Daily Kos: Why the Employee Free Choice Act Is So Important: The Power of Organization

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.dailykos.com/ Perm link: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/4/134814/6303/296/680087

by Trapper John
Sun Jan 04, 2009 at 03:08:31 PM PST


At the banquet table of nature there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold. If you can't take anything, you won't get anything; and if you can't hold anything, you won't keep anything. And you can't take anything without organization.

-A. Philip Randolph, Founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, civil rights leader, and all-around American hero.


At this point, even the most casual reader of Daily Kos has probably heard of the Employee Free Choice Act. Labor unions are pushing Congress to move on it quickly, big business and its astroturf front rackets are spending untold millions to kill it, and in general, the atmosphere surrounding the bill is more akin to that of a nasty political campaign than a policy debate. But why do labor organizers care so deeply about Employee Free Choice? Why are astroturf groups funded by some of the worst employers in America popping up everywhere purporting to be deeply concerned about the rights of employees? Why is the Chamber of Commerce spending $20-30 million to poison the minds of Americans against the bill?

Why? Because the Employee Free Choice Act is, quite simply, not only the most necessary and important labor law reform in 75 years -- it's the cornerstone of any serious effort to reestablish a real middle-class in the United States. And Wal-Mart, and Grover Norquist, and the Chamber of Commerce, and the institutional Republican Party don't want a real, secure middle class. They want a docile, subservient class of workers who are utterly dependent on the tender mercies of their employers for every meal. They realize far better than many progressives that organization in the workplace -- unionization -- is the single greatest tool that workers have to ensure that they get a piece of the pie. They know that they have to do whatever it takes to prevent working Americans from joining together to "get what they can take, and keep what they can hold." And so, they will do whatever they have to do to try and kill the Employee Free Choice Act.

We can't let that happen. We have a golden opportunity to pass the Act in this Congress -- what with a Democratic president, 58 Democrats in the Senate plus Lieberman (who is a reliable vote on this issue), and a solid House majority. There hasn't been an opportunity for real labor law reform like this in 40 years. This is not a time for incremental change -- not when we have the chance to reorder the economic rules of the nation so that everyday Americans have a chance to claim what's theirs.

Now, I can hear some of you saying, "man -- that's some pretty bold claims about this bill. With the credit crunch, and Iraq, and the health crisis, how can the Employee Free Choice Act be so important?"

Well, that's what I'm going to try and answer here.

Employee Free Choice is Essential Because Unions Are Essential to a Real Middle-Class

Before we can really understand why the Employee Free Choice Act is so critical to improving the health of the middle class, we need to talk about why unionization is so critical to the health of the middle class. Too often, unionists assume that progressives outside of the labor movement share our understanding about the centrality of organizing to the progress and security of working people. So here's a synopsis of the argument for unions.

FULL story at link.

[antigop]

1. But the Employee Free Choice Act is UNCONSTITUTIONAL

According to a University of Chicago law professor.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122964977342320545.html

Consider card check and the First Amendment. Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) today, an employer can insist upon a secret ballot after 30% of workers indicate by card checks their interest in a union. The campaign that follows lets the employer air his views about the downsides of unionization before the vote takes place.

To be sure, the employer's free-speech rights are limited under the NLRA. He cannot threaten to move or shut down if workers vote for the union. Nor can he promise higher wages if they don't. But he can make predictions of what will happen if his firm is unionized, and he can point to the reversal of worker fortunes in other unionized firms.

The Supreme Court (unfortunately, in my view) has held that the peculiar labor-law environment justified these abridgements of ordinary speech rights. But it hardly follows that if the government can curtail speech rights, the EFCA can eliminate them. There is simply no legitimate government interest in promoting unionization that justifies a clandestine organizing campaign which denies all speech rights to the unions' adversaries.

Looks like the employers are lining up their arguments now and working on how they will try to shoot the EFCA down.

[Omaha Steve]

3. Wall St. Journal: Card Check Is Not Unconstitutional

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123033969658536557.html

Richard Epstein wrongly asserts the Employee Free Choice Act will "eliminate" employer free speech by allowing certification of unions based upon checked cards, in "The Employee Free Choice Act Is Unconstitutional" (op-ed, Dec. 19).

Nothing in the EFCA curtails what employers can say about unionization. With card check, employers are free to campaign against unionization before and during union membership card drives. Mr. Epstein also wrongly suggests that the EFCA prescribes "clandestine organizing campaigns." Nothing in the EFCA specifies how organizing campaigns are to be run.

When evaluating the constitutionality of card check, it is important to remember that certification based on cards and without an election was regularly practiced by the National Labor Relations Board in the early years of the National Labor Relations Act. Today the NLRB continues to certify unions without an election in cases of egregious employer misconduct and pursuant to voluntary card check agreements between employers and unions. There were, and have been, no constitutional problems with card check.

There are reasonable arguments against card check, but unconstitutionality is not one of them.

Michael Janson, Ph.D.
University of Pennsylvania Law School
Philadelphia

[antigop]

4. HA! Thanks. I was going to post that.

I'm sure the employers are hunkering down right now trying to figure out every angle on how to defeat the EFCA.

[ngant17]

2. The EFCA bill is about our evolution

"Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking." As in humans, organisms that cooperate with others of their own or different species often out-compete those that do not.
See Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors. Summit Books, New York, 1986. ISBN 0-520-21064-61

My point is that the formation of unions in a civilized society is a natural and predictable act of evolution of our species. Human society progresses, and we progress more effectively when we collectively organize ourselves in the workplaces.

WalMart, Norquist, the Chamber of Commerce, the institutional Republican Party all subconsciously and/or instinctively know this, and they react against it in predictable manners. Unfortunately they are too narrow-minded to realize that the whole of society will benefit in the long run with unionization.

Why can't they let nature take its course? If in fact they are right and we are wrong, sooner or later the unions will self-destruct on their own without any corporate goon squads to kill them for us. Fortunately unions don't tend to self-destruct internally although they might face internal restructuring at times, it isn't anything inherently wrong or unnatural in that process.

[antigop]

5. Note to Omaha Steve

:yourock:

Thanks for all of your posts on labor issues.

I appreciate it.