Category: Labor

A Bad Ruling for McDonalds, a Great Ruing for the Rest of Us

No Comments

The National Labor Relation’s board has ruled that the McDonalds corporation bears some of the responsibility for its franchisees working conditions:

The general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board ruled on Tuesday that McDonald’s could be held jointly liable for labor and wage violations by its franchise operators — a decision that, if upheld, would disrupt longtime practices in the fast-food industry and ease the way for unionizing nationwide.

Business groups called the decision outrageous. Some legal experts described it as a far-reaching move that could signal the labor board’s willingness to hold many other companies to the same standard of “joint employer,” making businesses that use subcontractors or temp agencies at least partly liable in cases of overtime, wage or union-organizing violations.

The ruling comes after the labor board’s legal team investigated myriad complaints that fast-food workers brought in the last 20 months, accusing McDonald’s and its franchisees of unfair labor practices.

Richard F. Griffin Jr., the labor board’s general counsel, said he found merit in 43 of the 181 claims, accusing McDonald’s restaurants of illegally firing, threatening or otherwise penalizing workers for their pro-labor activities.

………

The fast-food workers who filed cases asserted that McDonald’s was a joint employer on the grounds that it orders its franchise owners to strictly follow its rules on food, cleanliness and employment practices and that McDonald’s often owns the restaurants that franchisees use.

I am not sure how wide the application of this ruling will be.

McDonald’s exerts far more control over the operation of its franchisees than most other companies operating in this manner. Not only, as noted above, does McDonald’s have physical ownership of many of the restaurants that its franchisees operate, but:

In the current cases, the fast-food workers, backed by the Service Employees International Union, said that McDonald’s had significant control over its franchisees’ employment practices, noting that it supplies many with software telling them how many employees to use at any given hour. The workers pointed to an instance in which McDonald’s even told a franchise owner that it was paying its employees too much. The average fast-food wage is about $8.90 an hour.

While it is conceivable that a company might want to prevent its franchisees from underpaying its workers to preserve the reputation of the brand, there is no such justification for warnings about overpaying its worker.

This is pretty much a prima facie case that McDonald’s is an active co manager of those restaurants.

It appears to me that this level of direction is rare among the various franchise businesses, and I think that, as a result of this decision, it will become ever rarer, so this will likely only have minor impact.

And This Decision is a Camel’s Nose Under the Tent

No Comments

In Harris v. Quinn, the Supreme Court ruled that home healthcare workers who are not members of a union do not have to pay dues for the services received.

It is better than could be expected, since they could have applied this to all public sector unions, effectively going right to work nationwide.

What I do think is that it is clear that this, along with an earlier decision, Knox v. SEIU, are an attempt to reverse the National Labor Relations Act via the death of 1000 cuts.

Eventually, assuming that the current 5-4 reactionary judge/real judge split remains in place on the Supreme Court, they will be making it  impossible for labor unions to function in the United States for the next decade.

This is partisanship masquerading as an impartial judiciary.

Lean In, My Ass!

No Comments

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, is due to speak at Harvard.

Harvard is also landlord at Hilton DoubleTree Suites, where management is engaged in an aggressive anti-union drive.

The union asked Sandberg to host a “Lean In”, she turned them down:

With Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg coming to town next week, a group of housekeepers, nightclub servers, and other employees of a Boston hotel are trying to turn her now-famous campaign for empowering women in their favor as they move toward forming a union.

 Unite Here Local 26, which is organizing workers at the Hilton DoubleTree Suites hotel near the Charles River, said it wanted to enlist Sandberg’s help after facing resistance from Hilton and receiving no encouragement from Harvard University, which owns the property where the hotel is located.

 So, the union decided, why not appeal to the author of the bestseller “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead”?

 Organizers asked Sandberg to meet with the hotel’s female workers. They started an online petition calling for her to become involved in their cause. And they created leaflets depicting the book’s cover, with faces of housekeepers replacing Sandberg’s, and a message that reads, “Sheryl Sandberg, will you lean in with the women of Harvard’s hotel?”

 The Facebook chief operating officer, who is scheduled to deliver a Class Day address at Harvard Wednesday, has sent word she does not have time to host a “Lean In circle” with the hotel employees. Undeterred, the workers are planning to hand out the leaflets during Sandberg’s speech in Harvard Yard.

(Emphasis Mine)

Note that a “Lean In Circle” would probably take less time than the inevitable parties and meetups that are a part of her speaking gig.

I guess that “leaning in” means being born to well to do parents, going to Harvard, becoming an acolyte of Lawrence Summers, etc.

When a commitment to “equality” is juxtaposed with an indifference to labor organizing rights, there is no commitment to equality, which is why, “Sandberg has been criticized for creating a movement aimed at financially well-off women.”

This is Good, But I Expect SCOTUS to Overturn it on Corporate “Free Speech” Grounds

No Comments

The NLRB is considering a ruling that would require that businesses allow their email systems being used for union organizing:

The NLRB has issued a “Notice and Invitation to File Briefs” [PDF] in the Purple Communications, Inc. case which could overturn the precedent concerning organizing activities on company email systems set by the board’s ruling in the Register-Guard case during the Bush Administration.

Using the Register-Guard decision as precedent, companies can currently enforce policies which prohibit company email from being used for anything but business purposes. But the current NLRB appears interested in reversing that decision partially due to the increased importance of email in organizing since the Bush era. Another goal is to align the ruling with other recent rulings that helped streamline the union election process.

This is a good idea, but it is a pro worker idea, so I expect a 5-4 decision from the Supreme Court overruling this on 1st Amendment grounds.

After all, if the DC, and the 4th Circuit, Courts of Appeals has already found that a requirement that employers post a notice of labor rights was a violation of the 1st Amendment, and the increasingly radical right wing of SCOTUS has become fairly explicitly partisan, and sabotaging labor organizing rights is good for the Republican Party.

Heads they Win, Tails you Lose

No Comments

Our executive class, Walmart edition:

Sometimes the effects of our social and income inequality are easy to see, but hard to measure.

But not in this case: despite falling revenues, and despite only reluctantly paying minimum wage to its workers, Walmart increased the pay for its top executives. The people who do the labor get little. The people who make the decisions that can cause falling revenues get more (and more and…) Could it be any clearer what is going on?

This is what Thomas Piketty’s theories look like in practice.

………

A key question for detectives trying to figure out who may have committed a crime is to ask cui bono, “Who benefits?” Who stands to profit from a murder, from a crime? That’s often your perp.

In Walmart’s case, it is not its stockholders who profited. Indeed, this has not been a money year for Walmart shareholders. Despite an overall good twelve months for the stock market in general, Walmart stock bumbled due to lower sales growth.

No joy for Walmart’s customers, or its own employees. Walmart cited cuts in federal food stamps as one reason for its weak sales increase. Since they are paid only minimum wage (and Walmart fights vigorously against any increases) and only are given 39 hours a week or less so as not to qualify for full-time benefits, a fair number of Walmart’s own workers receive food stamps.

Good news though for Walmart’s top executives. The company employed some accounting tricks to “adjust” on paper actual revenues to make them appear higher than in reality. On the strength of that “adjusted” performance, William Simon, CEO of Walmart’s United States unit, received total compensation of $13 million last year. Of that, $1.5 million was a “performance bonus,” paid out actually for declining revenues. In fact, six of Walmart’s top executives received a total of $8.42 million in cash incentive payments for 2014 even as revenues fell and the company closed stores. The former employees of those stores, needless to say, did not receive any performance pay bonuses as they fell deeper into poverty.

They don’t get it.

They won’t get it if they are riding in an oxcart to Madame la Guillotine.

Here is Hoping That This Holds Up on Appeal

No Comments

The regional director of the NLRB has just ruled that Northwestern football players are employees, and so are allowed to unionize:

In a stunning ruling that has the potential to revolutionize college athletics, a federal agency said Wednesday that football players at Northwestern University can create the nation’s first college athletes union.

The decision by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board means the board agrees that football players at the Big Ten school qualify as employees under federal law and therefore can legally unionize.

The Evanston, Ill-based university argued that college athletes, as students, do not fit in the same category as factory workers, truck drivers and other unionized workers. The school plans to appeal to labor authorities in Washington.

Outgoing Wildcats quarterback Kain Colter took a leading role in establishing the College Athletes Players Association (CAPA), which would take the lead in organizing the players. The United Steelworkers union has been footing the legal bills.

Colter, whose eligibility has been exhausted and who has entered the NFL draft, said that nearly all of the 85 scholarship players on the Wildcats roster backed the union bid, though only he expressed his support publicly.

CAPA attorneys argued that college football is, for all practical purposes, a commercial enterprise that relies on players’ labor to generate billions of dollars in profits. That, they contend, makes the relationship of schools to players one of employers to employees.

The top level of college sport is thoroughly corrupt and exploitative of “Student Athletes”, and it time for the cartel that keeps those students in peonage to pay the piper.

At the very least, one hopes that the students get insurance coverage of their chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

What, You Mean that the Union has Seats on the VW Board of Directors?!?!?!?

No Comments

The head of the union at Volkswagon is saying that the the labor environment in the South means that VW should conduct future expansion elsewhere.

Seeing as how labor unions effectively control a majority of the seats on the board, this looks to revealing Senator Bob Corker, who claimed that VW told him that not having a union was key to expansion, to be a lying sack of sh%$:

Volkswagen’s top labor representative threatened on Wednesday to try to block further investments by the German carmaker in the southern United States if its workers there are not unionized.

Workers at VW’s factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, last Friday voted against representation by the United Auto Workers union (UAW), rejecting efforts by VW representatives to set up a German-style works council at the plant.

German workers enjoy considerable influence over company decisions under the legally enshrined “co-determination” principle which is anathema to many politicians in the U.S. who see organized labor as a threat to profits and job growth.

Chattanooga is VW’s only factory in the U.S. and one of the company’s few in the world without a works council.

“I can imagine fairly well that another VW factory in the United States, provided that one more should still be set up there, does not necessarily have to be assigned to the south again,” said Bernd Osterloh, head of VW’s works council.

“If co-determination isn’t guaranteed in the first place, we as workers will hardly be able to vote in favor” of potentially building another plant in the U.S. south, Osterloh, who is also on VW’s supervisory board, said.

The 20-member panel – evenly split between labor and management – has to approve any decision on closing plants or building new ones.

Here’s a thought: If you want to locate a plant in a 3rd world country, actually set it up in a real 3rd world country, as opposed to the 3rd world country wannabees in the south.

In Unity, There is Strength

No Comments

It appears that police are going zero tolerance on politicians who want to cut their pensions.

They did nothing, and in some cases aggressively supported politicians, (I’m talking to you, Wisconsin Police unions) when this was done to other public servants, they would not be facing this problem now.

If you want to protect your own union rights, you have to do so for your coworkers as well.  It was clear to anyone with half a brain that once they hit clerks, street cleaners, and teachers, it was public safety next.

A drive by some American cities to cut costly police retirement benefits has led to an extraordinary face-off between local politicians and the law enforcement officers who work for them.

In Costa Mesa, California, lawmaker Jim Righeimer says he was a target of intimidation because he sought to curb police pensions. In a lawsuit in November, Righeimer accused the Costa Mesa police union and a law firm that once represented them, of forcing him to undergo a sobriety test (he passed) after driving home from a bar in August 2012.

That followed a call to 911 by private detective Chris Lanzillo, who worked for the police union and the law firm that represented it, according to the suit. Lanzillo is also named as a defendant, accused of following Righeimer home from the bar.

Disputes such as these have intensified as Detroit and two California cities, Stockton and San Bernardino, have gone bankrupt in the past two years. Police pension costs were a major factor in the financial troubles facing all three. Now large cities, including San Jose and San Diego, say they have no choice but to alter pension agreements lest they end up in bankruptcy too.

The suit by lawmaker Righeimer also said that an FBI raid of the law firm last October uncovered evidence that an electronic tracking device had been attached to the underside of the car driven by another lawmaker, Steve Mensinger, one of Righeimer’s allies in the pension fight.

“What we are alleging is a conspiracy to gather information against political opponents”, said John Manly, a lawyer representing Righeimer and Mensinger.

………

There also have been allegations of intimidation by police in Cranston, Rhode Island.

On January 9, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung announced that state police will take over an investigation into a flurry of parking tickets issued in the wards of two council members. The pair claim the tickets were issued as retribution after they voted against a new contract for police that would have given them a pay raise.

Fung announced that Police Chief Marco Palombo Jr. had been placed on administrative leave while the Rhode Island state police investigate the parking ticket allegations.

………

In 2008 DeLord told officers in American Police Beat Magazine to “get dirty and fight to win,” by getting personal with reformist council members and to “bloody their noses.”

DeLord told Reuters last month that he had learnt to be more collaborative since 2008, but said of the “get dirty” message: “I wrote it. I believe it.”

Who Hit the Democrats with a Clue Stick?

No Comments

It seems that Democrats are looking to stop running away from Obamacare, (a good idea, the Dems own it whether they like it or not) and instead want to push for a minimum wage increase as their signature issue for 2014:

Democratic Party leaders, bruised by months of attacks on the new health care program, have found an issue they believe can lift their fortunes both locally and nationally in 2014: an increase in the minimum wage.

The effort to take advantage of growing populism among voters in both parties is being coordinated by officials from the White House, labor unions and liberal advocacy groups.

In a series of strategy meetings and conference calls among them in recent weeks, they have focused on two levels: an effort to raise the federal minimum wage, which will be pushed by President Obama and congressional leaders, and a campaign to place state-level minimum wage proposals on the ballot in states with hotly contested congressional races.

With polls showing widespread support for an increase in the $7.25-per-hour federal minimum wage among both Republican and Democratic voters, top Democrats see not only a wedge issue that they hope will place Republican candidates in a difficult position, but also a tool with which to enlarge the electorate in a nonpresidential election, when turnout among minorities and youths typically drops off.

“It puts Republicans on the wrong side of an important value issue when it comes to fairness,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the president’s senior adviser. “You can make a very strong case that this will be a helpful issue for Democrats in 2014. But the goal here is to actually get it done. That’s why the president put it on the agenda.”

This is good politics, and good policy, though having your hired guns run to the press (I’m talking to you, Mr. Pfeiffer) crowing about how this is such good politics does not serve to reinforce their message.

The minimum wage fight is an opportunity to create a space for the discussion about political values on a terrain that favors Democrats, it’s not about allowing self important political consultants crow about their genius.

Major Supreme Court Not-Ruling on Labor Organizing

No Comments

After giving cert (accepting) the case, the Supreme Court has dismissed the case, essentially saying, “Oops, my bad.”

Unions dodged a bullet today when the Supreme Court took the unusual step of dismissing the strange and possibly disastrous case of Mulhall v. Unite Here Local 355 as “improvidently granted.”

Though the dismissal leaves some bad law in place in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Florida, Alabama and Georgia, labor should nonetheless breathe a sigh of relief.

In Mulhall, a Florida casino employee backed by the anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW) argued that neutrality agreements violate an anti-bribery provision in the Taft Hartley Act of 1947 and therefore constitute a federal crime.

Making neutrality agreements a crime would have struck at the heart of organizing as it is practiced today. The neutrality approach—in which the employer agrees not to oppose an organizing campaign—has been the mode of choice in most union drives since the ‘90s. The employer usually further promises to “card check,” which means that it will recognize the union if a majority of the employees sign cards stating their desire for union representation.

………

Although this was a bad ruling, letting it stand would have been less dangerous than the approach Unite Here took—appealing it to the Supreme Court and giving them the chance to invalidate neutrality agreements entirely. Though incorrectly reasoned, the 11th Circuit decision did not end neutrality agreements as we know them. The precedent may have caused some problems for unions in the 11th Circuit by scaring some potentially cooperative employers into demanding NLRB elections, by inviting additional lawsuits from the NRTW (which uses “strategic litigation” to “eliminate coercive union power and compulsory unionism abuses”), or by posing a possible danger in the hands of a future, zealous Republican U.S. Attorney in Florida, Alabama and Georgia. However, the case did not pose an immediate threat that warranted bringing this case before the Supreme Court—a court that has been found to be the most pro-business Supreme Court since World War II.

I’m not sure of his analysis, but the dismissal is profoundly odd.

  • They accepted the case.
  • They had oral arguments.
  • Then they dismissed the case.

My guess right now is that the Supreme Court has 5 justices more or less inclined to rule that neutrality agreements are bribery (WTF?!?!?!), but one, or two, of the 5 decided that they needed some less expansive cases to build a foundation to justify to their partisan goal of gutting organized labor.

If you want to look at the legal minutae here, try SCOTUS blog.

Yes, I Watched the Washington-New York Football Game

No Comments

I normally do not make comments about the outcome of sporting events on this blog, and at 3-8 (now 3-9) their playoff chances before the game were about the same as John McCain christening the Gerald Ford class carrier Barack Obama.

However, there was the worst officiating error I have ever seen in the game.

It was worse than the scab referees that they brought in last year:

The NFL’s officiating director said Monday that the officials should have stopped the game during the final minutes of the Washington Redskins’ 24-17 loss Sunday night to the New York Giants to clear up confusion over what down it was during the Redskins’ last drive of the game.

 “In this situation where there is obvious confusion as to the status of the down, play should have been stopped prior to third down and the correct down communicated to both clubs,” Dean Blandino, the league’s vice president of officiating, said in a written statement released by the NFL. “This should have occurred regardless of the fact that Washington had no timeouts and it was inside two minutes.”

 Blandino said the “ball was correctly spotted” by the officials and referee Jeff Triplette correctly “signaled third down” but the head linesman “incorrectly motioned for the chain crew to advance the chains, which caused the down boxes to read first down.

 “Following a Washington incomplete pass, the chains were moved back and the down boxes correctly reset to fourth down,” Blandino said.

 ………

 [Referee Jeff] Triplette told the pool reporter that the officials didn’t halt the game to sort out the confusion “because that would have given an unfair advantage,” apparently to the Redskins, in his view, by stopping the clock. Triplette said he couldn’t respond to Shanahan’s contention he’d been told by an official it was a first down because he was unaware of that situation.

No.  If you have an unclear ruling on the field, you halt play, and Mr. Triplette needs not to work in the NFL any more.

Instead, the Redskins took a 1st down play, a long pass, on 3rd down.

It’s OK for refs to make a mistake.  Sticking with the mistake, even though you are aware of it at the time, because of its effect on the game, means that you should not be a referee.

Of course, this will be handled through the a process agreed upon by the NFL and the Referees Association, so the consequences of Triplette’s decision are a part of a negotiated collective bargaining agreement, and I support this.

But if there is a way to keep this guy away from making on-field decisions, it would be appreciated. 

And while you are at it, how about making the Referees full time employees, so they can train the whole year. 

This whole part time thing ain’t working.

How About F%$#ing Paying Your Employees a F%$#ing Decent Wage Instead?

No Comments

Walmart just held a food drive for its own employees:

The storage containers are attractively displayed at the Walmart on Atlantic Boulevard in Canton. The bins are lined up in alternating colors of purple and orange. Some sit on tables covered with golden yellow tablecloths. Others peer out from under the tables.

 This isn’t a merchandise display. It’s a food drive – not for the community, but for needy workers.

 “Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner,” read signs affixed to the tablecloths.

 The food drive tables are tucked away in an employees-only area. They are another element in the backdrop of the public debate about salaries for cashiers, stock clerks and other low-wage positions at Walmart, as workers in Cincinnati and Dayton are scheduled to go on strike Monday.

 Is the food drive proof the retailer pays so little that many employees can’t afford Thanksgiving dinner?

 Norma Mills of Canton, who lives near the store, saw the photo circulating showing the food drive bins, and felt both “outrage” and “anger.”

 “Then I went through the emotion of compassion for the employees, working for the largest food chain in America, making low wages, and who can’t afford to provide their families with a good Thanksgiving holiday,” said Mills, an organizer with Stand Up for Ohio, which is active in foreclosure issues in Canton. “That Walmart would have the audacity to ask low-wage workers to donate food to other low-wage workers — to me, it is a moral outrage.”

Gee, you think?

Don’t shop Walmart.

This Might Even Be a Worse Public-Private Partnership than the Chicago Parking Deal………

No Comments
You arrogant ass. You’ve killed us!

In this case, it appears that Fukushima Daiichi cleanup is being run by the Yakusa.

Yes, various Japanese organized crime syndicates are running the labor force:

The complexity of Fukushima contracts and the shortage of workers have played into the hands of the yakuza, Japan’s organized crime syndicates, which have run labor rackets for generations.

 Nearly 50 gangs with 1,050 members operate in Fukushima prefecture dominated by three major syndicates – Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai, police say.

 Ministries, the companies involved in the decontamination and decommissioning work, and police have set up a task force to eradicate organized crime from the nuclear clean-up project. Police investigators say they cannot crack down on the gang members they track without receiving a complaint. They also rely on major contractors for information.

 In a rare prosecution involving a yakuza executive, Yoshinori Arai, a boss in a gang affiliated with the Sumiyoshi-kai, was convicted of labor law violations. Arai admitted pocketing around $60,000 over two years by skimming a third of wages paid to workers in the disaster zone. In March a judge gave him an eight-month suspended sentence because Arai said he had resigned from the gang and regretted his actions.

 Arai was convicted of supplying workers to a site managed by Obayashi, one of Japan’s leading contractors, in Date, a town northwest of the Fukushima plant. Date was in the path of the most concentrated plume of radiation after the disaster.

 A police official with knowledge of the investigation said Arai’s case was just “the tip of the iceberg” in terms of organized crime involvement in the clean-up.

 A spokesman for Obayashi said the company “did not notice” that one of its subcontractors was getting workers from a gangster.

 “In contracts with our subcontractors we have clauses on not cooperating with organized crime,” the spokesman said, adding the company was working with the police and its subcontractors to ensure this sort of violation does not happen again.

I am so glad that I live on the Atlantic roast.

H/t Americablog.

They Pretend to Pay Us, and We Pretend to Work

No Comments

It’s an old joke from the Soviet Union, and in a very real way, it explains much of what brought down the USSR.

Well, the good folks at The New York Times have found a study showing that, after decades of MBA driven management by intimidation, a majority of American workers actually loathe their employers:

I thought of this black mark on my résumé while reading an exhaustive and depressing new study of the American workplace done by the Gallup organization. Among the 100 million people in this country who hold full-time jobs, about 70 percent of them either hate going to work or have mentally checked out to the point of costing their companies money — “roaming the halls spreading discontent,” as Gallup reported. Only 30 percent of workers are “engaged and inspired” at work.

 At first glance, this sad survey is further proof of two truisms. One, the timeless line from Thoreau that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” The other, less known, came from Homer Simpson by way of fatherly advice, after being asked about a labor dispute by his daughter Lisa. “If you don’t like your job,” he said, “you don’t strike, you just go in there every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.”

Or, as Gin and Tacos notes, “When a job devalues employee, literally and figuratively, their response is often to work just hard enough to avoid getting fired.”

In the G&T case, he’s talking about (underpaid and never getting a raise) teachers at a Catholic school basically checking out for the month of May (multiple showings of Toy Story), but it applies throughout our economy.

In a very real way, we are eating our seed corn, and I fear that it will not become apparent until it is too late.

What happens when we run out or rubes who think that good work and honesty will get you ahead?

H/T Balloon Juice.

Accountability in Free Trade, What a Concept

No Comments

Following a spate of horrific fatal disasters at Bangladeshi textile industry pressure is increasing end special trade status between that nation and the US:

After several deadly factory disasters in Bangladesh — including the collapse of an eight-story garment factory last month that left at least 1,127 people dead — labor advocates are stepping up pressure on the Obama administration, calling for it to convey its disapproval of working conditions in the country by revoking its special trade status.

But federal officials remain conflicted over the American government’s responsibility for safer labor conditions overseas, and in meetings in recent weeks they disagreed over what combination of carrots and sticks would work best to achieve this goal.

 Some officials, particularly in the State Department, say that if trade status is revoked, Washington will lose its leverage to pressure Bangladesh to improve building codes and labor rights. Labor advocates and officials from the Labor Department counter, however, that this leverage is lost anyway if the administration is never willing to use it.

 “By failing to take serious action before now even in the face of phenomenal, unprecedented death of workers, U.S. trade officials have already sent the wrong message to Bangladesh,” said Brian Campbell, policy and legal programs director of the International Labor Rights Forum, a workers advocacy group. “It’s time to send a strong signal.”

Mr. Campbell is right.

If you are not willing to have consequences to an employment regime that is corrupt and patently anti-worker (the factory owner has to approve before employees can join a union) because you fear losing leverage, then you never had any leverage to begin with.

If the US revokes the trade status, it is likely that the EU will as well, so this is a big deal, and a well deserved response.

This is not just poor pay and working conditions in Bangladesh, it is also that the state security apparatus murder labor organizers:

Last April, Aminul Islam, a prominent worker advocate, was found dead, his body bearing signs of torture. Reporters in Bangladesh said there was evidence that the government’s security forces might have been tied to the death. No one has yet been arrested. According to American diplomats and labor officials, there has been little progress in the investigation.

It’s not going to happen now, because the Obama administration is populated by “free market mousketeers”, who believe that lowered trade barriers created improved working conditions and worker protections (they don’t Bangladesh, QED), make everyone richer, and keep your daughter from dating that guy with the piercings and tattoos.

Dropped from My Blogroll

No Comments

Matthew Yglesias has been dropped from my blogroll.

He just wrote an article saying that it’s OK that all those people died in Bangladesh, it’s a choice made by “rational actors” to trade safety for jobs:

I think that’s wrong. Bangladesh may or may not need tougher workplace safety rules, but it’s entirely appropriate for Bangladesh to have different—and, indeed, lower—workplace safety standards than the United States.

The reason is that while having a safe job is good, money is also good.

Shades of Larry Summers suggesting that we ship toxic waste to Africa because they need the money.

The workers did not have a choice about safety. They knew that they, and their families, would face starvation if they got fired for not going into an unsafe building. The choice was made by their evil bosses.

This is a constant theme of his writing, and I am no interested in his faux liberal bullsh%$.

While there are people on my blogroll with who I profoundly disagree with because they provide insight into foreign view points.

Retired Maryland Republican hatchet man Joe Steffen, and Russian/Orthodox Christian Nationalist Stanislav Mishin are two such examples on my blogroll.

His view, which can best be described by the phrase, “Even the liberal The New Republic.”

It’s all about self-entitled white guys who never have to wonder about where their next meal is coming from play the Michael Kinsley counter-intuitive idiocy game in an attempt to prove how smart they are.

It’s dull, it’s predictable, it’s bereft of any real insight, and it’s off my regular reading list.

Why Unions are In Decline

No Comments

Kris Warner compares union penetration of the labor market in the United States, and compares it to that of Canada, and rather observes that there are some real reasons for this, and that they exist because labor rights have been under legislative assault in the United States since the passage of Taft-Hartley:

Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual summary of unionization in the U.S. It reports that in 2012, the union-membership rate of wage and salary workers was 11.3 percent, compared with 11.8 percent in 2011. The trend has been downward for some time: Fifty years ago, the figure was almost 30 percent.

It’s conventional wisdom that the post-industrial workforce doesn’t want to be unionized. But survey data show that workers’ desire to join unions has been growing since the 1980s, and a majority of nonunion workers would now vote for union representation if given the opportunity. So if workers want unions, why is unionization falling?

Commentators have also blamed the decline on everything from globalization to technological advances to the hollowing-out of American manufacturing. But those factors are only part of the story.

Canada’s experience offers another answer. Canada has gone through many of the same economic and social changes as the U.S. since the middle of the 20th century, yet it hasn’t seen the same precipitous decline in unionization. The unionization rate in the U.S. and Canada followed fairly similar paths from 1920 to the mid-1960s, at which point they began to diverge drastically.

Differences in labor law and public policy are at the root of this disparity.

No so-called “right to work” laws in Canada, card check, or elections that are conducted in 1-3 weeks, instead of months, or possibly years, the right to first contract arbitration, so that employers cannot simply stonewall negotiations to a new union for years.

I want us to be more like Canada.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

No Comments

The DC Court of Appeals has just ruled that almost all recess appointments are unconstitutional:

Strictly curbing the President’s power to temporarily fill government posts to keep an agency in operation, the D.C. Circuit Court ruled Friday that the constitutional authority to fill a vacancy can only be used when one Congress has ended and before a new Congress comes to town, or when there is a formal break at the end of one session, but not during any other mid-session break. That part of the ruling by the three-judge panel was unanimous. On a second part, a two-judge majority ruled that the vacancy-filling power only applies to vacancies that actually open up during a formal recess, between sessions or between Congresses. Because lower courts are split on both issues, this historic controversy over the constitutional separation of powers is likely to go on to the Supreme Court.

 In the current atmosphere of partisan gridlock, which often involves thwarting of presidential nominations, the ruling provides a major new opportunity for a minority in the Senate to deny the President the authority even temporarily to put a new government officer to work in a vacant spot. When a vacancy arises while Congress is in session, and the Senate does not act on it, the President will not be able to fill it during the next time the Senate takes a break. The ruling came one day after the Senate chose not to make a major change in its filibuster rule, which is the main weapon of a Senate minority seeking to challenge presidential action.

I expect an appeal to the Supreme Court, though they may ask for an en banc hearing by the whole court of appeals first.

Unsurprisingly, David Sentelle, the right winger who gave us Ken Starr, is a part of this.

The 2nd part of the ruling ruling, where they say that the only recess that counts is the few days every two years when the old Congress has ended, and the new Congress is sworn in, flies in the face of over 150 years of precedent.

As to the pro-forma sessions, Obama needs to go Article 2 Section 3 of the Constitution on Congress:

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of
Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

(emphasis mine)

So, with the House refuses to adjourn, which is what led to the pro-forma sessions, Obama can adjourn them.

As to the claim that recess appointments can only be made during intercongress recesses, and not intracongress recesses, I cannot believe that the Supreme Court could support that, but since Bush v. Gore, I’ve made it a point of never underestimating the politicization of the right wing of that body.