The lobbyist and spin doctors against the working American have launched all sorts of anti-union websites, one of their newest is using the "stop unions" phrase. So here's a nice little spot on Blogger where I can test some nice widgets for my own site Joe's Union Review
WASHINGTON — President Bush issued an executive order on Monday that denies collective bargaining rights to about 8,600 federal employees who work in law enforcement, intelligence and other agencies responsible for national security.
Mr. Bush said it would be inconsistent with "national security requirements" to allow those employees to engage in collective bargaining with respect to the conditions of their employment.
Among those affected are 5,000 employees of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is now part of the Justice Department.
The text of the executive order can be found here.
Because nothing ensures our national security quite like people who aren't allowed to organize for decent pay and working conditions. Seems to me these are exactly the types of employees you would want to keep off the "disgruntled worker" list.
This is most excellent, isn't it?
Not only has this administration tossed workers aside, destroyed enforcement of labor laws, reduced funding for OSHA, MSHA and fought against regulations for just about everything, here, they even take a pot shot at the employees at Energy, Transportation, Homeland Security, Treasury and of course, Justice, from the White House:
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 7103(b)(1) of title 5, United States Code, and in order to reflect the effects of the reorganization and restructuring of the Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, Transportation, and the Treasury on their subdivisions exempted from coverage under the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Determinations. The subdivisions of the Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, Transportation, and the Treasury set forth in sections 2 through 6 of this order are hereby determined to have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work. It is further determined that chapter 71 of title 5, United States Code, cannot be applied to these subdivisions in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations.
And just what offices are affected, here are just a few:
Department of Energy: (e) The Savannah River Operations Office.
Homeland Security: (a) Office of the Military Advisor.
(b) The following office within the Management Directorate:
(1) Office of Security.
(c) Office of Operations Coordination.
(d) Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement.
(h) The following offices and subdivisions within United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement:
(1) The Office of Investigations.
(2) The Office of International Affairs.
(3) The Office of Intelligence.
(4) The National Incident Response Unit.
(i) The following office within the Transportation Security Administration:
(1) The Office of Law Enforcement/Federal Air Marshal Service.
Isn't this a most excellent list of random agencies and subdivisions?
ec. 4. Department of Justice. Executive Order 12171 of November 19, 1979, as amended, is further amended by:
(a) revising subsection (g) of section 1-209 to read as follows:
"(g) National Security Division."; and
(b) adding to the end of section 1-209 the following new subsection:
"(h) Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives."
It's pretty far reaching for a list of obscure agencies. The funny thing is that at a general schedule 13 and up, most (I think all, but am not positive) postions are actually exempted positions. Which means you are unable to be represented by a union. Now, even the lower grades in this offices are excluded? Seriously? Gee it's like getting slapped in the face while someone's pissing in your mouth. At what point is enough enough?
The corporate war against unions and American workers in general has taken an awful turn, in 'if you repeat it people will believe it is true fashion' the stooges against us are creating more anti-union sentiment with making us think that only unionized autoworkers are making far too much money as opposed to the rest of us here in the U.S.
Alas their fear of the possible passage of the Employee Free Choice Act is making them slam the unions as hard as possible, getting catch phrases like "73 dollars an hour" to become a household phrase, but you my dear reader are much smarter than those who believe this to be true. Finally the numbers have been scrutinized and the sensationalistic numbers have been brought to our attention, the average union autoworker makes around $28 an hour as of 2007 and the new contract signed in early 2008 will limit the top wage of many non-core new hires to roughly $14 an hour with a lower degree of benefit costs also. That's a whole lot less than what a Toyota worker makes here in the US, but it was done to create American jobs.
The average UAW autoworker at the 'Big 3' makes roughly a little less than $60,000 a year and the average non-union autoworker in the U.S. makes roughly $52,000 and considering that most of the nonunion plants are in lower cost of living areas, I would say that both are quite competitive with one another. Basically no one is getting rich who is a general worker at any U.S. auto manufacturing plant. The anti-union forces along with the corporate right are spinning this to create more anti-union sentiment in our country. They fixate on a number that sounds outlandish and just keep repeating it until you say "greedy union worker", when in fact with the way the world is changing even the nonunion manufacturers here will be cutting back and need help eventually as it is very hard to compete globally when places such as Mexico have a minimum wage of $2 an hour, Bangladesh is only $0.06, and Vietnam is $64 an month.
So the choice is your, keep listening to their horseshit, keep hating your fellow American workers, keep letting them get away with outsourcing all of our industry or open your eyes and let them know that you know they are misinforming us. Remember "unions force jobs overseas" or at least that's what they want you to believe.
Yes these are bad times, really bad times, but don't take it out on the American workers, not the union ones or the nonunion ones, we are all hurting, don't let them get away with driving a bigger wedge between all of us, the collapse of GM, Ford and Chrysler will cost us 3 million U.S. jobs, add that to the 50,000+ Citibank workers, and all the others who have recently been laid off and you can see now we as the American working class need to rely on each other now more than ever.
Debunking the $73/hour Myth
Here's the scoop on the pay at the 'Big 3', from the pages of The New Republic
Why Are We Bailing Out Auto Workers Who Make $70 An Hour? by Jonathan Cohn Debunking the myth of the $70-per-hour autoworker.
If you've been following the auto industry's crisis, then you've probably read or heard a lot about overpaid American autoworkers--in particular, the fact that the average hourly employee of the Big Three makes $70 per hour.
That's an awful lot of money. Seventy dollars an hour in wages works out to almost $150,000 a year in gross income, if you assume a forty-hour work week. Is it any wonder the Big Three are in trouble? And with auto workers making so much, why should taxpayers--many of whom make far less--finance a plan to bail them out?
Well, here's one reason: The figure is wildly misleading.
Let's start with the fact that it's not $70 per hour in wages. According to Kristin Dziczek of the Center for Automative Research--who was my primary source for the figures you are about to read--average wages for workers at Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors were just $28 per hour as of 2007. That works out to a little less than $60,000 a year in gross income--hardly outrageous, particularly when you consider the physical demands of automobile assembly work and the skills most workers must acquire over the course of their careers.
More important, and contrary to what you may have heard, the wages aren't that much bigger than what Honda, Toyota, and other foreign manufacturers pay employees in their U.S. factories. While we can't be sure precisely how much those workers make, because the companies don't make the information public, the best estimates suggests the corresponding 2007 figure for these "transplants"--as the foreign-owned factories are known--was somewhere between $20 and $26 per hour, and most likely around $24 or $25. That would put average worker's annual salary at $52,000 a year.
So the "wage gap," per se, has been a lot smaller than you've heard. And this is no accident. If the transplants paid their employees far less than what the Big Three pay their unionized workers, the United Auto Workers would have a much better shot of organizing the transplants' factories. Those factories remain non-unionized and management very much wants to keep it that way.
But then what's the source of that $70 hourly figure? It didn't come out of thin air. Analysts came up with it by including the cost of all employer-provided benefits--namely, health insurance and pensions--and then dividing by the number of workers. The result, they found, was that benefits for Big Three cost about $42 per hour, per employee. Add that to the wages--again, $28 per hour--and you get the $70 figure. Voila.
Except ... notice something weird about this calculation? It's not as if each active worker is getting health benefits and pensions worth $42 per hour. That would come to nearly twice his or her wages. (Talk about gold-plated coverage!) Instead, each active worker is getting benefits equal only to a fraction of that--probably around $10 per hour, according to estimates from the International Motor Vehicle Program. The number only gets to $70 an hour if you include the cost of benefits for retirees--in other words, the cost of benefits for other people. One of the few people to grasp this was Portfolio.com's Felix Salmon. As he noted yesterday, the claim that workers are getting $70 an hour in compensation is just "not true."
Of course, the cost of benefits for those retirees--you may have heard people refer to them as "legacy costs"--do represent an extra cost burden that only the Big Three shoulder. And, yes, it makes it difficult for the Big Three to compete with foreign-owned automakers that don't have to pay the same costs. But don't forget why those costs are so high. While the transplants don't offer the same kind of benefits that the Big Three do, the main reason for their present cost advantage is that they just don't have many retirees.
The first foreign-owned plants didn't start up here until the 1980s; many of the existing ones came well after that. As of a year ago, Toyota's entire U.S. operation had less than 1,000 retirees. Compare that to a company like General Motors, which has been around for more than a century and which supports literally hundreds of thousands of former workers and spouses. As you might expect, many of these have the sorts of advanced medical problems you expect from people to develop in old age. And, it should go without saying, those conditions cost a ton of money to treat.
To be sure, we've known about these demographics for a while. Management and labor in Detroit should have figured out a solution it long ago. But while the Big Three were late in addressing this problem, they did address it eventually.
Notice how, in this article, I've constantly referred to 2007 figures? There's a good reason. In 2007, the Big Three signed a breakthrough contract with the United Auto Workers (UAW) designed, once and for all, to eliminate the compensation gap between domestic and foreign automakers in the U.S.
The agreement sought to do so, first, by creating a private trust for financing future retiree benefits--effectively removing that burden from the companies' books. The auto companies agreed to deposit start-up money in the fund; after that, however, it would be up to the unions to manage the money. And it was widely understood that, given the realities of investment returns and health care economics, over time retiree health benefits would likely become less generous.
In addition, management and labor agreed to change health benefits for all workers, active or retired, so that the coverage looked more like the policies most people have today, complete with co-payments and deductibles. The new UAW agreement also changed the salary structure, by creating a two-tiered wage system. Under this new arrangement, the salary scale for newly hired workers would be lower than the salary scale for existing workers.
One can debate the propriety and wisdom of these steps; two-tiered wage structures, in particular, raise various ethical concerns. But one thing is certain: It was a radical change that promised to make Detroit far more competitive. If carried out as planned, by 2010--the final year of this existing contract--total compensation for the average UAW worker would actually be less than total compensation for the average non-unionized worker at a transplant factory. The only problem is that it will be several years before these gains show up on the bottom line--years the industry probably won't have if it doesn't get financial assistance from the government.
Make no mistake: The argument over a proposed rescue package is complicated, in no small part because over the years both management and labor made some truly awful decisions while postponing the inevitable reckoning with economic reality. And even if the government does provide money, it's a tough call whether restructuring should proceed with or without a formal bankruptcy filing. Either way, yet more downsizing is inevitable.
But the next time you hear somebody say the unions have to make serious salary and benefit concessions, keep in mind that they already have--enough to keep the companies competitive, if only they can survive this crisis.
Jonathan Cohn is a senior editor at The New Republic.
My apologies to my readers for the lapse of writing on my behalf, I needed some time after the election to rest, work has been very satisfying also and I have been trying to have more free time with my family. Fear not I have a lot to say and a ton of ammunition on really bad shit happening against workers in today's America, I even have about 4 stories in the sandbox that need final editing to go forward and get published, but I need some time to focus and get the facts correct and intact.
More child labor in our backyard, more unscrupulous employers rejecting us in favor of undocumented workers with little or no rights and even a touch of good news, a story on more clothing made in the USA.
Update #1: Michael Moore, Moore on the $73 Myth and the anti-union ties to it, just like I wrote and spoke about last Thursday at the NYC Central Labor Council meeting
Michael Moore on the arrogance of the Big 3 this is from CNN on Nov.19th.
It's more like $41 for the entire package Another update on the myth from Media Matters (11/22/08), in a story entitled "Media figures falsely assert or suggest autoworkers make $70/hour without noting figure includes benefits paid to current retirees" (In part, entire article at link above):
In a November 18 post on his American Prospect blog criticizing Sorkin's reporting, economist Dean Baker wrote that the $70 figure Sorkin used is distorted by conflating "legacy" costs -- medical benefits and pensions paid to retirees -- with current labor costs:
The New York Times told readers that GM's autoworkers are paid $70 an hour (including health care and pension). This is not true. The base pay is about $28 an hour. If health care cost per worker average $12,000 per year, that adds in another $6 an hour. If the pension payment takes up 25 percent of base pay (an extremely high pension), that gets you another $7 an hour, bringing the total to $41 an hour. That's decent pay, but still a long way from $70 an hour.
How does the NYT get from $41 to $70? Well the trick is to add in GM's legacy costs, the pension and health care costs for retired workers. These legacy costs are a serious expense for GM, but this is not money being paid to current workers. The person on the line in 2008 is not benefiting from these legacy costs.
Rick Berman, the US Chamber Of Commerce and their agenda against the Employee Free Choice Act
I called this one last week, I spoke in front of my fellow New york City Central Labor delegates and noted that the $73 an hour myth was perpetrated by anti-union forces seeking to discredit unions. Here's the payoff, Rick Berman, the corporate lobbyist and spin doctoring lawyer, who's past efforts were defending animal torture by trying to make PETA look bad, defending cigarette companies, trying to lower the legal drinking age and higher the breath test levels for the alcohol companies and trying to defend the fish industry against claims of mercury levels that are dangerous. He is also the creator of The Center For Union Facts, a biased attack site against unions which is funded by McDonalds, Smithfield Pork and others who I cannot name due to court papers being locked.
One of Mr.Berman's front groups, the business-backed Employee Freedom Action Committee has been showing commercials which attack unions. Are we gonna let this corporate shill distort the facts? Here's the scoop from The Hill in a story by By Ian Swanson entitled "Business group blames unions for carmakers’ woes" (full story at link):
Unions are to blame for the Big Three automakers’ problems, according to a television ad meant to stoke public opposition to organized labor’s number one legislative priority.
“Steel, auto, airlines. What do these industries all have in common?” asks the ad sponsored by the business-backed Employee Freedom Action Committee, which was active in several hotly contested Senate races this year. “Hundreds of thousands of lost jobs and union bosses that helped put them out of business.”
The advertisement urges people to fight the Employee Free Choice Act, which unions hope will be taken up quickly by the Democratic Congress and President-elect Barack Obama. The bill would eliminate the requirement for workers to cast secret ballots in deciding whether to organize, making it easier to form unions.
Business groups are paying for the ad to run on CNN and the Fox cable news network Monday through Wednesday, according to the group’s spokesman, Tim Miller. He said the ad buy was “fairly substantial” but declined to specify a figure. A similar ad ran in Mississippi and New Hampshire in conjunction with Senate races in those states, where business groups worked to tie Democrats to the Employee Free Choice Act.
“If Americans like what the unions did to Detroit’s economy, they’ll love what the unions will do to the country,” said Richard Berman, the business group’s executive director.
“The unions have played a significant role in nearly bankrupting the Big Three automakers with untenable inefficiencies which have put tens of thousands out of work,” Bergman said. He said the union bill, known as “card-check legislation,” would do the same to millions of jobs across the country.
Alan Reuther, legislative director for the United Autoworkers, blasted the ad and Bergman’s comments. He said the auto industry’s problems rest on a series of bad trade and healthcare policies, and that the credit crunch is to blame for the current crisis.
Reuther also said major concessions offered by unions in their 2005 and 2007 contracts will result in the elimination of the cost-gap between union and non-union plants. “We feel that we’ve stepped up to the plate,” he said.
He also pointed to a 2007 report by two auto industry consulting firms that found nine of the 10 most-efficient auto plants in North America have workers organized by the United Autoworkers or the Canadian Autoworkers.
It's called Propaganda "Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths."
You know who said that? Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's Propaganda Minister in Nazi Germany, he got the people to focus and hate other people, this cycle is repeated over and over throughout history, Goebbels also quips
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”
We have seen this recently in the term "terrorism", which was used against President-Elect Barack Obama by Sarah Palin in a failing campaign.
Now these groups against workers want to use the manifestation of "greedy" union workers, those guys and gals who are making a whopping "$73 an hour", it's all propaganda and many of us are eating it up.
To hear the media tell it, arrogant corporate chiefs failed to foresee the demand for small, fuel-efficient cars and made gas-guzzling road-hog SUVs no one wanted, while the clever, far-sighted Japanese, Germans and Koreans prepared and built for the future.
I dissent. What killed Detroit was Washington, the government of the United States, politicians, journalists and muckrakers who have long harbored a deep animus against the manufacturing class that ran the smokestack industries that won World War II.
He continues (full article in link above):
It then clamped fuel efficiency standards on the entire U.S. car fleet.
Next, Washington imposed a corporate tax rate of 35 percent, raking off another 15 percent of autoworkers’ wages in Social Security payroll taxes
State governments imposed income and sales taxes, and local governments property taxes to subsidize services and schools.
The United Auto Workers struck repeatedly to win the highest wages and most generous benefits on earth — vacations, holidays, work breaks, health care, pensions — for workers and their families, and retirees.
Now there is nothing wrong with making U.S. plants the cleanest and safest on earth or having U.S. autoworkers the highest-paid wage earners.
That is the dream, what we all wanted for America.
And under the 14th Amendment, GM, Ford and Chrysler had to obey the same U.S. laws and pay at the same tax rates. Outside the United States, however, there was and is no equality of standards or taxes.
Thus when America was thrust into the Global Economy, GM and Ford had to compete with cars made overseas in factories in postwar Japan and Germany, then Korea, where health and safety standards were much lower, wages were a fraction of those paid U.S. workers, and taxes were and are often forgiven on exports to the United States.
All three nations built “export-driven” economies.
The Beetle and early Japanese imports were made in factories where wages were far beneath U.S. wages and working conditions would have gotten U.S. auto executives sent to prison.
The competition was manifestly unfair, like forcing Secretariat to carry 100 pounds in his saddlebags in the Derby.
Japan, China and South Korea do not believe in free trade as we understand it. To us, they are our “trading partners.” To them, the relationship is not like that of Evans & Novak or Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It is not even like the Redskins and Cowboys. For the Cowboys only want to defeat the Redskins. They do not want to put their franchise out of business and end the competition — as the Japanese did to our TV industry by dumping Sonys here until they killed it.
While we think the Global Economy is about what is best for the consumer, they think about what is best for the nation.
Like Alexander Hamilton, they understand that manufacturing is the key to national power. And they manipulate currencies, grant tax rebates to their exporters and thieve our technology to win. Last year, as trade expert Bill Hawkins writes, South Korea exported 700,000 cars to us, while importing 5,000 cars from us.
That’s Asia’s idea of free trade.
How has this Global Economy profited or prospered America?
In the 1950s, we made all our own toys, clothes, shoes, bikes, furniture, motorcycles, cars, cameras, telephones, TVs, etc. You name it. We made it.
Are we better off now that these things are made by foreigners? Are we better off now that we have ceased to be self-sufficient? Are we better off now that the real wages of our workers and median income of our families no longer grow as they once did? Are we better off now that manufacturing, for the first time in U.S. history, employs fewer workers than government?
We no longer build commercial ships. We have but one airplane company, and it outsources. China produces our computers. And if GM goes Chapter 11, America will soon be out of the auto business.
Our politicians and pundits may not understand what is going on. Historians will have no problem explaining the decline and fall of the Americans.
Mr. Buchanan points towards over-government and unfair trade. I was happy to see his views, I'm so sick and tired of reading the propaganda that is today's mainstream, the likes of the US Chamber and Rick Berman who claim more unfair trade is a good thing for America make me sick. One commenter on the above article, Kurt2208, states:
Free trade agreements work fine with countries like Germany, England, japan and Canada which have close to the same standard of living. They do not work with third world and communist countries. As the traiter Dubya leaves office he is pushing another trade agreement with Columbia. I believe he should be tried and convicted of treason and shot!!!
Hope that last line doesn't get him in trouble. They might even call him a 'terrorist". We toss $700,000,000 billion on the banking industry that got us in this mess and when it comes to unionized workers the talking points start. Do you know what the US Chamber of Commerce and Mr.Berman had to say about the banking bailout? Nothing.
Now they blame the workers. Fucking amazing.
GM sent me an E-Mail on the crisis I own a Chevy Impala
Despite what you may be hearing, we are not asking Congress for a bailout but rather a loan that will be repaid.
The U.S. economy is at a crossroads due to the worldwide credit crisis, and all Americans are feeling the effects of the worst economic downturn in 75 years. Despite our successful efforts to restructure, reduce costs and enhance liquidity, U.S. auto sales rely on access to credit, which is all but frozen through traditional channels.
The consequences of the domestic auto industry collapsing would far exceed the $25 billion loan needed to bridge the current crisis. According to a recent study by the Center for Automotive Research:
• One in 10 American jobs depends on U.S. automakers • Nearly 3 million jobs are at immediate risk • U.S. personal income could be reduced by $150 billion • The tax revenue lost over 3 years would be more than $156 billion
Discussions are now underway in Washington, D.C., concerning loans to support U.S. carmakers. I am asking for your support in this vital effort by contacting your state representatives.
Please take a few minutes to go to www.gmfactsandfiction.com, where we have made it easy for you to contact your U.S. senators and representatives. Just click on the "I'm a Concerned American" link under the "Mobilize Now" section, and enter your name and ZIP code to send a personalized e-mail stating your support for the U.S. automotive industry.
Update #2♦: Spotted a new blog by the autoworkers who are trapped in this mess, it's called Joe The Autoworker, go stop bye and show some support for our fellow American workers
Tell the Gap: Don't Harbor Worker Abuses Don't let Gap Inc. support worker and retiree abuses!
Oak Harbor Freight Lines workers in Oregon, Washington and Idaho were forced to strike on Sept. 22 in protest of the freight company's violations of U.S. labor laws, as well as hostile efforts by the company to intimidate workers.
A day later, Oak Harbor took the outrageous step of cutting off health care benefits to its workers and retirees. Instead of negotiating with striking workers in good faith, Oak Harbor has imported teams of professional strikebreakers to coerce and scare loyal long-time employees.
Oak Harbor's biggest freight customer, Gap Inc., has supported the move to replace striking workers and cut off health care benefits to retirees.
REI, Urban Outfitters, and other companies have elected to suspend their relationship with Oak Harbor until the company finds a just and lasting resolution to the ongoing labor dispute.
Several organizations, including, Sweatfree Communities, the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation, the International Transport Workers' Federation, Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, and the International Labor Rights Forum have called on Gap Inc. to suspend its relationship with Oak Harbor.
Unfortunately, the Gap continues to ignore workers' rights abuses and use Oak Harbor to transport merchandise. Tell the Gap to stop harboring worker abuses.
On Oct. 21st. Teamsters rappelled down the side of a building adjacent to The Gap’s headquarters in San Francisco to bring attention to the company’s support of union-busting freight firm Oak Harbor Freight Lines.
*Click above for larger image
“We are here today at Gap Inc. to let the people of San Francisco, and the country, know that Gap, Inc. supports union-busters,” said Dan Jurpik, a striking worker who participated in the banner drop. “I have worked for Oak Harbor for 14 years. Now they are slashing our health care and bringing in professional strikebreakers to coerce and scare loyal long-time employees.”
“This company is treating its employees badly,” said Al Hobart, President of Teamsters Joint Council 28 and International Vice President. “Not only do they not want to negotiate fairly, but now they have taken the outrageous step of slashing health care benefits for workers. And, to add insult to injury, they cut health care for retirees – the very workers who built Oak Harbor into a strong company.”
Oak Harbor’s biggest freight customer, retail giant Gap Inc., continues to provide support to Oak Harbor even after it cut retiree health care benefits, froze workers’ retirement income and slashed sick leave.
More than 600 Teamsters remain on strike in Washington, Oregon and Idaho against Auburn, Washington-based Oak Harbor, after bargaining unsuccessfully for a fair contract for the past 11 months.
A huge thank's to Eric Lee at the folks at Labourstart for helping gather support for our fellow workers. A huge thanks to the labor and social justice organizations worldwide that are in support of our American workers.
By Larry Retired I've finally realized why unions should have never been created and should be put to rest for good.
If unions had never been created, there would have never been a middle class. That way ordinary people would have never been exposed to many of the creature comforts of the elite. What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. We could all still be going to work in our childhoods, working 14 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week. We would die young, allowing our jobs to be passed on to the next fortunate generation. This way our jobs wouldn't have had to be exported to China, where those lucky souls are getting to do this admirable labor. There would still be a place for the greedy and unscrupulous, there always is. We wouldn't have the time or energy to be corrupting our minds with things like religion or recreation. Without all these distractions, our lives would be so much simpler. This scenario, after all, is the ultimate goal of the multi-national corporate elite. They have particularly escalated their push toward this end during the past 30-odd years.
The only downside that I see with this is that everything around us would be different, in most cases nonexistent. I mean if we, the masses, didn't have any money or time, there would be no need for all the stores, homes , doctors, roads, you name it. So as this brave new world is systematically foisted upon us by the corporate elites, don't be so damned ungrateful. They are only looking out for your own good, after all.
But since we already have these pesky unions, we all need to join together and help bring them down. Consider this, 33% of American citizens are making less than $15,000 a year, and 75% of us are making less than $50,000 a year. Now how ungrateful can we be, to expect that kind of compensation, with days off in many cases, to boot. In 1970 the largest corporation in America was General Motors. They paid their labor well, provided them with excellent benefits, and allowed them to retire with dignity. Henry Ford had the stupid idea that he needed to pay his help enough so that they could afford his products.
Today Walmart is America's largest corporation, where turnover is huge, pay is low, there are few or no benefits, and certainly no retirement. Can't you see where this is far superior to that of the recent past? If we can just keep heading in this direction for a little while longer, maybe we can get back to where we will be making so little and working under totally miserable conditions, that we can get back our basic means of production from China. Oh what a blessed thought, golly I can't wait.
Great post Larry, thanks. Larry is a retired Yellow city driver, dock worker and hostler. Retired in 2005, after 31 years.
We have come a long way from when I wrote this on Union Review last year, but the fight has intensified, I hope that people are learning from all of our sites that we as workers must get together and fight for a better tomorrow, so here's my article which has been parked here on the front page since this site began in Janurary 2008, which was originally posted on Union Review. The information is eben more important today then it was last year.
Reposted from 10/27/07
Why is it that when someone who becomes a hero, the fact that he is a proud union member is not mentioned in the mainstream media? Could it be that the media on a whole is quite a bit anti-union?
I'm not just talking about the likes of Rupert Murdoch, I am talking about the main 6 companies that own almost everything you see and read, the six that have to bargain directly with unions and would like nothing more than for people to believe that the working mans plight is hopeless and we must bargain from the scraps left for us. And yes my friends, they want total control of the internet . Well I've gone a bit off point, the point is that when Wesley Autrey, a member and shop steward of LIUNA Local 79, became New Yorks subway hero on Jan. 3rd. 2007, by putting his life at risk to save another, there was absolutely no mention that he was a union member in any of the big media outlets. I only came to learn that through my diligence in serching out news on the internet. And that my friends is a total shame .
NYPost "Autrey, 50, a construction worker who achieved nationwide fame for his death-defying rescue of a Boston man who had fallen off the subway platform" NYTimes "Mr. Autrey, a 50-year-oldconstruction worker, said he knew something was different when he showed up for work later on Tuesday. His boss, he said, bought him lunch — a ham-and-cheese hero — and later told him to take yesterday off." USAToday "I just tried to do the right thing," said the 50-year-old Harlem construction worker." NBC "Wesley Autrey, a Navy veteran and construction worker, was standing nearby on the platform with his children when he saw Hollowpeter fall. Autrey jumped down to the track area and lay on top of Hollowpeter as a train passed about "2 inches" from his head."
What comes to mind that is if this was me, the first thing i would say if asked what my job was would be my union . Now this isn't the only instance whereby I have come to this conclusion , when speaking with an official with OPEIU on the crisis in downtown NYC regarding HIP's removing 186 union jobs from downtown , good paying jobs they were obligated to keep there when they used "Empire State Development Corp.'s WTC Job Creation and Retention Program", none of the big papers here in New York would carry the story , the Times (which has this so-called worker friendly stance said it was too small an issue) refused as did all the others , the only paper that would run the story was New York Newsday. I consider it very newsworthy, and refuse to buy any other paper. Not to mention the fact that Newsday is the only paper here in New York which reports on employee misclassification and tax evasion by nonunion contractors .
"A Federal Communications Commissioner said that the censoring of political speech during a recent Pearl Jam performance illustrates the need for network neutrality." Link
What is Network Neutrality? Network Neutrality — or "Net Neutrality" for short — is the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet. Put simply, Net Neutrality means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from speeding up or slowing down Web
content based on its source, ownership or destination.
Ok that means hypothetically, that without "Net Neutrality", if Disney, who is partnered with Verizon , has a "Union" issue and someone posts an article on UnionReview about it, Verizon is within their rights to throttle our sites basic internet bandwidth to the degree that it would be frustrating if not impossible to view it. Think this isn't a possibility, think again .
"If you missed the incident, Verizon Wireless initially refused to transmit text messages over its cellular network from Naral Pro-Choice America, a pro-choice group, to its members. Naral uses text-messaging to update its supporters on pro-choice policy and the message would have only gone to people who had signed up to receive them. But several days later, Verizon did an about-face and agreed to send the messages. Nonetheless, according to news reports, Verizon did not retreat from its position that it is entitled to decide what messages to transmit. This is censorship of the first magnitude."
As a matter of fact , those that oppose Net Neutrality have garnered the talents of "spin-doctor' Rick Berman, former lobbyist for big tobacco and current creator of Center For Union Facts, whose main focus is to tarnish unions through truths, half-truths and out right propaganda.
Basically his site Hands Off The Internet is a giant scare tactic to those in the world that believe everything they read. Basically if you read through Berman's web sites you can easily understand this joke.
Q: How can you tell that Rick Berman is lying? A: He opens his mouth
What else are the phone and cable companies not telling the truth about?
AT&T and others have funded a massive misinformation campaign, filled with deceptive advertising and "Astroturf" groups like Hands Off the Internet and NetCompetition.org. Learn how to tell apart the myths from the realities in our report, Network Neutrality: Fact vs. Fiction.
Well this was installment #1 of my "Mad as Hell", stay tuned as I once again someday sift through all the misinformation and spin-doctoring and get another story here.
Wow, found this at Democratic Underground, real nice to see Joe Biden's views on unions and the working class
Anti-Worker, Associated Builders And Contractors, first business association to endorse McCain
Just a little side note, while The United Association was the first Building and Construction Trades Union to back Barack Obama, on the other aide of this race, the staunchly anti-union Associated Builders And Contractors has the honor of being "the first business organization to back John McCain"(it happened about 2 months ago) stating that John McCain opposes union-only labor projects and opposes prevailing wage laws which make certain that individuals who work on publicly funded jobs receive the area standard wages.
Both prevailing wage laws and Project Labor Agreements are proven time and cost saving measures that make sure that the public gets what it pays for.
The who, what, where, when, how and why, of the forces against the American worker.
Wow, everything I speak about, and even more, this fantastic video that explains better than I can, about the opponents of The Employee Free Choice Act, and a bit of history in the process.
A huge thanks to NoahKunin at The Uptake for posting this video
You can read more about Myth Vs. Fact about the Employee Free Choice Act at The US House Of Representative's Committee Of Labor and Education "Employee Free Choice Act: Myth vs. Fact "
Wow, its certainly a war against the American worker, the Bush administration is at it again, this time they are going after private sector companies which have governmental contracts. This administration would make a card-check negotiated by both sides illegal. That means that even the companies that pre-negotiate a path where the workers can get into a union with just a card check, they will now have to have a 'secret-ballot' election. What part of "if the American workers want a union, they sign a card saying they want a union, the company agreed that this would be enough, so the American workers have a union", is such a terrible idea?
White House Prepares Order On Union Organizing By KRIS MAHER
The Bush administration is weighing an executive order that would eliminate a union-preferred method of labor organizing at large government contractors, according to people familiar with the situation.
Labor leaders prefer a card-check system in which workers can form a union if a majority of them sign a union-authorization card. Companies generally prefer a secret-ballot election.
The issue has become a factor in some Senate races and the presidential campaign. Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, supports legislation favoring the card-check approach. Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, opposes such legislation.
The executive order would require large government contractors to use secret-ballot elections for union organizing or risk losing government contracts, say people familiar with the order. Though companies typically prefer secret ballots, some are willing to accept card checks to avoid a fight.
It isn't clear if the order would apply to a company's entire operations or only those operations serving the government. According to a person familiar with a draft of the order, it would exclude companies with small government contracts.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto declined to comment on the matter. It is possible President George W. Bush would choose not to sign the order being prepared by lower-ranking officials, people familiar with the matter said.
Union leaders believe the order, if issued, could derail some current organizing drives. Gregory Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said his union is negotiating a card-check agreement with a large defense contractor and the order "could very well affect us." The union represents 75,000 engineers and technical workers at Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and General Electric Co., among other companies.
Rick Berman runs the Washington-based Center for Union Facts, which opposes card-check campaigns. He said he was aware of the order and called it "long overdue." He said the order shows "the government is not going to promote the hijacking of democracy through their government-contracting process."
Labor officials who have heard of the plans criticized the idea. "This is politics at its worst," said Bill Samuel, the AFL-CIO's director of government affairs. He called the order a gift to the business community "from the most antiunion administration that we've seen."
Had to say something, so I was reading through the NY Times article about how the AFL-CIO has launched a Veterans Vs. McCain website and when readin the comments I just had to chime in, from the NY Times, "Union Veterans’ Group Starts Ad Campaign Against McCain" (7/11/08):
Wow, reading through I can see the paid for posts, yes that’s right, today’s Big Law firm fat cats pay people to post on major news sites spreading bull misinforming people about The Employee Free Choice Act, the one true good piece of legislation that will allow people, that’s right American working people, to decide if they want to be in a union by signing a card. If more than 50% sign they get a union. The current method allows these union avoidance law firms to swoop in and divide and conquer the work force in the interim before the vaunted “secret ballot” election, using any means necessary, whether legal or not, by the time the election is over they deal with the legalities. This is a multi-billion dollar industry. Union avoidance and busting, a bunch of lawyers who spread the misinformation, and terrorize workers in their business see the passage of The Employee Free Choice Act as a tremendous loss to their cash cow, when was the last time you saw a “non-profit” so adamantly oppose legislation under the guise of taking away our democracy, where obviously money is no object, creating and running TV ad’s at will, that takes BIG money, even bigger than the AFL launching this campaign. Don’t let the billion dollar lawyers tell you how to think. They have owned the NLRB for the past 8 years under the guidance of a Bush appointee, Robert Battista, who has thoroughly contracted the power of all workers and given even more power to multi-national corporations who are ruling our world. He has done such a good job that when his appointment as the chairman came up this year, he decided to refuse in order to join one of the biggest union busting law firms in the world, that’s a fact that Main Stream Media doesn’t speak about.
And yes, Mr.McCain, who would make us all pay for our own health insurance with taxed money, and feed us into the hands of the big insurance companies is not the choice for any American worker, union or otherwise.
He also opposed the new GI Bill. I have been writing about the new GI Bill for quite some time and was completely surprised that this maverick veteran, ex-pow, would allow our returning vets to not get the care they needed, to not get funding to higher education, to not get the mental health care they needed. While both Republicans and Democrats supported the GIBILL 2008, McCain threatened cloture, and Bush threatened Veto, until a few weeks ago. This bill will allow our returning veterans a chance to become workers, company owners, supervisors, and modern day heroes, not the Vietnam era bill that flooded our country with homeless returnees. McCain did not want this! Bush did not want this! The military industrial complex did not want this! We the American people wanted this!
As a labor writer, do I staunchly back Obama? absolutely not, I despise the current 2 party system, I despise the fact that MSM censored the candidates I would have easily voted for in favor of the ones they could control through campaign finance. But Obama has a better chance of helping working people here in our country, and is a little less of a world eating profiteer that the reagan/bush/clinton/bush travesty that has lead us to where we are today. Especially if we, as working American’s hold Obama accountable if lected, remember, if you have 1 term in office, you will want another.
We can change the world a bit if Obama is elected, we can not if McCain is.
All of you here are among the Americans who can read independent news on the internet, do it, don’t just read the NY Times(no offense Mr.Greenhouse, I read your stuff, and it has been heading in a much better direction lately), don’t just read USA Today, spread yourself out onto Mother Jones, The Man Common blog, Peoples Weekly World, UTNE Reader, Consumers Union, Corp Watch, the list goes on, see the social interests links on my site. We have many issues, if this country continues on its path of separatism, the powers that be will take it all away from our little satellite groups at a whim.
As far as unions destroying America’s workplace, keep thinking that way.
Did the unions allow our industry to go to Haiti, where the people eat dirt sandwiches and the ones who are lucky enough to work in the former US Made Levi’s factory make about $2 a week, yeah blame the unions for that, or the other place where they make Levi’s, Bangladesh, where even the school teachers and policemen have to wait on thousand people lines to get government subsidized rice because they are paid so poorly, or in Vietnam, home of sneakers that were made her, where workers work 12 hours a day and recently went on strike to make a whopping $62 a month, instead of their current $58.
Yeah, the unions killed American jobs, yep
Open your eyes.
Gotta run, going to attend a function of the Wounded Warriors Project, where my friend, a retired union Steamfitter, who, along with a retired Firefighter, sell shirts and help our severely wounded returning vets do things they wouldn’t think they were capable to do.
Today they are scuba diving, yeah, that’s right, guys and girls with no legs going scuba diving, and union workers help, not because we want to, because in our hearts, just like running down to the trade center site after 9/11, we have to.
Firstly, Labor Day 2008 in New York, trying to promote the Employee Free Choice Act
Myself, Richard from Union Review and Kirsten from Uniongal, the Women, Unions and Our Stories blog, are looking for sponsors to get some Employee Free Choice Act shirts, with our sites listed as supporters, to be given away at this years Labor Day Parade in New York, if all goes well we will have a major labor union donation to help us get our message out there, we are hoping that all our readers, and some people who are not as active out there in the streets will get educated on the Bill and spread the word of the facts on this legislation. It is possibly the most important bill in my lifetime.
Many law firms stand to lose a tremendous cash cow if The Employee Free Choice Act is enacted
Usually, unless the company agrees to a card check vote, when a MAJORITY of workers signs cards to be in a union there is a wait time, usually over a month later, when the employees get a chance to vote via "secret ballot" to be in a union. That's where the Lawyers and Union Avoidance law firms come into play, they make multi-billions in figuring ways to turn workers against the idea of being in a union, turning workers against one another and using any means , such as unlawful firing. . These law firms thrive on fear. They make companies whose workers are engaged in organizing drives terrified of a collective voice , which unfortunately in today's day and age is really not looking at the facts at all.
Many companies could stand to gain a great deal if they mimicked the business practices of COSTCO, who has a hands off policy and allows their workers to join a union by a simple MAJORITY card signing, some stores sign up and some do not, but their employees all benefit from not being denied that basic right. Consider how disgruntled almost every Home Depot employee is, it's a down right shame, they don't care about their shit job one bit, give them a fairs day wage, nice pension to worry about keeping, and decent medical and they would likely make the Home Depot experiance a much better one for customers and would most likely raise their share value far beyond just the next quarter. Corporations however usually do not think like that, you can learn more at "The Corporation- 23 chapters in YouTube playlist form", but let's get back to the facts in this matter.
What employers and law firms do to keep workers from joining unions and who's on their side, why America needs the Employee Free Choice Act FACT: Many companies have closed door meetings with employees without their own pro-union workers in attendance, brain washing them to fear being in a union and in fact fear to even mention the word. In one recent article I wrote about a construction contractor here in New York, whose MAJORITY of employees signed cards to be in a union, were sent to another jobsite for a closed door meeting, were told they would get a $5 an hour raise if they voted against joining a union and in fact a former supervisor, who stood to gain nothing testifying, in an affidavit to Federal labor officials, stated when he asked his boss about the union:"He said he had about six guns on the job, and he had people there who would do whatever needed to be done. He said that he could dig a hole and put me in it and make the records showing I worked for the company disappear.", the workers fearing reprisal and thinking they were going to get a raise wound up voting overwhelmingly against the union.From: "High-Cost Condos, Low-Cost Labor—and Threats of Violence to Union Organizers"- Village Voice (6/24/08)
Last November, the NLRB ordered Auringer to post a notice promising not to make such threats. A new vote was canceled after Auringer fired 10 pro-union employees on the election's eve.
This is a good reason that America needs the Employee Free Choice Act. They sign the cards, they get into a union. No guns, no threats, no bullshit propaganda. More reasons that the current NLRB "secret ballot' hurts working Americans
FACT: 30% of pro union employees are fired during an organizing drive, even though it is against the law, they just don't care as the NLRB has been battered by lobbyist and mega-corporations to the point of intellectuality. This is in no small part due to President Bush's appointment as NLRB Chairman, Robert Battista who just recently declined the reappointment to join a union avoidence and union busting law firm, from American Rights at Work, which I first published here on 5/5 in a story, titled "Former Bush NLRB Chairman Robert Battista, joins union avoidance law firm" which highlights the deterioration of the rights of workers during his tenure at the NLRB:
For years I've been writing that Robert Battista, former chair of the National Labor Relations Board, has been doing the bidding of anti-union employers by dismantling protections for workers under the law. Apparently, he's now going to be doing the bidding of anti-union employers and making a lot more money at notorious unionbusting firm Littler Mendelson (see a sample of their unionbusting strategies: Littler Mendelson’s Dos & Don’ts).
Now Battista can make money telling employers how to exploit the law he helped to weaken in order to prevent their workers from organizing.
Battista is not alone, spin-doctor lawyer and lobbyist Rick Berman, the self proclaimed "Dr.Evil", corporate lobbyist for Big tobacco and the liquor industry among others, and creator of such fun filled sites as The Center for Union Facts is working hard on getting the American public against the Employee Free Choice Act, by advertising on local networks against the bill, using that d1ckhead who played Johnny Sachs in the Sopranos (probably a rank-and-file SAG member like Ronald Reagan, except a hell of a lot less talented), to scare people into thinking that if the Bill is
passed that their Democracy will be erased by ending 'secret ballot'. It's more like it will end
Mr.Berman's and other lawyers cash cow. Lawyers, corrupt politicians and corporations are the modern day gangsters, I'm starting that when they went after the Mafia they really wanted to eliminate their competition.
The commercial shows a gangster over the card signers shoulder, yeah maybe it should show a corporate lawyer counting money if this doesn't get passed
**Click the image to add your name to the petition that will wind up on the desk of the next US President Strike News and Job Loss UA LU 699, IBT 282 NY Concrete drivers, American Axle updates
Lots of news going on, I've been trying to contact the Business Manager for UA Local 699 Sprinklerfitters to see if I can get any more info on the strike in Seattle Washington, last night I sent him an e-mail, still waiting for a response, I'm sure the guy is busy.
I have read that the New York concrete truck Teamsters Local 282 have gone back to the negotiating table as of yesterday, the NY Times reports that there is some progress.
Also received news of American Axle, who I recently wrote is gearing up to destroy the environment, is now looking to get rid of 400 white collar workers in the United States, now that they are escaping the land of labor rights to distant shores. What a disgrace, maybe they can rename the company to "3rd. World Nation Axle" Health Care For All, supported by doctors and now the Mayors Council
Big news, the single payer health care bill is being endorsed by the US Conference of Mayors(The U.S. Conference of Mayors is a nonpartisan organization of mayors representing cities with a population of 30,000 or more. It currently has about 1,100 members.), this is a bill that would get health insurance for all Americans and isstrongly endorsed by a whopping 59% of American doctors, here's the text of the resolution in support of the United States National Health Insurance Act, H.R. 676:
Submitted By: The Honorable Lois J. Frankel, Mayor of West Palm Beach, Fla. The Honorable Wayne J. Hall Sr., Mayor of Mayor of Hempstead, N.Y. The Honorable Carolyn K. Peterson, Mayor of Ithaca, N.Y. The Honorable John E. Marks, III, Mayor of Tallahassee, Fla. The Honorable Sheila Dixon, Mayor of Baltimore, Md. The Honorable Becky Tooley, Mayor of Coconut Creek, Fla. The Honorable Ryan Coonerty, Mayor of Santa Cruz, Calif.
WHEREAS, every person deserves access to affordable quality health care; and
WHEREAS, the number of Americans without health insurance now exceeds 47 million; and
WHEREAS, millions with insurance have coverage so inadequate that a major illness would lead to financial ruin, and medical illness and bills contribute to one-half of all bankruptcies; and
WHEREAS, proposals for “consumer directed health care” such as Health Savings Accounts or Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRAs) would only worsen this situation by penalizing the sick, discouraging prevention and saddling many working families with huge medical bills; and
WHEREAS, managed care and other market-based reforms have failed to contain health care costs, which now threaten the international competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers; and
WHEREAS, administrative waste stemming from our reliance on private insurers consumes one-third of private health spending while the single payer Medicare system has administrative costs of less than 5 percent; and
WHEREAS, U.S. hospitals spend 24.3 percent of their budgets on billing and administration while hospitals under Canada’s single payer system spend only 12.9 percent; and
WHEREAS, Harvard researchers estimate that more than $300 billion could be recovered by replacing private insurance companies with a single public payer, enough to cover the uninsured and to improve coverage for all those who now have only partial coverage; and
WHEREAS, entrusting care to profit-oriented firms diverts billions of dollars to outrageous incomes for CEOs and threatens the quality of care; and
WHEREAS, The United States National Health Insurance Act (H.R. 676) would assure universal coverage of all medically necessary services, contain costs by slashing bureaucracy, protect the doctor patient relationship, assure patients a completely free choice of doctors, and allow physicians a free choice of practice settings; and
WHEREAS, most polls show that the majority of Americans support universal health care; and
WHEREAS, as of the date of this resolution, the majority of American physicians (59 percent) believe that Single Payer is the best method of securing universal health care; and
WHEREAS, The United States National Health Insurance Act (H.R. 676) will guarantee every mayor that all residents and employees of his/her city will be fully covered for health care and save millions of taxpayer dollars now spent on premiums to provide less than full health insurance coverage for government employees; and
NOW, THEREFORE,
BE IT RESOLVED, that the United States Conference of Mayors expresses its support for The United States National Health Insurance Act (H.R. 676), and calls upon federal legislators to work towards its immediate enactment and further urges the adoption of a process to insure that health care providers justify any increase in health care costs.
Got the MySpace up, and a shoutbox. Next we will change the layout here.
Finally did it, got a dedicated Joe's Union Review MySpace account that mirrors the blog here into the MySpace social network, it's how I met Richard at union review, theres a whole lot more to that story, but in a nutshell, I'm looking to meet more Richard's, Joe's and Kirsten's.
I also added a "shoutbox' to this site, you can easily add messages onto the site by entering text into the box and submitting it, try it out, it's right under the title "Say something even if it's wrong"
Seriously thinking of updating the site, I have been working with a layout that has more features, like having just the story introduction on the front page, with a read more lnk, ala Union review and the Building Bridges Radio blog i have been working on, let me know what you think.
Working behind the scenes a bit lately, a great win for the future of New York's labor solidarity was achieved yesterday, I'm waiting for a press release to write on it, stay tuned, and finally I leave you with...
Capoccia rose as a housing developer as he donated thousands of dollars to the campaigns of Mayor Giuliani, Governor Pataki, and President Bush. He recently told the newsletter The Real Deal that he launched his career by using a truck full of day laborers hired from a street corner.
How does New Yorks biggest Non-Union contractor stop his employees from being union?
With guns and threats, this isn't a new thing, but in todays main stream media, it's hard to come by. We have focused on the contractors in the past and the illegalities in the nature of their business, these are the scum bags that are building high rise towers for the likes of Sheraton all over the city. They have immense Bush/Neo-Con/corp ties, and hire an almost entire undocumented workforce. Not only that, when the business opens up they treat their employees like shit too. I know, on previous I have been on the picket lines and when there was a union vote about a month after the employees signed cards to become union, I was there in support of these workers getting the rights to collective bargaining they deserve. Think about it, these workers who work in fear and have absolutely no voice signed the majority of the cards needed to be in a union and a month and a half later, from the amazingly accurate "High-Cost Condos, Low-Cost Labor—and Threats of Violence to Union Organizers"- Village Voice (6/24/08):
Workers there tried to vote in the carpenters union last year. In an affidavit to federal labor officials, a former supervisor at the hotel project described the response from Auringer's project manager after he asked the boss about the union: "He said he had about six guns on the job, and he had people there who would do whatever needed to be done. He said that he could dig a hole and put me in it and make the records showing I worked for the company disappear."
Other workers at the project told the National Labor Relations Board that managers promised them a $5-an-hour raise to vote against the union. Last November, the NLRB ordered Auringer to post a notice promising not to make such threats. A new vote was canceled after Auringer fired 10 pro-union employees on the election's eve. An NLRB official said the matter is under investigation.
The article fails to mention, the private meetings that the employees had to sit through.
This is a good reason that America needs the Employee Free Choice Act. They sign the cards, they get into a union. No guns, no threats, no bullshit propaganda.
Today the corporate backed, immigration enforcement ignored, slave owners of multi national corporations get everything on a silver platter, while the working class people and those that actually want to embrace them and get them representation are almost totally ignored in the anti-union main stream media. Thank goodness for people like Tom Robbins, from the Village Voice and Steven Greenhouse at the Times for actually writing facts about workers here in New York.
Response to Bernie Carr at New York State Association for Affordable Housing
This mans comment to the story in the Voice must be responded to, if indeed he wrote them he is an utter asshole. When a poster wrote:
robbins said: crane accidents=union, corruption=union, middle class=union, ...get the facts straight....nyc was built on the minortiy working class.. we have a right to work in this city too cause you white people in the unions will not let us in..please tell the union not too burn anymore vehicles and physically beat us up in the streets of nyc.. your nazi regime is not going to work in the costruction industry anymore...
Which is amazingly stupid to say in it's own right, considering that in much of this article the unions are trying to actually get these workers into their ranks, please read the entire Voice story and see how these nonunion thugs operate, not to mention how many times union workers are attacked on the street on front of these jobsites when they are peacefully protesting, again I have been there to witness it. We then have this asshole agreeing with the above comment, thats all fine and dandy, because we expect ignorance written in comments on the internet, but after being in quite a few Central Trades and Labor(NYCCLC) meetings when building projects are spoken of and affordable housing and middle income housing is always mentioned as something worth fighting for the next comment threw me for a loop. It seems from the nickname he chose that he is none other than Executive Director of the obviously corporate backed(see picture and logos on the sign behind Mr.Carr) NYS Association For Affordable Housing:
bernie@nysafah.org: The last comment was absolutely right! NYC construction jobs should go to NYC residents, especially minority residents, not a bunch of corrupt union guys from the suburbs. No one spends more on lobbyists and campaign contributions than unions, that's why they're so powerful even though they haven't represented the little guy for decades.
This makes me wonder, who owns this guy? He agrees with the obviously racist post of the guy before him, then goes on to attack union workers even more so, doesn't he have a clue, did he read the story? the entire body of which is how the unions are trying to get these non-union workers into their ranks. How the non-union developer has even gone as far as having a thug follow Omar Lopez, the organizer for the Ironworkers Local 361, to his home while he was with his daughter and threaten him at his door.
Did he read that the threatened union ironworker is a native of El Salvador and a current Queens resident? From the same article as above:
The ironworkers decided to blow up a photo of Capoccia and mount it on a truck. They wrote beneath it: "Shame on Donald Capoccia—Don't profit off immigrant worker poverty." It also carried the developers' office and cell-phone numbers. Then they drove the truck around the work site, City Hall, and Capoccia's bank.
On Saturday evening, June 14, Lopez was in front of his Elmhurst home about to take his nine-year-old daughter to buy some ice cream when a menacing figure appeared. "The guy was about five-foot-nine; he's carrying this big green umbrella and glaring at us. I had a bad feeling. I told my daughter we had to go back. She knew something was wrong. She ran right upstairs and told my wife to call 911, that Daddy was in trouble."
Lopez ducked inside and peered through the window. The lurker walked past his door and disappeared. When he opened the door to look down the street, the man was standing on an adjacent stoop, staring. "I said, 'Are you looking for me?' He cupped his ear like he didn't hear me. I said, 'Are you fucking looking for me?' Then he ran at me with the umbrella and reached under his jacket. I closed the door. He hit the door a bunch of times with the handle of the umbrella. He was shouting, 'I find you and I got you now!' He did that a few times and then went away.' "
Mr.Carr, you attack union workers who live in this city and you attack our entire organizations from a glass house, you speak of lobbyist, just one look at that picture above and it all seems clear, all the banks who helped lend out mortgages that people now cannot afford.
You and your group have done nothing to help keep mid-range wage earners stay in this city, wheres my affordable housing?
Every time an apprentice recruitment is released for the union trades I try my best to post it on this site, there is no discrimination in the hiring practices, any New York City resident can apply.
I have often spoken of how people of all race who get what is known as a "good union job" choose to leave the city as the sentiment of a better life for your family is often thought of as not achievable in this city. Everyone I talk to about where to find an affordable place to live with my girl and her 2 children talks of upstate New York and New Jersey, most recently my Laborer friend, who is a native from the Bronx and a Puerto Rican(since you all like to talk shit about race) found a nice home Upstate. Oh, and 3 out of the 4 last work partners I had were not white, only 1 chose to remain in Brooklyn, only for the fact that his grandparents bought his house many years ago.
So a big fuck you Mr.Carr, for talking shit and rubbing shoulder of the enablers of mistreatment of immigrants, citizens and financial enslavers of the working class. You yourself are a lobbyist for the people and companies that help deny my fellow New Yorkers a fair days wages for a hard days work, just another stuffed white shirt sucking up corporate money disguised as a fighter for the people, say hello to that other divisional profiteer for hire, Al Sharpton for me.
Oh, I'm sorry, looks like you only hang with white people.
WOW, the pictures were removed by the New York States Division Of Affordable Housing?? They seem to have read this article and don't want the dirty little 'secret's' about our friendly Mr.Carr let out to the public.
Mr.Carr, since you agree with all the bullshit that robbins posted, why not in your high and mighty position take a stand against New Yorks sweatshop construction practices?
Till then, thanks for nothing!
A HUGE thanks to Michael, the UFT writer who pointed this article out.
Who would have thunk it? Former Bush NLRB appointee now working for anti-union law firm.
For quite some time the NLRB has been favoring employers, now former Chairman Robert Battista can help exploit American workers, using laws he helped create.
Breaking: Battista Now Busting Unions For Profit Written by Erin Johansson
For years I've been writing that Robert Battista, former chair of the National Labor Relations Board, has been doing the bidding of anti-union employers by dismantling protections for workers under the law. Apparently, he's now going to be doing the bidding of anti-union employers and making a lot more money at notorious unionbusting firm Littler Mendelson (see a sample of their unionbusting strategies: Littler Mendelson’s Dos & Don’ts).
"Today, fewer workers have fewer rights and weaker remedies under the National Labor Relations Act," said Liebman, who was appointed to the board by President Clinton. "Virtually every recent policy choice by the board impedes collective bargaining, creates obstacles to union representation or favors employer interests."Unions have protested what they call anti-union decisions from the current National Labor Relations Board. They particularly point to 61 decisions the board made in September they say hurt unionized workers.
"Since its installation in 2002, the Bush administration's labor board has embarked on a systematic and insidious effort to radically overhaul our federal labor law and its regulation of labor relations in the private sector," AFL-CIO lawyer Jonathan Hiatt said.
If anti-union employees can get 30 percent of eligible employees to sign a petition within 45 days, an NLRB secret-ballot election will take place, the decision said.
"This is an encouraging step forward for employee freedom," said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation.
National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation lawyers challenged the card-check system for workers at two auto parts suppliers, Dana Corp., an Ohio auto parts maker and Metaldyne Corp.,of Plymouth, Mich., who were organized by the United Auto Workers.
The NLRB, however, said its decision would only apply to future card check campaigns, leaving the Dana Corp. and Metaldyne Corp. employees as members of the UAW.
The board's decision will make it less likely that a company will voluntarily agree to a card-check campaign, said NLRB members Dennis P. Walsh and Wilma B. Liebman.
"An employer has little incentive to recognize a union voluntarily if it knows that its decision is subject to second-guessing through a decertification petition," the two wrote.
WASHINGTON, DC—Today, the White House announced the President’s intent to nominate Robert Battista and Gerald Morales to the National Labor Relations Board.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy said, “It’s unbelievable that President Bush would renominate Mr. Battista to the Board, after he led the most anti-worker, anti-labor, anti-union Board in its history. America’s hard-working men and women deserve a Board that will uphold their rights, not undermine them. With these nominations, the Administration has again demonstrated its hostility to fairness and justice in the workplace.”
"This is not the NLRB. This is George Bush's board. This is Dick Cheney's board. This is the Chamber of Commerce's board. This is the National Association of Manufacturers' board. And it sure as hell ain't the Labor Board!” declared Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts.
The marchers protested 61 NLRB decisions, virtually all by party-line 3-2 votes, starting in late September and continuing, that stripped away many workers' rights. They included rulings making it easier to oust unions through what are called "decertification petitions” -- rulings making it harder for workers illegally fired for pro-union work to get back pay, and rulings making it easier for firms to break labor law.
Human Rights Watch wishes to express our deepest concern that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision in the so-called Kentucky River Trilogy violates United States obligations under international human rights law and international labor law. The decision announces an expanded definition of “supervisor” under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the main U.S. law governing workers’ right to organize. Under the new definition, employers can classify as “supervisors” those employees with incidental oversight over coworkers, even when such oversight is far short of genuine managerial or supervisory authority.
Word is that there are about 52 hotels in the works that will be built completely Nonunion in New York, when they are complete there will be no Hotel workers union either, heres a kinda/sorta follow up to 
This makes me wonder, who owns this guy? He agrees with the obviously racist post of the guy before him, then goes on to attack union workers even more so, doesn't he have a clue, did he read the story? the entire body of which is how the unions are trying to get these non-union workers into their ranks. How the non-union developer has even gone as far as having a thug follow Omar Lopez, the organizer for the Ironworkers Local 361, to his home while he was with his daughter and threaten him at his door.