US unions are campaigning for the freedom to organise. I receive daily campaign updates from the AFL-CIO to lobby to support The Free Choice Bill. But there are no daily emails from Australian unions and the ACTU to pressure the DPM, the ALP caucus and the Senate to amend the Fair Work bill before the Senate Inquiry in line with union and ACTU concerns (see details earlier in this blog).
1. Go to the peak USA Union website
www.aflcio.org/blog.
See also policies on workers’ rights
http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/
Link into the Change to Win unions
2. US union campaigning
LABOUR WEBSITE OF THE YEAR
This year’s winning site belongs to the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America –
The UE Freedom To Organize Campaign
FIGHT FOR AN ECONOMIC RECOVERY FOR WORKERS… NOT BANKERS.
UE has launched the Freedom to Organize Campaign, a nationwide mobilization to fight for union rights, to provide a voice on the job for more and more workers and to demand an economic recovery that benefits workers, not bankers.
Campaign events will include UE Action Week, from March 29 through April 4 where we will make our voices heard at work and in Congress.
3. Hilda Solis has been confirmed by the US Senate as Obama’s Labor Secretary. She promises to be on the side of working people who deserve fair wages, safe workplaces, job training to compete and win in the global economy, and the right to organise and bargain collectively.
President Obama pledged to reverse Bush’s anti-union policies, saying he believes unions are part of solution, not part of the problem.
Solis says she will have four priorities as Labor Secretary:
* expanding skills development and job search assistance and promoting green-collar jobs.
* ensuring employers comply with workplace and OHS laws.
* addressing the retirement savings crisis; and
* guaranteeing equal opportunity and freedom from discrimination: “the Labor Department’s message will be clear and simple: no unjust barrier should keep any worker from achieving the American Dream.”
Solis supports the Employee Free Choice Act, which would require employers to bargain with unions if a “card check” shows they have majority support, without having to conduct a secret ballot. It would also provide for first contract arbitration if bargaining with a new union is unsuccessful after three months and strengthen freedom of association protections and penalties.
President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, which redresses a loophole that prevented the Act’s namesake from being compensated for 10 years of being paid less than her male colleagues performing the same job at a Goodyear manufacturing plant in Alabama.
See also
4. In a statement delivered today to Capitol Hill and published as a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post, more than three dozen of the nation’s top economists call on Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to help restore an economy that works for everyone, built on a sustainable, wage-based growth.
The statement, signed by 39 of America’s top economists, including two Nobel Prize winners, points to the failure of U.S. labor laws to protect employees’ freedom to form a union and bargain as a major factor in our economic crisis. The statement says in part:
Indeed, from 2000 to 2007, the income of the median working-age household fell by $2,000—an unprecedented decline. In that time, virtually all of the nation’s economic growth went to a small number of wealthy Americans. An important reason for the shift from broadly shared prosperity to growing inequality is the erosion of workers’ ability to form unions and bargain collectively.
These economists, representing respected universities and policy institutions from across the nation, point to the corporate-dominated system for forming unions—and the coercion and anti-union campaigning by management—as the causes for declining wages and a gravely weakened economy.
A rising tide lifts all boats only when labor and management bargain on relatively equal terms. In recent decades, most bargaining power has resided with management. The current recession will further weaken the ability of workers to bargain individually. More than ever, workers will need to act together.
Although current headlines are dominated by the crises in the stock market and the financial sector, working families have been struggling for years under the weight of an unbalanced economy. These economists say that restoring bargaining power and ensuring working people have a voice in their workplace, and in their health care, pensions and wages, is critical to rebuilding our economy.
James K. Galbraith of the University of Texas, one of the economists who has signed on, says the freedom to form unions and bargain has many benefits for the economy and the country.
I support the Employee Free Choice Act for two reasons. First, it levels the playing field after a generation of anti-union policies, and in a world where far more workers are in decentralized, hard-to-organize workplaces than was true a generation back. Second, unions are a proven ally of progress, not only in politics but also in economics: unionized workforces promote technical change and productivity growth, because they make it possible to distribute more fairly and less brutally the costs of change.
Eileen Appelbaum, of Rutgers University, says:
To get our economy back on track and growing again we need to strengthen wages, make sure that workers have health and retirement benefits, and reduce inequality. Unions play a unique and significant role in achieving equity and efficiency in the workplace and, more broadly, in society.
5. Ben Self, founder of Blue State Digital, oversaw Obama’s groundbreaking digital election campaign, was in Australia and talks on
fundraising, grassroots activism and voter engagement. Speaking at smh.com.au
http://media.smh.com.au/?rid=46198
http://media.smh.com.au/?rid=46198
6. Workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain will be critical to rebuilding a strong economy, says a new report that examines the effect of unions on wages and state economies.
Unions Are Good for the American Economy, written by researchers Karla Walter and David Madland for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, says that increasing union rates would put more money in workers’ pockets, reversing the sharp growth in income inequality that has undermined our economy. In fact, if union membership was as high as it was in 1983, Walter and Madland suggest, employees would earn an estimated $49 billion more in wages and salaries.
The report also provides a state-by-state analysis of increased union membership on wages. An increase in the rate of union membership of just 5 percent would increase total wages by $176 million in Nebraska, $503 million in Wisconsin and $852 million in Pennsylvania.
These wages would be spread across the entire labor market.
The essence of what labor unions do—give workers a stronger voice so that they can get a fair share of the economic growth they help create—is and has always been important to making the economy work for all Americans. And unions only become more important as the economy worsens.
One of the primary reasons why our current recession endures is that workers do not have the purchasing power they need to drive our economy…what is sustainable is an economy where workers are adequately rewarded and have the income they need to purchase goods. This is where unions come in.
Walter and Madland point to the disconnect between productivity and wages as a major factor in our economic crisis.
Indeed, if wages had kept pace with productivity increases, rather than falling behind as they have in recent decades, average wages would be 42.7 percent higher. That’s a sizable share of the economy that workers have lost, undermining consumer purchasing power and economic security—which, in turn, hurt the nation’s entire economy in a vicious downward spiral. The massive loss to workers of the economic growth they created can be traced to a decline in workers’ bargaining power in the labor market.
The solution, Walter and Madland contend, is to make it easier for workers to form unions and bargain for a fair share of the value they create.
Passing the Employee Free Choice Act and making it harder for management to threaten workers seeking to unionize would be good for American workers. It would help boost workers’ wages and benefits. And putting more money in workers’ pockets would provide a needed boost for the U.S. economy. Increasing unionization is a good way to get out of our current economic troubles.
In a time of economic crisis when political leaders are looking for ways to restore balance, rebuild a middle class and improve the lives of working families, this report shows that giving workers the power to form unions and bargain is essential. See the AFL=CIO web blog for further references.
Obama
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