EFCA

Today the Republicans decided they did not want the Employee Free Choice Act to pass through the Senate, so they voted to continue debate (effectively filibuster) the bill. The vote was 51-48 with the Democrats united and joined by Sen. Arlen Specter. The bill had already passed the House, but it faced a presidential veto. This defeat was not unexpected, but the fight was just the first one of a longer campaign.

AFL-CIO blog:

But the momentum for this bill is growing. The grassroots movement behind this legislation is bigger and more exciting than anyone believed last year. Working families across the country mounted a massive campaign to win passage of the bill. Sixteen governors and nearly 1,300 state and local elected officials expressed support for the legislation in all 50 states. Seven presidential candidates also backed the bill.

Working families held more than 100 rallies last week across the country demanding that Congress restore the fundamental freedom to join a union and bargain for a better life. More than 4,500 workers and elected officials rallied on Capitol Hill June 19 to urge support for the legislation. Middle-class Americans generated 50,000 telephone calls to the Senate, 156,000 faxes and e-mail messages and 220,000 postcards, including 120,000 delivered to the Senate last week.

Even though the cloture vote fell short, this vote is a step forward because it is the first time in a generation that a majority of the U.S. Senate has voted for workers’ rights. Click here to see how your senators voted.

Both Houses are now on record with a majority supporting working rights. It is disappointing to see a handful of Republicans deny a real vote on the bill. But onwards and upwards. The Employee Free Choice Act will be back. After-all, the need for workers rights is only increasing.

The voices of the casino workers were heard within the Capitol today. Hundreds of red-shirted workers gathered on the North steps for a rally and then marched inside in an orderly fashion to do some lobbying. The event culminated as over two hundred UNITE-HERE members chanted from the second story of the rotunda "¡Si, Se Puede!" just steps from the office of Speaker Fabian Nunez. The dome amplified the chants as staffers poked their heads out of their office doors and the CHP scrambled to ensure the direct action did not get out of control.

The events today were the last big push by the workers to ensure that workers rights were included in the Indian gaming compacts that the legislature is about to vote on. At issue are the basic workers rights protections that workers have under California law. In particular, the right to use check cards to indicate the desire of workers to form a union.

It is that exact right that is actually being heard in the U.S. Senate ironically today, as part of the Employee Free Choice Act. The Democratic leadership here in the state legislature has been indicating that they are siding with the tribes on the establishment of right to work colonies in the casinos. Dozens of labor leaders, including Working Californians' co-chairs Marvin Kropke and Brian D'Arcy signed on to a letter to Senator Perata and Speaker Nunez recently. Here is an excerpt from that letter:

In contrast to most previous compacts submitted by the Governor in 2004, this compact—and presumably others to come—removes from the Tribal Labor Relations Ordinance the right for tribal casino workers (who are virtually all not tribal members) to freely choose whether they want unionization through card check, and to establish a level playing eld for their pursuit of decent wages, benets and working conditions. Instead, the Governor has reverted to the 1999 procedures for unionization, even though Speaker Núñez and Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero conducted a detailed study of those procedures and found them severely decient and ineffective.

The U.S. House of Representatives, led by California’s own Nancy Pelosi and George Miller, with the support of every California House Democrat, recently voted to approve the card check procedure of organizing as a reform of the National Labor Relations Act. A super majority of California Assembly and Senate Democrats signed a letter of support for that legislation. Unfortunately, even if this effort should succeed, the enforceable jurisdiction of national labor law will not be settled law at tribal casinos for many years to come, if ever. In contrast, the card check procedure of organizing has become the standard in commercial gaming, and many tribal casinos, throughout our country and Canada. It would be ironic in the extreme for the California legislature, led by Democrats, to reject card check at the same time that California’s congressional delegation is leading the way on the same issue.

It is doubly ironic that the day of the rally is the day as debate begun on S. 1041 (EFCA). Indeed thousands of fellow brothers and sisters gathered on the National Mall today as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senators Dick Durbin, Edward M. Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders spoke to the crowd about the importance of passing the Employee Free Choice Act. (photo from democrats.senate.gov)

Meanwhile, I watched AFL-CIO Labor Fedration head Art Pulaski work hard today to explain to Nanette Mirada of ABC 7 why secrete ballot elections are not fair in practice. It is clear that there is a real lack of education on the issue. He used the example of the tribes scheduling several "educational" meetings on unionization, or deliberately making security guards fill out their ballots under video cameras and other intimidation tactics. He also patiently explained that workers do not have access to workers compensation and other benefits since they are working on the reservation.

Pulaski also went into the politics of the fight and vaguely threatened the Democratic leadership. Pulaski referred to the gathered workers as the "ground troops" for the election, noting that they would not be particularly motivated in upcoming elections if they lost this battle now. "Money talks inside the capitol...and the odds are stacked against these workers" he said, referring to the large amount of donations the legislators have received from the gaming tribes.

More from the letter:

It is incomprehensible how California, in a period when the state is relying more and more on service sector jobs for economic de-
velopment, could enact compacts which will create the largest expansion of gaming in American history with no clear path to the middle class for a work force eclipsing 60,000 workers, soon to be 100,000 workers, who are the engine behind this extraordinarily lucrative industry.

All the workers want is that the new compacts include the same rights as the 2004 Compacts did, nothing more. Already, 5,000 tribal gaming employees have chosen unionization. That choice has improved their lives and communities and simultaneously relived the Californian taxpayers of the burden of their health care costs and other social services for the working poor. If the Democratic Congress can support these basic rights, so should the Democratic State Legislature in California.

More pictures in my flickr set.

Today I am busy building out the Republican Choices, three candidates down eight to go. So you get a linky thread instead of a more detailed post. Lot's off stuff going on today.

• The Supreme Court ruling on political union dues got the right wing all excited here in California, but it is a very narrow ruling, limited to that unique Washington State Law. As the AFL-CIO noted, this "will have a very limited practical effect and will not affect any existing union practices."
• Robert Greenwald's next movie will be called "Supermarket Swindle" and he is currently looking for current or former employees at Vons, Ralphs, Alberstons, Kroger, Safeway or Supervalu. Greenwald is best known for "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price". This movie is scheduled for release next year.
• Want to ask a question during the July 23rd Democratic presidential debate? YouTube is co-hosting the debate and CNN will pull all of its questions from videos that YouTubers submit. Learn more here and submit your own question.
• The Employee Free Choice Act is coming up in the Senate next week. Both Boxer and Feinstein are counted among the bill's 47 co-sponsors.
• Even though Arnold has appointed a Delta Vision task force to study building a canal to transport water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, he has gone ahead and endorsed the idea without waiting to hear back from the task force
• Duncan Hunter has a black lab named Hunter (creative that one). Mitt Romney likes hot dogs. Hillary Clinton is a lousy cook. Bill Richardson didn't do well taking music in school. John McCain could start his own zoo with is 22 pets. Oh don't worry, you can learn more random facts about the presidential candidates, courtesy of the AP questionares they sent around. The SDUT has an amusing write-up complete with vegan bashing.

Happy Friday afternoon.

Hillary Clinton elected to appear in Detroit, as part of the AFL-CIO's endorsement decision-making process. She is the latest in a series of candidate appearances at local union halls. The AFL-CIO blog has the report from the event.

When I was asked where I wanted to go, I said one place: Detroit.

One reason Clinton chose Detroit is to highlight the nation’s need for a strong manufacturing sector. As Clinton put it:

If we don’t have a strong manufacturing sector, it won’t be long before we don’t have a strong economy.

She specifically called for the rejection of the Korea-US (KORUS) trade deal.

Clinton also heard from several workers who spoke about their personal experiences with the outsourcing of good American jobs, the difficulties workers face today when trying to form a union and this country’s health care crisis.

Janine Berry and her co-workers told Clinton about their experiences in seeking to form a union to bargain for a better life with AFT, a teachers union. After a long and difficult struggle to form a union, Berry and her co-workers won recognition. However, they remain without a union contract because the company continues to use intimidation and stall tactics to avoid an agreement.

Clinton pledged to sign the Employee Free Choice Act if she became president, legislation that will defend workers’ freedom to join and form unions and require arbitration if workers and a company can’t come to a first contract.

“When I’m president, we will have an Employee Free Choice Act, and I will sign it and I will work for it,” promised Clinton.

Guess who was hired to run the campaign to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act? The DC Navigators, which is led by some very familiar names to those who were involved in the 2005 anti-worker Special Election here in California. Anyone remember Mike Murphy, the campaign manage? How about Rob Stutzman and Todd Harris? They all filled various high powered roles during that campaign. They were credited with encouraging Arnold to hold the election in the first place and push forward that particular agenda.

Harris has been taking the lead on the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers backed lobbying efforts to defeat the EFCA, which would finally ensure that the illegal union busting activities these employers have been practicing for years actually bring timely and proportional punishments.

Naturally they created completely ironic name, calling themselves the "Coalition for a Democratic Workplace" and have been airing TV ads in Democratic district, attempting to cause trouble for the legislators who voted for the bill earlier this year. Roll Call (h/t to Stoller)

The coalition — advised by Navigators, an all-GOP lobbying and consulting shop — ran several ads against vulnerable Democrats for supporting the “card check” bill. The ads, said one of the senior House aides, “really alienated a number of Democrats that would have been willing to work with the business community on other issues.”

Good. They are having the exact opposite impact that they were hoping for.

In retaliation for the spots, Democrats began calling certain coalition members, such as the American Hospital Association and the National Restaurant Association, and asked them to pressure the coalition to pull the ads.

It is nice to see the Democrats pushing back directly on the hard right's aggressive tactics. The anti-worker coalition is well funded and they had planned on keeping up this onslaught in order to "extract as much blood as possible through the debate". We will see if lobbying the other employer groups gets them to tone down their attacks.

No matter what happens with the legislation this year, there will be a continued battle between those who want to dismantle the labor movement and others who want to strengthen it. It is not surprising to see Arnold's old team taking the lead. They lost that battle in 2005 and they will find the same result here.

Cal Professor Harley Shiken's op-ed on the Employee Free Choice Act in today's SacBee is well worth a read.

These days corporations reward their executives with multi-million dollar bonuses while firing their most skilled and experienced workers for cheaper labor. Case in point Circuit City. It is pretty easy for corporations to get away with this "low-wage approach to fattening the bottom line", due to the declining percentage of private-sector workers who are represented by a union. As Prof. Shiken points out, there are many factors for this decline, but one of the keys is "dysfunctional labor law."

Seventy years of amendments, court decisions, administrative rulings and aggressive employers have gutted the original intent of the Wagner Act -- hailed as labor's Magna Carta when it was passed in 1935 -- to give workers the right to choose a union.

The process remains democratic in form but is increasingly authoritarian in content.

The solution is the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would put some teeth behind the existing law, making it more difficult for employers to get away with breaking it. EFCA also adds a new option for employees to express their desire for a union by signing a card.

The dirty tricks have begun again. We really shouldn't be surprised that the grocery stores would resort to breaking the law, in an attempt to weaken the workers negotiating position. After all, three years ago Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons entered into an illegal pact to share their profits, in order to outlast the worker strike. That landed them in court facing anti-trust charges. And just last year, Ralphs plead guilty to fraud charges and lying to the government. It was part of their scheme to use fake social security numbers to hire strikebreakers during the last contract dispute. They paid $70 million in fines and were placed on three years' probation.

Albertson's faced a strike vote Sunday and they immediately dug back into their bag of dirty tricks. They violated the National Labor Relations Act in the following ways:

• Sending home union activists to prevent them from speaking with fellow workers
• Keeping records of employee preferences on the strike authorization vote
• Directly asking workers how they were going to vote

Due to the weakness of the NLRB, it will be years until they will receive their light slaps on the wrist, if ever. It is another stark reminder of the necessity for the Employee Free Choice Act.

Billy Gonzalez an Albertsons Produce Clerk and UFCW Local 1428 member penned an email today about these outrageous violations of federal law. He says:

It is one step forward, one step back today on the labor front. On a more positive note, the House of Representatives just passed the Employee Free Choice Act 241-185. It faces a tough slog in the Senate and certain veto by Bush. However, the people's house just voted overwhelmingly to protect workers against harassment and intimidation.

California's own Rep. George Miller makes us proud with his closing remarks today. (h/t to the Gavel)

Like Nancy Scola says over at MyDD, this comes down to picking sides: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers or the workers? They have made it clear that they want win with fear and destroy collective bargaining.

History and recent events leave no doubt that there are those among us who really don't like unions. There are national interests committed to ripping the heart out of the labor movement. They want to, in the words of Grover Norquist, "to crush labor as a political entity" and eliminate unions. That's all that this debate is about. That's it. There are anti-union interest groups, union-busting law firms, there's an industry in this country of trying to cut the legs out from the labor movement. It's an undeniable part of the American political landscape. It has been as long as there have been unions.

There is a thriving industry designed to deny workers the ability to advocate for better working conditions. The Employee Free Choice Act would stop them in their tracks and create a much more open and accountable process.

And as Speaker Nancy Pelosi said during the debate:

The Employee Free Choice Act is the most important labor law reform legislation of this generation. But this legislation is about more than labor law: it is about basic labor rights, about the rule of the majority free from intimidation, and about protecting jobs.

It is a guarantee - when a majority of workers say they want a union, they will get a union.

Now the Senate will have to decide if they will support the workers or those who want to crush them. Free choice or threats and illegal firings? Do we respect worker's choices or show them contempt?

Not all elections are created equal. In fact, one of my favorite quotes about the American electoral system comes from former President Jimmy Carter, who's foundation certifies election system in other countries.

"It's a tragedy in many ways that the standard for accountability and integrity and objectivity is better in many Third World countries than in ours," says former President Jimmy Carter, who explains that the Carter Center, which monitors elections around the world, could not do so in the United States because of a lack of consistent standards and a lack of commitment on the part of both major parties to cooperate with the monitoring process.

The sad thing is that the American elections are a heck of a lot more fair than the ones overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. It isn't just the stacked deck rules, the massive industry that exists to deny a fair process is shocking in its size.

Most companies faced with organizing campaigns hire consultants or lawyers who specialize in "union avoidance." By one estimate, the business of battling union organizing is a $4-billion industry.

Unions allege systematic attempts by companies to fire, discipline or intimidate workers who support a union. The balance of labor complaints about the election process focus on delays. Even when unions win, some companies delay contract talks or refuse to bargain collectively.

These elections are not fair or democratic. They encourage nefarious tactics. The lack of effective oversight enables companies to try and drag out the process, ensuring it lasts years and not a few weeks.

In response, many unions have tried to avoid elections. Before submitting signed union cards, they build campaigns to push employers to sign "card-check neutrality" deals to recognize the union without an election.

Such campaigns have been successful in Los Angeles. Security officers in office buildings around Los Angeles County are being organized under a neutrality agreement between Service Employees International Union, building owners and security contractors.

It is possible for employers and labor to work together on these issues, but that is not the norm.

The most prominent ongoing labor dispute in Southern California — over a unionization drive at hotels near Los Angeles International Airport — is about a card check. The union seeking to organize, Unite Here, is demanding that hotels agree to a card check. The hotels want their workers to have a secret ballot.

Asked about the effect on hotel workers, Maria Elena Durazo, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said, "I'm confident that if the Employee Free Choice were law, workers on Century Boulevard would now have better wages, family health insurance and a pension through a union contract."

The hotels are trying to drag this out and frustrate their employees who would like to have a union. They are willing to pay to lengthen the process rather than pay their employees a fair wage and benefits, much like they would rather sue than pay a living wage.

Dan Walters thinks that there is hypocrisy in the push to ensure that our votes are counted accurately and the simultaneous support for the Employee Free Choice Act. It is about Democracy he says, and transparent election processes.

He doesn't actually have the guts to go far enough to say that he trusts black box voting. Instead, he tries to undercut Bowen and Feintein by saying it is just all to confusing to sort out. In the end, this really comes down to trust. The components of the machine matter less than how the voters perceive the security and accuracy of the voting method. We need to fix our voting systems because people do not trust them. There may be a extremely secure, open-source, touchscreen that enables all people to vote privately, but if the voters do not believe that their vote will count, then something needs to change.

The current system for choosing to form a union is completely broken, with severe consequences for millions of American workers. Every 23 minutes a worker is either fired or discriminated against for supporting a union. Employers routinely force their workers to be subjected to propaganda and threats. There are no meaningful penalties for breaking the current law. Walters focuses on the check card provisions of the legislation.

There is, however, an anomaly evident in the drumbeat for safeguarding the sanctity of the secret ballot. Most of it is coming from Democrats such as Bowen and Feinstein -- reflecting, one assumes, the angst and anger within their party over what happened in 2000. But the Democratic majorities in both Congress and the California Legislature are simultaneously pushing the notion that secret ballots should be eliminated in union representation elections.

The unions have been losing many of those elections, so they want to do away with them and substitute a "card-check" system under which an employer would be required to recognize and bargain with a union that had gathered signed cards from a majority of the affected workers.

Unions contend that with elections, employers have too much ability to influence workers. If so, however, the remedy should be to improve the voting procedures of the National Labor Relations Board, because the card-check system would open the door to coercion by union organizers. They would know which employees were and were not supportive of the union.

Walter's is correct, the voting procedures of the NLRB are seriously broken and I contend they are broken beyond repair. Take a look at what actually goes on. This is fromPaulVA over at the AFL-CIO blog:

Gordon Lafer, a professor at the University of Oregon who has studied how the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) union representation election process really works, told the staff members the process

resembles what happens in rogue regimes abroad rather than anything we call American.

Even though the process ends in a secret ballot, it is not fair, Lafer told a briefing for Capitol Hill staff members Friday. He compared what happens in union representation elections to the standards the United States sets for what is “free and fair” in foreign elections and says “every aspect of the NLRB process violates U.S. standards of free and fair.”

In a report for ARAW, Lafer compares U.S. standards for foreign and domestic elections with the union representation election:

• Democratic Election Standard: Each side should have equal access to the media so that competing viewpoints can create an informed electorate.
• Union Representation Election: Employees are restricted from openly handing out information. Employers have monopoly control of media in the workplace. Employers can distribute anti-union literature anywhere anytime, while pro-union workers can only post literature in the break area during break time.
• Democratic Election Standard: The right should be freedom of speech that allows broad debate of public issues.
• Union Representation Election: Employers are allowed to enforce a total ban on employees discussing a proposed union outside the break room. Yet employers can have unrestricted access to employees, including mandatory staff meetings and one-on-one meetings with supervisors.
• Democratic Election Standard: Both sides should have equal access to contact and inform voters.
• Union Representation Election: Although pro-union workers can contact workers outside the workplace, they cannot have address information for employees until they can document that 30 percent of the workforce wants a union.
• Democratic Election Standard: No side should coerce or have undue influence on who a voter supports.
• Union Representation Election: Employees are not protected against economic coercion. Employers and suWalters on Elections - Google Docs & Spreadsheetspervisors exercise considerable leverage over workers. Generally, they stop short of outright threats or bribes (which are illegal) and instead, are allowed to issue thinly veiled threats like “choosing a union may lead the company to lose business or make cutbacks.”
• Democratic Election Standard: Once the voters make a decision, it should take effect quickly through a system of regular elections and fixed terms of office.
• Union Representation Election: If workers vote for a union, they can face infinite delays before their will is carried out. Often the delays, which sometimes take years because employers take full advantage of permissive election guidelines and drag out appeals for years. Also, the laws require that the workplace operate as if the workers did not choose a union during the appeals.
• Democratic Election Standard: Campaign finances should be regulated to allow a competitive and level playing field.
• Union Representation Election: The law sets no limit on the amount an employer can spend to fight workers’ choice to form a union. Also, the employer has access to resources the uniondoesn ’t such as on-the-clock meetings, use of company property and equipment and converting supervisors to anti-union campaign staff.

Contrary to Walters assertions about coercion, academic studies show that workers who organize under majority sign-up feel less pressure from co-workers to support the union than workers who organize under the NLRB election process. They also report less pressure from management. It is already illegal for anyone to coerce employees to sign a union authorization card. Anyone who breaks that law will be subject to penalties under the Employee Free Choice Act.

While the check-card process is at the heart of the Employee Free Choice Act, the increased penalties for breaking the law that will bring about enormous change and level the playing field. It is unacceptable for either employers or union supporters to coerce employees. Any violation of that law should be punished. Right now the process takes way too long and renders insufficient penalties to serve as a real deterrent. The EFCA would change all of that

Majority sign-up represents the will of the majority which votes by signing cards. Reforming the NLRB does not address the unique concept of an election where the employer holds veto power over the will of employees by exposing them to a second election. Additionally, the Employee Free Choice Act would not take away the right of workers to have an election. It would merely add check-cards as another way for employees to voice their desire to form a union.

It is well past time to have fair and trusted elections in this country. Now it appears we have people in office who will work to ensure that happens. We should expect nothing less.

Happy V-day to everyone. There are a number of interesting things going on in the labor/political blogosphere today that simply need to be shared:

• Cheney declared today that Bush would veto the Employee Free Choice Act if it reaches his desk. That is disappointing, but not unsurprising. The Bush Administration has been virulently anti-labor. Think Progress has the video. AFL-CIO has even more here.
• Speaking of the Employee Free Choice Act...looks like some deep pocketed groups are joining together to try and defeat it.
• Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a new official blog up, run by Jesse Lee called The Gavel. It is really well done and should be a great resource in the coming months and years.
• A new health care coalition was just launched. Its OUR Health Care represents 8 million Californians. Frank Russo has a post up and Gary Passmore of the Congress of California Seniors has a second one on the CA Progress Report.
• Not directly blogging, but tech related. Villaraigosa wants citywide WiFi. Free WiFi would certainly improve the quality of life in LA, but how the deal is constructed is critical.