Business Groups Gear Up Campaign To Use “Labor Boss” James Hoffa To Slam EFCA
Here we go. The forces opposing the Employee Free Choice Act are gearing up a campaign to use “labor boss” James Hoffa as a cudgel against the measure — an effort to target the “secret ballot”provision of the measure and apparently to discredit labor in the process.
This new ad — which is set to run starting tomorrow for a week in various Beltway publications and is being funded by a business-funded anti-EFCA outfit called the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace — is a kind of starting-gun for the new strategy. A CDW official sends over an advance copy of the ad (click to enlarge):
The ad shows an angry-looking Hoffa asking on March 10: “Since when is the secret ballot a basic tenet of democracy?”
It then claims: “Jimmy Hoffa was elected president of the Teamsters Union by secret ballot in 1998,” and goes on to bash “labor bosses like Mr. Hoffa” for “trying to rewrite history to pass their anti-worker card check agenda.”
This is the first of many such uses of Hoffa, Rhonda Bentz, a spokesperson for the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, tells me.
“We think it’s a pretty compelling piece of history,” she says. “We’ll look to using what Mr. Hoffa has said and the history of the Teamsters as it relates to protecting secret ballots throughout this effort.”
I asked Bentz if it’s an overstatement to say that EFCA would eliminate the secret ballot, as some opponents have said, since the measure merely would take away the right of management to force a secret ballot.
Bentz answered that since organizers control the cards and collect them, it’s not likely that organizers would ever give workers the option of a secret ballot election. “If you believe that a union organizer would tell workers they can choose to vote by secret ballot,” she says, “then I have some beachfront property in Iowa to sell you.”
Trying to get comment from the labor side on this. Stay tuned.
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Well isn’t this interesting. From the people who ignore history we get this ancient history.
Republicans: First you have to admit you have broken the economy. Twice in the space of 85 years. Then we can talk. Otherwise, just shut up.
Had the Republicans demanded fair union elections, this would not have been such an issue. Instead they allowed employers to harass union supporters — making a fair election impossible.
But we must not lose sight of other DOL issues. We need ASAP a new Solicitor for DOL, and deputies, etc. The 400 person Office of the Solicitor at DOL has many talented people, but these attorneys who are the front line of enforcement need right away new leadership.
It is my understanding that if management of a unionized business is approached by its 50% +1 of its workers, stating they no longer wish to be represented by the union, then management no longer needs to recognize the union, without any use of a secret ballot. Thus, EFCA would simply apply the rules equally to enact or remove union representation.
Is the CDW equally as upset about the lack of secret ballot for de-unionization?
I’ve heard proponents (e.g, Rachel Maddow) say that EFCA does not eliminate the secret ballot. Fine.
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What I’m not at all clear on (and haven’t heard articulated at all) is who can force a secret ballot. Just how is that done?
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When I read an ad for a product that does not advertise its price, I figure it must be overpriced. If price were a selling point, they’d have included it in the ad. I’m starting to get the same feeling about EFCA.
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I’d really like to find out that EFCA’s secret-ballot mechanisms actually make sense and are not just a smokescreen to let talking heads and wagging tongues claim that EFCA does not (technically) eliminate the secret ballot.
Since no one else is around, apparently, I’ll just go on my rant.
I cannot believe the developments in the MSM this past weekend. Your paper, Greg, had the most egregious damn piece by Scott Wilson in which a not-so-subtle attempt was made to blame Obama and the Democrats for this economic crisis.
That is history so recent it hasn’t cooled off yet – this bust occurred in September-October – before Obama was even elected. But it began much longer ago – in 2000, when Bush usurped the presidency. From that point til now the Republicans got their way – they got to try their philosophy of governing, which includes their economic philosophy. That philosophy has not changed since the last time the Republicans had the White House and the Majority and they broke the whole thing the exact same way.
Why doesn’t anyone talk about this? What’s the difference between now and 80 years ago – 1929? Hardly any. The Republicans let the market go hog wild, unregulated, in the 20s and a big bubble developed mostly on trading on margin. Then laws were passed that stopped that and we were secure for all those years – until Bush and the Republicas took over again. They lifted the remaining restraints and let the market do whatever it wanted to and here we are. AGAIN.
Either the Republicans admit this and face the fact that their philosophy is an Epic Fail, or 80 years from now we turn around and do this again.
They have to admit it. They have to.
I’ll just wind up this huge towering rage I’ve developed by telling y’all that I grew up listening to stories about the Depression – my parents were married during the Depression. I asked my mother when I was just a little girl if that could ever happen again. My mother told me that it couldn’t, as long as the laws that Roosevelt passed to keep it from happening stayed in place.
Well they didn’t, and here we are – I’m reliving my childhood nightmare scenario – another Depression. Because the safeguards the Democrats put in place were ripped out from under and the whole thing started over.
@jzap
See my first two posts under the Specter story from earlier this morning for an explanation of why EFCA most certainly does not preserve the secret ballot election. There may be reasons why we should go to card check system (I disagree), but there is simply no denying that replacing elections with card check is both the intent and effect of this bill.
This is the point. This card check, secret ballot hoopla is just a smokescreen. What companies and management don’t want is what’s in the bill, which is mandatory arbitration if an agreement between management and employees have not been reached within 90. Then an impartial mediator or judge will make the decision, and probably most times it will be in favor of the employees. Now companies do not have any way to intimidate employees into changing their minds or stalling them until they just lose interest and forget their demands.
jzap
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What happens now: Now in order to form a union the organizers have to get 30% (although they usually get 50%) of the workers at a business to sign on. Then the labor board gets involved and validates the signatures. Now at this point in theory the union could be formed but the business owner has the option to force the union to conduct an election to get 50% of the workers to vote for unionization. Now the union can chose whether it be an open election or a secret election but they don’t get to choose whether or not they have to have another election or not, that is up to business owners.
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What EFCA proposes is called card check where you get 50% of the workers to sign cards and send them in to the labor board for validation. Now at this point the workers can then elect to have another vote again secret or otherwise before they form the union. Who doesn’t get to make that decision now is the business owner.
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Now why is this important? Because historically business owners have been known to harrass or even outright fire employees who are trying to form a union. When they get to force another election then that gives business owners time to either get some of the workers who want to unionize out of there or intimidate some of them not to vote to unionize. This is not just a hypothetical. Many instances of this kind of intimidation get reported to the labor board every year. The problem is most of the time no action is taken against the business owners and they end up successfully defeating the union organizers.
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Now what they would like you to believe is that some thugs are hanging around getting people to sign the cards for unionization, however if a worker is threatened in that way then they can report the union organizer just like they can currently report the business owner for harrassment.
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What it boils down to is that business owners do not want their workers to have union representation because they know that they will have to offer better wages and benefits if that happens. They don’t give a sh*t about the sanctity of the secret ballot but much like the furor over China wrt Chas Freeman they are willing to use it as a wedge issue if it means fewer unions.
@jzap — why exactly do you equate the pro-EFCA position with a misleading ad, but not the anti-EFCA position? After all, the anti-EFCA position, in which employer-funded groups express that their only concern is that changing union-organizing procedures will be bad for *workers* is disingenuous on its face.
@King — you are correct that EFCA proponents shouldn’t make the mistake of arguing on the fundamentally false grounds established by the anti-union propaganda campaign. It’s silly to argue about “preserving a secret ballot election” which the anti-EFCA spin tries to paint as being like voting at your neighborhood polling place. In fact, these are nothing like what we would recognize as democratic elections in this country, instead being characterized by intimidation, massively unequal access to workers including closed-door required-attendance anti-union propaganda sessions, firing of union supporters with no effective punishment. So yeah, if you believe that a banana-republic election where, say, you could never mention to anyone that you were supporting Obama, and *certainly* never go to a rally or encourage anyone else to support him for fear of losing your job, then it’s *just* like “the foundation of our democracy.”
So before you go accusing other people of lying about EFCA’s effect on union certification, perhaps you could address why your side is lying about how it works under the current rules.
The anti-EFCA argument that the bill takes away the secret ballot which protects workers from union thugs is really hard to swallow. It plays on stereotypes and an ignorance of how organizing really works. For me, this comes down to leverage. Businesses want to force a secret ballot because THEY, not the unions, can intimidate/fire/threaten/etc. workers in to voting against a union. After all, they have all the power. What can union organizers do if someone says “no thanks, I don’t want to sign a card”? The anti-EFCA forces want you to think that all union organizers are thugs who will beat you up if you don’t sign their cards when the reality is, union organizers have a hard enough time just talking to most employees at large corporations.
@ Redshift
There is no question that employer lobbying groups suddenly discovered how precious their workers’ freedom of choice was when possibly eliminating it threatened their bottom line. And I appreciate that not all EFCA supporters are claiming that there will still be secret ballot elections after EFCA, but some are, including Greg Sargent. But anyway, kudos for your honesty on that point.
As for how things work under current rules, I will grant you that the NLRB can be ineffective in dealing with some employers who violate current law prohbiting firing union organizers and making threats or promises about future conditions. But the number of elections in which these things occur has been wildly overstated; and the fact is these things do violate current law and are grounds for setting aside elections and event order bargaining without an election in extreme cases. Many times the Board does jam the Company for such actions and the Board is political, so Obama’s appointees (when they are made) could push this even further.
The bottom line is that, I think the NLRB process would be fine if they could move more quickly. I would support that legislative fix rather than scrapping elections for card check. I don’t think there will be massive union coercion under EFCA, I just think people will frequently get worn down and sign a card to get the pro-union people off their back — whether it’s like political elections or not, I think the secret ballot is a better way to find out what the majority really wants.
And, to whomever said this above — you are absolutely right that mandatory arbitration is a much bigger problem for business than card check.
To champion those hurt most by the downward spiral in the economy — the unemployed and marginally employed — AND to open a major new flank in the battle for EFCA, labor should launch a coalition effort to organize and advocate for the unemployed.
My story from last week: “For A Union of the Unemployed”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/11/133013/148/675/700032
I expect this to be followed up with an equally effective attack on the administration of Jimmy Carter.
@jzap: “What I’m not at all clear on (and haven’t heard articulated at all) is who can force a secret ballot. Just how is that done?”
So, none of this is happening in secret or anything. Here’s what I did upon seeing your question: I went to the website “thomas.loc.gov” and I typed “employee free choice act” into the little search box. From there I found a link to the text of the EFCA, which is only about two pages long. The main provision of it is an addition to 29 U.S.C. 159(c), which you can find the current text of as the first result if you type “29 U.S.C. 159″ into Google.
The addition says that “notwithstanding any other provision of this section… If the Board finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations designating the individual or labor organization specified in the petition as their bargaining representative and that no other individual or labor organization is currently certified or recognized as the exclusive representative of any of the employees in the unit, the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative described in subsection (a).”
29 U.S.C. 159 also says, after the place where this text is added, in subsection (e), that “Upon the filing with the Board, by 30 per centum or more of the employees in a bargaining unit covered by an agreement between their employer and a labor organization made pursuant to section 158(a)(3) of this title, of a petition alleging they desire that such authority be rescinded, the Board shall take a secret ballot of the employees in such unit and certify the results thereof to such labor organization and to the employer.”
So as I read this, after the EFCA passes, what 29 U.S.C. 159 will say is: a union becomes an (a)-subsection worker representative if 50% of the workers sign cards; but if 30% of the workers sign a petition, then a secret ballot election must be held on whether that (a)-subsection representation should be kept or taken away.
In short, the answer to “who can force a secret ballot, how is it done” is “30% of the workforce signs a petition and submits it to the National Labor Relations Board”. This happens to agree with what I have heard EFCA advocates say about the bill.
Interesting website=) will definitely visit soon!