(Washington, May 20) — A new study by renowned labor expert and Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner reveals that private sector employer opposition to workers’ efforts to form unions has intensified and become more punitive than in the past. Employers are more than twice as likely to use 10 or more tactics – including threats of and actual firings – in their campaigns to thwart workers’ organizing efforts. Today’s anti-union activities include a greater focus than in the past on more coercive and punitive tactics designed to intensely monitor and punish union activity.

In No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing, published by the American Rights at Work Education Fund and the Economic Policy Institute, Bronfenbrenner provides a comprehensive, independent analysis of employer behavior in union representation elections supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The report also compares employer behavior data in the study’s time period (1999-2003) to previous studies conducted by Bronfenbrenner’s research teams over the last 20 years.

For the vast majority of workers who want unions today but do not have them, the right to organize and bargain collectively—free from coercion, intimidation, and retaliation—is at best a promise indefinitely deferred. According to Bronfenbrenner, in NLRB election campaigns, it is standard practice for workers to be subjected by corporations to threats, interrogation, harassment, surveillance, and retaliation for union activity. From the 1999-2003 data:

63% interrogate workers in one-on-one meetings with their supervisors about support for the union
54% threaten workers in such meetings
57% threaten to close the worksite
47% threaten to cut wages and benefits
34% fire workers

Even when workers succeed at forming a union, 52 percent are still without a contract a year after they win the election, and 37 percent remain without a contract two years after the election.

At a briefing today to unveil the results, Angel Warner, a worker with Rite Aid in California trying to form a union and get a contract with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union said: “We wanted to form a union so we would be treated with dignity and could speak up without fear of losing our jobs. Now we finally got through the harassment to form a union and we still don’t have a contract. It shouldn’t be like this. If my coworkers and I want a union, we should have one.”

Bronfenbrenner’s study documents the increased use by employers of more punitive tactics such as plant closing threats and actual plant closings, discharges, harassment, disciplinary actions, surveillance, and alteration of benefits and working conditions. At the same time, employers are less likely to offer “carrots,” such as unscheduled raises, positive personnel changes, bribes, special favors, social events, promises of improvement, and employee involvement programs.

Private sector campaigns differ markedly from public sector ones, where 37 percent of workers belong to unions. Survey data from the public sector describe an atmosphere in which workers may organize relatively free from the kind of coercion, intimidation, and retaliation that so taints the election process in the private sector. Most of the states in the public sector sample have laws allowing workers to choose a union through the majority sign-up process.

According to the report, the failure of the current system to defend workers’ rights in a timely manner multiplies the obstacles workers face when seeking union representation, adding further delays that favor employers over workers. Bronfenbrenner finds that employers appeal a high percentage of the cases and in the most egregious cases the employer can count on a final decision being delayed by three to five years.

Of the few cases in the representative sample studied where a penalty was imposed, the heaviest penalty an employer had to pay was backpay, minus the worker’s interim wages.

No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing is available at the link below.  http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp235/

With the election of a pro-worker president and greater pro-worker majorities in Congress, the political conditions are ripe for addressing the problem of a diminishing population of workers with protected union rights. Congress could clarify or expand the definition of “employee” under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to better reflect the realities of today’s workforce. Several bills have been introduced that would restore collective bargaining rights to employees wrongly categorized as supervisors, independent contractors, and students, and would strengthen the law’s protections of immigrant workers. Additionally, President-elect Obama could appoint members to the National Labor Relations Board and judges to the federal courts to better uphold the NLRA’s mission to promote collective bargaining, and reverse the course of the Bush Administration to narrow the law’s coverage.

The complete report is available at http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/publications/general/the-have-and-have-nots-20081121-680-116-116.html

Disappearing pensions                                 
Costly health insurance
Stagnating wages                                            
Worthless 401 k

Is the middle class in danger?

Can our country survive if we fail to advance the middle class? 

What are the barriers to advancing the middle class in Alaska?

Come discuss these issues and more at our Town Hall

July 27^th 6:30-8:00pm

Anchorage Senior Center

1300 E 19^th Ave

Panelist Include

Dr. James Ellsworth President, Anchorage NAACP

Dr. Larry Weiss Executive Director, Alaska Center for Public Policy

Rep. Chris Tuck Alaska Legislature and member of IBEW 1547

Sponsored by the Alaska Center for Public Policy and the Alaska AFL-CIO
www.acpp.info

One of the classic pieces of research in this regard is a ten-year statistical analysis of fatalities in trench work. The research was published in the prestigious Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.*  It provides well-documented evidence that union members work more safely than non-union workers.

 The data were gathered by researchers whose main focus was on the impact of a new OSHA trenching regulation that became effective in January, 1990. OSHA regulatory efforts are often attacked as ineffective, and researchers hoped to shed light on this subject by investigating fatalities in the five-year periods before and after adoption of the new standard.

The adoption of the new standard resulted in a 50 percent reduction in trench-related fatalities in both union and non-union companies. In the five years before the new standard, the fatality rate was 13.5 per million workers per year, but that dropped to 6.8 per million per year for the five years after adoption. The decline was consistent across all construction companies, regardless of size.  So, OSHA regulations provide for a safer work place, but the researchers also discovered that union workplaces are safer.

Between 1985 and 1995, 522 workers were killed in trench-related mishaps. Of these, 60 died working for union firms while 462 died in non-union employment. Non-union companies employed about four times more workers than union firms, however, the actual fatality rates were 5.71 per million employees for union firms and 11.80 per million for non-union.  In other words, a non-union worker was more than twice as likely to die in trenching incident than a union worker.

_______________
* Suruda A, Whitaker B, Bloswick D, Philips P, Sesek R, Impact of the OSHA Trench and Evacuation Standard on Fatal Injury in the Construction Industry, Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2002; 44:902-905.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has finally been signed into law, and a full menu of implementation work is on the table. Even this milestone achievement, however, won’t be enough to support the full agenda for working families. Jump-starting our economy is critical, but this alone will not solve the deep crisis of inequality that has been building in this country for decades.

Long before this recession set in, working families were already struggling to survive in a brave new world of stagnant wages, disappearing benefits and little job security. Government has retreated from intervention in all things economic, and it’s our workers who bear the costs. Americans are more productive than ever, but a shrinking share of corporate profits is going to their wages. They are working harder and for longer hours, but their upward mobility is stunted.

And every day, millions of workers clean our hotel rooms, serve our food, ring up our sales, care for our grandparents and in general keep our economy running–but for low wages, anemic benefits and a dead-end career. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, eight of the top ten occupations projected to generate the most jobs by 2016 are low-wage jobs in the service sector.

This is the biggest unspoken challenge for our recovery: low-wage jobs have become a key growth engine of our economy. Policies focused only on job growth will simply put us back on the path toward greater inequality. If we truly want to rebuild a good jobs economy–to “create jobs that sustain families and sustain dreams,” as President Obama recently put it–we have to act now to lay down the institutional and regulatory framework.

So what are the opportunities to forge a new social contract surrounding work? How can we craft a recovery strategy that seizes opportunities for fundamental reform, even as we struggle to bring the country out of recession?

One way to answer the question is to think about the tools and points of leverage the government has available to increase the number of good jobs in our economy. Here are four concrete strategies that are both low-cost and put more money into the pockets of low-income families.

First, we need to fully enforce minimum-wage and overtime laws, because growing numbers of employers are ignoring even the most basic of these laws and retaliate against workers for reporting violations. In October, for example, a federal judge ordered the Saigon Grill in New York City to pay its delivery workers a full $4.6 million in owed wages. And in December Wal-Mart announced it would settle sixty-three cases in forty-two states charging unpaid wages, totaling at least $352 million and involving hundreds of thousands of current and former workers.

Rebuilding our economy on the back of illegal working conditions is not only morally untenable, it’s not smart policy: these practices
hurt workers and responsible employers alike and cost billions of dollars in tax revenues.

Simply put, the Department of Labor must return to its core mission of safeguarding workplace standards. That means increasing the number of inspectors (there are fewer inspectors now than thirty years ago, while the number of workplaces has doubled). It also means smart enforcement, targeting industries with high rates of violations, protecting workers who file complaints and cracking down on employers who misclassify their employees as independent contractors.

A second area ripe for action is to harness government spending to create living-wage jobs. Every year, our government spends $400 billion on contracts with a wide range of companies for goods and services, financing more than 2 million jobs. But significant numbers of these jobs are low wage and provide no benefits, in industries such as utilities and housekeeping, property maintenance and repair, clothing and apparel, and food preparation.

Federal contracts should favor employers that pay living wages, provide health benefits, offer quality training and obey labor laws. The same principle should be applied to government-funded programs that directly or indirectly support low-wage industries, like home healthcare workers paid under Medicaid (who currently earn about $20,000 a year). Adopting these reforms requires no new legislation and can be done under existing contracting guidelines.

Third on the list is raising the federal minimum wage, one of the best tools we have to lift millions of families out of poverty–and to stimulate growth. A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that an increase in the minimum wage boosts consumer spending more than tax cuts, as families spend their paychecks in local businesses. But Washington has neglected the minimum wage for decades. The increase in 2007 was long overdue but was only a down payment on making up for forty years of sporadic action.

What’s needed is an increase in the federal minimum wage, starting next year and phasing in over multiple years to make up the lost ground. Thereafter, we must ensure that the minimum wage increases annually; otherwise, low-wage workers will always be taking one step forward and two steps back. At the same time, we must close unfair loopholes that exclude some occupations from full minimum-wage protection and disproportionately impact women, immigrants and people of color.

Finally, the president and Congress should enact the Employee Free Choice Act to guarantee that workers have access to a union selection process that is fair and free of intimidation and abuse. It was the right to organize that transformed manufacturing into a middle-class industry after World War II; today it is doing the same for low-wage workers such as janitors, childcare workers, homecare workers and hotel room cleaners.

Continuing on the path of rising inequality is not inevitable. On the heels of the Great Depression, our country put into place the core policy anchors–the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act–that formed the basis for several decades of strong economic growth and shared prosperity. We now face another deep economic crisis, and another opportunity to set the bar higher. Let’s not just stimulate the economy; let’s rebuild it with good jobs.
* * *
Annette Bernhardt is policy co-director, and Christine Owens executive director, of the National Employment Law Project.

Published in the Nation on March 12, 2009

• Raise the wages of the employees they represent
• Reduce income inequality in the wider society by reducing inequality not only within and between represented firms, but also across entire industries as nonunion employers increase compensation to discourage unionization, all of which strengthens the middle class (Card, Lemieux, and Riddell 2007).
• Increase the retention of skilled employees, enhancing human capital and productivity in both the firm and the economy as a whole (Freeman and Medoff 1984; Bennett and Kaufman 2007)

According to Voos’s testimony, “The most important reason to improve the ability of employees to organize into unions is that such membership is a fundamental right in democratic societies, related to freedom of association and the right of all human beings to band together to improve their lives. For that reason alone, I would urge you to pass legislation to make real in the U.S. once again the promise of the National Labor Relations Act.”

Voos draws a clear connection between the decline of the middle class and unions with the current economic crisis, and explains why passage of the Employee Free Choice Act will play a vital role in helping the U.S. economy recover, achieve stability, and thrive in the highly competitive global market.  For the complete text of her testimony, visit the Alaskans for Free Choice related studies page.

Prior to meeting legislators in person to lobby, Local 52 members received in-depth information on the voting records and tendencies of legislators whose votes we need for passage of the proposed measures under consideration.

Next, our members met with their legislators in personal one-on-one meetings to add their personal touches to the context of the Employee Free Choice Act and Alaska legislation in the forms of HB 30 and SB 54. The latter measures seek to return public employees to a defined benefit [retirement plan] from the present defined contribution (401k). The defined benefit was erased and replaced with the defined contribution by the Alaska Legislature in 1995 as a cost-saving mechanism, resulting in miniscule savings since its enactment.

The event included an all-union rally on the capitol steps where over 350 Alaska unionists turned out to remind the Alaska legislature that if talking fails to get our voices heard, we don’t mind yelling a little.

Legislators aren’t the only politicos who need a public employee pension wake-up call: Governor Sarah Palin publicly took note of the need to improve state employee pensions from a study she commissioned upon taking office in 2006.  Nevertheless, as governor, she inexplicably proposed a $42 million reduction in the general fund for state employee pensions, while complaining of ongoing problems in recruiting and retaining quality state employees.

ASEA/AFSCME Local 52 remains steadfast in its commitment to enlightening the Alaska public and its elected officials of the need to pass these paramount legislative measures–not just for the betterment of public employees, but for a better Alaska.

Sam Rhodes
ASEA/AFSCME Local 52, AFL-CIO

Sam Rhodes is a Business Agent and Organizer for ASEA/AFSCME Local 52, representing more than 8500 state and municipal employees in various locations across Alaska.

Indeed, from 2000 to 2007, the income of the median working-age household fell by $2,000- an unprecedented decline. In that time, virtually all of the nation’s economic growth went to a small number of wealthy Americans. An important reason for the shift from broadly-shared prosperity to growing inequality is the erosion of workers’ ability to form unions and bargain collectively.

A natural response of workers unable to improve their economic situation is to form unions to negotiate a fair share of the economy, and that desire is borne out by recent surveys.  Millions of American workers – more than half of non-managers – have said they want a union at their work place.

Yet only 7.5% of private sector workers are now represented by a union. And in all of 2007, fewer than 60,000 workers won union status through government-sanctioned elections. What explains this disconnect?

The problem is that the election process overseen by the National Labor Relations Board has become drawn out and acrimonious, with management campaigning fiercely to deter unionization, sometimes to the extent of violating the labor law. Union sympathizers are routinely threatened or even fired, and they have little effective recourse under the law. Even when workers overcome this pressure and vote for a union, they are unable to obtain contracts one-third of the time due to management resistance.

To remedy this situation, the Congress is considering the Employee Free Choice Act.  This act would accomplish three things: It would give workers the choice of using majority sign-up– a simple, established procedure in which workers sign cards to indicate their support for a union – or staging an NLRB election; it triples damages for employers who fire union supporters or break other labor laws; and it creates a process to ensure that newly unionized employees have a fair shot at obtaining a first contract by calling for arbitration after 120 days of unsuccessful bargaining.

The Employee Free Choice Act will better reflect worker desires than the current “war over representation.”   The Act will also lower the level of acrimony and distrust that often accompanies union elections in our current system.

A rising tide lifts all boats only when labor and management bargain on relatively equal terms. In recent decades, most bargaining power has resided with management.  The current recession will further weaken the ability of workers to bargain individually.   More than ever, workers will need to act together.

The Employee Free Choice Act is not a panacea, but it would restore some balance to our labor markets.  As economists, we believe this is a critically important step in rebuilding our economy and strengthening our democracy by enhancing the voice of working people in the workplace.

Statement Endorsers:

Henry J. Aaron, Brookings Institution

Katharine Abraham, University of Maryland

Philippe Aghion, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Eileen Appelbaum, Rutgers University

Kenneth Arrow, Stanford University

Dean Baker, Center for Economic Policy and Research

Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University

Rebecca Blank, Brookings Institution

Joseph Blasi, Rutgers University

Alan S. Blinder, Princeton University

William A. Darity, Duke University

Brad DeLong, University of California/Berkeley

John DiNardo, University of Michigan

Henry Farber, Princeton University

Robert H. Frank, Cornell University

Richard Freeman, Harvard University

James K. Galbraith, University of Texas

Robert J. Gordon, Northwestern University

Heidi Hartmann, Institute for Women’s Policy Research

Lawrence Katz, Harvard University

Robert Lawrence, Harvard University

David Lee, Princeton University

Frank Levy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lisa Lynch, Brandeis University

Ray Marshall, University of Texas

Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute

Robert Pollin, University of Massachusetts

William Rodgers, Rutgers University

Dani Rodrik, Harvard University

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Columbia University

Robert M. Solow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

William Spriggs, Howard University

Peter Temin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mark Thoma, University of Oregon

Lester C. Thurow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Laura Tyson, University of California/Berkeley

Paula B. Voos, Rutgers University

David Weil, Boston University

Edward Wolff, New York University

This signed statement signed in support of the Employee Free Choice Act was published 25 February 2009 as a full page ad in the Washington Post (http://epi.3cdn.net/1eb9aba51935a5b82b_13m6iixpt.pdf ). The biographical information on the signers can be found at: http://www.epi.org/page/-/pdf/200902_epi_ad_signers_bios.pdf

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The SOSB seems to be a project of the conservative, Arizona-based Goldwater Institute and the national Heritage Foundation (whose representative chairs the SOSB national advisory board).  The SOSB joins a national network of corporate-funded, anti-worker organizations that are seeking to erode labor rights and the freedom to form unions at the federal, state and local level.  (See here for more on the corporate-funded Anti-Union Network).

Ignoring Worker Choice under Employee Free Choice Act:  While the rhetoric of the campaign is to protect workers’ right to use a secret ballot in union organizing campaigns, they deliberately ignore the reality that under the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, workers would still have the right to use a secret ballot and would only use majority sign-up rules if a majority of workers chose the option.  What would change under the Employee Free Choice Act is that EMPLOYERS could no longer force a prolonged union election campaign — where it’s documented that workers are fired and intimidated — when a majority of workers would prefer a simpler and less intimidating process.

Whether the state ballot initiatives would be legal under federal labor law is unclear.  What is clear though is that the goal of the campaign is to promote the corporate lie that the Employee Free Choice Act would undermine workers’ freedom to use or not use secret ballots.

Along with publicly debunking the lies of the SOSB corporate front groups, progressive leaders should push to have their states approve resolutions, such as Wisconsin State Senate Resolution 7 in support of federal passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

This post, written by Nathan Newman, has been provided by a statewide dispatch courtesy of Progressive States Network.