Senate Republicans rev up attack on workers

LANSING – Michigan Senate Republicans continued their anti-worker stance by approving Senate Resolution 16 on Thursday that asked the U.S. Congress to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

The resolution was introduced by Sen. Mark Jansen, R-Gaines Twp., and co-sponsored by Senators Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland and John Pappageorge, R-Troy. The resolution was approved 20-16 along party lines.

Under current U.S. law, if more than 50 percent of employees certify their desire for representation, then a union can choose to form using card check procedures by signing a card and the employer would have to recognize the bargaining unit. However, currently the employer does not have to recognize the card check petition of the majority and can veto the majority and require a secret-ballot vote overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and it does every single time. Under the proposed EFCA, an employer could only challenge a card check petition if fraud or illegal coercion was alleged. Currently, once the workers indicate they want a union, the employer calls for an election, and then the intimidation, threats of closure, threats of firing and actual firing begin.

The rise of unions coincided with the rise of the middle class, and the assault on the middle class has coincided with the attack on unions. Sen. Ray Basham, D-Taylor, said the fall in union membership has contributed to the widening gap between the rich and poor. Basham was a past Employee Support Services Representative for the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 245 and on the bargaining committee for the local.

"As organized labor becomes less and less and people lose health care and a living wage, then again, we get the very rich and the very poor," Basham said. "A lot of countries have a very rich and a very poor population like Mexico, but when you do not allow employees to organize and peacefully assemble and to have a collective voice in a workplace, you are doing a disservice not only to those employees, but also to the middle-income folks as a group in this country."

Republicans have continued to cling to the false talking point that EFCA "does away with the secret ballot." The fact that it's not true has not stopped them from parroting it at every opportunity, and this is something we have seen with all GOP talking points. It's also ironic that now Republicans now care about the sanctity of elections.

"What on earth is Congress thinking when they take away a person’s right to vote," said Sen. Alan Cropsey, R-DeWitt. "Elections by a secret ballot allow everybody to have a say in their shop."

The simple fact is that what the EFCA does is put the power of who calls for a secret ballot in the hands of the employee not management. The workers can call for a secret ballot anytime, but the employer cannot do so to use the extra time to intimidate the workers.

Senate Minority Mike Prusi, D- Ishpeming, said he has seen plenty of intimidation on the part of employers. Prusi is a former iron ore miner who has spent plenty of time at the bargaining table. He was elected to three terms as President of Local Union 4950 of the United Steelworkers of America.

"On the question on whether or not there is coercion involved, I have seen much more coercion on the part of the employer than I ever have on the part of an organizing union," Prusi said. "The employers who spend, in some cases, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars to keep the union from their workplace would be much better served if they were to work with their employees in a collective bargaining arrangement for the betterment of the employees and the betterment of the workplace."

Unions are the most democratic organization in the workplace, and workers elect their leaders and vote for the contract. It is also a bipartisan organization, a fact not lost on Sen. John Gleason, D-Flushing. Gleason was a skilled trade millwright for 30 years and is a member of Millwright's Local 1102 and UAW Local 598.

"A Republican President said it would be foolish; President Eisenhower said, “It would be foolish to not understand what unions have offered our country," Gleason said. "I agree with that Republican President that the unions have offered us a great deal of fairness."

Wear a white shirt on Wednesday and celebrate the end of the Flint Sit-Down Strike and the creation of the middle class

People all over Michigan and the nation will be wearing white shirts on Wednesday to mark an anniversary of a courageous and historic day that helped create the middle class and raised the standard of living of all U.S. workers.

White Shirt Day celebrates the historic 1937 sit-down strike at General Motor's production complex in Flint that led to the United Auto Workers (UAW) recognition as the sole bargaining agent for GM workers and led to the unionization of the United States automobile industry and helped create the middle class.

The strike began On December 30, 1936 when workers took control and occupied the plant. The workers fought off tear gas and an assault by police to retake the plant, and the parties finally reached agreement on February 11, 1937 that recognized the UAW as the exclusive bargaining representative for GM's employees.

White Shirt Day was first celebrated on Feb. 11, 1948 as a way to honor the men and women who participated in the 1937 sit-down strike. White shirts are worn to work on the anniversary of the end of the strike. This action was intended to send a message to management that "blue collar" workers had earned the right to the same respect as their management counterparts, according to Region 1C of the UAW.

Rally at noon Monday to show support for auto workers

Rudy Reyes, a retired GM worker from Lansing UAW Local 602, is organizing a rally at noon today at the Capitol in downtown Lansing in support of the bridge loan for the Big 3 automakers.

According to TV station WLNS, the rally is the result of a grassroots organization that includes retirees and current GM employees as well as unions, churches and other interested people from across the state. If you’re anyway near Lansing today drop by and show your support for workers.

Senate Republicans put power and politics ahead of the country and people

If anyone had any doubt that the U.S. Senate Republicans opposition to federal loans to save the U.S. domestic auto industry was just an excuse to break the United Auto Workers (UAW) and kill the middle class, the decision by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and his GOP cronies to scuttle the hard fought negotiations that would have provided a $14 billion loan package is proof of that.

Apparently, the loss of some 3 million jobs and a national depression are worth killing a group that primarily backed Democrats to McConnell and company. According to the AP, Senate Republicans killed a deal that had already passed the House because the UAW declined to arbitrarily cut wage cuts to "bring their pay into line with U.S. plants of Japanese carmakers. The UAW refused to do so before its current contract with the automakers expires in 2011." "Republicans insisted that the carmakers …bring wages and benefits in line with those paid by Toyota, Honda and Nissan in the United States."

Since when do foreign companies carry so much weight in U.S.? This comes just a year after the UAW agreed to an historic contract that created a two-tier pay stem that dramatically reduced wages for new workers; to as low as $14 an hour. The UAW also agreed to return to the bargaining table as a condition to get the loan. It makes no sense to arbitrarily agree to such a ridiculous demand.

Judy over at LivingBlue offers an excelent analysis of the $400 billion in subsidies and giveaways at taxpayer expense a foreign manufacturer got in a southern, non-union state while denying a $14 billon loan to a U.S. manufacturer and 3 U.S. million workers.

The solution should be for the Japanese plants to organize to lift all workers up to a decent, living wage and benefits, but the foreign companies make that extremely difficult. They locate in rural, conservative areas like Kentucky that are hard to get to by organizers and that are grateful to have any job that's off the farm. That's why there are so many meat packing plants in rural settings. Then there are the trained union busters.

According to the AP, "Hourly wages for UAW workers at GM factories are about equal to those paid by Toyota Motor Corp. at its older U.S. factories, according to the companies. GM says the average UAW laborer makes $29.78 per hour, while Toyota says it pays about $30 per hour. But the unionized factories have far higher benefit costs."

Good for them. Of course, the foreign auto makers have less so-called "legacy costs." A legacy cost is a retiree like my dad who worked all of their lives to enjoy a decent retirement. Yet, a minority of Republicans put politics and power before the country and people. There's a reason they go their ass kicked in the last election.

Maybe the next time we are in a massive war like World War II, we can ask the foreign manufactures if they would please make our tanks, armored vehicles, weapons, vehicles and aircraft. Let's hope the Chinese never call in their debt we owe them; they have more people than we do, all the money and now all the manufacturing. Instead of Detroit being the "Arsenal of Democracy" that honor can now can go to Beijing.

This decision to screw the worker and the country is in sharp contract to the $700 billion no-strings attached giveaway to the banks and the finical industry.

Auto Banks
$14 billion loan $700 billon free
Require oversight, like a car czar No oversight
Auto CEOs hand to submit a plan None required
Required employee concessions None required
Scrutinized mode of transportation Phoned it in

Voting for anti-working Grinch of the Year has begun

The nominations are in and the voting has begun for the Ninth Annual “Grinch of the Year” contest sponsored by Jobs with Justice that identifies the greediest Grinch that has caused the most harm to working families.

After taking nominations from all over the country for almost a month, the nominees are anti-worker corporate lobbyist Richard Berman and Wall Street executives.

Berman is a notorious lobbyist and hired gun for the alcohol, tobacco and fast food industries, who will say or do anything for the right price. He’s mounted campaigns to relax drunken driving laws, downplay the public health impact of obesity and indoor tanning and prevent an increase in the minimum wage. But he is a nominee for his latest attacks on labor unions and their members.

Berman has waged a multi-million dollar PR campaign against unions and the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would level the playing field by making it easier for workers to join unions. His smear campaigns do the dirty work for corporate special interests who want to deny their employees a fair wage, health care benefits and safety on the job.

We have seen the Bush administration throw money at Wall Street with zero oversight, while requiring the Big 3 and the millions of blue collar workers they employee to jump through hoops. Over the past 30 years, conservatives successfully gutted regulation and preached 'smaller government' while millions of Americans lost good jobs and Wall Street and corporate America made record profits. Wall Street invented new, more complicated ways to make money off other people’s money

Now that the party’s over, Wall Street wants to plunder the rest of us to pay the bill for their greedy rampage.

For conservatives and financial elites, when working class people face a crisis, plants close or health care costs triple, the system is working. They take all the private profits, but when the bubble bursts, and they can no longer sustain their profiteering rampage... well, they're too big to fail. And who pays the bill? The CEOs are telling Congress to send the bill to working people – the very people who have been forced out of their housing, out of their jobs, out of their healthcare and out of their pensions by Wall Street’s greed.

You can also write in a candidate, and I nominate the U.S. Senate Republicans for using the auto bridge loan to try and break up the United Auto Workers (UAW).

Vote online now.

Jobs with Justice is a national organization that runs national campaign for workers' rights, with the vision of lifting up workers’ rights and struggles as part of a larger campaign for economic and social justice. Jobs Local Jobs with Justice Coalitions unite labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations to build power for working people.

Ford has the safest cars in the world

It has been tough the last week listening to talk radio in the middle of the Big 3 auto loan talks when callers called in to disparage auto workers, the UAW and the quality of the Big 3 products.

I just have to grit my teeth knowing it’s simply not true. I would place any American car against any foreign made car, so it was good news to hear today that on the list of the safest cars put out by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Ford has the most cars on the list.

Ford was represented on the list by the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable passenger cars with optional ESC, and the Ford Edge, Ford Taurus X and Lincoln MKX midsize sport utility vehicles. Seventy-two vehicles earned the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Top Safety Pick award for 2009. This is more than double the number of 2008 recipients and more than three times the number of 2007 winners, according to the press release announcing the winners. The numbers reflect automakers' push to make certain safety equipment more widely available.

Although foreign manufactures were also represented well on the list, so were U.S. automakers. Also on the list were Cadillac CTS, Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Traverse, GMC Acadia and the Saturn Outlook.

I have driven nothing but American cars, with the exception of a two-year period when I lived overseas, and the quality and reliability of those has been fantastic a. I have owned my cars for an average of five years, and I put almost 300,000 miles on a Chevrolet Celebrity.

The bottom line is American cars are the best cars made.

Proposed auto company loans serve as excuse to bust unions

If you had the opportunity to save 3 million U.S. jobs from being lost, most people would say it’s a no-brainer and you would do it in order to not worsen the U.S. recession, but U.S. lawmakers are balking at giving the Big 3 automakers a loan to save those jobs.

It's ironic that we just threw $700 billon at banks with zero accountability, no strings and no guarantee any of it will be paid back, but we don't want to loan money to save 3 million jobs. I have a sneaky suspicion this is just one more attempt to break the union, a goal of Republicans for years.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) is being blamed for the woes of the U.S. auto industry, despite the fact that the credit crunch is making money for car loans scarce as moderate Republicans and cutting into sales. I saw some bozo on CNN last night from the rightwing Heritage Foundation making the outrageous claim that the average UAW workers make $70 an hour. Nothing could be further from the truth

People quickly forgot the huge concessions the UAW made in the contract that was settled in 2007. The Voluntary Employee Benefit Association (VEBA) agreement that will be ran by the union that will over approximately 500,000 retired auto workers and took more than 70 billon in obligations off the books for the Big 3.

The two-tier wage system means new workers will make less than foreign car makers at some $14 an hour. That is not much money. To make matters worse, foreign car makers get government help with health care that adds more than $2,000 to the cost of an American car.

We can expect to see a big push to approve so-called "right to work" laws that really means the right to work for less. The UAW almost single-handily created the middle class, and this is just one more assault on the middle class.

Proponents of so-called "Right to Work" claim the law would do away with the requirement that workers must be in a union to be employed at a union shop. However, federal law already protects workers who don't want to join a union to get or keep their jobs, and gives workers the right to opt out of a union. But they must still pay union dues. RTW would give them the option of not paying dues while still enjoying the benefits of being in a union.

Unions in RTW states are required by law to defend non-dues-paying members involved in a dispute or charged with a grievance at work, but even those employees do not have to contribute dues. RTW does not give workers more rights, but instead it weakens unions and their ability to bargain for improved benefits and working conditions, which is the real intent of RTW. The union, by law, must represent all workers equally.

Earlier this year I read " The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman. The book makes the case for the benefits of globalization, saying the convergence of technology and events has allowed counties like India, Communist China and other Third World countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing that has raised the standard of living. He claims it is not a race to the bottom for wages when companies send entire factories to Communist China so they can pay rock bottom wages of a $1 an hour because those workers will eventually organize and all workers will see an increase in wages, benefits and the standard of living will improve.

He ignores the desperate union busting in the U.S. We even have foreign companies locating in the southern U.S. where the unions aren't as strong so they can take advantage of workers.

Union organizers in China are being jailed for organizing workers. Workers in China are prevented from forming independent unions and many have been arrested for attempting to exercise that right and for defending other workers’ rights.

Top labor stories of 2007 feature a strike and an assault on labor

Organized labor was under attack in Michigan with proposals aimed at busting unions and increased moves to privatize many services and send them to non-union employees at often lower wages and benefits. But the biggest news that had Michigan residents on edge was the contract negotiations between the Big 3 and the UAW.

UAW and The Big 3 sign a contract after short strikesThe United Auto Workers signed a historic four-year contract with the Big 3 automakers in the fall that called for moving unfunded retiree health care costs into an independent trust administered by the UAW. The contract did not come easy and in September the UAW launched a nationwide strike against General Motors as 73,000 UAW members walked off the job and hit the picket lines at the nation's largest automaker. Luckily, the strike only lasted two days before an agreement was reached. In October, the UAW reached an agreement with Chrysler after a strike that only lasted a few hours. The contract Ford and the UAW signed in December was reached without a strike.

Right to Work Laws pushed
Republicans in the Michigan legislature made a concerted push to enact so-called Right to Work laws this year. Sen. Nancy Cassis, R-Novi, introduced Senate bills 607 and 608, and the companion bills in the House – House bills 4454 and 4455 – were introduced by Rep. Jack Hookendyk, R-Kalamazoo, and Rep. Kevin Elsenheimer, R-Bellaire. Both bills sat idle in their respective committees, despite Republicans controlling the Senate and Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop saying that passing Right to Work was a priority in 2008. There is also talk of a Right to Work ballot initiative in Michigan appearing in mainstream media outlets, and that may be a story for 2008. Right to Work laws allow workers to enjoy benefits won by trade unions but not pay union dues.

Pro-labor law makes it out of the HouseThe Michigan House tried to put an end to the unfair advantage that unions feel management has when there is a drive to establish a union. This came in the form of House Bill 4316, known as the Worker Freedom Act sponsored by Rep. Mark Meadows, D-Lansing. The bill would prohibit employers from making workers attend mandatory meetings where employers have a captive audience to put out negative and anti-union information. The bill passed by a 56-49 vote on July 18, 2007, and it’s still currently in the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee awaiting action. The practice of gathering employees to put out one-sided information is a staple in management’s fight to stop a union-organizing effort, while union organizers are sent to the sidelines to try and pass out info as employees zoom out of the employee parking lot. According to the nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency, a study of more than 400 union representation election campaigns found that during 92 percent of union organizing drives, employers forced their employees to attend closed-door, anti-union meetings. In addition, 78 percent of employers directed supervisors to deliver anti-union messages to employees in one-on-one meetings.

Employee Free Choice Act approved
In March, the U.S. House approved HR 800, the Employee Free Choice Act, by a vote of 228-183. It will allow workers to organize a union free of an employer’s intimidation, free from fear of being fired and free from retaliation. The bill was introduced by U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., on Feb. 5, and it had bipartisan support with 233 co-sponsors. The bill would allow employees at a work site who want a union to simply sign a card clearly indicating support for a union, and the company is required to recognize the union. Under the current law, even if the majority of the workers sign up for the union, the company can simply veto that decision and call for an election.

GM cuts workforce
General Motors Corp. announced in December it plans to offer buyouts to 5,200 of its 72,000 hourly workers. This will allow GM to hire new workers at lower wages. The deal was part of the agreement reached in September between the union and GM.