Contra Costa Times (California), March 12, 2009, Thursday

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Contra Costa Times (California)

March 12, 2009, Thursday

HEADLINE: Byron Williams: Act would make American workers too big to fail

BYLINE: By Byron Williams Columnist

BODY:

IN THESE UNPREDICTABLE economic times, it is common to hear the bipartisan mantra that some corporations or industries are "too big to fail." Seldom do we hear these words about the American worker.

In the failure to include the American worker into this premium category, are we are doing ourselves a disservice?

To this end, there are several pieces of legislation introduced this week in Congress, along with a bipartisan coalition of co-sponsors known as the "Employee Free Choice Act."

The bill is designed to enable working people to bargain for better benefits, wages and working conditions by restoring workers' freedom to choose for themselves whether to join a union.

This is undoubtedly important labor legislation. I've received calls urging me to look at this bill from as far as Washington, D.C. as well as from local representatives in Oakland.

If passed, the Employee Free Choice Act would:

Remove current obstacles to employees who want collective bargaining.

Guarantee that workers who can choose collective bargaining are able to achieve a contract.

Allow employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.

The Employee Free Choice Act was introduced last year; it passed in the House, carried a majority in the Senate, but was not filibuster proof. Assuming Al Franken is the ultimate victor in the Minnesota Senate race, Democrats would only need to peel away one Republican senator to conduct an up-or-down vote.

The public perception may be the proposed legislation is already law, but over the past two-plus decades, there has been a systematic attempt to reduce the influence of organized labor in the American marketplace.

According to a study conducted by Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research at Cornell University:

Ninety-two percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union rhetoric.

Eighty percent require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions.

Seventy-eight percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.

Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns.

Half of employers threaten to shut down partially or totally if employees join together in a union.

The current U.S. labor laws do not prohibit the harassment, coercion and intimidation outlined in Bronfenbrenner's study.

It comes as little surprise many within the business community oppose the Employee Free Choice Act. A popular red herring is to use the automobile industry as Exhibit A.

"To have a union increases wages and benefits, just look at the problems that Ford, GM, and Chrysler are experiencing now" is how the argument goes. The problem with this argument is that organized labor is not responsible for the mishaps in research and design. Nor are they responsible for the increasing gap between CEO salaries and the pay of the average worker.

The decline of labor began in the early 1980s when corporations made the argument that they would inherently do the right the thing, so they told workers there's no need to organize.

Beth Schulman, author of "The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans" and board member of the American Rights at Work calls this phenomenon the "deregulation of the labor market."

"Working people getting into middle class doesn't come down from the sky; it requires a strong labor movement and progressive legislation," she said.

If America is indeed a consumer driven economy, by what other means can the myriad individuals who work in the hotel and nursing home industries, provide janitorial services and retail industry, as well as other low-wage service jobs, which are an increasingly important segment of the economy, participate lest they be organized? And they can only organize if given a free choice.

"The Employee Free Choice Act," Schulman said, "doesn't change anything. It just makes the existing laws work."

My reading of the Employee Free Choice Act inclines me to agree with Schulman's assessment, I would add one caveat if passed it also offers the potential of adding workers, low-wage earners in particular, to the illustrious category of "too big to fail."

Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and is a columnist for the Bay Area News Group-East Bay. E-mail him at byron@byronspeaks.com or leave a message at 510-208-6417.

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