National Public Radio, Morning Edition, December 15, 2004, Wednesday

Copyright 2004 National Public Radio (R)
All Rights Reserved
National Public Radio (NPR)

SHOW: Morning Edition 10:00 AM EST NPR

December 15, 2004 Wednesday



LENGTH: 493 words

HEADLINE: Entire NHL season may be wiped out because of labor dispute

ANCHORS: RENEE MONTAGNE

REPORTERS: TOM GOLDMAN

BODY:
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The National Hockey League has moved a step closer to becoming the first North American sport league to cancel an entire season because of a labor dispute. Yesterday in Toronto, hockey players and owners rejected each others' contract proposals and did not schedule any more bargaining sessions. The three-month-old lockout already has wiped out more than 400 games from the schedule. NPR's Tom Goldman reports.
TOM GOLDMAN reporting:
Hope--that's what hockey fans felt last Thursday when the players union offered a new proposal after three months of no negotiations. Anticipation--that's what many felt yesterday as National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman emerged from a three-and-a-half-hour bargaining session on that union proposal.
Mr. GARY BETTMAN (Commissioner, National Hockey League): Good afternoon. Today we formally responded to the union. We also made a counterproposal, and it was rejected by the Players' Association.
GOLDMAN: One can almost imagine the fans now slumping in their chairs, shaking their heads. For those who kept watching and listening to Bettman's news conference, they heard him praise last week's union offer, which included what both sides agree was a significant 24 percent immediate rollback on player salaries. But the rest of the proposal, said Bettman, didn't work.
Mr. BETTMAN: It is dramatic in its immediate short-term impact, but it is fatally flawed as a system going forward. Of that, I and our 30 clubs have absolutely no doubt.
GOLDMAN: Bettman and the owners say hockey's economic system is broken and needs to be rebuilt on the principle of cost certainty. Too much of the league's dwindling revenues go to player salaries, they say. Controlling those salaries and linking them directly to team revenues is the league's key demand. The union dismisses that as another attempt to put a cap on salaries. After rejecting the league's counterproposal on Tuesday, union head Bob Goodenow said, quote, "Gary Bettman remains fixated on the salary cap solution. As long as that's the case, there are going to be problems," end quote. In particular, potential problems for the union, says Richard Hurd, a professor of labor studies at Cornell University.
Professor RICHARD HURD (Cornell University): In other settings in the United States over the past 20 years when employers have taken this firm a stand, the ultimate objective often was to eliminate the union.
GOLDMAN: Professor Hurd says it's not clear the league is trying to do that in this case. What is clear is that the broken-down process now threatens to eliminate an entire hockey season, and many may not care. A recent poll in The Hockey News reportedly said only 56 percent of Americans knew about the lockout. Detroit forward Brendan Shanahan was quoted last week as saying, "It's been a real wake-up call. I have a lot of pride in my sport, and most people in the US haven't even noticed we're not playing." Tom Goldman, NPR News.

Chicago Tribune, December 12, 2004, Sunday

Copyright 2004 Chicago Tribune Company
Chicago Tribune

December 12, 2004 Sunday
Chicago Final Edition

SECTION: BUSINESS ; ZONE C; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: Lockout weapon;
A strike once was a union's most powerful weapon, but employers are trumping that move by keeping workers out and hiring replacements for them

BYLINE: By James P. Miller and Stephen Franklin, Tribune staff reporters.

DATELINE: RACINE, Wis.

BODY:
Outside the chain-link fence that surrounds CNH Global NV's farm-equipment plant here, a dozen men and women in thick jackets and wool caps are wielding bold-lettered signs, stamping their feet and hunching their shoulders against the cold.
When passing cars honk their horns in a sign of support the workers, members of the United Auto Workers union, waggle their signs in return.
At first glance, the scene in front of the looming gray-metal CNH facility appears to be a classic labor strike. But these workers are not on strike. They are unemployed, and none too happy about it.
"UAW LOCKED OUT," their signs read.
The CNH employees want to work, but the company has told them to stay home, without pay, until they agree to a new contract. In the meantime, the Lake Forest-based maker of Case and New Holland brand farm and construction equipment is keeping the production line going with the help of replacement workers it brought in.
CNH's maneuver is known as a lockout. A lockout is essentially the flip side of a strike: Once a labor contract expires, the workers are free to withhold their labor by striking, but the employer is similarly free to close the workplace to the unionized employees.
The owners of the National Hockey League, for example, have locked out NHL players for the past 12 weeks, and many people think the entire season will be lost.
Once a nearly unthinkable management tactic, the lockout gradually has grown more common.
"Clearly, employers are very aggressively using the lockout. They are willing to take on unions," said UCLA labor expert Ken Wong, citing California employers' recent lockouts in disputes with grocery store workers and hotel workers.
Employers frequently hire replacement workers at the same time they impose a lockout, so that they can ride out the labor fight without losing production.
That tactic has proven so successful that many unions have grown afraid to strike.
As the auto workers at CNH have discovered, to their dismay, the strike, once a powerful last-resort weapon for labor, has turned into a dangerous two-edged sword that often does more harm to the workers than to the employer.
Lost leverage
The trend reflects unions' diminishing clout, experts say.
As unions have grown smaller over the past two decades, companies see fewer strikes and are less threatened by the handful they do face, said John Raudabaugh, a Detroit-based management attorney and former member of the National Labor Relations Board.
Companies don't fear employee walkouts as they once did because "there are too many ways to ride out a strike," he said.
In earlier times, when organized labor was more prominent in public opinion, companies shrank from using the lockout for fear that they might be portrayed as bullying workers.
"Lockouts," said Raudabaugh, "for years were not really part of management's arsenal."
They are now. Many experts say that the use of replacement workers lost much of its stigma in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan fired and replaced striking air-traffic controllers who refused to return to work.
And the shift in leverage is apparent in the lockout of 650 workers at CNH's plants in Racine and Burlington, Iowa.
After months of fruitless talks, during which the workers continued to toil under terms of their expired contract, the CNH workers went on strike Nov. 3.
The strike was a surprise to CNH, which has 10,000 employees worldwide and is controlled by Italy's Fiat group.
"They told us at 10 o'clock in the morning they were going out at noon, and at noon they went," said a company spokesman.
Replacement strategy
Twenty or 25 years ago, once the picket lines went up, both sides would have hunkered down to see who gave ground first. The employer would have no product to sell, and the striking workers would get no paychecks. The mutual economic pain ensured that both sides eventually would come back to the table.
But times have changed, and CNH did not hunker down. Instead, it resumed production one week after the strike began, using salaried employees and temporary replacement workers.
And 10 days after buses full of temporary replacements first began rolling through the plant gates, the company declared the contract talks to be at an impasse. Under federal labor law, that assertion allows the company to turn those temporary replacement workers into permanent hires.
An impasse also allows a company to unilaterally impose a contract, putting workers in a take-it-or-leave-it situation.
CNH hasn't made the temporary workers permanent, but it has declared effective some of the terms contained in its unpopular contract proposal. Still, the message was clear: The striking workers' jobs were officially on the line.
Within hours of the company's "impasse" announcement, the strikers announced that they were ready to return to work. There was no impasse, they argued, because the two sides hadn't explored all options.
But CNH responded by telling the workers, in essence, to stay home until they were ready to accept what the company has called its final offer. And cynics note that the workers' offer to return could bolster a union appeal of the company's action.
Though insisting it is committed to the negotiation process, CNH said, "We do not think it is appropriate at this time to allow striking employees to return to work while the parties remain so far apart."
After the end of all that maneuvering, the striking workers were no longer strikers, because they had asked to come back to work but been spurned. They were unemployed.
Although their applications for unemployment compensation initially were rejected by the State of Wisconsin, the locked-out Racine workers last week received approval to collect jobless benefits.
"I think it's the lowest of the low," John Valko, president of UAW Local 180 in Racine, said of CNH's actions. Valko was sitting in the union hall, where deer-hunting magazines sit on the tables and a sign on the blackboard tells workers that if they're having problems making payments, "Horizon Credit Union will work with you."
Workers manning the union's informational picket line outside the Racine factory feel the same way. It's particularly unfair of the company to take a hard line, they say, because the union has already granted a host of concessions intended to lower CNH's operating costs.
"It's an insult to us," fumed Mike Callahan, who works in the tool room at the factory.
"We've given up so much," said another worker. "It's kind of doggish of them" to lock out the workers, he added.
Doggish or not, the use of replacement workers, coupled with a lockout, has become a potent negotiating tool for employers. Just as union workers typically make a big show of voting to authorize a strike they hope won't be needed, employers often advertise for replacement workers--and sometimes hire and begin training them--while contract negotiations are under way.
Companies shut out their workers, said Rick Hurd, a labor expert at Cornell University, "when they think they have more leverage than the unions." These days, he said, unions much prefer to work without a contract rather than risk a strike, he said.
Such concerns are the reason why 9,000 UAW-represented workers at Caterpillar Inc. are playing it safe, staying on the job even though their old contract expired last spring, and even though the Peoria heavy-equipment manufacturer has refused to alter contract proposals the workers twice have voted to reject.
Caterpillar battle
Indeed, among blue-collar unions, the strike almost has become a mirage, a memento of a time decades ago when dozens of walkouts were staged annually, without fear.
The loss of that former swagger has many causes. The growth of foreign competition changed the economic balance and stiffened many producers' resolve to face off with the unions.
As part of that plan, many major manufacturers have reduced their exposure to union pressure by building factories in non-union Sun Belt states or in low-cost foreign sites. That way, even if their unionized plants walk out, companies can keep customers happy by using those alternative, non-union sources.
Thus, when 14,000 Caterpillar UAW employees struck twice during an epic six-year contract fight during the 1990s, Cat successfully weathered those walkouts by keeping production lines running with replacement workers and salaried personnel, and by relying on output from its non-union facilities.
The UAW's battle with Caterpillar is seen by many as the last of the old-style, large-scale strikes against a major manufacturing company. But Valko argues that it wasn't a mistake to take on CNH.
"Our solidarity is just terrific," he contends. "Our goal is to get back to the bargaining table."
- - -
How a lockout works
If labor-management negotiations haven't yielded a new contract by the time the old accord expires, the situation becomes more volatile: Workers are free to strike in an effort to win better terms, but the employer is free to lock out union workers.
In a lockout, the company can shut down operations to pressure the workers, as the National Hockey League is doing with the players union. Alternatively, it can bring in replacement employees and continue to operate without the union, as CNH Global has opted to do.

GRAPHIC: PHOTO (color): Union workers at the CNH Global plant in Racine, Wis., stage informational picketing Thursday outside the plant's gates. The company last month declared contract talks were at an impasse and locked out workers, who had been on strike since Nov. 3. Tribune photo by Jim Robinson.

PHOTO: John Valko, president of UAW Local 180, which represents CNH union employees, defends the decision to strike. Tribune photo by Jim Robinson.
PHOTO

The Journal News (Westerchester County, NY), December 12, 2004, Sunday

Copyright 2004 The Journal News (Westerchester County, NY)
All Rights Reserved
The Journal News

December 12, 2004 Sunday

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4A

HEADLINE: Mainstream jobs prove to be a benefit

SERIES: Coming of Age

BYLINE: Amy Sara Clark

BODY:
Placement agency says diversity, cost also aid employers
Amy Sara Clark
For The Journal News
Twenty-one-year-old Natalie Troupe spent the past few years trying to answer one of the quintessential questions facing American youth: What should I do with my life? She tried working at a plant nursery, a nursing home and a nursery school. Now she's trying out clerical work at a local law firm.
Since her senior year in high school, Troupe has been working with the life-planning department at Westchester ARC, an agency and advocacy organization for people with disabilities, to figure out a career path that's appropriate for her.
"Their goal is to help different people get jobs. Jobs that they feel comfortable in, jobs that they think are nice," said Troupe, who graduated from Rye Neck High School in 2003.
It may seem like a given that people with developmental disabilities would try to find appropriate career paths, but up until the 1980s, it was not. Back then, people with developmental disabilities generally did whatever work was offered at sheltered workshops set up just for them.
Then a new approach revolutionized the attitudes of professionals and of people with developmental disabilities.
"Person-centered planning asks, 'Who is this person, what are their God-given gifts?' " said Carol Blessing of Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Then it builds a plan around that individual, rather than putting the individual into an existing formula.
To begin her process of self-exploration, Troupe sat down with the life-planning program's coordinator, Ralph Szur, and mapped out her skills and interests. Once Troupe figures out what she wants to do, a job coach at Westchester ARC will help find her a permanent job in a local business, then train her once she gets there.
ARC sells its work force using four arguments - job satisfaction, company image, diversity and cost, said Thomas Hughes, Westchester ARC's associate executive director.
For example, suppose an office has several highly paid administrative assistants doing their own shredding and copying.
A job coach might suggest that one of Westchester ARC's workers could do the shredding and copying at a lower price, a technique called "job carving." This substitution will probably create greater job satisfaction for everyone at the workplace, Hughes said.
Most people with disabilities feel tremendously proud to be working in a mainstream workplace, he said, generally stay in positions longer and are absent less often. Hughes added that employers also choose to hire ARC's clients because it improves the company's public image and demonstrates that it has a diversified work force.
The approach works. Westchester ARC has placed about 200 clients in jobs with local businesses - nearly 50 people in the past year alone.
ARC also helps students get jobs through a resume-writing and job-skills class, which Troupe said taught her a lot. "Don't go late to work and always be on time. Dress to success - meaning you can't go to work looking all sloppy," she said.
While the program helps people find jobs, it does something even more important.
It helps them find themselves, said Adrienne Troupe, Natalie's mother. "She just ended up being independent and liking to be her own person, which makes a big, big difference."
Glossary
Mainstreaming: Integration of people with special needs into community schools, workplaces, recreational activities and neighborhoods.
Developmental disabilities: A range of neurological disorders, including mental retardation, autism, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy.
Sheltered workshop: A workplace created for people with disabilities. The work is often of a repetitive nature, such as factory work or stuffing envelopes.
Competitive-community-individualized employment: Jobs held by people with disabilities in mainstream workplaces.
Work crew: A mix of individualized and workshop employment models in which a team of people with disabilities works in a mainstream workplace as a group, usually under the supervision of an agency employee, rather than as employees of the mainstream workplace.
Person-centered planning: Helping developmentally disabled people pick individually appropriate career paths.

The Journal News (Westerchester County, NY), December 12, 2004, Sunday

Copyright 2004 The Journal News (Westerchester County, NY)
All Rights Reserved
The Journal News

December 12, 2004 Sunday

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A

HEADLINE: COMING OF AGE

SERIES: Coming of Age

BYLINE: Amy Sara Clark

BODY:
Developmentally disabled make way into work force
Once relegated to low-paying jobs, many seek careers
Amy Sara Clark
For The Journal News
First in a series The moment Jessica Martino was born, the medical staff could tell from her tiny features that she had Down syndrome, and the delivery room fell still. Kay and Luigi Martino's doctor told them she would never walk or talk or be able to love. It was 1978, a time when it was still common for doctors to advise parents to institutionalize newborns who were develop-mentally disabled. The Martinos didn't listen. Today, she has a job and a full social life and soon will move into her own home.
Every weekday afternoon, Jessica Martino walks through the sunlight-filled library at Westchester Community College, straightening chairs, collecting books and keeping order in what - especially come finals - can be a very disorderly place.
Martino, who has Down syndrome, works 17y hours a week in a permanent clerk position and gets full benefits, including health insurance, a pension plan, and vacation and sick days.
When Martino is done with her rounds, she electronically scans the books, then sorts them by call numbers. She also sends out video materials requested by other libraries and modifies records in the library's database.
Four decades ago, a person with developmental disabilities securing such a job would have been nearly unheard of. Back then, if such a person worked, it was most likely in a "sheltered workshop" specifically for the disabled. If the person did get a mainstream job, it was likely to be at the lowest level, with little chance of advancement.
"People were working for minimum, or even subminimum wage," said Carol Blessing of Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. "They weren't going anywhere."
Carolyn Holodak of Yonkers had such an experience.
Holodak graduated from high school in 1974 and was considered lucky when she secured a 15-hour-a-week job at a college cafeteria with the help of Westchester ARC, a social-services agency. At first, she was happy to have the work, but with a fifth-grade reading level, she soon felt unchallenged.
"They never really tried to train her to do anything," said her father, James Holodak. "After 20 years, she was about where she was when she started."
A few years ago, through political volunteer work, Holodak landed a full-time salaried job with benefits at Yonkers City Hall. She started out sorting and distributing mail, but her duties have grown to include maintaining records and answering the phone.
If she had been born a generation later, that job would have come much sooner.
Legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which prohibits employers from discriminating against people with disabilities as long they can do the job with reasonable accommodation, has opened up a world of opportunity. Teens with developmental disabilities now begin exploring potential careers in high school.
Jessica Sirota, 27, of Pomona tried several jobs, including working at a nursing home and busing tables at a Ruby Tuesday, before settling on a job at a day-care center, which she adores. "I love being with (the children); I get to talk to them, I play with them and I enjoy them," she said.
Joseph Lombardozzi, a 19-year-old who has autism, found his job at Pappalardo, Tombini & Wolff, a small Elmsford law firm, through an internship program at Southern Westchester's Board of Cooperative Educational Services.
"At first, we thought we were going to get a regular vocational student," said Michele Tombini, a partner at the firm. But the school suggested Lombardozzi, and the match was apt.
"The task itself is very repetitive in nature," said the firm's senior paralegal, Phyllis Brigantino. "The average young person would get very bored with the job."
Lombardozzi continues checking his work long after most employees would have gotten lazy, Brigantino said, adding that he rarely makes mistakes. "Not a single keystroke error," she said. "No matter what he does, he does it to precision."
So when another position opened, the firm went back to BOCES.
"The pride, the work ethic," Brigantino said. "Why wouldn't you want someone that does at a drop of a hat whatever you ask?"
Lombardozzi started out entering data from legal files, then packing the files for storage, and the firm continues to expand his duties. Now he opens mail and categorizes legal documents, sends out records to government offices, photocopies, and faxes and downloads legal files from the Internet. Tombini said she lies awake at night, thinking of new tasks she can give him to help him grow.
"For me, it's been quite remarkable to see a human being go from a very isolated person to such a social employee," Brigantino said. "For example, he used to not like people touching him. Now he high-fives them."
While Martino, Sirota and Lombardozzi work in what's called competitive employment, another option for people with disabilities is to work in a "work crew," supervised by a nondisabled job coach. Nick Albrecht of Mahopac sorts and hangs up clothing at a Goodwill store with a small group of friends from Putnam Associated Resource Centers. He's paid by the piece for his work, and he enjoys it. "I like hanging clothes, (and) I eat lunch down there," he said.
In this economy, it's harder than it used to be to get businesses to hire people with disabilities, professionals say, and one solution is for people with disabilities to create their own businesses. Another Step, a Rockland County agency, has helped four of its clients create a line of gumball machines. Jill McManus of Valley Cottage and three of her friends, Andy Vunk of Pearl River, Jeffrey Askew of Pomona and Kelley Christie of Pearl River, own about 20 machines in Rockland. They count the gumballs, clean the machines, count the quarters and try to expand.
"These guys have a very good feeling about owning their own business. It's being in control of your own destiny," said Jack Ribeiro, who directs Another Step's employment services.
McManus, 27, said she likes the store owners and friends she's working with. "I'm happy. I like to do gum machines. It's fun, making money," she said.
Although legislation and special programs have opened up a world of opportunity for McManus and Martino's generation, there's still a long way to go.
A lingering problem, many advocates agree, is a lack of flexibility in funding sources. For example, someone with an IQ a few points too high might not qualify for programs, even if other problems prevent the individual from finding employment.
Although things have gotten better, in the end it's still up to the parents to secure the appropriate resources and services for their children - and it's up to employers to be willing to hire them.
"A lot of people Jessica went to school with, I know they can do a lot more," said her mother, Kay Martino. "Kids that certainly aren't any more disabled than she is, they work as busboys, or work at the gym picking up towels, or at the grocery store doing carts. And nothing's wrong with doing that. But that's all they're going to get the opportunity to do for the next 30 years, when they could do more if somebody gave them a little push or a little helping hand."
Resources
Putnam
* The Friends Network (also serves Westchester):
845-225-1741.
* Putnam Associated Resource Centers or PARC:
845-278-7272.
* Putnam County Office for People with Disabilities:
845-228-5912.
* Taconic Developmental Disabilities Services Office:
845-279-2905.
Rockland
* Another Step Inc. (also serves Westchester):
845-353-2809.
* ARC of Rockland: 845-267-2500.
* Hudson Valley Developmental Disabilities Services Office (also serves Westchester):
845-947-6100.
* Rockland County Department of Mental Health:
845-364-2374.
Westchester
* North East Westchester Special Recreation Inc.: 914-347-4409.
* Nor-West Regional Special Services: 914-737-4797.
* South East Consortium For Special Services: 914-698-5232.
* Westchester ARC: 914-428-8330.

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, December 8, 2004, Wednesday

Copyright 2004 Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
All Rights Reserved
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

December 8, 2004 Wednesday Metro Edition

SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 1A

HEADLINE: Joy, wariness greet new minimum wage

BYLINE: Joy Davia, JDAVIA@DemocratandChronicle.com

BODY:
Workers welcome the extra income but some area businesses fear payroll hardships ahead
Joy Davia
Staff Writer
Waitress Debbie Knapp is both excited and worried about the state's newly passed minimum-wage increase.
She's excited because she needs the extra money, especially since her recently laid off fiance just landed a job with a much smaller salary. But she is worried that her employer - Patricia Hall of Pat's Coffee Mug - can't handle another financial hit.
Fewer customers are eating at the restaurant, so business is hurting. In the last few years, one neighboring business closed and another laid off workers. Participants in a nearby ARC program have also stopped frequenting the South Clinton Avenue restaurant after losing their stipends because of funding cuts, she added.
"I know she can't afford it," said Knapp, gesturing toward Hall, who was working in the kitchen, "especially because business is so slow. I just feel bad."
Local workers and businesses had similar mixed reactions Tuesday to the state Senate's override a day earlier of Gov. George Pataki's wage increase veto. The Assembly already overrode the veto in August. So the state's minimum wage will jump from $5.15 an hour to $6 in January, to $6.75 in 2006 and to $7.15 by 2007.
Some agreed that the increase would provide a more livable wage for about 28,300 workers in Monroe County who are paid between $5.15 and $6.99 an hour. It might also allow such workers - who include waitresses, dishwashers and day care workers - to spend more money and bolster the local economy.
A ripple effect?
But others painted a bleaker scenario. How can companies - especially smaller businesses - absorb another jump in overhead costs, especially in a stagnant economy? Businesses will have to raise prices and perhaps cut staff. Workers paid just above the minimum wage will probably expect a similar pay jump, said area business owners.
Still, Toni Prutzman, a waitress at South Wedge Diner and a single mother who lives with her 5-year-old son, Tyler, in Irondequoit, said the wage jump is welcome relief. She makes close to $4 an hour - which is more than tip workers' minimum hourly rate of $3.30 - but said it's hard to pay bills because the amount she takes in from tips fluctuates.
In July, for example, her tips unexpectedly dropped by about $100 to $150 a week. She couldn't pay her rent, so her landlord let her make it up a month later.
Prutzman's boss, owner Tam Tran, scanned a newspaper report on the wage increase, which for tip workers would climb to $3.85 in 2005, $4.35 in 2006 and $4.60 in 2007 for tip workers. "I can handle that," he said.
But other business owners weren't so sure.
Romold Inc. President Lou Romano said the wage increase was another rising cost that might prompt him to explore options such as relocating out of New York state.
He ticked off a list of his growing expenses: workers' compensation, utility costs, lease payments.
His full-time workers are paid at least $8 an hour, "but invariably, in some way, shape or form, we'll probably have to follow suit with our other workers and keep the proportions the same," said Romano, whose Gates firm designs and manufacturers plastic injection molds.
Other states did OK
But their fears might be unfounded. Businesses in other states were not greatly hurt by higher minimum-wage rates, said Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Cornell University's Irving M. Ides labor professor.
"There was some increase for people down at the bottom of the scale but the ripple effect was not that large. Especially because they're going to increase salaries of the other people over time, anyway," he said.
Pataki said he vetoed the wage increase because he feared New York might lose jobs to neighboring states such as Pennsylvania and New Jersey who are still at the $5.15 federal minimum. (Massachusetts and Connecticut have higher minimum wages.) He also said he believed the federal government should set the minimum wage rate so all states would be on equal footing.
Business owners say they don't begrudge their workers a chance to earn more money.
"We pay our workers at least $8 an hour and they can barely survive on that," said Nel Adams, vice president of Jeff's Books in Midtown Plaza, who might have to increase pay for workers making a bit over the minimum rate.
The minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. If the state 1968 minimum wage of $1.50 were adjusted for inflation, it would have been worth $8.72 in 2003, according to a March 2004 report by the New York state Assembly.
But some business owners are very worried about how to manage the extra cost.
For Hall of Pat's Coffee Mug, it might just mean selling her business of 12 years before her lease expires in September.
"I keep on handing out more than I take home," she said. "And the (minimum wage) increase is just one more thing that will add to that."

GRAPHIC: Waitress Toni Prutzman, at work at the South Wedge Diner, makes about $4 an hour, so the rise in the minimum wage is welcome. But she will still find it hard to pay bills because she depends on fluctuating tips. CARLOS ORTIZ staff photographer; Top minimum wages; New York will raise the minimum wage to $7.15 an hour by 2007, joining other states with rates above the federal minimum. Federal minimum wage: $5.15 Chart is not available. * Indexes the minimum wage to account for annual increases in the cost of living. ** Vermont's and Illinois' minimum wages will increase to $7 and $6.50, respectively, on Jan. 1, 2005. SOURCE: Fiscal Policy Institute; KEVIN M. SMITH staff artist

Charleston Gazette (West Virginia), December 6, 2004, Monday

Copyright 2004 Charleston Newspapers
Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)

December 6, 2004, Monday

SECTION: News; Pg. P6A

HEADLINE: Labor leaders talk about making difference again

BYLINE: Philip Dine

BODY:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
NEW YORK - For most of the past century, the American labor movement was at the forefront of the country's economic, political and social battles - helping elect presidents, lifting millions of workers into the middle class and pushing for safer workplaces.
In recent years, as their influence steadily dwindled, union leaders have fended off criticism, maintaining that they were still a vital force and were doing as well as could be expected given factors beyond their control, such as the shipping of union jobs overseas.
The period of denial is officially over.
Late last week, union leaders and activists gathered in New York to acknowledge what has gone wrong - and to figure out how to make the labor movement relevant again. The failure to organize enough new workers to maintain labor's size and strength was a key topic.
AFL-CIO organizing director Stewart Acuff said organizing new groups of workers had been made more difficult by labor laws, aggressive employer actions, pro-business appointments to labor relations boards and by the failure of union leaders to make it a priority.
The dwindling numbers have, in turn, damaged labor's ability to take on employers in the type of successful collective bargaining that long helped boost wages and benefits, said Larry Cohen, executive vice president of the Communications Workers of America.
"We have seen collective bargaining rights virtually destroyed on our watch," he said. "We have to go back to these roots."
They were among 565 of the nation's top labor leaders, analysts and local union officials who gathered Thursday and Friday for an open - and unusually frank - debate on what ails their movement and how to fix it.
"The fact that this debate has moved from the executive board of the AFL-CIO to the public is just really significant. I've never seen it in my lifetime, this type of open debate," said Mark Dudzic, national organizer for the Labor Party and former union official.
The City University of New York hosted the event, sponsored by the Queens College Labor Resource Center and the New Labor Forum, a periodical. The high attendance reflected the significance of labor's troubles, with the exclamation point being last month's re-election of President Bush, considered by many in labor as the most anti-union president ever.
"The topic is hot for two reasons," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. "It's hot because labor is in a crisis, and it's hot because labor is really thinking about fundamental changes that could revitalize it."
From a high of 35 percent of the work force in 1955, labor today represents 13 percent - and only 8 percent of workers in the private sector.
Last year, labor organized 400,000 new members, but 600,000 union jobs were lost because of company closings or relocations.
But while labor is clear on the problems, there was a good deal of dispute over the solutions. Among the proposals:
s Merging unions. The goal is to present corporations with more powerful adversaries, lessen internal competition among unions and cut administrative costs to free resources for other purposes.
s Improving what unions do to promote more skillful negotiating and more effective organizing campaigns.
s Changing labor laws. Current laws have been interpreted in ways that make it easier for businesses to combat union organizing.
s Making unions more democratic and increasing rank-and-file involvement. This might make unions more attractive to unorganized workers.
s Forging more alliances between labor and other groups. Bringing labor together with environmentalists, blacks and immigrants on a permanent basis, not just during elections, would increase the strength of each.
s Weaning unions from the Democratic Party. Some contend that unions have been taken for granted, giving them little leverage and preventing them from articulating their own agenda.
s Taking a page from the Republican Party playbook by stressing values.

Modern Healthcare, December 6, 2004, Monday

Copyright 2004 Crain Communications Inc.
Modern Healthcare

December 6, 2004, Monday

SECTION: Pg. 26

HEADLINE: Labor pains; As membership slides, unions have turned to provocative corporate campaigns to aid organizing. But critics say they re just a way to increase flagging numbers, dues

BYLINE: Melanie Evans

BODY:

The Service Employees International Union sees the public face of labor's push to organize U.S. healthcare in Chicago's Rev. Dan Dale. Clergy, such as Dale, low-income patients and community activists-not union organ-izers-figure prominently in the union's 17-month-long public skirmish with Advocate Health Care, a not-for-profit healthcare system that the SEIU alleges overcharges the uninsured and harasses patients who cannot pay. ''Untrue and untrue,'' responds Dan Parker, a spokesman for Advocate, based in Oak Brook, Ill. ''The suggestion that we're charging outrageously high prices is in and of itself outrageous.''
Nonetheless, the SEIU's allegations and efforts have tapped a rich vein of consumer frustration as healthcare costs climb, insurance coverage wanes and patients squeeze household budgets to pay a growing share of medical bills.
''Ours is a movement for social and economic justice,'' insists Joseph Geevarghese, who arrived in Chicago via Washington in 2002 to lead the SEIU's Hospital Accountability Project, a ''significantly funded'' advocacy arm of the nation's largest healthcare union, by Geevarghese's account, though he declined to give specifics.
Analysts and labor experts have another name for it: a corporate campaign.
The Hospital Accountability Project, headquartered in downtown Chicago with a staff of 25, has launched a high-profile and prolific campaign, scrutinizing the business practices, wages, benefits and working conditions at Advocate's hospitals while rallying neighborhood activists, politicians and religious leaders like Dale.
Such campaigns-also known as advocacy or comprehensive campaigns-are not new in labor or limited to healthcare. University of Iowa and Marquette University researchers counted at least 10 campaigns from 1976 to 1988 that squeezed employers, some successfully, to grant concessions as unions sought to organize workers or achieve their first contracts.
IRI Consultants to Management, Detroit, says at least a dozen unions have staged corporate campaigns aimed at 28 companies since 1981, including four targeted at healthcare companies by the SEIU or the California Nurses Association: Advocate; Sutter Health, Sacramento, Calif.; Tenet Healthcare Corp., Santa Barbara, Calif.; and Catholic Healthcare West, San Francisco, the last of which is often cited as an example of a successful corporate organizing campaign.
The SEIU's campaign involving the CHW began in 1997 and wrapped up in 2001 with a three-year contract covering 7,000 employees. The SEIU argued that the nine orders of nuns that operate CHW failed to uphold church support for organized labor; some religious leaders agreed and pressure mounted as a result, says Jarol Manheim, a George Washington University professor who has written two books on corporate campaigns.
Labor experts say such campaigns typically blend legal challenges and public protests-such as picket lines at annual shareholder meetings, for example-to frustrate and embarrass management, customers, regulators or owners, but such efforts must be ongoing and far-reaching to qualify as a campaign.
For Dale, pastor of a 98-year-old United Church of Christ congregation in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood, the SEIU is an ''important ally and partner'' to hold Advocate accountable to its religious commitment to the low-income and uninsured. The United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America jointly sponsor Advocate.
For the union, enlisting clergy and community activists adds strength to a waning labor movement.
Citing the uninsured
In Illinois, the SEIU released a string of scathing reports, blasting how and how much Advocate bills its uninsured patients and alleging the system unfairly stymied workers' organizing efforts. The SEIU contends Advocate spent less to cover expenses of low-income patients than other Cook County religiously sponsored hospitals but charged uninsured patients more than what it billed ''typical'' insurers for identical care. The union's Web site includes supportive-occasionally strident-testimony from financially strapped patients and Chicago's religious community on Advocate's debt collection or workers' right to organize. ''Churches and unions are two manifestations of the same world we are called to create,'' reads Dale's comment.
Corporate campaigns ''hit the company from multiple sides all at once,'' says Manheim, a media and political science professor at GWU.
Employers' costs climb and their reputations suffer as public pressure, litigation and regulatory inquiries mount, he says. Organizers enlist community allies with common interests or distrust of corporations to exert public pressure on an employer, Manheim says. In healthcare, campaigns publicly pit hospital management against patients and clergy, a nightmare for a not-for-profit hospital's image. ''You don't want to be fighting these people,'' Manheim says.
Critics of the tactics say unions orchestrate high-profile attacks on hospitals' wages or aid for low-income patients to boost sagging membership and flagging dues.
Proponents counter that such pressure is necessary to exert labor's influence in an increasingly consolidated and global marketplace. Public scrutiny of business practices and working conditions holds companies accountable as corporate citizens and employers, according to union organizers and supporters, who say such campaigns raise public awareness and give labor much-needed leverage in workplaces increasingly hostile to labor.
The strategy evolved as corporate ownership became more intricate and removed from the workers and communities where companies operate, says Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University's director of Labor Education Research. ''As corporate structures get more complex and diffuse, then the union strategy must be more complex,'' says Bronfenbrenner, who describes campaigns as creative, strategic and escalating. Organizers expand a network of local activists, politicians and workers to a national stage while broadening its campaign beyond an employer to its customers, suppliers and investor, she said, citing the SEIU campaign against Catholic Healthcare West as an example.
''We think what we do is run public education and public accountability campaigns,'' says SEIU Executive Vice President Mary Kay Henry, who argues the union's goal isn't boosting dues revenue but rather promoting healthcare reform. ''We represent 1.8 million people and we listen to what they care about,'' she says. ''We can't just think about wages, hours and working conditions if we're going to win on the issues that matter to our members. We can't win healthcare coverage at the bargaining table.''
California Nurses Association spokesman Chuck Idelson says the union's goals reach beyond salaries and benefits for its rank and file. ''Certainly we have an obligation of representing our members,'' he says. ''The CNA is a patient-advocacy organization. It's a charge that we take very seriously.''
Achieving critical mass
Improving access to healthcare and controlling patients' healthcare costs can't be done one contract at a time, Henry says. Unions must pressure policymakers and health systems to change, she says.
To do that, unions must rebuild membership and recruit activists with similar goals, Henry says. Labor alone ''doesn't have enough strength,'' she says.
On this point all agree: Steadily waning membership has eroded unions' clout. Last year was no exception. In 2003, labor had fewer actual members-down 369,000 from 2002-and its share of the workforce shrank, to 12.9% from 13.3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In healthcare, unions struggled to hold their ground in 2003. Labor unions had 733,000 members among the nearly 6 million healthcare professionals and medical technicians employed in the U.S. in 2003. That's a slight gain in members but a drop in unions' share of that workforce, to 12.3% in 2003 from 12.5% in 2002. That doesn't include the nation's 2.8 million healthcare support workers, where union membership slipped in 2003 as well, to 11% from 12.4% of the workforce, federal data show.
Despite slipping membership, unions have scored some victories. Healthcare workers opted to join a union in 75% of representation elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board in 2003, according to IRI Consultants. That compares with 58% of all union elections.
And elections governed by the NLRB, a federal agency, don't reflect all of labor's organizing efforts. Many seek ''neutral'' or alternative elections, according to BNA Plus, a research division of Washington-based publisher BNA. Neutral or alternative elections may bypass an NLRB ballot, secure greater access to employees by organizers or obtain a pledge from an employer to waive its participation in an election. By law, employers may make a counterargument to union campaigns but can't spy on, threaten, interrogate or make promises to employees as workers weigh their options, lawyers said.
An estimate by IRI Consultants put unions' election victories at 80% when employers agree to neutral elections.
How workers vote for union representation is often a contentious issue at the heart of a corporate campaign. Organizers, who say secret-ballot elections overseen by the NLRB fail to safeguard workers from employers' intimidation, push companies to agree to alternative elections or demand more access to workers and less interference from employers during an organizing campaign.
Champions of NLRB elections say alternatives to the secret-ballot election may leave workers vulnerable to union intimidation.
This tug of war over how to vote for union representation has spilled over to Congress, promoting hearings in the House of Representatives as well as legislation. ''The well-advised employer knows how to manipulate the NLRB election process in such a way as to turn the concept of democratic free choice on its head,'' Nancy Schiffer, associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO, testified at a House subcommittee hearing on employer-employee relations in April. In the same hearing, Charles Cohen, a senior partner with the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and a former NLRB member, defended the federal agency's secret-ballot elections as ''efficient and fair.''
Legislation introduced in Congress in May by Rep. Charles Norwood (R-Ga.) pushed for a ban on alternatives to secret-ballot elections. That followed a measure, introduced by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) in November, that sought to expand recognition for a less-formal arrangement, called a card check, which would allow unions to use signed authorization cards from a majority of employees and bypass an NLRB election. Neither measure succeeded, but both will be reintroduced, say spokespeople for both lawmakers.
Healthcare ripe for organizing
Healthcare is vulnerable to organizing efforts and corporate campaigns, George Washington University's Manheim says. The jobs cannot be exported, unlike manufacturing, he says, and healthcare's growing workforce is largely unorganized.
The shortage of nurses, rising healthcare costs and public distrust of corporate governance-at both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations-give unions fertile ground to cultivate strong public support, he says, citing polls that show Americans' concerns over healthcare costs. An August poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health found 40% of Americans are ''very worried'' about being unable to afford necessary healthcare.
In Connecticut, Illinois and Maryland, the SEIU has targeted prominent not-for-profit health systems, alleging price-gouging of uninsured patients or depressed wages for workers-with some results. The Illinois Senate held hearings on Advocate's debt-collection methods. In Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Hospital enlisted three economists to respond to the SEIU's 42-page report linking the city's struggling economy to the prestigious hospitals' wages.
Though the SEIU represents 25,000 Illinois healthcare workers, none work at Advocate. Geevarghese says Advocate ''aggressively'' blocked efforts to organize workers. Parker, Advocate's spokesman, counters that the SEIU's efforts to unionize failed. ''It's regrettable that the SEIU is choosing to pursue a corporate campaign to damage our organization's reputation when it appears that they don't believe they would win a secret-ballot election,'' Parker says.
A health system's best defense against a corporate campaign is to avoid one, says Douglas Topolski, a lawyer with McGuireWoods, Baltimore, who specializes in labor law, representing management since 1986.
Fighting a campaign is costly, he says. Health systems risk increased legal and security fees, a damaged reputation and lost business, grants or donations, he says. Some companies have battled campaigns by seeking injunctions against demonstrations or parade permits, or have filed lawsuits alleging unions wrongly damaged the company's reputation.
''Preparation is the best defense,'' Topolski says. If corporate campaigns seek to exploit tensions between a hospital and its employees or patients, he says organizations must pre-empt the effort. ''You need to treat employees fairly and with respect,'' he advises hospitals and health systems. Be a good corporate citizen. Publicize contributions to the community. He adds: ''Make your own reputation; don't let the union make it for you.''
What do you think?
Write us with your comments. Via e-mail, it s mhletters@crain.com; by fax, 312-280-3183.

GRAPHIC: We think what we do is run public education and public accountability campaigns. --Mary Kay Henry, executive vice president, Service Employees International Union * Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago and its parent, Advocate Health Care, are under fire from union leaders as well as community religious leaders over debt-collection practices involving uninsured patients. * The SEIU has published lengthy reports as part of its campaigns against healthcare providers, like this one involving Advocate.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), December 6, 2004, Monday

Copyright 2004 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)

December 6, 2004 Monday
FIVE STAR EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A01

HEADLINE: Labor leaders look to reverse declines

BYLINE: By PHILIP DINE Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau

DATELINE: NEW YORK

BODY:
For most of the past century, the American labor movement was at the forefront of the country's economic, political and social battles -- helping elect presidents, lifting millions of workers into the middle class and pushing for safer workplaces.
In recent years, as their influence steadily dwindled, union leaders have fended off criticism, maintaining that they were still a vital force and were doing as well as could be expected given factors beyond their control, such as the shipping of union jobs overseas. The period of denial is officially over.
Late last week, union leaders and activists gathered in New York to acknowledge what has gone wrong -- and to figure out how to make the labor movement relevant again. The failure to organize enough new workers to maintain labor's size and strength was a key topic.
AFL-CIO organizing director Stewart Acuff said organizing new groups of workers had been made more difficult by labor laws, aggressive employer actions, pro-business appointments to labor relations boards and by the failure of union leaders to make it a priority.
The dwindling numbers have, in turn, damaged labor's ability to take on employers in the type of successful collective bargaining that long helped boost wages and benefits, said Larry Cohen, executive vice president of the Communications Workers of America.
"We have seen collective bargaining rights virtually destroyed on our watch," he said. "We have to go back to these roots."
They were among 565 of the nation's top labor leaders, analysts and local union officials who gathered Thursday and Friday for an open -- and unusually frank -- debate on what ails their movement and how to fix it.
"The fact that this debate has moved from the executive board of the AFL-CIO to the public is just really significant. I've never seen it in my lifetime, this type of open debate," said Mark Dudzic, national organizer for the Labor Party and former union official.
The City University of New York hosted the event, sponsored by the Queens College Labor Resource Center and the New Labor Forum, a periodical. The high attendance reflected the significance of labor's troubles, with the exclamation point being last month's re-election of President George W. Bush, considered by many in labor as the most anti-union president ever.
"The topic is hot for two reasons," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. "It's hot because labor is in a crisis, and it's hot because labor is really thinking about fundamental changes that could revitalize it."
From a high of 35 percent of the work force in 1955, labor today represents 13 percent -- and only 8 percent of workers in the private sector.
Last year, labor organized 400,000 new members, but 600,000 union jobs were lost because of company closings or relocations.
But while labor is clear on the problems, there was a good deal of dispute over the solutions. Among the proposals:
- Merging unions. The goal is to present corporations with more powerful adversaries, lessen internal competition among unions and cut administrative costs to free resources for other purposes.
- Improving what unions do to promote more skillful negotiating and more effective organizing campaigns.
- Changing labor laws. Current laws have been interpreted in ways that make it easier for businesses to combat union organizing.
- Making unions more democratic and increasing rank-and-file involvement. This might make unions more attractive to unorganized workers.
- Forging more alliances between labor and other groups. Bringing labor together with environmentalists, blacks and immigrants on a permanent basis, not just during elections, would increase the strength of each.
- Weaning unions from the Democratic Party. Some contend that unions have been taken for granted, giving them little leverage and preventing them from articulating their own agenda.
- Taking a page from the Republican Party playbook by stressing values. Among them: decent wages, the right to health care and improvement of education.
One labor leader who has been a vocal advocate of the need to change is Bruce Raynor, president of the newly merged textile and hotel workers union. He said there was no choice but to acknowledge -- and fix -- what is happening.
"This is not simply our problem," Raynor said, arguing that stagnant union pay depresses wages in general. "We need to be seen as a spokesperson for working America, to be seen as the voice of the American working class," he said.
"I think we've failed in that."
Health care battle
Organized labor waged its most intense effort yet on behalf of Democratic nominee John Kerry. As a result, said AFL-CIO political director Karen Ackerman, Kerry won 65 percent of the vote among union households -- but this was drowned out by superior Republican turnout efforts.
Losing elections translates into an inability to enact labor-law legislation facilitating the right to organize, and the resulting dip in numbers complicates bargaining.
Gregory Junemann is president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents some of Boeing's employees. He said weakened union bargaining power had led to a decline in health care benefits. About 56 percent of employers now provide them, "and it's declining every week," he said.
"As soon as that gets below 50 percent, we have a major problem on our hands, because if I'm dealing with Boeing or Lockheed Martin, they're going to say, 'Why am I the only one in town providing health care benefits? Maybe it's time to discontinue it.'"
That, in turn, would further reduce the value of union membership.
Unions still have strong regional pockets, including St. Louis, where unionization rates have held steady at 22 percent. Veteran local labor leaders Bob Kelley and Bob Soutier attribute that to active manufacturing and construction industries, a diverse economy and the area's status as a transportation hub.
More broadly, the atmosphere at the conference buoyed many, because labor has sometimes been accused of stifling dissent so it can present a strong and unified front, which has had the unintended consequence of preventing progress.
"There ought to be honest discussion. It ought to be deep, and it ought to go broad -- and nobody ought to be penalized for participating," said Gerald Hudson, international executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, at 1.7 million the AFL-CIO's biggest union.

The Tribune (Port St. Lucie/Fort Pierce, FL), December 6, 2004, Monday

Copyright 2004 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
The Tribune (Port St. Lucie/Fort Pierce, FL)

December 6, 2004, Monday

SECTION: DOMESTIC NEWS

HEADLINE: Labor leaders speak of need to reverse decline, restore relevance

BYLINE: By Philip Dine

BODY:
NEW YORK _ For most of the past century, the American labor movement was at the forefront of the country's economic, political and social battles _ helping elect presidents, lifting millions of workers into the middle class and pushing for safer workplaces.
In recent years, as their influence steadily dwindled, union leaders have fended off criticism, maintaining that they were still a vital force and were doing as well as could be expected given factors beyond their control, such as the shipping of union jobs overseas.
The period of denial is officially over.
Late last week, union leaders and activists gathered in New York to acknowledge what has gone wrong _ and to figure out how to make the labor movement relevant again. The failure to organize enough new workers to maintain labor's size and strength was a key topic.
AFL-CIO organizing director Stewart Acuff said organizing new groups of workers had been made more difficult by labor laws, aggressive employer actions, pro-business appointments to labor relations boards and by the failure of union leaders to make it a priority.
The dwindling numbers have, in turn, damaged labor's ability to take on employers in the type of successful collective bargaining that long helped boost wages and benefits, said Larry Cohen, executive vice president of the Communications Workers of America.
"We have seen collective bargaining rights virtually destroyed on our watch," he said. "We have to go back to these roots."
They were among 565 of the nation's top labor leaders, analysts and local union officials who gathered Thursday and Friday for an open _ and unusually frank _ debate on what ails their movement and how to fix it.
"The fact that this debate has moved from the executive board of the AFL-CIO to the public is just really significant. I've never seen it in my lifetime, this type of open debate," said Mark Dudzic, national organizer for the Labor Party and former union official.
The City University of New York hosted the event, sponsored by the Queens College Labor Resource Center and the New Labor Forum, a periodical. The high attendance reflected the significance of labor's troubles, with the exclamation point being last month's re-election of President Bush, considered by many in labor as the most anti-union president ever.
"The topic is hot for two reasons," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. "It's hot because labor is in a crisis, and it's hot because labor is really thinking about fundamental changes that could revitalize it."
From a high of 35 percent of the work force in 1955, labor today represents 13 percent _ and only 8 percent of workers in the private sector.
Last year, labor organized 400,000 new members, but 600,000 union jobs were lost because of company closings or relocations.
But while labor is clear on the problems, there was a good deal of dispute over the solutions. Among the proposals:
Merging unions. The goal is to present corporations with more powerful adversaries, lessen internal competition among unions and cut administrative costs to free resources for other purposes.
Improving what unions do to promote more skillful negotiating and more effective organizing campaigns.
Changing labor laws. Current laws have been interpreted in ways that make it easier for businesses to combat union organizing.
Making unions more democratic and increasing rank-and-file involvement. This might make unions more attractive to unorganized workers.
Forging more alliances between labor and other groups. Bringing labor together with environmentalists, blacks and immigrants on a permanent basis, not just during elections, would increase the strength of each.
Weaning unions from the Democratic Party. Some contend that unions have been taken for granted, giving them little leverage and preventing them from articulating their own agenda.
Taking a page from the Republican Party playbook by stressing values. Among them: decent wages, the right to health care and improvement of education.
One labor leader who has been a vocal advocate of the need to change is Bruce Raynor, president of the newly merged textile and hotel workers union. He said there was no choice but to acknowledge _ and fix _ what is happening.
"This is not simply our problem," Raynor said, arguing that stagnant union pay depresses wages in general. "We need to be seen as a spokesperson for working America, to be seen as the voice of the American working class," he said.
"I think we've failed in that."
Organized labor waged its most intense effort yet on behalf of Democratic nominee John Kerry. As a result, said AFL-CIO political director Karen Ackerman, Kerry won 65 percent of the vote among union households _ but this was drowned out by superior Republican turnout efforts.
Losing elections translates into an inability to enact labor-law legislation facilitating the right to organize, and the resulting dip in numbers complicates bargaining.
Gregory Junemann is president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents some of Boeing's employees. He said weakened union bargaining power had led to a decline in health care benefits. About 56 percent of employers now provide them, "and it's declining every week," he said.
"As soon as that gets below 50 percent, we have a major problem on our hands, because if I'm dealing with Boeing or Lockheed Martin, they're going to say, 'Why am I the only one in town providing health care benefits? Maybe it's time to discontinue it.'"
That, in turn, would further reduce the value of union membership.
Unions still have strong regional pockets, including St. Louis, where unionization rates have held steady at 22 percent. Veteran local labor leaders Bob Kelley and Bob Soutier attribute that to active manufacturing and construction industries, a diverse economy and the area's status as a transportation hub.
The atmosphere at the conference buoyed many, because labor has sometimes been accused of stifling dissent so it can present a strong and unified front, which has had the unintended consequence of preventing progress.
"There ought to be honest discussion. It ought to be deep, and it ought to go broad _ and nobody ought to be penalized for participating," said Gerald Hudson, international executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, at 1.7 million the AFL-CIO's biggest union.
___
(c) 2004, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Visit the Post-Dispatch on the World Wide Web at http://www.stltoday.com/
r is cs ar e

New York Times, December 5, 2004, Sunday

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

December 5, 2004 Sunday
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section 1; Column 1; National Desk; Pg. 34

HEADLINE: Between Union Leader and His Protege, Tension Over Direction of Labor Movement

BYLINE: By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

BODY:
Twenty years ago, John J. Sweeney, then the president of the Service Employees International Union, was so impressed by the drive and intelligence of a little-known union official from Pennsylvania that he asked him to move to Washington and become his organizing director.
The official was Andrew L. Stern, who, quite predictably, succeeded Mr. Sweeney as the union's president. But rather unpredictably, he has called into question the whole structure of the house of labor, which Mr. Sweeney has headed for the past nine years.
Eager to reverse labor's decline, Mr. Stern has called for a sweeping overhaul of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., proposing to cut its budget by more than 50 percent and to use the savings to vastly increase organizing by its member unions. And he has warned that the service employees, the largest union in the A.F.L.-C.I.O., may quit the labor federation unless it embraces far-reaching changes -- changes that would have to be pushed through by the man who was his mentor, Mr. Sweeney, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
Adding intrigue, some union leaders say Mr. Stern is seeking to push Mr. Sweeney into retirement, although he denies that, or having any interest in succeeding Mr. Sweeney in organized labor's top job.
At the moment, these two union leaders have only kind words for each other, but when they were interviewed separately last week, their frustrations with each other showed: Mr. Stern's frustration that Mr. Sweeney has not done more to halt labor's slide and Mr. Sweeney's frustration that his former protege is seeking to slash the federation's budget, is threatening to break away and appears to be undercutting him.
''We haven't seen a resurgence of organizing,'' Mr. Stern said, adding that Mr. Sweeney's efforts to use his bully pulpit to spur far more organizing by individual unions have fallen short. And Mr. Sweeney ever so diplomatically indicated his displeasure with Mr. Stern's threat to secede, saying, ''My goal is to keep the federation united.''
What happens over the next few months between these men could go far to determine the shape of the American labor movement.
Mr. Stern, who heads the nation's fastest-growing union, with nearly 1.7 million members, insisted that the two men were making common cause. ''I would say we're allies in what we want to accomplish,'' he said, noting that he and Mr. Sweeney each favor bold steps to stop labor's decline.
But many labor leaders say it is strange behavior for an ally to threaten to quit, to upstage Mr. Sweeney and to implicitly criticize his performance.
''In terms of what Stern has proposed, there's a lot of overlap between what Sweeney and Stern want, but my sense is the Sweeney people aren't happy with how it's been done and that it has made Sweeney look bad,'' said Richard Hurd, a professor of labor relations at Cornell University.
With an elan rare for labor leaders, Mr. Stern has promoted his 10-point plan for change with a glossy brochure, a sophisticated Web site and a blog. His plan calls for having the A.F.L.-C.I.O. spend more on politics, for merging its 60 unions into fewer than 20 and for using the $25 million in yearly profits from its credit card to mount a nationwide campaign to pressure Wal-Mart to improve its wages and benefits. He wants unions to keep half the dues money they currently give to the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and to use that to create a $2 billion war chest over five years for organizing.
Mr. Sweeney praises his former protege.
''What Andy is proposing are some very good ideas,'' he said. ''I don't completely agree with every single proposal, but every single one of them merits discussion. Some of them, there will be great support for and for others, there will be healthy debate. I don't interpret these as Andy taking a swipe at me. I'm too big for that.''
If Mr. Sweeney and Mr. Stern agree on anything, it is that labor unions and workers are in a bad way. Wages are stagnant, millions of workers are losing health insurance, corporations are hacking away at pensions, and just 8.2 percent of private-sector workers are in unions, the lowest level since 1901.
Facing such a crisis, Mr. Stern and Mr. Sweeney badly need each other. If Mr. Stern is to persuade the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s 60 unions to embrace his plan for aggressive change, he needs Mr. Sweeney to build a consensus. If Mr. Sweeney is to achieve his goal of making labor grow again -- a goal frustrated by the many union leaders who have done little to increase organizing -- he needs Mr. Stern as a battering ram to break through union leaders' resistance to change.
''We complement each other,'' Mr. Sweeney said. ''There is no question Andy has good ideas. He has done a great job at S.E.I.U. I think I have some skills and some strengths that can develop some of his great ideas and build consensus around them.''
At times, Mr. Stern acts like his own worst enemy. After he warned that he might quit and seek to build something better unless the A.F.L.-C.I.O. embraced reform, some union leaders began calling him arrogant, divisive and a prima donna. Some said his style was undercutting his efforts to win support for his ideas.
But Mr. Stern said he felt a duty to speak out about labor's woes.
''I don't believe I have all the answers,'' he said. ''But I do have an incredibly strong opinion based not just on the experience of our union, but the experience of other unions in how we can best change workers' lives. It's my obligation to say what I believe is right for helping workers get some changes in this country because things are looking worse and worse for this generation and for my kids.''
In his view one of labor's biggest problems is that many unions are too small to stand up to giant corporations -- two-thirds of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s 60 unions have fewer than 100,000 members. Convinced that there is strength in numbers, Mr. Stern -- a University of Pennsylvania graduate who first became involved in the union movement when he took a job as a social worker -- is labor's most fervent advocate of mergers.
''We don't look at this movement, as it's currently structured, as giving workers the best chance they have to succeed,'' he said. ''They are trapped in organizations that were formed generations ago when the economy was different. Workers are paying the price for our failure to confront some of these structural problems. The purpose of the labor movement is not to keep as many unions as possible and as many officials with the title president after their name.''
In the interviews, Mr. Sweeney and Mr. Stern praised each other for what they accomplished while heading the S.E.I.U. In Mr. Sweeney's 15 years at the union's helm, its membership grew by 500,000 and in Mr. Stern's eight years as president it has grown by nearly 600,000. The union represents nearly 900,000 health care workers and 220,000 janitors and other building service workers.
The two men echoed each other in saying they had ''different styles.'' Mr. Stern is hot, Mr. Sweeney is cool. Mr. Stern, 53, states new ideas with crispness and machine-gun rapidity, while Mr. Sweeney, 70, speaks slowly, after careful deliberation. Mr. Sweeney is a consensus builder, Mr. Stern a charge-ahead consensus breaker. ''I think I have a little more patience than Andy does,'' Mr. Sweeney said.
But the tensions are unmistakable. Viewing it as retaliation and as an attempt to discourage internal debate, Mr. Stern's supporters are angry that Mr. Sweeney fired the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s director of field mobilization, Marilyn Sneiderman, whose husband, director of the S.E.I.U.'s Justice for Janitors campaign, helped to write Mr. Stern's 10-point plan.
Mr. Sweeney made clear that he feared that Mr. Stern's call to slash the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s budget could hobble the organization.
''We need a strong federation,'' Mr. Sweeney said. ''The federation has to include services that don't get a lot of attention, the work we do on education, on safety and health, on communications and media. These are all important parts of our program.''
In coming months, Mr. Sweeney plans to study proposals for change submitted by many union presidents and union members. He will make recommendations, including presumably some of Mr. Stern's, to the federation's executive council.
''Andy has chosen to be the lightning rod to help push for change,'' said Professor Hurd, of Cornell. ''Whether or not labor leaders agree with his proposals, if they don't do something dramatically different, the future for organized labor might be drastically bleak.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com

GRAPHIC: Photos: Andrew L. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, left, talked about his proposal for labor and said of his former mentor, John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., ''we're allies in what we want to accomplish.'' Mr. Sweeney, above, said, ''What Andy is proposing are some very good ideas.'' But the picture was not all rosy. (Photo by Thor Swift for The New York Times)
(Photo by Hillery Smith Garrison/Associated Press)

The Hotline, December 3, 2004, Friday

Copyright 2004 The National Journal Group, Inc.
The Hotline

December 3, 2004 Friday

SECTION: CAMPAIGN 2004

LABOR SHAKEDOWN?
Cornell U Prof. Robert Hurd writes in Detroit News, When
the AFL-CIO exec. council gathered in Washington several weeks
ago to assess the damage in the wake of Bush's re-election, it
was not the organization's pres., John Sweeney, who grabbed the
headlines, but Andy Stern, head of the SEIU.
Stern, who eight years ago succeeded Sweeney at SEIU, chose
this opportunity to "turn up the heat" on his mentor. Arguing
that the future of the labor movement "is in peril" and that the
AFL-CIO is "an antiquated body unprepared to meet the challenges
of the 21st century," Stern and a group of like-minded union
leaders pressed for a "dramatic makeover in labor's structure
and strategic priorities." Their insistence that the AFL-CIO
must be transformed -- or must "get out of the way" -- has
outraged old-time, tradition-bound unionists and has ignited an
"internal feud that threatens to split the movement into warring
factions."
These are difficult times for labor, and not just because
of the election. The union share of the work force has dropped
to 8 percent in the private sector, the "lowest level in 100
years and less than one-fourth of the post-World War II
peak."Industrial unions have suffered under the weight of
globalization, while their counterparts in transportation,
communications and utilities have been weakened by deregulation.
On top of this, labor faces an "inhospitable legal environment
made worse by an antagonistic president and Congress."
Stern and his colleagues in what they're calling the New
Unity Partnership argue that the growing crisis requires an
"aggressive response -- including not just massive reallocation
of resources into recruitment of new members but substantial
restructuring as well." They have proposed collapsing the
60-plus unions into "no more than 20 powerful mega-unions, each
with a clearly defined industry focus." This would allow labor
to "translate growth directly into power within a market," in
contrast to the current arrangement in which unions have
multiple jurisdictions and often compete with each other for new
members(12/3).

The Times Union (Albany, New York) December 3, 2004, Friday

Copyright 2004 The Hearst Corporation
The Times Union (Albany, New York)

December 3, 2004 Friday
3 EDITION


SECTION: MAIN; Pg. A17

HEADLINE: Wal-Mart finds union label in China

BYLINE: By HAROLD MEYERSON

BODY:
Wal-Mart has finally found a union it can live with.
Up to now, America's largest employer has opposed every effort of its employees to form a union. Wal-Mart doesn't recognize unions; it doesn't even recognize "employees." The proper Wal-Mart name for its workers is "associates," a term that connotes higher status and collegiality and that actually means lower pay and workplace autocracy. For the privilege of associating themselves with Wal-Mart, its employees are paid so little that many can't afford the health insurance the company generously allows them to buy. One study of health care in Las Vegas revealed that a plurality of that city's employed Medicaid recipients worked at Wal-Mart.
But that was the old Wal-Mart. Last week Wal-Mart announced that if its associates wanted a union to represent them, that would be hunky-dory - as long as the union was affiliated with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, a body dominated by the Chinese Communist Party. The official statement was simple and seemingly unambiguous: "Should associates request formation of a union, Wal-Mart China would respect their wishes."
Wal-Mart America has made no such declaration, of course. Why it deems its 20,000 Chinese associates who work in its 40 Chinese stores worthy of representation while its million of U.S. employees can't be trusted with the right to represent themselves is a good question.
The answer must lie in Wal-Mart's preference for old-line communist-dominated unions in authoritarian communist states over any other kinds of unions anywhere else. America's unions, which Wal-Mart despises, have a long history of anti-communism, and today's AFL-CIO is the staunchest defender on the American political scene of democratic rights in communist nations such as China. For that matter, unions affiliated with reformed or post-communist parties outside of the few remaining communist states have gotten nowhere with Wal-Mart either. Only in China, with its inimitable blend of Dickensian capitalism and authoritarian communism, has Wal-Mart found a union to its liking.
And small wonder. Unions affiliated with the All-China Federation seldom push for wage increases or safer machinery. Indeed, the locals are often headed by someone from company management. Not that there isn't worker discontent in China: Every week brings accounts of spontaneous strikes, and now and then an occasional riot over such lifestyle impediments as unpaid wages. But the role of the state-sanctioned unions isn't to channel the discontent into achievable gains; it's to contain it to the employer's benefit.
The leaders of genuine workers' movements in China don't end up running the All-China Federation. They're to be found in prison, in exile or in hiding.
Besides, truly democratic unions in China would run counter to the truly undemocratic, one-party state. Allowing a democratic union movement to form would threaten both Dickensian capitalism and authoritarian communism, and diminish some of China's competitive advantage over other low-wage but not authoritarian nations in Southeast Asia, Central America and elsewhere. Such a development would be anathema to both the Politburo and Wal-Mart's board of directors. It would introduce the concept of free choice and the prospects of higher living standards not just to Wal-Mart's 20,000 Chinese store employees but to the far larger number of Chinese workers laboring in poverty-wage servitude to stitch clothing for the contractors, subcontractors and sub-subcontractors whose products fill Wal-Mart's shelves.
When a company such as Wal-Mart is so plainly comfortable with authoritarianism abroad, it tells you something about that company's values at home. It regards the prospect of employee free association and organization within its stores with the same fear and loathing that Beijing feels at the prospect of free elections in China. Anti-union American employers can't imprison pro-union workers, but exile is a real possibility. Troublemakers are free to go. According to Cornell labor relations professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, at least 5 percent of workers involved in unionization campaigns are fired, which is both quite illegal and quite routine: Companies would rather pay the nominal fines than pay their workers higher wages and lose the absolute control they hold over the work lives of their employees.
The noblest of the Bush administration's goals, surely, is that of spreading democracy. If it's serious about that task, though, there are places closer to home than the Middle East that could use a little democracy-spreading, and the American workplace is high on that list. Strengthening labor law would make it harder for employers such as Wal-Mart to thwart their workers' desire for an organized voice on the job. When America's largest employer feels more affinity for the political legacy of Mao Zedong than for that of Franklin D. Roosevelt, it's time to start democratizing our own back yard.
Harold Meyerson is editor of the American Prospect. He wrote this article for The Washington Post.

Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2004, Wednesday

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
All Rights Reserved
Los Angeles Times

December 1, 2004 Wednesday
Home Edition

SECTION: CALIFORNIA; Metro; Editorial Pages Desk ; Part B; Pg. 13

HEADLINE: Commentary;
Disorganized Labor

BYLINE: Richard Hurd, Richard Hurd is a professor of labor studies at Cornell University.

BODY:
When the AFL-CIO executive council gathered in Washington several weeks ago to assess the damage in the wake of President Bush's reelection, it was not the organization's president, John Sweeney, who grabbed the headlines, but Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union.
Stern, who eight years ago succeeded Sweeney at SEIU, chose this opportunity to turn up the heat on his mentor. Arguing that the future of the labor movement is in peril and that the AFL-CIO is an antiquated body unprepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century, Stern and a group of like-minded union leaders pressed for a dramatic makeover in labor's structure and strategic priorities. Their insistence that the AFL-CIO must be transformed -- or must get out of the way -- has outraged old-time, tradition-bound unionists and has ignited an internal feud that threatens to split the movement into warring factions.
These are difficult times for labor, and not just because of the election. The union share of the workforce has dropped to 8% in the private sector, the lowest level in 100 years and less than one-fourth of the post-World War II peak. Industrial unions have suffered under the weight of globalization, while their counterparts in transportation, communications and utilities have been weakened by deregulation. On top of this, labor faces an inhospitable legal environment made worse by an antagonistic president and Congress.
Stern and his colleagues in what they're calling the New Unity Partnership argue that the growing crisis requires an aggressive response -- including not just massive reallocation of resources into recruitment of new members but substantial restructuring as well. They have proposed collapsing the nation's 60-plus unions into no more than 20 powerful mega-unions, each with a clearly defined industry focus. This presumably would allow labor to translate growth directly into power within a market, in contrast to the current arrangement in which unions have multiple jurisdictions and often compete with each other for new members.
Stern has also suggested that the AFL-CIO's authority over its affiliates should be strengthened in order to orchestrate the mergers, and even to shift units from one union to another. This proposal has angered those labor leaders who embrace the tradition of national union autonomy on strategic issues related to bargaining and organizing. The International Assn. of Machinists has even authorized its president, R. Thomas Buffenbarger, to withdraw from the AFL-CIO if Stern's proposals are adopted.
Buffenbarger apparently sees this as more than a disagreement over strategy; he views it as a takeover attempt by a group of elitist intellectuals. Stern -- along with his New Unity Partnership colleagues Bruce Raynor of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and John Wilhelm of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union -- represents a new breed of progressive union leaders, all with Ivy League degrees and experience as campus activists in the 1960s and early 1970s. Buffenbarger was quoted in the New York Times as saying that the Ivy League-educated union leaders talk down to the rest.
Other labor leaders have also voiced displeasure, including United Steelworkers of America President Leo Gerard, who has described the efforts of the NUP as presumptuous. Gerard's declaration that "I don't need a lecture about mergers" reflects a view shared by many more traditional leaders, including most of those from smaller unions who fear being gobbled up in any major restructuring.
It is not just the traditionalists who are uneasy; several high-visibility union officials with progressive credentials have also attacked the plan. Among them is Larry Cohen, who is expected to be the next president of the Communications Workers of America. Though he backs increased resources for organizing, Cohen supports equal attention to political initiatives such as labor law reform and rejects the restructuring idea as top-down engineering that would undermine union democracy. This position is shared by the American Federation of Teachers and other public-sector unions.
To date, opponents have offered no clear alternative to the NUP proposal other than the status quo -- and Stern has threatened that if the basic restructuring concept is not adopted, he will secede from the AFL-CIO to "build something stronger." Or, the NUP may put up a candidate of its own for the AFL-CIO presidency at next July's convention.
Those who believe that unions play a productive role can only hope that labor leaders take this opportunity to engage in productive debate about the future. If instead they lock into narrow positions that provoke internecine warfare, the outcome can only be destructive. In the 1930s the legendary president of the United Mine Workers of America, John L. Lewis, orchestrated a split in labor and formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
The CIO focused on organizing and led a dynamic period of union growth. But that was during the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt -- not George W. Bush -- with friendlier labor law and widespread worker militancy fueling the expansion. A rupture in today's environment could well lead to the demise of unions rather than their rebirth.

Washington Post, December 1, 2004, Wednesday

Copyright 2004 The Washington Post

The Washington Post

December 1, 2004 Wednesday
Final Edition

SECTION: Editorial; A25

HEADLINE: Wal-Mart Loves Unions (In China)

BYLINE: Harold Meyerson

BODY:
Wal-Mart has finally found a union it can live with.
Up to now America's largest employer has opposed every effort of its employees to form a union. Wal-Mart doesn't recognize unions; it doesn't even recognize "employees." The proper Wal-Mart name for its workers is "associates," a term that connotes higher status and collegiality and that actually means lower pay and workplace autocracy. For the privilege of associating themselves with Wal-Mart, its employees are paid so little that many can't afford the health insurance the company generously allows them to buy. One study of health care in Las Vegas revealed that a plurality of that city's employed Medicaid recipients worked at Wal-Mart.
But that was the old Wal-Mart. Last week Wal-Mart announced that if its associates wanted a union to represent them, that would be hunky-dory -- as long as the union was affiliated with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, a body dominated by the Chinese Communist Party. The official statement was simple and seemingly unambiguous: "Should associates request formation of a union, Wal-Mart China would respect their wishes."
Wal-Mart America has made no such declaration, of course. Why it deems its 20,000 Chinese associates who work in its 40 Chinese stores worthy of representation while its million U.S. employees can't be trusted with the right to represent themselves is a good question. Whence the Sinophilia and Americaphobia?
We can, I think, dismiss suspicions of anti-anyone-but-Chinese racism as such. The answer, then, must lie in Wal-Mart's preference for old-line communist-dominated unions in authoritarian communist states over any other kinds of unions anywhere else. America's unions, which Wal-Mart despises, have a long history of anticommunism, and today's AFL-CIO is the staunchest defender on the American political scene of democratic rights in communist nations such as China. For that matter, unions affiliated with reformed or post-communist parties outside of the few remaining communist states have gotten nowhere with Wal-Mart either. Only in China, with its inimitable blend of Dickensian capitalism and authoritarian communism, has Wal-Mart found a union to its liking.
And small wonder. Unions affiliated with the All-China Federation seldom push for wage increases or safer machinery. Indeed, the locals are often headed by someone from company management. Not that there isn't worker discontent in China: Every week brings accounts of spontaneous strikes, and now and then an occasional riot over such lifestyle impediments as unpaid wages. But the role of the state-sanctioned unions isn't to channel the discontent into achievable gains; it's to contain it to the employer's benefit.
The leaders of genuine workers' movements in China don't end up running the All-China Federation. They're to be found in prison, in exile or in hiding.
Besides, truly democratic unions in China would run counter to the truly undemocratic, one-party state. Allowing a democratic union movement to form would threaten both Dickensian capitalism and authoritarian communism, and diminish some of China's competitive advantage over other low-wage but not authoritarian nations in Southeast Asia, Central America and elsewhere. Such a development would be anathema to both the Politburo and Wal-Mart's board of directors. It would introduce the concept of free choice and the prospects of higher living standards not just to Wal-Mart's 20,000 Chinese store employees but to the far larger number of Chinese workers laboring in poverty-wage servitude to stitch clothing for the contractors, subcontractors and sub-subcontractors whose products fill Wal-Mart's shelves.
When a company such as Wal-Mart is so plainly comfortable with authoritarianism abroad, it tells you something about that company's values at home. Bentonville regards the prospect of employee free association and organization within its stores with the same fear and loathing that Beijing feels at the prospect of free elections in China. Anti-union American employers can't imprison pro-union workers, but exile is a real possibility. Troublemakers are free to go. According to Cornell labor relations professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, at least 5 percent of workers involved in unionization campaigns are fired, which is both quite illegal and quite routine: Companies would rather pay the nominal fines than pay their workers higher wages and lose the absolute control they hold over the work lives of their employees.
The noblest of the Bush administration's goals, surely, is that of spreading democracy. If it's serious about that task, though, there are places closer to home than the Middle East that could use a little democracy-spreading, and the American workplace is high on that list. Strengthening labor law would make it harder for employers such as Wal-Mart to thwart their workers' desire for an organized voice on the job. When America's largest employer feels more affinity for the political legacy of Mao Zedong than for that of Franklin D. Roosevelt, it's time to start democratizing our own back yard.
meyersonh@washpost.com

Washington Post, November 30, 2004, Tuesday

Copyright 2004 The Washington Post

The Washington Post

November 30, 2004 Tuesday
Final Edition

SECTION: Financial; E01

HEADLINE: Temps Lose Bargaining Rights Won In 2000;
NLRB Reverses Stand Along Party Lines

BYLINE: Amy Joyce, Washington Post Staff Writer

BODY:
Temporary workers will no longer be able to bargain for job benefits as part of a unit with permanent employees, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled, reversing a Clinton-era precedent.
In a 3 to 2 vote that was issued Friday, the three members appointed by President Bush -- Robert J. Battista, the chairman; Peter C. Schaumber and Ronald E. Meisburg -- said there is a difference between temporary and permanent workers. "Thus, the entity that the two groups of employees look to as their employer is not the same. No amount of legal legerdemain can alter that fact," their ruling stated.
It overturned a 2000 NLRB ruling, called M.B. Sturgis, that said bargaining units that combined both temporary and permanent employees were permissible.
Two NLRB members appointed by Clinton, Wilma B. Liebman and Dennis P. Walsh, dissented. They cited the rise of temp workers and argued that those workers would essentially be barred from organizing labor unions unless their employers consented. They said the board has a "disturbing reluctance to recognize changes in the economy and the workplace."
The new case is the latest of three major decisions overturned by the board this year by 3 to 2 votes. In June, the board ruled that employees in nonunion companies are no longer entitled to have a co-worker present when they are interviewed as part of a disciplinary investigation. In July, it ruled that graduate teaching assistants at universities are not employees, and therefore cannot organize.
Worker advocates say the temporary worker ruling could have a major effect in an economy that is relying more and more on the hiring of workers who usually aren't eligible for health care and other benefits.
"It's a very big deal," said Kate L. Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "Sturgis said you can't put a temp label on someone to avoid unionizing. It took away the use of the temp status, but also meant you didn't have second-class citizens. Now, by overturning Sturgis, they are giving employers another incentive to disenfranchise workers."
Lawyers representing companies said the ruling will help employers while not really harming workers.
The decision permits temporary workers to organize if both their temporary agency and the company where they work consent. But at least one labor expert said that will be hard to achieve.
"It's going to be an almost impossible set of permissions to be met," said Harley Shaiken, a professor of labor issues at the University of California at Berkeley. "I think it is meant to and will discourage organization among temporary workers."
One of the biggest sources of job gains in September was temporary jobs, which grew by 33,000. Temporary staffing firms added 48,000 jobs in October, according to the Labor Department. There are about 2.5 million temporary workers in the workforce today, and the hiring of temps has accounted for nearly half of the private jobs created since the beginning of 2002.
The AFL-CIO said the decision was one of several where the NLRB is "increasingly siding with employers over workers and denying workers their federally protected rights to form unions."
Shaiken said the new decision "more clearly defines a difference between full-time and temp workers and in certain circumstances it allows an employer to divide them more effectively."
However, some experts say the decision will ease confusion among employers.
Temporary or contract employees work for an agency that places them with the employer, so they are essentially employed by two organizations at once.
"When you have two groups of employees working in the same location, one employed by a contractor or temp agency and another employed by the main employer . . . you need to have two different bargaining units because you are really bargaining with two different employers," said Peter M. Panken, a management side labor attorney with Epstein, Becker & Green in New York City.
The ruling does not prevent temporary workers from organizing, said Kenneth R. Dolin, a partner representing management in the labor and employment practice at Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago. Workers could form a bargaining unit with other temporary workers, he said.
Labor experts and attorneys said they expect the labor board to continue to overturn Clinton-era decisions as its majority moves from Clinton appointees, who were thought to have a pro-labor bias, to Bush appointees, who are thought to have a pro-corporate bias, Panken said.
"The labor movement is really bracing for an assault," said Robert Bruno, professor of labor and industrial relations at the University of Illinois in Chicago.