Counterpunch, December 8, 2008
Bait and Switch on the Employee Free Choice Act
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?
By STEVE EARLY
It’s only been a month since hundreds of thousands of union members and
their families helped Barack Obama win key “battleground states.” Yet,
already, some labor supporters of the president-elect fear he may be
backing away from a key campaign promise to workers threatened by recession.
While running for office, Obama said he strongly backed the Employee
Free Choice Act (EFCA), a long overdue labor law reform measure that
should be part of his promised economic stimulus plan. However, when
Obama introduced his top economic advisors on Nov. 25 and talked about
steps to “jolt” the economy in January, EFCA was not part of the
package. More disturbingly, his new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel,
declined to say whether the White House would support EFCA when he was
questioned about it at a Wall Street Journal-sponsored “CEO Forum”
earlier in November.
EFCA is vehemently opposed by big business because it would enable
workers to unionize and negotiate first contracts more easily. The bill
would amend the 73-year old National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) so that
private sector employers have to bargain with their employees when a
majority sign union authorization cards. Just as the NLRA did, as a
centerpiece of the New Deal, EFCA would encourage collective bargaining
to raise workers’ living standards and restore greater balance to
labor-management relations. Beginning in the late 1930s, this federal
labor policy helped create a vast new post-World War II American
middle-class.
Now, facing the worst financial crisis since the Depression, the
Democrats have an unparalleled opportunity to link labor law reform to
their broader economic recovery efforts. As economist Dean Baker, from
the Center for Economic and Policy Research, points out, “If workers are
able to form unions and get their share of productivity gains, it could
once again put the country on a wage-driven growth path, instead of
growth driven by unsustainable borrowing.”
Tax cuts, home foreclosure protection, extended jobless benefits, and a
public jobs program are all fine, EFCA supporters say. But expanded use
of labor’s traditional tool for “self help” (i.e. collective bargaining)
is needed just as much and doesn’t require new federal outlays like the
recent $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. With newly-won bargaining
rights, both hourly and salaried employees would gain a seat at the
table, when management decisions are being made during the hard times
ahead. Even amidst down-sizing, they would have more say about lay-offs,
severance pay, and recall rights, not to mention pay, health care
benefits, and the funding of troubled retirement plans.
EFCA’s potential (and not just because it might lead to a wave of
successful organizing). Contrary to the opinion of most historians,
employer propagandists claim that NLRA-assisted union growth during the
late 1930s actually prolonged the Depression. In a recent op-ed piece,
National Right To Work Committee president Mark Mix predicted that
passage of EFCA “will likely have a similar effect on the economy as the
original Wagner Act, transforming what could have been a recovery into a
lengthy, deep recession, or worse.” To kill the bill, business groups
spent an estimated $50 million on anti-EFCA advertising in Congressional
races this fall.
Key Democratic challengers were elected anyway, giving labor law
reformers a large majority in the House and 59 Democratic, Republican,
and independent supporters in the Senate. Based on this latter head
count, it will only take a single additional Republican vote for cloture
(if not for EFCA itself) or another Democratic win (in the
still-disputed contest for a Minnesota Senate seat) to thwart any GOP
filibuster like the one in 1978 that doomed labor’s last bid to overhaul
the Wagner Act.
Of course, some Senate Democrats counted as pro-EFCA by labor may now be
waffling, on cue from Chief of Staff Emanuel. See, for example, Arkansas
Sen. Blanche Lincoln who told the Northwest Arkansas Times Dec. 4 that
“focusing on this bill, this issue, isn’t paramount.” According to the
Times, Lincoln professed to be “undecided” on EFCA and “believed the
nation has more important issues to deal with.” Even a union supporter
and key House committee chair like Rep. George Miller (D-Calif) seemed
to be sending mixed signals in a Nov. 18 Chicago Tribune interview.
Miller said EFCA was not going to be “the first bill out of the chute,”
but was “not moving to the back of the train” either. [Never forget that
the Taft-Hartley Act which consummated the postwar corporate onslaught
was driven successfully through a Truman veto by Republicans crucially
helped by Democrats both north and south of the Mason-Dixon line. Editors.]
As Michael Mishak reported in the Las Vegas Sun Nov. 30, the new
administration clearly fears that any debate about EFCA early in 2009
“would be divisive at a time when Obama has gone to great lengths to
bridge the partisan rift in Washington that has grown deeper over the
past eight years.” (Of course, outside the Beltway, there’s little
evidence that strengthening workers’ rights is an unpopular cause
anywhere in America.) The problem for labor is, if EFCA is not pushed
early and hard as part of Obama’s overall economic recovery plan, the
bill runs a high risk of getting pigeonholed as “special interest”
legislation and post-election “pay-back” for labor. This narrow frame
will seal its fate.
That’s why the same union-backed political apparatus that helped put
Obama in the White House needs to be re-mobilized now to keep grassroots
pressure on him and other Democrats. In many cities, a broad coalition
of labor and community groups organized by Jobs With Justice is planning
a week of activities, Dec. 7-13, calling for a “People’s Bailout” that
would include passing EFCA. In January, unions need to bring their
rank-and-file members to Washington in far greater numbers than the UAW
has mustered on behalf of its foundering, management-driven agenda for
the auto industry.
Backers of the bill have a strong case to make that EFCA is an economic
fix that would work, while costing taxpayers almost nothing compared to
massive handouts for bankers, insurers, credit card companies,
investment firms and, perhaps next, auto makers as well. Workers about
to be—or already—crippled financially by the recession will be watching
closely to see whether their plight merits the same helping hand so
quickly extended to corporate America.
Steve Early is a labor journalist and lawyer who worked as a union
organizer for 27 years. He is the author of a forthcoming book called
Embedded With Organized Labor. Monthly Review Press, 2009. A shorter
version of this article appeared in the Dec. 6 Boston Globe. Early can
be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
