[Educationforall] spam con huevos labor news, views and concerns, 5.23.12‏‏‏‏-I‏

Thu May 24 05:55:21 UTC 2012

American Workers: Shackled to labor Law‏ VOTE RoseAnn DeMoro a Top 100 Healthcare Leader Today!‏ ACTION ALERT! Tell Your Assembly Representative to Vote Yes to Raise the Minumum Wage!‏  Men Move Into "Women's Jobs," Even Though There Are No High-Paying "Women's Jobs"  Health savings, Wisconsin, and fairness for women‏ Cohen: Fix Economy with Collective Bargaining Rights‏ Why a Growing Movement of Young People Could Ignite a Workers' Revolution  Nurses Lead Rally for Robin Hood Tax‏ Where Are the Missing 5 Million Workers? In the Underground Economy   Utah's experiment with 4-day workweek has lessons for California  
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American Workers: Shackled to Labor Law
Does the National Labor Relations Act do more harm than
good?
BY JOSH EIDELSON
May 23, 2012
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13181/american_workers_shackled_to_labor_law

Some of labor's dramatic victories in recent years have
come from organizations that, by choice or necessity,
operate outside of the protections and prohibitions of
labor law.

Republicans hate the National Labor Relations Board. But
they're not the only ones. In speeches to workers and
testimony in Congress in the '80s and '90s, then-AFL-CIO
President Lane Kirkland repeatedly declared that union
members would be better served by "the law of the
jungle." Some union presidents agreed, including Richard
Trumka, who now heads the AFL-CIO. In 1987, Trumka
called for abolishing both the law's "provisions that
hamstring labor" and "the affirmative protections of
labor that it promises but does not deliver."

In other words, it's not just Mitt Romney who argues the
National Labor Relations Board - which interprets and
enforces labor law - does more harm than good.

That's in part because the National Labor Relations Act
(NLRA), as amended by Congress and interpreted by the
courts, bans or restricts labor's most effective
tactics. The occupations of workplaces that fueled
momentum for the NLRA, passed by Congress in 1935, are
now illegal under it. The aggressive strikes - shutting
down workplaces or even entire cities - that forged the
modern labor movement have largely been replaced with
strikes that are essentially symbolic. While anti-choice
groups can target Planned Parenthood by pressuring the
Komen Foundation not to fund it, and progressives can
hurt Rush Limbaugh by calling on advertisers to drop his
show, unions face unique legal restrictions on mounting
equivalent "secondary boycott" campaigns that spread a
struggle throughout a supply chain.

Of course, when Republican presidential candidates bash
the NLRB, it's for restricting business, not unions. On
paper, the NLRA actually commits the government "to
promote collective bargaining" and requires most
companies to recognize and negotiate with unions that
win elections. It made it illegal for companies to spy
on, threaten or retaliate against workers for union
activism or other "concerted activity."

But reality has proven to be a different story. "This
labor law is a scam," says Larry Cohen, president of the
Communications Workers of America. "It is garbage. ...
It's a fucking lie."

Getting around a failing law

During an organizing drive, managers can legally hold
mandatory anti-union meetings in which they predict that
unionization would shut down the company. Even when
workers win a union election, 52 percent of the time
they haven't won a union contract a year later, because
managers can legally sabotage union contract
negotiations by refusing to concede anything. If a union
contract is in place, once it's up for re-negotiation
managers can legally lock out union members, denying
them any work until they accept a worse contract or vote
out the union.

And companies don't restrict themselves to these legal
union-busting tactics. In 57 percent of union elections,
employers threaten to shut down the worksite. In 34
percent, they fire union activists. When a union
activist is illegally fired, it's difficult to prove
that the firing was retaliatory - and even if the
government sides with the union, generally the worst
that can happen to management is being forced to
reinstate the worker with back pay. This process often
takes years, which can be more than enough time to quash
an organizing campaign. Fred Feinstein, who served under
President Clinton as the NLRB's top prosecutor, says the
penalties available against employers "don't provide any
deterrence" for companies set on breaking a union.

Efforts to reform this legal imbalance have been failing
for decades. Where labor is succeeding, it's often in
spite of or outside of the law, not because of it. Major
unions have abandoned government-run elections in favor
of "comprehensive campaigns" that leverage some
combination of worker, consumer, media and political
pressure to extract agreements from companies not to
terrorize or stonewall. By blocking tracks, spilling
grain, and defying a restraining order in Longview,
Wash., members of the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union (with help from Occupy) beat back a
company's attempt to do their jobs without them. Other
labor organizations - like the National Domestic Workers
Alliance, or "workers' centers" - are growing and
achieving victories through activism without identifying
as unions at all.

"The majority of our work in Justice for Janitors was
trying to figure out how to negotiate around the
secondary boycott laws," says Stephen Lerner, the
architect of that campaign for the Service Employees
International Union. In the Justice for Janitors
campaign, labor law restricted the Service Employees
union (SEIU) from targeting building owners, even though
they - rather than the contractors who technically
employed the janitors - were the real decision-makers.

Some of labor's dramatic victories in recent years have
come from organizations that, by choice or necessity,
operate outside of the protections and prohibitions of
labor law. Longtime farm worker Gerardo Reyes works for
one such organization, the Coalition of Immokalee
Workers (CIW). The Florida-based group doesn't identify
itself as a union, it doesn't seek recognition as one by
management or by the government, and it doesn't
negotiate union contracts. But CIW has extracted "Fair
Food" agreements from the growers who directly employ
farm workers. CIW has won and defended agreements with
the growers by pressuring - and sometimes boycotting -
well-known companies at the other end of the supply
chain. In February, following a multi-year campaign, CIW
achieved an agreement with Trader Joe's under which the
company will only buy tomatoes from growers following
"Fair Food" rules.

For farm workers under CIW agreements, says Reyes, "it
is better as it is right now" than it would be under the
NLRA. "Would we be better off if workers in Florida or
in the entire nation were covered? It's hard to tell,
because that's not our reality ... so we just work with
what we have."

A sobering debate

Others argue that stripping away labor law would leave
unions far worse off - not because current law removes
the need for aggressive worker activism, but because
withdrawing the formal protection for union activity
would make such activism much harder to pull off.

"If we took away the NLRA right now," says Cornell
University Labor Education Director Kate Bronfenbrenner,
labor "would lose the protections that they do have when
employers try to break unions." While harshly critical
of the current labor law regime, Bronfenbrenner suggests
that labor leaders may use it as a scapegoat in an era
of declining unionization. "It is not like unions are
using the power they have" under current law, says
Bronfenbrenner, who thinks labor should aggressively
build coalitions, mount anti-corporate campaigns and
nurture workplace activism.

Yet the fact is, if a union wanted to test its luck with
fewer legal restrictions on strikes and boycotts and no
legal right to recognition or negotiations, it could do
so right now by legally dissolving itself and
re-constituting as something more like the CIW.
Historian and New Labor Forum editor-at-large Steve
Fraser argues that the downside of the NLRA may be less
in the explicit restrictions it enforces than in the way
its existence has "locked the trade union movement into
a juridical way of proceeding" and made it "doubt other
tactics."

The law is unlikely to change, argues Lerner, as long as
politicians "think the consequence of not having labor
law reform is there's no conflict" with the powers that
be (both corporate and political). "We're more likely to
get labor law reform if we're out there mass organizing
the private sector and demonstrating the need." To fix
the law, he argues, we need conditions like the ones
that birthed it: hundreds of thousands of workers
pushing against - and beyond - the limits of current law
by organizing, occupying or going on strike. It takes
"ammunition," says Lerner, "to prove ... there's a crisis
that needs to be fixed."

ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Josh Eidelson is a freelance writer and a contributor at
In These Times, The American Prospect, Dissent, and
Alternet. After receiving his MA in Political Science,
he worked as a union organizer for five years. His
website is http://www.josheidelson.com. Twitter:
@josheidelson E-mail: "jeidelson" at "gmail" dot com.

____________________________________________

PortsideLabor aims to provide material of interest to
people on the left that will help them to interpret the
world and to change it.

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   RoseAnn DeMoro Nomination for 11th Year of the "Modern Healthcare Top 100" listPlease vote for her and ask friends and colleagues to join you!Show your support for National Nurses United leader RoseAnn DeMoro hereShe's made the list for 10 years in a row, and this is great prestige for our organizations and a well-deserved recognition for RoseAnn. So please be sure to vote and ask friends, coworkers, and others to join you in voting for RoseAnn DeMoro.Since NNU was founded in December 2009, from the affiliation of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, former United American Nurses, and the Massachusetts Nurses Association, NNU has been one of the fastest-growing organizations in the U.S. winning representation for 11,000 RNs at 24 hospitals in nine states. Today, NNU represents more than 170,000 RNs.

Additionally, NNU has been a leader in sponsoring and achieving landmark patient reforms, such as nurse-to-patient ratios and limits on managed care abuses, winning record improvements for direct-care RNs, and campaigning for the most far-reaching healthcare reform to expand Medicare to cover everyone.

Currently, NNU is campaigning for a change in national priorities, including a tax on Wall Street financial speculation to raise needed revenue for jobs, healthcare, education, housing, and other human needs, a Main Street Contract for America.Please vote for RoseAnn DeMoro today!RELATED INFORMATION:Read this article about NNU's May 18 Rally in Chicago
By: Modern HealthcareWatch and share this video about NNU's May 18 Rally in Chicago
By: Modern HealthcareIn case you missed RoseAnn on the Bill Moyer's Show...
Bill Moyers interviews NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro on the International push
for a "Robin Hood Tax" on Wall Street, the power of NNU/CNA, and Chicago G8 Actions on May 18.Watch and Share this VIDEO: Bill Moyers and RoseAnn DeMoro Talk Wall Street Tax

In an interview aired nationally on PBS earlier this month, legendary journalist Bill Moyers interviewed RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United (NNU), the largest union and professional association of registered nurses in the country, on the issues that are bringing thousands of nurses and supporters to Chicago for a May 18 Day of Action and Rally at Daley Plaza. The interview focuses on the union’s call for a Robin Hood Tax, a sales tax on Wall Street speculation, that could raise up to $350 billion a year in revenue and is at the center of the May 18 rally. —NNU Press Release, 05/15/12 More »UNSUBSCRIBE | www.NationalNursesUnited.org | www.MainStreetContract.org
National Nurses United | 8630 Fenton Street, Suite 1100 Silver Spring, MD 20910
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Friends, Right now there is a proposal in the New Jersey Legislature to increase the state minimum wage to $8.50 for all workers. We at CATA, the Farmworkers' Support Committee, support this legislation, as it would directly affect many of our members. While $8.50 is not a living wage, it still would make a positive difference in the lives of farmworkers and all low-wage workers around the state. We recently received notice that the bill will be voted on in the Assembly TOMORROW, May, 24!

The bill number is Assembly Bill A2162. You can read it at http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2012/Bills/A2500/2162_I1.HTM Please call your assemblyman/woman and urge them to vote YES on the bill. The message becomes stronger if they hear from their own constituents. You can look up your assembly representative at http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/districts/districtnumbers.asp. 

Sample Script: "Hi, my name is __________. I'm calling from (city/town; mention an organization if you represent one or are a member of one). I'm calling to ask Assemblyman/woman ________ to vote YES on Assembly Bill 2162. This bill would raise the minimum wage to $8.50 and benefit working people all over New Jersey. Thank you." Thank you for all your support! Sigue la lucha! CATAEl Comite de Apoyo a los Trabajadores Agricolas / Farmworkers' Support Committeewww.cata-farmworkers.org
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http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/933486/men_move_into_%22women%27s_jobs%2C%22_even_though_there_are_no_high-paying_%22women%27s_jobs%22/#paragraph2

Men Move Into "Women's Jobs," Even Though There Are No High-Paying "Women's Jobs"By Laura Clawson | Daily Kos
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It's About Fairness for WomenAct to support fairness for pregnant workersWomen represent nearly half of the workforce today, but many women who become pregnant face losing their job when requesting maternity accommodations. Take action to support the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.Take action » Share:
News You Can Use•"We Are Wisconsin" »•College Students and Workers Coming Together in Main Street Movement »•AFSCME Members Fight to Protect Jobs, Pay Raises in Maryland, Missouri »•San Diego AFSCME Members Overwhelmingly Ratify Landmark Agreement »•AFSCME Plan’s McEntee to JP Morgan Chase: “Don’t Hedge on Independent Board Chair; the Stakes Are Too High to Leave Jamie Dimon Unsupervised” »•AFSCME Statement on President Obama’s Remarks on Marriage »•Arizona Legislature Champions the Rich, Corporations, Attacks Workers »
Cover Story: AFSCME's EdgeRooted in history. Redefining our future. Some people think unions are a thing of the past. AFSCME is proving them wrong. Find out how in the Spring 2012 issue of:AFSCME WORKS »
AFSCME ConventionNearly 5,000 AFSCME delegates will convene this summer in Los Angeles to set the union’s course for the next two years. Learn More »
Benefits CornerAFSCME AdvantageYou want the best care when it comes to your family's health. AFSCME members and their families (including parents) can reduce out-of-pocket expenses with the Union Plus Health Savings Program.Find out more » AFSCME StoreSummer is right around the corner. Order an AFSCME Moisture Management T-Shirt and work out in style this summer.Shop AFSCME »The Main Street MomentA new book by Pres. Gerald W. McEntee and Sec.-Treas. Lee A. Saunders. AFSCME's leaders argue that the response to the unprecedented attacks on the rights of workers amid growing income inequality in the United States has triggered something extraordinary: the Main Street Moment. The book is the definitive manifesto for progressives and working people who know that America can only be transformed if we all stand united.Find out more »From the LeadershipGerald W. McEntee, President"The Good Fight" »Lee A. Saunders, Secretary-TreasurerStanding Up from State to State »Get informed. Get free stuff.
Keep reading AFSCME's email and if you see a golden ticket here — instead of a gray one — that means you won! Just forward the email with the winning golden ticket to us atgoldenticket at afscme.org to claim your $50 gift card to the AFSCME store.
Overheard on..."I was raised with a strong belief in the Union movement: it is the legitimate people's movement historically in America"– Mark W.,   Minneapolis"San Diego City Workers Overwhelmingly Ratify Landmark Agreement!http://bit.ly/MAWPtlvia @AFSCME #p2 #1u"– @CaliforniaLaborSign up for AFSCME Mobile Updates.Join the conversation: Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
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May 23, 2012
All right, class: Compare andcontrast—Romney/Ryan Republican budget and progressive “Budget for All.”Ironclad collective bargaining rights for all workers would fix America’s ailing economy and create millions of jobs because of demand-led growth, Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Larry Cohen told a forum at the Center for National Policy.

Read more and comment.  Romney/Ryan Budget’s for 1%, Not for All What the Cluck’s on My Chicken? U.S. Will Investigate Honduran Workers’ Rights Violations Charges Fracking Exposes Workers to High Levels of Silica and Other Health Hazards Philip Levine, Working Person’s Poet Laureate, Bids Adieu Indonesian Workers Can Defy Challenges to UnionizeRead more important news of the day on the issues working families care about.Follow the AFL-CIO:
            Take the next step. Become a mobile activist
by joining the AFL-CIO Rapid Action Text Team.
Text NEWS to AFLCIO (235246) to receive action alerts and more.
(Message and data rates may apply.)
To find out more about the AFL-CIO, please visit our website at www.aflcio.org.
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http://www.alternet.org/story/155492/why_a_growing_movement_of_young_people_could_ignite_a_workers%27_revolution?akid=8833.16102.hpWooq&rd=1&t=12

-Why a Growing Movement of Young People Could Ignite a Workers' RevolutionIn this excerpt from the new book "Labor Rising: The Past and Future of Working People in America," Michelle Chen looks at young workers from Egypt to Wisconsin. READ MOREBy Michelle Chen / The New Press
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May 21, 2012
The National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint against Verizon for firing and disciplining workers after a two-week strike in August.Thousands of National Nurses United (NNU) activists and others called for a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street in a massive demonstration in Chicago. Said NNU co-President Karen Higgins, “It is time for Wall Street to start paying back what they owe the rest of the country.” 
Read more and comment.  NLRB Issues Complaint Against Verizon Over Firings Boeing Pilot Instructors Vote 4-to-1 to Join SPEEA Check Out New Online Women’s Health Community Revisions to Alabama’s H.B. 56 Are No Fix Enter Union Plus Contest for Free Week’s Car RentalRead more important news of the day on the issues working families care about.Follow the AFL-CIO:
            Take the next step. Become a mobile activist
by joining the AFL-CIO Rapid Action Text Team.
Text NEWS to AFLCIO (235246) to receive action alerts and more.
(Message and data rates may apply.)
To find out more about the AFL-CIO, please visit our website at www.aflcio.org.
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Where Are the Missing 5 Million Workers? In the Underground EconomyThe “underground” is always with us. For better and often for worse, it’s how marginalized populations tend to survive—often not very well. READ MORELaura Flanders / The Nation
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http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/21/4504361/utahs-experiment-with-4-day-workweek.html
Utah's experiment with 4-day workweek has lessons for CaliforniaBy Jon OrtizAs Gov. Jerry Brown and labor unions negotiate to put state workers on a four-day, 38-hour workweek to cut payroll costs, they could learn a lot by looking east – to Utah. - Read More@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
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