Labor Union Blog

The AFL-CIO and the global union movement are demanding that Burma’s military dictatorship immediately free Nobel laureate and democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained since last Thursday. She was just six days short of completing her house arrest. She was taken to prison after a U.S. citizen swam a mile across a lake to her home and stayed overnight, which violated the terms of her house arrest.

Aung San Suu Kyi, 63, has been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years and reportedly is in poor health and in need of medical care. The military regime has given no indication that it will grant her freedom and just last week denied an appeal made by her lawyer for her release. A few days ago, she was transferred from her home to Insein Prison and threatened with new charges.

Aung San Suu Kyi is the legitimate leader of Burma and a recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.  Her political party, the National League for Democracy, won 82 percent of the parliamentary seats in a national election in 1990, but the military regime refused to cede power.

Burma’s leaders have been roundly condemned by the United Nations, human rights groups and others for their brutal suppression of human and workers’ rights.

In its statement, the AFL-CIO says:

The Burmese military regime must be held accountable for Aung San Suu Kyi’s proper medical care and must allow for her complete freedom of movement.  The AFL-CIO calls for the immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi. 

Last week, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) called for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and the more than 2,100 political prisoners in Burma. The ITUC statement quoted the democracy leader saying

the release of political prisoners is the most important thing for all those who truly wish to bring about change in Burma.

The ITUC noted that the U.N. Security Council has called for political prisoners to be released but must do more to make sure this happens.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the two top members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) and ranking minority member Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), also called for the immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi.

You can help by going here and urging U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to make the release of Burma’s political prisoners his personal priority.

Yesterday, 47 top performers from Broadway and Hollywood launched Artists for Workers Choice, an exciting new campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act, sharing their support for this crucial working families’ legislation in a new video.

As one of the actors in the video, Jerry Stiller (also known as Seinfeld’s “Frank Costanza”) says the freedom to bargain for a better life is critical to an economy that works for everyone.

I’ve belonged to three unions in my life and every one gave me the freedom to bargain with my co-workers for decent hours, benefits, and safe conditions. If all workers don’t have the freedom to form unions, I don’t see how we can fix our economy.

Variety, one of the top entertainment industry newspapers, spotlighted the entertainment unions that are bringing “star power” to bear on this critical battle. The unions—representing some 450,000 entertainment industry workers on-screen, on-stage and off—include Actors’ Equity, American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM), American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), Directors Guild of America (DGA), Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), Screen Actors (SAG), Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) and Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW).

The Hollywood Reporter says the fight for Employee Free Choice and the campaign behind the new video has united the entertainment unions. Lisa Derrick at Firedoglake gave glowing coverage to the video, and it’s also drawn coverage from NYC Stagehand and Fact-esque.

The Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, National Journal and The Hill also covered yesterday’s star power shining on the Employee Free Choice Act.

You can help spread the word. Tell your family and friends about the video and click here to get a banner to add to your website.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told two congressional committees this week that the Department of Labor’s fiscal year (FY) 2010 budget will

restore capacity in our worker protection programs, which have languished for years.

Appearing in separate hearings before the Senate and House Appropriations committees’ Labor, Health and Human Services and Education subcommittees, Solis said the department’s budget—including a 10 percent increase for worker protection programs—will fund three priorities:

• Renewed capacity of programs that protect workers’ safety and health, pay and benefits;
• New and innovative ways to promote economic recovery and the competitiveness of our nation’s workers; and
• Carrying out programs in a way that is accountable and transparent to the public and our stakeholders.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said the budget will allow

significant improvements in labor protections and workplace safety and health.

At the House hearing, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said during the past eight years, the department relied far too heavily on voluntary employer compliance programs for workplace safety and other worker protections.

Your budget makes it clear that your department is in competent hands.

Solis said the proposed funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will

restore OSHA’s capacity to enforce statutory protections, provide technical support, promulgate safety and health standards, and strengthen safety and health statistics.

The increased funding for worker protection programs, Solis said, will allow the department to hire an additional

• 130 safety and health inspectors (a 10 percent increase from FY 2009);
• 25 whistle-blower investigators (a 33 percent increase);
• 13 full-time employees to strengthen OSHA’s capacity to quickly respond to the sudden emergence of safety and health hazards, such as a pandemic influenza;
• 20 full-time employees to restore OSHA’s rule-making capabilities, allowing the agency to simultaneously address multiple complex longstanding and emerging regulatory issues.

Solis told the committees the budget request for the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA)—including funds to hire 15 new inspectors for metal and nonmetal mines—will allow MSHA to

ensure a 100 percent completion rate for all mandatory safety and health inspections; support MSHA’s enhanced enforcement initiatives, which target patterns of violation, flagrant violators, and scofflaws.

In March, a report from the Government Accountability office (GAO) found the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division under the Bush administration had a pattern of failing to investigate worker complaints of employer wage theft. The report followed up two earlier GAO investigations outlining the Wage and Hour Division’s failure to investigate worker complaints of employer wage violations.

Solis told the panels that the Wage and Hour Division’s budget includes a $35 million increase over the last Bush budget and allows the hiring of 288 more inspectors to

help revive its customer service focus by supporting improved complaint intake and more in-depth complaint investigation processes. In FY 2010, the Wage and Hour Division will hire additional investigators to strengthen enforcement resources on behalf of vulnerable workers; verify future compliance of prior violators; and conduct high quality, responsive complaint investigations strategically, to increase protections for the greatest number of workers.

Arkansas union members and Working America members rally outside the office of Sen. Blanche Lincoln, encouraging her to support the Employee Free Choice Act.

Yesterday, at a town hall meeting in New Mexico, President Obama reaffirmed his support for the Employee Free Choice Act, capping off a busy week of grassroots activity around the country in support of this critical bill.

Obama acknowledged there’s a tough fight ahead, but expressed his concern that current labor law isn’t fair to workers and needs to be changed if we’re going to rebuild the middle class.

…the scales have been tilted to make it really hard to form a union. So a lot of companies, because they want maximum flexibility, they would rather spend a lot of money on consultants and lawyers to prevent a union from forming than they would just going ahead and having the union and then trying to work with—and collectively—allow workers to collectively bargain.

So there’s a bill called the Employee Free Choice Act that would try to even out the playing field. And what it would essentially say is, is that if a majority of workers at a company want a union then they can get a union without delay—and some of the monkey business that’s done right now to prevent them from having a union.

The broad, diverse coalition supporting the Employee Free Choice Act is fighting hard to solve these problems and turn our economy around. Union members, veterans, religious leaders, business owners and community organizations, large and small, are writing letters to Congress, rallying and getting the word out about the need to restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.

Union members and allies are taking the debate directly to their members of Congress. In Arkansas, union members and Working America members rallied outside the office of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D), asking her to support an economy that works for everyone. And in cities across Pennsylvania, including Allentown, Erie and York, union members got together to write letters to Sen. Arlen Specter (D) and watch a new ad asking him to continue his past support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Members of AFSCME in Louisiana, who rallied on the steps of the state Capitol yesterday, brought along more than 100 letters in support of Employee Free Choice to send to Sen. Mary Landrieu (D).

(Speaking of Louisiana, check out this video, where Greg Lavergne and John Green, IBEW 995, Baton Rouge, La., explain why the provisions the Employee Free Choice Act that help workers get a first contract are critical to making sure workers can bargain for a better life.)

The range of supporters speaking out in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act this week include Steve Sanford, a U.S. Army veteran and union member in Maine; Vivian Dwyer, a Virginia businesswoman who works for American Income Life; and union members, academics and business owners who attended community meeting in Philadelphia on Wednesday. Across Florida, union members are getting engaged and turning out at community meetings, while the fight for Employee Free Choice took center stage at the Northern Virginia Central Labor Council’s annual dinner.

As the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff notes at the Huffington Post, the national grassroots movement is letting politicians know that they

…have the power and the obligation to meet the grassroots movement and demand for change with the best kind of change—change that invites average people to move and at on their own behalf, collectively, to organize on the job for a better standard of living and a better quality of life for their own kids and families—and everyone else’s, too.

Vice President Biden addresses AFSCME’s legislative conference.

The Obama administration is committed to leveling the playing field for workers and giving them the bargaining power they need to rebuild the middle class. That was the message Vice President Biden and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis brought to the 2009 AFSCME legislative conference in Washington, D.C., this week. Biden said current labor law isn’t protecting workers’ critical freedoms:

You’ve got to climb up a hill with so many roadblocks on the way to organize that it’s just out of whack. 

If a union is what you want, then a union is what you should get. Labor built this country and labor should get a share of the benefits.

On the economy, Biden said the Obama administration will not consider itself a success simply by restoring the gross domestic product (GDP), a benchmark of economic growth.

From 2001 to 2008, the economy grew, but middle class Americans-they actually lost over that period $2,000 in income. If we’re not creating good, sustainable jobs, we’re not meeting our obligations.

Solis called on the union members to support the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to form a union without being harassed and intimidated by employers.

The way to “put trust and faith” back into a system of employer-employee relations that has for years favored management “is by making sure we pass [Employee Free Choice Act],” Solis said.

She added that President Obama intends to reverse the “dramatic cuts” by the Bush administration in funding for programs that favor workers.

Under the Bush administration, the Labor Department “lost so many good people,” she noted, particularly within Wage and Hour Division and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). She declared the Obama administration will hire more people in the Labor Department to make sure “all our laws are respected and enforced.”

So I’m telling you, there is a new sheriff in town-a sheriff who cares about working-class people, brings respect back into the workplace and allows more people to associate with unions if they want to collectively bargain. I’m talking about the Employee Free Choice Act. I’m talking about the opportunities for that bill to pass. And I’m talking about the means for us to strengthen our unions.

The 700 delegates then took that message to Capitol Hill yesterday, telling lawmakers to restore America’s economy, guarantee quality health care for all and rebuild the middle class by making it easier for workers to form a union.

Workers should “remind elected officials that you helped put them in Congress. Let them know the issues that are important to you and other members of the union,” AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy told the delegates.

AFSCME members from across the country told their members of Congress why the nation must invest in:

• Public services that Americans can count on in good times and bad. That means ensuring that federal stimulus funds are spent as intended-to maintain and create jobs at the federal, state and local levels.
• Comprehensive health care reform that guarantees a choice of coverage, including the choice of a new public health insurance option.
• Rebuilding the middle class, which means passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

For more on the AFSCME legislative conference, click here.

Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act, desperate in their efforts to kill the  proposed legislation that would level the playing field for workers seeking to form unions, have come up with another line of attack. They are making a lot of noise over the bill’s arbitration provision. The argument is just another straw-man attempt at gutting legislation that would enable more workers to have a voice on the job. (And one more sign of desperation—to wit, the trotting out of widely loathed figures like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove to attack the Employee Free Choice Act.)

Here’s the deal. Even after employees select a union to represent them, they need to bargain a first contract. But there’s no incentive for management to bargain in good faith. The longer contract negotiations are dragged out, the less likely one will ever be settled. In fact, nearly half of workers are denied a first contract, even when they’ve won their union.

So the Employee Free Choice Act provides that when an employer and newly formed union are unable to bargain a first contract within 90 days, either party can request mediation by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). If no agreement has been reached after 30 days of mediation, the dispute is referred to binding arbitration. All time limits can be extended by mutual agreement.

This change eliminates current incentives for employers to delay and stall negotiations and will dramatically reduce the delay, frustration and animosity generated by the company-dominated system. Thomas Kochan, professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, says the process could be set up to allow for a neutral arbitrator, an employer-chosen arbitrator and a union-chosen arbitrator.

We can design a fair process.

Because all too often what workers experience when trying to negotiate a first contract is what’s happening right now to Johanna Moon. The 25-year veteran of Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and her colleagues joined the UAW two years ago but still do not have a contract. The workers formed a union because, despite many years on the job, they were living paycheck to paycheck, and some had no health coverage. If the Employee Free Choice Act was law, these workers would have a contract. Clearly, they need one badly. 

As usual, opponents of Employee Free Choice are out of sync with Main Street America. According to new public polling conducted by Hart Research Associates and commissioned by the AFL-CIO, 61 percent of the public supports first-contract arbitration.

In fact, Big Business supports arbitration as well—as long as the boss controls the process. An issue paper from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform states: “Virtually any type of dispute between private individuals or entities can be addressed by arbitration, including, for example, contract, real estate, employment and tort disputes.” In October 2008, The New York Times reported on a study that found businesses used mandatory arbitration in 75 percent of consumer agreements but just 24 percent of contracts overall, showing they were used to prevent class-action lawsuits. (H/t to Michael Whitney at SEIU.)

The Chamber of Commerce knows arbitration works for business—and it doesn’t want the same for America’s workers.

By giving workers the choice to request mediation and arbitration, the Employee Free Choice Act guarantees that every worker who forms a union will get a contract.  Likewise, by giving workers the choice to request mediation and arbitration, the Employee Free Choice Act eliminates the incentive for employers to bargain in bad faith. 

And that’s why Big Business doesn’t want it.

This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.