Labor Union Blog

A coalition of 19 organizations representing professional employees today announced the creation of Professionals for the Public Interest: Associations and Unions Defending Professional Integrity (PftPI) to defend the ability of professionals to do their jobs right, despite outside pressures from bosses, politicians and others.

According to the AFL-CIO Department for Public Employees (DPE), polling over many years has shown that for professionals, the ability to do the job right is a priority as important as, or more important than, compensation and benefits. Professionals choose what they want to do, invest in extensive education and training and value the latitude to meet professional standards.

Yet professionals face extensive financial and political pressures that endanger their ability to turn out quality work and, as a result, endanger the public they serve, DPE says. For example, scientists found that the Bush administration regularly twisted the results of their research to fit a political agenda. Nurses are engaged in ongoing struggles to provide better service by safe staffing, and teachers seek to reduce class sizes.

DPE President Paul Almeida told a Washington, D.C., press conference today:

 [PftPI] represents an unprecedented and potentially historic alignment of professional associations and unions. Its goal is nothing less than allowing professionals to do their work on the basis of expertise, experience and high standards, with transparency and trust. Achieving that goal could mean a better quality of life for all of us.

The group also launched its new website, www.pftpi.org. At the site, professional workers can tell their stories and share ideas about better ways to defend their integrity. You also can learn more about disputes over professional integrity in the news and codes of ethics and rules of professional integrity that professional organizations have adopted.

 AFL-CIO President John Sweeney hailed the formation of the group:

For the people whom professionals serve, the ability to do the job right determines the quality of our lives and future: the safety of the air we breathe and the water we drink, the breadth of the education our children receive, our free access to the information that fuels a democracy, and the reliability of our medical care.

Glenn Ruskin, director of public affairs for the American Chemical Society, pointed to President Obama’s March 9 memo on scientific integrity in the federal government as a unique opportunity for the new organization to play a role in supporting unbiased use of scientific information.

AFT President Randi Weingarten says the group will push for elected officials to consult with practicing professionals before making new policies:

Whether it’s education reform, health care reform or government reform, it will fail if you ignore the professionals who do the work. What you get is top-down ivory tower policies that don’t work.

The PftPI is not a union but it will give an additional voice to nurses who are both patient advocates and union members, said United American Nurses (UAN) President Ann Converso.

Nurses are the frontline of care in hospitals. Our job is to protect patients and the union protects our freedom to do the job.

Mary Ghikas, senior associate executive director of the American Library Association, said the public has a stake in making sure professionals are allowed to do their jobs. She cited how librarians have been in the middle of many struggles to provide information to the public, including immigrants, teens and the homeless. They also fought to protect library records from unauthorized searches.

There is a public cost in turning away from the concept of professional integrity exercised in the public interest. From the perspective of librarianship, that cost may be in narrowing public discourse….in the minds that are not challenged, in new works that are not created.

In a written statement, Thomas Lee, president of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM), said:

In today’s difficult economic climate…professional standards and practices are sometimes compromised. The need for enforcement of a strong code of ethics and standards of professional integrity is even more necessary today. Our success is imperative and vital…[AFM is] confident the work of this coalition will bear rich results, best serving the interests of our professional memberships and the public.

By Doug Cunningham

The Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation – the federal agency that pays a portion of pensions to retirees when companies go bankrupt – has a deficit of $33.5 billion. The PBGC says it has the funds to pay benefits for many years, but long-term the deficit problem has to be solved. The PBGC payments are much less than the full pensions.

By Doug Cunningham

As the June 1st deadline for the United Auto Workers and GM to complete a restructuring agreement approaches big differences remain. One huge issue is the plan to consolidate plant capacity in the U.S. and how many imported cars GM will be selling in the U.S. Mike Herron is Chairman of UAW Local 1853 in Spring Hill Tennessee. He says if U.S. tax dollars finance a slash in U.S. production capacity, American autoworkers won’t be able to build the cars to meet North American market demand when the economy recovers.

[Herron]: “If your capacity is all gone at that point, then you don’t have the ability to be able to make those products in America. So that’s the big concern. I think the American people get it. This isn’t just an issue with the automotive industry, this is an issue with all jobs here in America. We’ve got unprecedented unemployment rates here and I think that everybody’s lookin’ to be able to shore up our economy and try to be able to create jobs in this country. And it’s extremely important – not only for us today but also for our kids in the future and our grandchildren.”

Last year, in his failed run for the presidency, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) proposed taxing working families’ health care benefits as part of his deeply flawed plan for health care reform.

The reaction was direct and swift. “No!” said unions, health care reform advocates and consumers. Candidate Barack Obama blasted the McCain proposal.

But today, the idea of taxing health care benefits has resurfaced, and from an unlikely source: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who for most of his career has been a good friend of working families. His call to tax your health care benefits is buried in legislation (S. 391) that he introduced this year and is now being considered by the Senate Finance Committee as one of several possible ways to finance health care reform.

The Oregon AFL-CIO, AFSCME, NEA and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) are telling Wyden, through a new radio ad campaign in Oregon, that with health care costs soaring:

The last thing we need is to pay more.

In a joint announcement, the unions say:

Taxing the health care benefits of working families as income would increase the cost of health care and lead many employers to stop providing health benefits altogether. Far from moving us in the direction of comprehensive health care reform, Senator Wyden’s health tax would only make the problem worse.

Earlier this month, Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain and Ken Allen, executive director of AFSCME Council 75, wrote in a posting on Blue Oregon:

Taxing health benefits discourages employers from offering benefits to their employees, and in the current system it would unfairly discriminate against small businesses and people in workplaces with more women and older workers. Health insurance for older people and for women tends to be higher than insurance for young men.

Worse, this tax targets middle-class Americans…middle-income Americans who are already struggling to pay their health care costs will get slapped with the full cost of a health insurance tax.

Says Dan Clay, president of UFCW Local 555 in Portland:

Our members have worked hard to earn the health care benefits they receive through their employers. The last thing they need is for those benefits to be taxed.

Chamberlain and Allen write that there are better ways to reform health care—expand coverage for all and make health care affordable.

Let’s get health care consumers and purchasers together with legislators to come up with a real fix to fund health care—something that encourages coverage, lowers costs and doesn’t punish middle-class Americans.

Click here and here for more information and to send Wyden a message that taxing health care benefits is a bad idea.

And don’t forget, there’s still time to take the AFL-CIO’s 2009 Health Care for America Survey, where you can tell us what you think of the current state of health care and share your personal story. Click here to take the survey and tell your story.

By Doug Cunningham

Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner says a five year study finds that three-quarters of American employers engage in illegal anti-union activities when workers try to use NLRB elections to form unions.

[Bronfenbrenner]: “We found that employers are engaging in a combination of threats, harassment, interrogation, retaliation and literally terrorism against workers in the workplace. And they’re doing so with impunity because we have a legal framework which is broken.”

Restoring the right of workers to organize is critical if the majority of workers who say they want unions ever have a chance of getting them.

Today on Capitol Hill, labor law experts and a California worker exposed the ugly truth about corporate abuses of workers trying to exercise their freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.

At the center of the discussion: Kate Bronfenbrenner’s new report, “No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing,” released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the American Rights at Work Education Fund. The report shows that the problems the Employee Free Choice Act would address are getting worse.

Bronfenbrenner has studied these issues for decades as the director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial Relations. This is her fourth survey over 20 years, enabling her to put into historical perspective the obstacles workers face today.

At the Capitol Hill briefing, Bronfenbrenner said weak laws and a hostile environment have emboldened corporations, over the past decade, to step up their abuses against workers trying to form unions.

The research provides a detailed portrait of a system that has failed private-sector workers. Workers have come to understand what our data confirms: Employers are using an arsenal of legal and illegal tactic to interfere with workers trying to organize, and they are doing it with impunity.

The study is the result of an in-depth examination of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) documents, examination of companies, interviews with workers and investigations of unfair labor practice filings, to give a clear picture of what the process of forming a union really looks like. And it’s not pretty:

• 63 percent of companies have supervisors interrogate workers in mandatory one-on-one meetings.
• 57 percent of companies threaten workers with plant closings.
• 47 percent threaten to cut wages and benefits.

What’s more, even if they win representation, a majority of workers still don’t have a first contract after a year.

Angel Warner, a working mom from California, offered a compelling story of these coercive tactics in action. Warner is a Rite Aid warehouse worker who tried to form a union through the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) at a large warehouse with 600 workers. The warehouse was inadequately heated in the winter and cooled in the summer, and the work was difficult and at times unsafe. That’s why Warner and her co-workers hoped to form a union. Wages and benefits were an issue, she said, but not the only issue. Mostly, they were concerned about job security and improving safety on the job, especially after management imposed a quota system that encouraged unsafe behavior.

You walk a fine line of taking a trip to the hospital or a trip to the unemployment line.

We like our jobs, we just want dignity, respect and a voice in our workplace. A person can only take so much—we decided it was time to stand up for ourselves.

Warner said that, as she and her-co-workers tried to form a union, management pulled union supporters aside for threatening meetings and singled out potential supporters for harassment. Pro-union employees were fired, and the workers filed 49 labor law violations against Rite-Aid—but the only repercussion for Rite-Aid is having to re-hire two employees and post fliers saying they would no longer engage in unfair practices.

Warner and her co-workers won the election by only a handful of votes, even after getting two-thirds of the employees to sign up, because of the extended election period and the abuses by management during that time. The election was held two years after starting the process of gathering signatures, Warner said, and even after a year of having won a union, the company still hasn’t offered a contract.

Our labor laws are not working, they’re not protecting the working class. We played by the rules. Even after harassment and threats, we voted for a union, and yet we’re still working without a contract. People are terrified of losing their jobs. It puts such a psychological and emotional pressure on you. It’s hard to function in the workplace because you’re so scared—you walk through the door and you don’t know, is this going to be the day that I walk out with my pink slip?

We have responsibilities to our families, our children. The working class needs help, we’re tired of waiting for justice. I urge Senators and Congresspeople that are on the fence, or have changed their minds, to look at people like me and the people I work with, and the thousands like me, because we’re not unique.

Workers’ rights need to be upheld. We’re ready to stand up for ourselves.

Fred Feinstein, a former NLRB counsel and a University of Maryland professor, agrees that existing labor law isn’t protecting workers. Warner’s story isn’t an exception, Feinstein said—it’s one vivid example of a pervasive failure of labor law:

There’s room for better enforcement and better strategies but fund the law itself is defective.

There’s considerable evidence that over the last decades, new tactics have been developed, weaknesses in the law have been discovered, refined and more successfully exploited, so that conditions on the ground have changed…we need to change the legal framework if we’re going to protect people.

Extended delay is a powerful weapon for employers, Feinstein said, because it ensures years of litigation to prevent remedies for their misbehavior.

And, said EPI President Larry Mishel, that this isn’t just an issue of fairness, it’s an economic issue. We’ve seen a 30-year period of rising inequality that didn’t allow people to have a good paycheck, he notes, which has undermined our economy by cutting back on workers’ purchasing power and security. As we rebuild the economy, we need to make sure it’s on a strong foundation.

One clear foundation is to fix the fundamentally broken labor market system—we have an economy that has been producing higher productivity, but most workers haven’t been able to benefit.

Companies are trying to pre-empt union campaigns, targeting union supporters and interrogating workers to find out how they’re going to vote. (Yes, that’s the reality of the “secret ballot” corporate lobbies are trying to impose.) Corporate tactics are designed to make the process less secret and less secure for workers who hope to join unions. Increasingly, management is working to monitor and punish union activities and force workers to choose sides. Said Bronfenbrenner:

We’ve found a climate of employer opposition that revealed a clear pattern of interrogation and surveillance…followed by threats and harassment to make sure that workers who pursue a union do so at clear personal risk.

Bronfenbrenner said that although she studied many unfair labor practice filings, many abuses aren’t even reported, because a climate of fear, weak remedies and long delays prevent workers from protesting unfair practices.

Warner said the common corporate complaint—that workers could act coercively as they campaigned to get their co-workers to form a union—was laughable and unsupported by facts.

From a worker’s point of view, the harassment and intimidation I’ve seen has come from the company side.

Bronfenbrenner and Feinstein both agreed that decades of research into organizing campaigns show this to be the case across the board. Historically, the number of unfair labor practice filings against unions is extremely low—only 42 cases of misconduct over seven decades—while there are nearly 30,000 unfair labor practices against workers by companies every year. People who say both sides are at fault aren’t to be taken seriously, Bronfenbrenner said:

Unions wouldn’t function if workers were coerced. The whole idea of having a union, of the organizing process, relies on workers feeling they have a democratic process, and believing in their union. Workers can vote their way out of a union at many phases—you don’t get to vote against your boss, and employers have enormous power over workers. They can fire you, they control your schedule, your pay, your working conditions.

Unions and their members will be a “gigantic part of the solution” to rebuilding the middle class, Vice President Joe Biden told the 3,000 delegates to the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department’s (BCTD) legislative conference.

Biden, speaking via videotape yesterday, told representatives of the 13 BCTD unions:

Welcome back to the table, it’s about time after eight years….We now have people on the Hill, we now have people in the White House who care a lot about you and respect you….For too many years we had a leadership in this country that dealt the middle class out of the American dream. We’re going to change that. We’re going to deal the middle class back in and you’re a big, big reason why….We can’t achieve a strong middle class without a strong labor movement. In this administration we know you are not the problem. You are a gigantic part of the solution.

Before delegates wrapped up the morning session and headed to Capitol Hill for an afternoon of lobbying on key issues such as the Employee Free Choice Act and health care reform, they heard from progressive radio and TV talk show host Ed Schultz.

Schultz said it’s time to hold accountable the lawmakers who rode union family support to office and tell them they must make good on their promises to move a working families’ agenda, especially the Employee Free Choice Act.

When you go to the Hill, tell them: “I’m here, I’m in Washington, I’m going to knock on your door and I’m going to tell you the union folks of this country, collectively every union together, raised more money and did more social networking, and did more phone calling, and put more boots on the ground than at anytime in contemporary American history, I will tell you directly, it’s time to collect!”

I know if the Employee Free Choice Act is passed it is the only hope we have of rebuilding and reconstituting the middle class in this country as we know it.

Schultz plans to feature the conference and the work of the BCTD on an upcoming edition of The Ed Schultz Show on MSNBC.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told conference attendees their work to win support for the Employee Choice Act will play a major role in winning other key issues to help rebuild the middle class.

We will never turn around our economy and make it work for working families until we reform health care, rein in our corporations and restore the freedom to organize…the Senate votes we need to end the filibuster against the Employee Free Choice Act are the same votes we’ll need to pass universal health care, re-regulate the banks and the big corporations and eventually restore the economy.

When Sweeney finished his remarks, BCTD President Mark Ayers joined him on the podium. Noting that it was the last time Sweeney would address the conference as AFL-CIO president—he is retiring after this year’s AFL-CIO convention in September—Ayers honored Sweeney for his dedication in leading the union movement.

Our “Hats Off” award is the building trades’ highest honor, an award for exemplary leadership made to those who make a real difference in lives of the members we represent. John Sweeney has done that and more.

Click here for BCTD’s daily video updates from the conference.

A landmark study examining workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain shows that the problems the Employee Free Choice Act would address are getting worse.

“No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing,” authored by Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of Labor Education Research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial Relations, documents a disturbing increase in corporate tactics to interfere with, block and delay workers’ attempts to form unions. Workers who want to form a union all too frequently are subject to harassment, mandatory meetings, threats and even illegal firings.

The study, released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the American Rights at Work Education Fund, updates earlier studies by Bronfenbrenner. “No Holds Barred” examines more than 1,000 union representation campaigns over four years and finds that “intense and aggressive” tactics to block workers’ freedom to form unions are becoming more commonplace.

• Coercive tactics to defeat attempts to form a union are all too common, with bosses threatening to close plants during 57 percent of union campaigns and threatening to cut wages and benefits in 47 percent of cases.
• In more than 60 percent of union campaigns, workers are forced to attend mandatory one-on-one sessions with supervisors and given anti-union messages or interrogated about support for a union.
• The use of negative tactics by employers during union campaigns, like threats of layoffs, has increased, while the use of positive tactics, like promises of wage hikes, has decreased.
• The number of employers using 10 or more identified coercive tactics has doubled.
• Even for those who do win the election, 52 percent still have no contract a year later, and 37 percent are still without a contract two years after they vote to join a union.

Brofenbrenner writes that these coercive tactics have a chilling effect on workers, which means they’re not able to exercise their basic freedom to form a union and bargain for a better life:

Our findings suggest that the aspirations for representation are being thwarted by a coercive and punitive climate for organizing that goes unrestrained due to a fundamentally flawed regulatory regime that neither protects their rights nor provides any disincentives for employers to continue disregarding the law. Moreover, many of the employer tactics that create a punitive and coercive atmosphere are, in fact, legal.

We’ll be covering the release of this report in greater detail later today, as Bronfenbrenner and other workplace experts discuss the findings today in a Capitol Hill briefing. It’s a critical study in why we so badly need reform that protects the freedom to form unions.