Communist
23rd February 2010, 18:29
Interesting bourgeois press article.
================================
Five Myths About the Labor Union Movement (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021902046.html?sub=AR)
By Alec MacGillis
February 2010
The anniversary of the $787 billion economic stimulus
act came and went last week with unemployment still
holding stubbornly close to 10 percent. The Democrats'
universal health-care legislation lies in limbo on
Capitol Hill. Where in all of this are the unions --
the historic guardians of the Democrats' economic
agenda? Sidelined, sort of.
Labor's top legislative priority, the Employee Free
Choice Act, is languishing. Craig Becker, the union
lawyer nominated by President Obama to a five-year term
on the National Labor Relations Board, hasn't made it
to his post. This month, he failed to win enough votes
to prevent a filibuster on his nomination, and the
president declined to make a recess appointment.
Becker's travails drew a brief flurry of attention to
the issue of labor law reform. It might be tempting to
dismiss this fraught realm with the old joke about
academia -- that the politics are so vicious because
the stakes are so low. But this would be wrong, as is
so much that is said and written across the political
spectrum about organized labor.
1. Organized labor is in inexorable decline.
Not exactly. Organized labor isn't so much shrinking as
shifting. The proportion of private-sector workers who
are union members continues to drop, to 7.2 percent
last year from 7.6 percent in 2008. But this decline
was offset by the ongoing growth of public-sector
unions -- 37.4 percent of public employees are now
represented by unions. Today, there are more public
employees in unions (7.9 million) than private-sector
ones (7.4 million).
Even within the private sector, organized labor's
decline isn't irreversible. Much of it is a result of
larger economic forces such as the shrinkage of union-
dominated manufacturing industries and the expansion of
more transient, service and professional jobs where the
workers are more difficult to organize.
But there are growing sectors in which unions are
making inroads -- low-wage jobs in retail and in health
care or elder care, for example. And they would be
signing up more workers if the regulatory climate were
more favorable. As manufacturing-heavy as the economy
was in the early 20th century, it was only when
President Franklin Roosevelt pushed through the pro-
union reforms of the New Deal that membership surged,
tripling from 12 percent of the workforce in 1930 to 36
percent in 1945.
2. Unions are bad for economic growth.
Economists on the left and the right can debate this
one for days. The pro-labor side has a strong argument:
The period of highest union penetration, from the 1940s
to the '70s, was also a period of sustained economic
growth. The other side counters with examples of unions
doing harm to their members and industries: The "jobs
bank" that the United Auto Workers maintained for
years, paying laid-off workers to do nothing, is a
favorite. And labor's foes like to note that states in
the South and the West with "right to work" laws
restricting unions have successfully lured companies
from the North or from abroad. But at least for now,
the most heavily unionized regions -- the Northeast,
the Midwest, the Northwest and California -- still hold
most of the country's wealthiest states and its most
dynamic metro areas.
The more pertinent claim against organized labor may be
on the public-sector side, where unions put significant
pressure on state budgets, particularly with pension
obligations. A new study by the Pew Center on the
States finds a $1 trillion gap between what the states
have promised their workers and what they've set aside.
3. Labor laws are not the issue -- economics are.
Far from it. Even lawyers who represent employers say
the system is badly outdated. There has not been a
major change to labor laws since the anti-union Taft-
Hartley Act of 1947. With no progress on the
legislative side, energies have focused on the five-
member National Labor Relations Board, the panel of
presidential appointees that rules on election disputes
and labor complaints appealed by unions and employers.
The NLRB is such a political football that it borders
on the dysfunctional. For the past 26 months, only two
of its five seats have been filled. This can mean long
delays for cases awaiting judgment. While the Labor
Department has far fewer union elections to oversee
these days -- 1,343 last year, down from 7,773 in 1970
-- it must process about 25,000 unfair-labor-practice
charges per year, including many that arise from nasty
jurisdictional disputes between unions.
The two board members, a Democrat and a Republican,
have managed to make rulings on 500 or so less-
controversial cases, but the weightier disputes have
been set aside. Sixty cases have been pending for two
years or more, and of them, 24 go back more than four
years. And the Supreme Court is considering whether the
two-person board is even allowed to have made the
rulings that it did.
4. The Employee Free Choice Act would radically reshape
the job market.
Not really. While the proposal would bring the biggest
change in generations, it would leave some union
challenges unaddressed. The bill as written would let
workers form a union if a majority of them sign cards
in favor of one, without having to hold a secret-ballot
election at the workplace. Unions argue that such
elections are unfairly influenced by employers. But
even before Democrats lost their filibuster-proof
Senate majority, they had all but jettisoned that part
of the bill -- dubbed "card check" by opponents --
because it lacked support among conservative Democrats.
Instead, the measure would now ease the process by
shortening the window before elections, giving
employers less time to sway workers, and by increasing
the penalties for employer violations, both relatively
incremental changes.
Arguably the more consequential part of the bill would
be a new requirement: Employers and workers who do not
reach a contract within several months after an
election would need to submit to an outside mediator.
As it now stands, more than a third of unions that win
elections never secure a first contract. Employers
ignore them, workers are afraid to strike in protest
(strikes occur far less often than they used to), and
the union eventually dissolves.
The legislation would not address what Wilma Liebman,
the Democratic NLRB member, has argued is the unions'
bigger problem. In a speech last week, she said the
true challenge is in the economy's growing reliance on
temporary and contingent workers and on undocumented
immigrants, two categories that are difficult to
organize.
5. Unions have the Democrats in their pocket.
They wish. Despite their diminished numbers, unions
still pack a powerful punch in national politics --
exit polls show that white, working-class union members
in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and
Michigan vote for Democrats at far higher rates than
white, working-class voters who are not in unions. And
unions certainly have a seat at the table now after
lacking one during the Bush years. Whereas then-AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney was invited to the White House
only once -- for the pope's visit in 2008 -- Service
Employees International Union President Andy Stern is
now among the most frequent visitors to 1600
Pennsylvania Ave.
But what do they have to show for it? Obama has held
off on pushing the Employee Free Choice Act. Union
leaders were told to wait until health-care reform was
done, and now even the compromise labor bill may be
doomed with the loss of the 60th Democratic vote in the
Senate. Obama's and the Senate's preferred funding
source for universal health care is a tax on high-cost
health plans, opposed by the unions; the White House
had agreed to labor-friendly revisions, but they are
now in doubt.
And then there is Becker. Obama has indicated that he
will not install him in a recess appointment, even
though his predecessor, George W. Bush, used recess
appointments to install seven of his eight NRLB
nominees. The unions are grumbling: If this is how
their hard work in 2008 is repaid, don't expect much
from labor's foot soldiers this fall in Altoona, Akron
or Fort Wayne. ____________________
Alec MacGillis is a reporter on the national staff of
The Washington Post.
================================
Five Myths About the Labor Union Movement (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021902046.html?sub=AR)
By Alec MacGillis
February 2010
The anniversary of the $787 billion economic stimulus
act came and went last week with unemployment still
holding stubbornly close to 10 percent. The Democrats'
universal health-care legislation lies in limbo on
Capitol Hill. Where in all of this are the unions --
the historic guardians of the Democrats' economic
agenda? Sidelined, sort of.
Labor's top legislative priority, the Employee Free
Choice Act, is languishing. Craig Becker, the union
lawyer nominated by President Obama to a five-year term
on the National Labor Relations Board, hasn't made it
to his post. This month, he failed to win enough votes
to prevent a filibuster on his nomination, and the
president declined to make a recess appointment.
Becker's travails drew a brief flurry of attention to
the issue of labor law reform. It might be tempting to
dismiss this fraught realm with the old joke about
academia -- that the politics are so vicious because
the stakes are so low. But this would be wrong, as is
so much that is said and written across the political
spectrum about organized labor.
1. Organized labor is in inexorable decline.
Not exactly. Organized labor isn't so much shrinking as
shifting. The proportion of private-sector workers who
are union members continues to drop, to 7.2 percent
last year from 7.6 percent in 2008. But this decline
was offset by the ongoing growth of public-sector
unions -- 37.4 percent of public employees are now
represented by unions. Today, there are more public
employees in unions (7.9 million) than private-sector
ones (7.4 million).
Even within the private sector, organized labor's
decline isn't irreversible. Much of it is a result of
larger economic forces such as the shrinkage of union-
dominated manufacturing industries and the expansion of
more transient, service and professional jobs where the
workers are more difficult to organize.
But there are growing sectors in which unions are
making inroads -- low-wage jobs in retail and in health
care or elder care, for example. And they would be
signing up more workers if the regulatory climate were
more favorable. As manufacturing-heavy as the economy
was in the early 20th century, it was only when
President Franklin Roosevelt pushed through the pro-
union reforms of the New Deal that membership surged,
tripling from 12 percent of the workforce in 1930 to 36
percent in 1945.
2. Unions are bad for economic growth.
Economists on the left and the right can debate this
one for days. The pro-labor side has a strong argument:
The period of highest union penetration, from the 1940s
to the '70s, was also a period of sustained economic
growth. The other side counters with examples of unions
doing harm to their members and industries: The "jobs
bank" that the United Auto Workers maintained for
years, paying laid-off workers to do nothing, is a
favorite. And labor's foes like to note that states in
the South and the West with "right to work" laws
restricting unions have successfully lured companies
from the North or from abroad. But at least for now,
the most heavily unionized regions -- the Northeast,
the Midwest, the Northwest and California -- still hold
most of the country's wealthiest states and its most
dynamic metro areas.
The more pertinent claim against organized labor may be
on the public-sector side, where unions put significant
pressure on state budgets, particularly with pension
obligations. A new study by the Pew Center on the
States finds a $1 trillion gap between what the states
have promised their workers and what they've set aside.
3. Labor laws are not the issue -- economics are.
Far from it. Even lawyers who represent employers say
the system is badly outdated. There has not been a
major change to labor laws since the anti-union Taft-
Hartley Act of 1947. With no progress on the
legislative side, energies have focused on the five-
member National Labor Relations Board, the panel of
presidential appointees that rules on election disputes
and labor complaints appealed by unions and employers.
The NLRB is such a political football that it borders
on the dysfunctional. For the past 26 months, only two
of its five seats have been filled. This can mean long
delays for cases awaiting judgment. While the Labor
Department has far fewer union elections to oversee
these days -- 1,343 last year, down from 7,773 in 1970
-- it must process about 25,000 unfair-labor-practice
charges per year, including many that arise from nasty
jurisdictional disputes between unions.
The two board members, a Democrat and a Republican,
have managed to make rulings on 500 or so less-
controversial cases, but the weightier disputes have
been set aside. Sixty cases have been pending for two
years or more, and of them, 24 go back more than four
years. And the Supreme Court is considering whether the
two-person board is even allowed to have made the
rulings that it did.
4. The Employee Free Choice Act would radically reshape
the job market.
Not really. While the proposal would bring the biggest
change in generations, it would leave some union
challenges unaddressed. The bill as written would let
workers form a union if a majority of them sign cards
in favor of one, without having to hold a secret-ballot
election at the workplace. Unions argue that such
elections are unfairly influenced by employers. But
even before Democrats lost their filibuster-proof
Senate majority, they had all but jettisoned that part
of the bill -- dubbed "card check" by opponents --
because it lacked support among conservative Democrats.
Instead, the measure would now ease the process by
shortening the window before elections, giving
employers less time to sway workers, and by increasing
the penalties for employer violations, both relatively
incremental changes.
Arguably the more consequential part of the bill would
be a new requirement: Employers and workers who do not
reach a contract within several months after an
election would need to submit to an outside mediator.
As it now stands, more than a third of unions that win
elections never secure a first contract. Employers
ignore them, workers are afraid to strike in protest
(strikes occur far less often than they used to), and
the union eventually dissolves.
The legislation would not address what Wilma Liebman,
the Democratic NLRB member, has argued is the unions'
bigger problem. In a speech last week, she said the
true challenge is in the economy's growing reliance on
temporary and contingent workers and on undocumented
immigrants, two categories that are difficult to
organize.
5. Unions have the Democrats in their pocket.
They wish. Despite their diminished numbers, unions
still pack a powerful punch in national politics --
exit polls show that white, working-class union members
in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and
Michigan vote for Democrats at far higher rates than
white, working-class voters who are not in unions. And
unions certainly have a seat at the table now after
lacking one during the Bush years. Whereas then-AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney was invited to the White House
only once -- for the pope's visit in 2008 -- Service
Employees International Union President Andy Stern is
now among the most frequent visitors to 1600
Pennsylvania Ave.
But what do they have to show for it? Obama has held
off on pushing the Employee Free Choice Act. Union
leaders were told to wait until health-care reform was
done, and now even the compromise labor bill may be
doomed with the loss of the 60th Democratic vote in the
Senate. Obama's and the Senate's preferred funding
source for universal health care is a tax on high-cost
health plans, opposed by the unions; the White House
had agreed to labor-friendly revisions, but they are
now in doubt.
And then there is Becker. Obama has indicated that he
will not install him in a recess appointment, even
though his predecessor, George W. Bush, used recess
appointments to install seven of his eight NRLB
nominees. The unions are grumbling: If this is how
their hard work in 2008 is repaid, don't expect much
from labor's foot soldiers this fall in Altoona, Akron
or Fort Wayne. ____________________
Alec MacGillis is a reporter on the national staff of
The Washington Post.