks for undermining Democracy!

CitizenOpinionated — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:27:27 -0400

First of all, I am glad that it took you approximately a month to formulate your thoughts on the matter, but hell I will bite and play with you.

If someone is illegally fired, do they have the option of going through the court system? The CEPR is nothing short of a liberal think tank, so I can automatically respond with a quote from the Heritage Foundation, which touts how high union intimidation has gotten in recent years.

How much do union workers make in Detroit at the GM plant?

How much do comparable workers make in South Carolina at the BMW plant?

Saying no to EFCA? Thanks for undermining Democracy!

RichardWhitehead — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 06:18:54 -0400

I must admit that I am a bit baffled by a few of the routine comments in opposition to card check made by the Chamber of Commerce officials and even others, such as former Democratic Senator George McGovern. Whether one agrees or disagrees with card check, one analogy in particular should be mystifying to anyone with an elementary understanding of the politics of unionizing.

The primary objection to card check was framed something like this:
BECAUSE CARD CHECK CAN GO FROM PETITION STRAIGHT TO UNIONIZATION, it will THREATEN THE RIGHT OF WORKERS to cast "SECRET BALLOTS" in deciding whether or not to unionize, thus undermining a core democratic spirit of the unionization process.

This is simply NONSENSE! The primary assumption of the argument is that the presence of a secret ballot means that the process is itself democratic. With this line of argument, the EFCA opponents are already running into troubles. If that is indeed the case (i.e. secret ballots = democracy), we have just added Zimbabwe, Kazakhstan, Iran, Afghanistan, and many others to our list of democratic countries. In most of these cases, the secret ballot is a regularized election practice. Yet, given the periodic jailing and disenfranchisement of those that dissent against the “powers that be,” I would hardly consider any of them to have free and fair elections.
So, if democratic elections are more than a secret ballot, how close does the current law live up a more expansive definition of democracy? In gauging this, it might be helpful to draw a few loose analogies from the dictatorial practices listed above.

First, let’s equate the place of work to a country and the managers as the “powers that be.”

Secondly, let’s equate any evidence of harassment prior to the secret ballot as analogous to dictators harassing oppositionists.

Thirdly, let’s equate the monopolization of the media by a political regime as similar to a monopolization of the campaign environment in the lead-up to the secret ballot election.

Finally, let’s equate any evidence of firing those that advocate a “yes” vote to unionize as similar to these regimes disenfranchising would be opposition supporters.

Since I’ve already established that countries which practice such things are not democratic, then it is only fair to say that similar practices in the workplace can also not be democratic.

The evidence suggests quite convincingly that the process which accompanies the vote on whether or not to unionize would make Robert Mugabe proud. A widely cited paper published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (http://www.cepr.net/) found that illegal firings occurred in one fourth of all union representation elections in the 2000s. This rate was around 16 percent during the 1990s. A House of Representative report cites that number to be around 1 percent in the 1970s. The Center’s senior economist, John Schmitt, cites that "Aggressive actions by employers -- often including illegal firings -- have significantly undermined the ability of U.S. workers to unionize their workplaces," Separate data from the AFL-CIO supports the CEPR’s research.

The pre-election campaign environments remind me of the election campaigns dominated by the political regimes that I’ve spent quite a few years studying. Business managers have a near exclusive monopoly on the dissemination of information and rallying in the weeks leading up to the secret ballot. Wal-mart has been widely known to use this tactic to scare workers away from unionizing. At the same time, Union activists have almost no ability to engage in dissemination campaigns.

So, in light of this evidence, what is the meaning behind all of the talk about the proposed card check as a threat to the democratic rights of the workers? Democracy is more than just an election. It encompasses a process of debate free from harassment and intimidation. It seems to me that card check might actually go a long way toward improving the effective rights of workers to a democratic election.

Re: Card-check battle warms up

CitizenOpinionated — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:07:23 -0500

Your argument is misleading. Let's breakdown the current law, which balances the rights of unions and employers during organizing elections to ensure that workers can hear from both sides. Generally, union organizers may not campaign when workers are on company time, but organizers may speak during unpaid time at work, such as breaks, unless the company has a policy prohibiting all solicitation--not just solicitation by unions--on its premises, which should be the case.

In addition, the government requires companies to provide union organizers with a complete and accurate list of all employees' names and addresses within seven days of the NLRB's order to conduct an election. If the company refuses, the NLRB will set aside the election and order a re-vote. Union organizers are free to contact employees at home or by phone to make their case, but employers may not do so. Thus I raise the counterpoint, is this really fair?

The law guarantees unions the opportunity to make their case to employees--just not when companies pay those employees to work.

The Employee Free Choice Act could in reality make it more difficult for unions to contact workers to make their case. Employees would still spend an average of 40 hours a week at their place of work with or without an election. If organizers did not file for an election, however, employers would have no obligation to provide them with the list of employee names and addresses. Without that list, organizers would have less access to workers to argue in favor of joining a union.

This is just one analysis of the legislation...but fairly logical in my opinion.

Re: Hypocrisy indeed

tangoz — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:35:55 -0500

Where was the NAACP during the Duke lacrosse hysteria? isn't that hypocrisy what they did there?

Re: Card-check battle warms up

cornbread — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:34:38 -0500

No free choice with any union? Such absolute statements undercut your argument.

Unions may have helped save the white collar financial whiz-kids in Winston and Charlotte from being dropped for replacements in India.

It's not just me, TPM is working on the story. Check out the fourth paragraph in this story.

If McClatchy-NC gets the scoop first, all the better.

Wonder what the chamber of commerce apologists think about this turn of events. Who is on the NC Chamber's board again?

Side note back at UKM: Only if it's buttermilk, honey pie.

Re: Card-check battle warms up

lgrafstein — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:29:37 -0500

Many of the points being debated here underscore the fundamental issue of leveling the playing field in the workplace. Jon, you make an argument about why workers shouldn't want a card check method, but the fact is that the EFCA does not require it -- it allows it. You haven't addressed that point. Right now, the employer gets to decide -- is that a level playing field? If the argument against card check is solid, why not let the workers decide which they want to use? Are they not smart enough to decide for themselves without the employer's "protection"?

The arguments about union intimidation simply ignore the numbers -- management intimidation clearly predominates. As you point out, workers can de-certify their union, and some choose to. The reality underscored by scharrison's story is that the employer has a lot more power to intimidate, and that disparity in power regularly shows in the way the union elections play out.

Re: Card-check battle warms up

UKNOWME — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:09:01 -0500

There is no free choice with any union. Everyone of you have heard or have read about union intimidation even among themselves: " When Oakland, California UHW had the audacity to question SEIU’s management-friendly approach to health care organizing, bargaining, and politics, the SEIU president launched a multi-faceted counter-insurgency campaign. Now, several hundred out-of-state SEIU staffers have been dispatched to California as a full-time occupation force. At huge expense to the union treasury (over $10 Million), their mission is to replace 100 elected UHW leaders, purge UHW’s own 500-member staff, seize the local’s offices and assets, and inform employers that they should no longer deal with UHW representatives about any labor-management issues." Unions like SEIU do nothing but deceive and spread their lies and money for their own evil purposes.
As a side note: Cornbread, please drop in a glass of milk and drown!

Re: Card-check battle warms up

jonoflocke — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:07:58 -0500

scharrison, in my head is a conviction that threats are wrong even when made by union advocates. I don't see how secret balloting could be a problem if intimidation by either interested party is a concern. My friend George Leef, who incidentally wrote the book Free Choice for Workers: A History of the Right to Work Movement, discussed this "other" kind of intimidation (and deception, too) today:

... Where the card check tactics have been used (that is, in organizing campaigns where the company has been intimidated into signing a "neutrality agreement" which means that it gives up the right to call for an election), there is abundant evidence of harassment and deception being used to get people to sign.

I'm no fan of the National Labor Relations Act (in my view an unconstitutional law that infringes upon the rights of workers and companies both), but at least with an election supervised by the NLRB, the workers get time to hear what the union claims it can do for them, but also counter-arguments by the company and perhaps even by workers who have had bad experiences with unions in the past. Apropos of that point, we have to keep in mind that every year there are numerous union decertification elections in which many workers express their dissatisfaction with "their" union. There are plenty of American workers who regard unions as corrupt, too costly, too political, etc. Under the "card check" procedure, there is no assurance that dissenting voices will have any opportunity to be heard.

That's hardly consistent with the First Amendment values of open debate on matters of legal and political importance, which is one reason why constitutional scholar Richard Epstein has argued that EFCA is unconstitutional. ...

Re: Card-check battle warms up

scharrison — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:54:00 -0500

Jon, have you ever worked in a factory that was in the middle of an attempt at unionization? I'm not trying to set you up as someone with "no experience", I'm just trying to get in your head for a minute.

When I was 20 and freshly married with a child on the way, I took an assembly-line job working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for $3.65 per hour. And no, this wasn't the Fifties, Reagan had just claimed victory over Carter. The CWA was attempting to unionize our plant, and (by law) there were a few union posters up on the wall by the breakroom and the timeclock.

Just out of sheer curiosity, I asked a few of my coworkers about it. I was told (in whispers) not to talk about it, but like an idiot, I kept asking. It wasn't an obsession or anything, I was just curious. There was a guy (maintenance tech) who supposedly represented the union and was "available" if someone had any questions. When I approached him and said I was interested in learning more, his reaction was just shy of running away screaming in terror. The next day I was transferred from operating a machine to slinging 50 lb. boxes. All day long. Seven days a week. Normally that job was shared by 2-3 guys, but for almost 3 months, it was all me, baby. Every night when I came home, I was beyond exhaustion. I was afraid to even hold my new baby, for fear my arms would give out and I would drop him.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to intimidate a worker. As long as management is able to stifle discussion through fear and control the dissemination of information, the secret ballot thing doesn't really matter. It's time we brought this out into the light of day, anyway. Let management try to punish someone for checking off a card, and then try to explain their actions in court. Smithfield figured the anti-union sentiment was prevalent enough that they didn't need to fear a jury over employee mistreatment. They were wrong.

Re: Card-check battle warms up

cornbread — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:24:21 -0500

What don't you people get?

The Employee Free Choice Act is just that. It allows for the card check method OR the secret ballot method. Read the legislation.

Both choices. More options. Both methods. More competition.

What's a free marketeer not to like?

I'm still trying to figure out why the touted banking industry in NC is in such trouble. It simply must have been unions.

If NC is the least unionized state, why are we losing all these jobs? Must be a secret union at WachBankofWellsFargio.

Re: Card-check battle warms up

ThatMakesSense — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:20:57 -0500

This has to be one of the worst proposals ever. We are going to wind up with a bunch of union organizers harassing people until they sign a union card. These union bullies will call employees repeatedly, show up at their house late at night, get their friends to pressure them, etc. until they finally agree to sign a union card. How is this better than a secret ballot? It's not. Even the NLRB says so.

With a secret ballot, you can tell your boss that you're on his side and then turnaround and vote for union if you want. No one will ever know.

I am proud that North Carolina is one of the nation's least unionized states. Let's hope it stays that way.

Re: Card-check battle warms up

lgrafstein — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:53:16 -0500

You can pull numbers from an advocacy organization all day long -- the actual numbers from the NLRB for 2007 (most recent year I'm finding in a quick search): 88.4% of "merit" complaints of unfair practices (intimidation, etc.) filed by the NLRB were against employers; 10.6% against unions. Here's the link: http://www.nlrb.gov/nlrb/shared_files/brochures/Annual%20Reports/Entire2007Annual.pdf

jonoflocke: I reiterate the point that, with the EFCA, employees can choose for themselves whether to use the card check method or not. Notably, employees who want to de-certify their union do so using . . . a non-secret card check. Have employers been decrying the possbility of union intimidation over that process? Uh, no.

Re: Card-check battle warms up

jonoflocke — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:28:40 -0500

scharrison, I'll agree that the difference between voting in secret and publicly read cards could point to intimidation. It would seem to me, however, that the more likely intimidation is over what will be made public — an employee's signed card or lack of one being all the same in that case.

Regardless of the greater coercion, however, it would seem rather obvious to me that someone who was truly concerned about intimidation itself, whether from management or union advocates, would support secret ballots.

Re: Card-check battle warms up

CitizenOpinionated — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:13:52 -0500

"The NLRB is labor law's equivalent of the Supreme Court. Most cases are decided well before they reach the full board, either in a settlement or in an administrative law judge's decision. The full board usually decides cases that involve novel legal issues, not the routine enforcement of the law. The union argument makes as much sense as examining 60 years of Supreme Court rulings, finding 42 that involved arson, and then claiming that there have been only 42 cases of arson in the United States during that time.

In fact, union coercion and intimidation are not as rare as labor activists contend. Thousands of unfair labor practices cases have been filed against unions since 2000, including 1,417 for coercive statements, 416 for violence and assaults, 546 for harassment, and 1,325 for threatening statements. Many of these cases did not involve election campaigns, and the unions were not found guilty in every case, but these numbers show that union intimidation is a real problem that workers face."

Center for Union Facts analysis of unfair labor practice charges against unions involving section 8(b)(1)(A) of the National Labor Relations Act using data from the National Labor Relations Board's Electronic Case Information System. Analysis provided to the author by the Center for Union Facts. Full results are available from the author upon request.

Already done this research...thanks for playing!

Card-check battle warms up

ryanteaguebeckwith — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:35:14 -0500

With the stimulus passed, the debate has now shifted to unionization.

Some of the same groups that argued over a $787 billion stimulus package in Congress are now facing off in North Carolina over the Employee Free Choice Act.

Sometimes called the "card check" bill, the legislation would make it easier for workers to join or form a union. Labor unions say the bill would help workers bargain for better conditions, while opponent say it would get rid of the secret ballot.

The state chapter of Americans for Prosperity will hold events in Greensboro and Raleigh this week, recognizing Sen. Richard Burr and Rep. Howard Coble for their opposition with a "Defense of the American Worker" award.

The state NAACP, meantime, has fired back with a "Hypocrisy Award" to the two Republicans, saying the awards are a "self-serving exploitation" of the civil rights movement.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Kay Hagan said she supports the bill.