AN OMINOUS ATTEMPT TO GAG CORPORATE AMERICA

While we all know that the proposed Employee Free Choice Act will mandate restrictions on the free speech of employers, the state of Oregon has leapt into the vanguard by passing a new law that eliminates an employer’s right to discuss unionization with employees.

Imagine having union organizers working day and night to get workers to sign card checks while employers are prohibited from offering counter arguments. It is the kind of law that one would expect to be enacted by a totalitarian dictatorship, not by the oldest, uninterrupted democracy in the world.

Now, corporations in Oregon have brought a law suit in federal court claiming that employers have the right to present its views of unionization to employees. They rightly claim that the new law is unconstitutional, a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. In addition, it is a violation of provisions of the National Labor Relations Act. They are asking for a preliminary injunction to prevent the law from taking effect.

Corporate America should take notice that Oregon may be a bellwether of labor relations in the new year. While we wish all of our readers a happy and prosperous 2010, the future state of labor relations in President Obama’s America will become increasingly pro-union and anti-employers.

UNION MEMBERS REVOLT

AFSCME FACES PORTENTOUS REVOLT

Municipal employees in Portland Maine have decided to show their unhappiness with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Many local union members (Local 1373) feel that they pay expensive dues and are not receiving sufficient job protections. More than ninety of their members were laid off from their city jobs.

Now 450 members of the union have received ballots, giving them the opportunity to decertify the union. The local AFSCME sends the national office $130,000 a year, and feels that it’s not getting its money’s worth.

Local leaders had filed a petition in October with 200 signatures that asked for decertification ballots. As a result, those leaders were suspended from their leadership positions, and the Local’s assets were seized. In addition, the National office has been running local ads critical of the Local.

As we reported last week in our report about SEIU, a union that is in a war with a break-away union, this is another example of intense dissension within the ranks of organized labor. As unions become increasingly more superfluous, their internecine battles increase in ferocity. Organized labor, unable to connect with workers, are fighting with each other for the ever diminishing number of workers who still find what is chimerical value in being union members.

ORGANIZED LABOR'S CIVIL WAR

One of the most aggressive unions in the country, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) will now face a challenge to its dominant role representing healthcare workers in California. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has called for an election to determine if SEIU or the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) will represent 2,300 Kaiser healthcare workers in California.

The decision of the NLRB came as a blow to SEIU in its ongoing battle with the breakaway healthcare union, NUHW. SEIU had hoped to stop NUHW’s ongoing march to win the allegiance of thousands of healthcare workers in a wide array of states. As part of its PR war, the two sides have exchanged charges of various acts of wrong doing, including financial mismanagement. Perhaps the most hilarious charge leveled by the unions is union-busting. It’s usually the paladins of Corporate America who are accused of being union busters. If the labor movement has ever evidenced its true agenda, the bitter battle between these two unions indicates that power and money are as important to unions as they are to other institutions.

Determined to preserve its power, the SEIU says it will appeal the NLRB decision. If, however, the SEIU appeal fails, balloting is expected to take place in January.

The fight between SEIU and NUHW amounts to a civil war within the labor movement. The unintended victor will be Corporate America, and the millions of workers who will regard unionization with a richly deserved sense of skepticism, if not disgust.

ANOTHER BLOW TO DEMOCRACY

According to a recent editorial in The Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration has delivered a body blow to Corporate America, specifically the airline and railway industries, which do not need any further impediments to their respective economic woes.

Both of those industries have their labor relations policies governed by The National Mediation Board (NMB), and the Board has maintained a consistent policy for the last seventy-five years.
Now, however, under a proposed new rule, the board plans to tilt the playing field in favor of organized labor. To wit: In order to obtain certification, a union will no longer need to win the approval of a majority of workers. Rather than obtain a majority of workers, a union will only have to win a majority of workers who choose to vote in a union election. That works well for unions, because only a minority of workers usually votes. Getting a majority of that minority to vote for a union will be easy. Imagine, if only 100 workers out of a total workforce of 1,000 agree to vote: the union would need only 51 votes to unionize 1,000 workers! The winning team will always be the union.

This dramatic change has been the result of President Obama appointing the former president of a pilots’ union and the former president of the Association of Flight Attendants to the NMB. It is comparable to a single football team using its own players as the sole referees in all of its games. Would such a team ever lose a game?

This change will invite numerous strikes, which will cripple the nation’s transportation system. We are now light years away from the time when President Reagan fired air traffic controllers, members of The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) for going on strike. Their strike was against the national interest. President Reagan’s actions led to the demise of PATCO and to a robust airline industry that benefitted all travellers. It was a milestone in the history of labor relations, a milestone that will not - unfortunately – be repeated anytime soon.