Voted out of the Union club

I will no doubt be voted out of the Club with this article selection and my commentary. I think this article's thesis flawed and truly unworkable in a 21st century global economy, frankly. I want to highlight paragraph two in my rebuttal for the very reason that article resounds negatively to me resides in two statements in the paragraph; one very true and one very misguided:

Corporations will tell you that the American labor movement has declined so significantly — to around 7 percent of the private-sector work force today, from 35 percent of the private sector in the mid-1950s — because unions are obsolete in a global economy, where American workers have to compete against low-wage nonunion workers in other countries. But many vibrant industrial democracies, including Germany, have strong unions despite facing the same pressures from globalization.

Unionization has dropped since WWII for exactly the reasons the writer states and that number will continue to move downward truly because it is a global economy where consumers have more choice, higher expectations and expect to pay less for both; that is a good thing for that is the very principle upon which the Free Enterprise was espoused in the mid 1770s by Adam Smith. The force of the Invisible Hand drives the machinery for the betterment of the consumer.

Having worked in Europe for many years and especially in Germany in German tire plants, I find the use of Germany as an example of how unions flourish facing the same global pressures as America as an apple & orange argument. When WWII ended and Germany, the vanquished, was in rubble, America, as the victor, was faced with reconstruction. In that reconstruction, the American architects of the manufacturing rebirth were astute enough to conjure up what is called today, the Works Council.

Remembering that the objective after WWII for America and the UK was to install a political and work process that would neuter Germany's penchant for rising from the ruins of defeat by rebuilding its war machine to again seek to control and conquer the world. So neutering Germany was the overarching strategy and thus putting a control in place to manage equitably the strong German unions was at the forefront. The Works Council is a level above the worker unions at the industrial and sector level of manufacturing. It is a government mandated mix of executives and union officials and government representatives that set strategic policy, direction and oversight of the more tactical union day-to-day thus tamping down issues that historically could lead to slow downs, strikes, etc.

Germany is an export-based economy so if they cannot maintain the production of exportable goods and services produced in Germany, the entire economy is paralyzed quickly. So the Works Council is a barometer and a mechanism to head off this scenario of bad or hostile labor relations. IT WORKS and works well. America would do well to consider such a configuration since it was an American innovation to begin with. By the way, another vanquished nation, Japan, is configured much the same engineered by American reconstruction after WWII. IT WORKS and works well!

This article pines and hearkens for America to be strong and vibrant again therefore needs a strong union movement in America; this is so off base in my humble opinion. There are myriad examples in America today, the auto industry in the SE United States and the increasing foreign transplants locating into Right-to-Work states of Alabama, Mississipp, Tennessee, etc, etc. These states and regions and communities are surging and flourishing and will continue to and they pay excellent, competitive wages and very good benefits much to the consternation and propaganda of unionists in Washington and in the Rust Belt; the once mighty corridor from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, etc. Those states are still bastions of unionism in Union Shop states but the term "Rust Belt" depicts clearly the drumbeat of reality and implication of ever thickening rule books and higher costs from these states and plants thus eating away at their current and future competitiveness.

I wish to restate that I am not anti-union but rather a very strong Pro-Consumer advocate so anything that impedes the consumer via higher price, lower quality and less selection will remain in my cross-hair. Some of the Rust Belt state leaders such as Ohio and Gov Kasich, are attempting to implement Right-to-Work state law but are facing the headwinds of strong unions funneling billions of dollars in dues collected from their members to combat this move to make their states more attractive to domestic and foreign direct investment. The unions, therefore, are basically winning the battle but I believe, and hope the war will be won with the sunlight of a person having a right to select if they want to be in a union or not; it really is just that simple.

So my union friends, and I have many or at least did, will vote me out of the club no doubt but this article was just too slanted and off kilter to just let it slide by. America HAS TO BE flexible, agile and cost down driven and, well, we are NOT and the forces of unions will, by their very nature, seek to defeat any force that will turn those consumer-improving initiates away. America deserves more but America more importantly deserves better!

February 29, 2012

A Civil Right to Unionize

By RICHARD D. KAHLENBERG and MOSHE Z. MARVIT

FROM the 1940s to the 1970s, organized labor helped build a middle-class democracy in the United States. The postwar period was as successful as it was because of unions, which helped enact progressive social legislation from the Civil Rights Act to Medicare. Since then, union representation of American workers has fallen, in tandem with the percentage of income going to the middle class. Broadly shared prosperity has been replaced by winner-take-all plutocracy.

Corporations will tell you that the American labor movement has declined so significantly — to around 7 percent of the private-sector work force today, from 35 percent of the private sector in the mid-1950s — because unions are obsolete in a global economy, where American workers have to compete against low-wage nonunion workers in other countries. But many vibrant industrial democracies, including Germany, have strong unions despite facing the same pressures from globalization.

Other skeptics suggest that because laws now exist providing for worker safety and overtime pay, American employees no longer feel the need to join unions. But polling has shown that a majority of nonunion workers would like to join a union if they could.

In fact, the greatest impediment to unions is weak and anachronistic labor laws. It’s time to add the right to organize a labor union, without employer discrimination, to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, because that right is as fundamental as freedom from discrimination in employment and education. This would enshrine what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed in 1961 at an A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention: “The two most dynamic and cohesive liberal forces in the country are the labor movement and the Negro freedom movement. Together, we can be architects of democracy.”

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that “everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.” The First Amendment has been read to protect freedom of association, and the 1935 National Labor Relations Act recognized the “right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations,” but in reality, the opportunity to organize is a right without a remedy.

Firing someone for trying to organize a union is technically illegal under the 1935 act, but there are powerful incentives for corporations to violate this right, in part because the penalties — mitigated back pay after extended hearings — are so weak.

It is noteworthy that American workers in the airline and railway industries, which are governed not by the 1935 law but by a stronger statute, the Railway Labor Act, have much higher rates of unionization.

Past efforts to strengthen labor laws over four decades have gotten bogged down: Congress cannot pass reforms until labor’s political clout increases, but that won’t happen without labor law reform.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, has much stronger penalties and procedures than labor laws. Under our proposal, complaints about wrongful terminations for union organizing could still go through the National Labor Relations Board, which has expertise in this field. But the board would employ the procedures currently used by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which provide that after 180 days, a plaintiff can move his or her case from the administrative agency to federal court. There, plaintiffs alleging that they were unfairly dismissed for trying to organize could sue for compensatory and punitive damages and lawyers’ fees, have the opportunity to engage in pretrial legal discovery and have access to a jury — none of which are available under current law.

Our proposal would make disciplining or firing an employee “on the basis of seeking union membership” illegal just as it now is on the basis of race, color, sex, religion and national origin. It would expand the fundamental right of association encapsulated in the First Amendment and apply it to the private workplace just as the rights of equality articulated in the 14th Amendment have been so applied.

The labor and civil rights movements have shared values (advancing human dignity), shared interests (people of color are disproportionately working-class), shared historic enemies (the Jim Crow South was also a bastion of right-to-work laws) and shared tactics (sit-ins, strikes and other forms of nonviolent protest). King, it should be remembered, was gunned down in Memphis in 1968, where he was supporting striking black sanitation workers who marched carrying posters with the message “I Am a Man.” Conceiving of labor organizing as a civil right, moreover, would recast the complexity of labor law reform in clear moral terms.

Some might argue that the Civil Rights Act should be limited to discrimination based on immutable characteristics like race or national origin, not acts of volition. But the act already protects against religious discrimination. Some local civil rights statutes even cover marital status, family responsibilities, matriculation, political affiliation, source of income, or place of residence or business.

Should organizing at work for “mutual aid and protection” not also be covered?

While there are many factors that help explain why the nation has progressed on King’s vision for civil rights while it has moved backward on his goal of economic equality, among the most important is the substantial difference between the strength of our laws on civil rights and labor. It is time to write protections for labor into the Civil Rights Act itself.

Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, and Moshe Z. Marvit, a labor and job discrimination lawyer, are the authors of “Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right: Rebuilding a Middle-Class Democracy by Enhancing Worker Voice.”