make it harder to get abortions. and don’t give adequate maternity leave benefits to those who have babies. this country is all about control – especially of women.

One of the standard elements of distress is just a listing of all the things the bosses CAN do to the “individual contributor” as s/he gets pushed out the door.

Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness…as dictated by corporate America.
Sexist and exploitive, a dysfunctional mentality predicated on economic leverage, and corporate servitude!

Maybe all the women working in the United States should just stop after finishing three-quarters of a workweek. Let’s see how fast those wallets open then.

what a great idea

The corpo’s first response would be to cut health insurance, if the woman had any health insurance offered, at all. It would be argued they are no longer full time employees working only 30 hrs a week, for equitable pay??

I like this kind of quick multiple topic update post style, Tula.

Can’t wait to see and hear Secretary Solis on cspan and elsewhere.

And 30 percent fired.. That’s huge!

OK.. I’m a white collar guy, and I evidently need a primer on employee free choice. How can 30% of workers who try to be organized be fired (per stat above)? Is it legal to fire a worker purely because he or she is known to be trying to join or organize a union or does an employer have to find some other excuse to fire the worker? By the same token, can an employer fire a worker if he doesn’t like the workers’ club memberships? the paper he reads? how is this any different?

Even in white collar positions, it has been known that someone who has consistently been shown to be an outstanding performer, suddenly starts getting gigged for every little thing, after having taken a position the boss doesn’t like. Often called a “Pearl Harbor File” to be used as justification for getting rid of someone.

And especially in so-called “right to work” states, it is real easy to find excuses to fire someone. It just so happens that often the person fired has also been attempting to talk up the union or do some organizing. And of course, the recent Labor Secretaries haven’t been necessarily friends of actual workers.

but how would employee free choice stop such employer abuse? Presumably, the thuggish boss would just come up with some other excuse to fire the worker?

I believe that it depends on various states laws. In some I don’t believe an employer needs to give an excuse.

The current system, which allows for workers to request a union via “card check” also allows management to accept the request (extremely rare) or put off doing anything for an extended period of time, allowing management to bully and lobby against the union until there is an actual vote, some months later. Even if 75 or 80% of the workers requested a union

EFCA (as I understand it) says that if over 50% of the workers request a union, then management has to recognize the union and start negotiating in good faith immediately.

Will it stop all the management abuses of the system? No. But it will re-level the playing field just a bit from where it has been the last 30 years or so.

Once a union is formed these abuses can be challenged

seems like a nominal difference to me… a good one, to be sure, so I support EFCA, needless to say, but at first blush it doesn’t seem to provide an effective remedy to workers whose bosses are determined to thwart their rate to form a union. seems like the safest thing one can do if one wants to organize a union, is at a church or community center at the other end of town.. or more likely in another town.

But that is basically the point. Most organizing by law HAS to happen away from the work place. By visiting the workers in their homes etc.

Management however, has been allowed to take the work day and force workers to attend “mandatory training” that is nothing more than anti-union propaganda. And that’s because, once the workers had made the request for a union, management could put off having an election for months.

This way, there is no extra step of the election when 50% of the workers request the union. It takes away one of management’s primary tools at knocking things down and force them to immediately start negotiating. And I believe it sets deadlines for negotiations and requires mandatory arbitration so it also forces management to bargain in good faith.

Will EFCA bring in under union protection ALL employees that were fired or laid off at the point the “organizing” was ibnitiated? And can recently fired or laid off staff participate in the election.

Those provisions would certainly de-fang any selective effort to eliminate those attempting to institute a Union. Of course, even if these people could vote and be subject to grievance proceedings…an employer could still use those firings to fill spots with employees (perhaps relatives) that were anti-union. Or they could simply hire on a bunch of part-timers (perhaps from the local Chapter of the College Republicans) to dilute the pro-Union votes.

As I understand it the employer can delay the recognition of a union and utilize intimidation techniques to dissuade enough employees under the current system.

why does management have, under current law, a say in when the election takes place? It seems to me that the organizing workers will want it to happen the very next day they have a majority. Can mgmt now block this?

Yes, they can delay for months.

I’d like the see that… members of the local College Rethug chapter working??? At a job? For their rethuggish ideals? Nah. Let’s get drunk.

Pretty much. I’m not exactly sure when it was first changed but my understanding is this law is really just putting things back to as it was until the early/mid-70s.

But yes, management has had all the power on when and where and how the “elections” were held at their organizations and could delay it for months in order to fight things.

Don’t forget, the deck has been purposefully stacked against the unions for decades with the unions being another version of the so-called “welfare Cadillac queen”.

Unions represented “them” and “those people” and the whole push has been to do whatever possible to play on the prejudices.

it seems to me that there should be freedom of association principles here. I don’t see why anyone would have thought a law allowing an election to unionize to be suppressed to be prudent plublic policy.

But that’s the point again; the effort since the 7os has been to do everything to make it more difficult for unions. That’s pretty much why the per cent of union members in the working population has dropped down to around 12% (from nearly 45%?) since the 50s and 60s.

This way, it even allows the workers to by-pass having the election IF they can get to the 50% threshold. Again, it re-levels the field slightly from decades of being tilted towards management.

Don’t forget, the union that St Ronnie of Ray-gunz got praised for busting was one of the few unions to actually endorse him in ‘80. Those were his “friends” so imagine how he felt for the unions that actually opposed him. And add in that this perspective has been on both sides of the aisle in Congress for a lot of years.

That’s what gave us Elaine Chao, Mitch McConnell’s beard wife as Labor Secretary for the last 8 years. Mitch is often known as the senior sentaor from Big Business

Tula, despite the discouraging items in your list, I have to say that this post is MUCH more hopeful than any number of blog entries during the Bush Regime! Isn’t it wonderful that our new Secretary of Labor, Veep, and President are moving America and our hard workers in the right direction?

Thanks so much for your contributions here at FDL!

Tula – I admire your posts more than you will ever know.
I’m very optimistic that between the EFCA and the dismal current circumstances will create an environment ripe for organizing workers at every level – or color of collar.
I hope that the lesson of the tech boom will not be lost. That highly skilled tech workers refused to organize because they (erroneouly) believed that they could not be replaced, and because they were responsible for the tech boom, and because the employer respected them, needed them, and were their equal “partners” a union was simply not in the cards – what with all the dues paying and the meetings to attend and the contracts to negotiate – just not for them.
Guess who found out that the work could easily be off-shored?
Union power is PEOPLE POWER.
POWER to the PEOPLE!