[Peace-discuss] right to association, right to a union

[E. Wayne Johnson]

It's pretty easy to get Canadian citizenship, Bob.

Robert Naiman wrote:
> The relationship is already antagonistic, in the sense that the two
> groups have different interests; what's tragic is that one side has
> almost all the power, which is a recipe for abuse. Having a union
> helps equalize things a little.
>
> The most straightforward way to measure the pendulum is to compare the
> U.S. to Canada and Western Europe. The U.S. is the outlier in terms of
> its labor relations, its fundamental failure to respect workers basic
> rights.
>
> Speaking about miners: remember recent U.S. mine "accidents", and the
> workers who died, and of course it was revealed in each case that
> there were massive safety violations. Around the same time, there was
> a mining accident in Canada. Only, in Canada, they have the safety
> features that the US owners are too cheap to comply with: a sealed
> room with oxygen, etc, and the oxygen is actually there. So they bring
> out the Canadian miners a day later, and they're joking about how they
> had the day off and played cards; they were never in any danger.
> That's what being a worker in an industrialized democracy is like,
> when you have strong unions.
>
> On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 1:55 AM, E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> wrote:
>   
>> I have seen people who suffer from black lung and it's a tragic situation.
>> It's also tragic that the workers have had to organize themselves in an
>> antagonistic relationship
>> in order to accomplish change.
>>
>> I am most certainly not anti-union but how far does pendulum need to swing
>> before its enough?
>>
>>
>>
>> Marti Wilkinson wrote:
>>
>> My father used to be a union representative when he worked for the State of
>> Illinois and some of the grievances brought before him often had to do with
>> petty behavior from managers,supervisors, and other employees.  My mother
>> helped unionize employees at Parkland College several years ago and
>> participated in contract negotiations.
>>
>> In many organizations office politics are an unavoidable part of the
>> professional landscape and unions are able to protect individuals who are
>> unfairly targeted. A well run union structure does not prevent a bad
>> employee from getting fired, but does allow the individual due process.
>> Often what gets negotiated are things such as pay scales, benefits, and
>> eliminating health and safety risks to employees in contract procedures.
>> This is in addition to the due process I mentioned.
>>
>> For instance, my father handled a grievance from a woman who was being
>> harassed by her co-workers. When he investigated the people who were bugging
>> this woman claimed that she was not getting her work done and her
>> performance was dismal. So he calculated the caseloads being handled by the
>> complaining employee and her accusers and found that she actually had a
>> higher level of productivity than the individuals who were attempting to
>> create trouble for her. Needless to say when he presented his findings it
>> shut a few people up.
>>
>> It's interesting that the example of coal minors are brought up here.  One
>> of the reasons why unions formed for coal minors was to force industry to do
>> a better job of safeguarding the well being of employees. How many coal
>> minors have died due to the mine caving in or from poor air quality?  One of
>> my uncles worked in the coal mines in Southern Illinois and, amongst his
>> list of health problems, he suffers from black lung as a direct result of
>> his work in the mines.
>>
>> The unfortunate truth is that employers cannot be counted on to provide safe
>> working conditions, fair wages, and reasonable benefits simply out of the
>> kindness of their heart. Even though research can be presented to them which
>> shows a correlation between productivity and working conditions - the truth
>> is many employers only pay lip service to the research.  Their goal is to
>> get the maximum profit with the least amount of effort.
>>
>> Employee welfare often does not become a concern until it hits the employer
>> in the pocketbook. For instance Mitsubishi had to pay 34 million in damages
>> after a class action lawsuit was brought against them due to sexual
>> harassment.  More recently Starbucks has faced lawsuits due to their
>> practice of having  baristas share tips with shift supervisors. A well
>> organized union not only protects employees, but it can also save the
>> employers millions of dollars in legal fees.
>>
>> Marti
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 12:37 AM, E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> wrote:
>>     
>>> Ricky,
>>> I don't have any workers.  Its just my wife and I, but if I were employing
>>> someone I would want them to wear the sort of
>>> socks that I told them to, and I would like to be able to fire them simply
>>> because I didnt like their attitude, and I would not
>>> desire the hassle of being second-guessed by some 3rd party for my
>>> management decision.
>>>
>>> If they work for me, they are there to do a job and if they wont or cant
>>> do it then I don't need them around.
>>>
>>> It sounds like to me that this law you favour aims at putting the workers
>>> in charge of the production.  That might
>>> be ok provided that its their business to begin with, meaning that they
>>> provided the innovation, management and
>>> sweat to get the thing going.  Quite frankly most of the workers are
>>> incapable of doing that, otherwise they would be
>>> working for themselves in their own shop rather than punching the clock
>>> for someone else.  I don't mean that
>>> to sound belittling or deprecating of others.
>>>
>>> I have been self employed most but not all of my  adult life.  I started
>>> driving a tractor on the farm at age 9.  I worked in
>>> the oil field as a roughneck beginning at age 13.  It was dangerous work
>>> but it paid good and I made enough
>>> money to buy some cows that along with working oil field in summers I was
>>> able to get through college and get
>>> a DVM degree in 1980.   After that I had my own business in the
>>> countryside for fifteen years.  I have had an
>>> few employees in the office at times.  It's a hassle having employees.
>>>
>>> I went to China in 1996 and worked a few years for the Chinese government
>>> for $250 (two hundred and fifty dollars) per month.  It cost me about half
>>> of that
>>> for my housing.  I lived exactly as the Chinese live, ate what they eat,
>>> did what they did, washed my clothes by hand.  We worked 7 days a week most
>>> of the time,
>>> we worked on Christmas day like it was just another day (but I met my wife
>>> the first time working on one Christmas day)
>>> and we frequently worked through the night.  No one ever complained about
>>> work.  No one ever complained that they were cold.
>>> Nobody complained that they didnt have any money.  Lots of times I had to
>>> dig through my desk to find enough money
>>> to buy breakfast (it cost about a quarter).  We did have some fun
>>> describing in eloquent terms how hot it was.  It got up to 45C (113F) in the
>>> summer of 1997.  Nobody
>>> laid down their work and went home.  We were excited about the work that
>>> we were doing and that was enough most of the
>>> time.  If you got sick, you went to the hospital and they gave you a
>>> combination of herbal and Western medicine
>>> and you got over it.  I had a root canal without anaesthesia.  The pain
>>> was brief but very intense.
>>>
>>> After I got married, I did need a better job so I quit the ministry of
>>> agriculture and got a consulting job.
>>>
>>> I do understand hard work and labour and poverty, and although at times my
>>> poverty might have been
>>> somewhat voluntary, there were times when it most certainly was not.
>>>
>>> The coal mines in southern Illinois were unionized.  The workers were on
>>> strike almost more often
>>> than they were employed.  Finally the coal mines were shut down and the
>>> workers either moved away
>>> or got jobs in the prisons.
>>>
>>> I really dont know anything much else about unions or union workers except
>>> when I worked for the
>>> University of Illinois in 2001 to 2004 and the farms were unionized.  The
>>> university farms had cows dying because
>>> the workers didnt know what the  they were doing, er...they needed more
>>> training, and they didnt care and the department heads at the university
>>> didnt
>>> dare fire them.  From what I have seen it doesnt appear that unions are
>>> compatible with agriculture.
>>>
>>> >From my perspective it looks like excessive regulation and excessive
>>> pressure from unions is driving business out of Illinois
>>> and out of the United States.  I have visited Canada.  It's a real nice
>>> place except that there are so many Canadians there.
>>>
>>> If employers are good, they will take good care of their workers.  I work
>>> for some farms who have had the same workers employed there
>>> for more than 20 years.  The manager of the farms treat them like they are
>>> members of the family.
>>>
>>> On the other hand, I have worked for people who are abusive of workers and
>>> they typically don't get very good results.
>>> I do have sympathy for everyone in those situations.
>>>
>>> I do think that all workers are employed by will, and that it is the right
>>> of the worker to quit and the right of the employer to fire.
>>> If your proposed law is aimed at destroying that relationship, you will
>>> just export more jobs to places where a more satisfactory
>>> production environment exists and further damage the US economy.
>>>
>>> Please explain the law you propose more clearly if I have missed
>>> something.
>>>
>>> It looks like to me from the research I have done that this bill has
>>> passed the House but got hung up in
>>> the Senate.
>>>
>>> Ricky Baldwin wrote:
>>>
>>> Hey folks,
>>>
>>> Not sure who's doing AWARE's agenda for Sunday meetings these days, but
>>> I'd like to put an endorsement request out for discussion.  It's from Jobs
>>> With Justice, to which AWARE belongs, and which was instrumental in starting
>>> US Labor Against the War.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Jobs With Justice and many other organizations are currently pushing – and
>>> trying to collect a million postcards in support of – national  legislation
>>> to protect an important right of association that has been under severe
>>> assault because it threatens the steep American gradient of power between
>>> employer and employee: a workers' right to join with his or her co-workers
>>> in a union.  The bill is called the "Employee Free Choice Act," and it's
>>> nothing to sneeze at.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Since 1935, in response to mass uprisings of workers – many of them thrown
>>> out of work in the Great Depression – the US Congress enacted and the
>>> President signed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), also known as the
>>> "Wagner Act," establishing the right to form, join and participate in unions
>>> as the official policy of the US government.  It was a compromise, enacted
>>> to stave off a feared revolution of the type that other countries had
>>> experienced, notably in 1848 and 1917-1925.  It did not cover everyone.  It
>>> specifically excluded large classes of workers – agricultural and domestic
>>> workers, both much more numerous than today – mainly as a means of cutting
>>> out Southern blacks and poor whites from the New Deal.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> But in the wake of passage, union membership increased in the US to over
>>> 30 percent, raising the overall standards of wages, safety on the job, etc.,
>>> even for non-union workers.  Union-sponsored legislation, like the OSHA Act
>>> in 1970 – which has saved thousands of workers' lives even with its faults,
>>> began improving the lives of all workers.  But it was no panacea, and it was
>>> certainly not invulnerable to attack from anti-worker forces.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The Wagner Act and its many "reforms" added afterwards, when the threat of
>>> revolution had cooled, also took the US down a different path than other
>>> industrialized nations have taken.  There are two legal doctrines concerning
>>> workers that most Americans have never heard of, and not because they slept
>>> through high school social studies classes.  One is called the
>>> "master-servant" relationship, which basically says if your employer orders
>>> you to do something, you have to do it (with some minor limitations,
>>> obviously, for illegal activity, etc.) or you could be disciplined or fired
>>> – there are few exceptions, including civil service regulations for some
>>> public employees, and union contracts.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Second, workers who are unrepresented by a union are "employed at will,"
>>> meaning they can be fired "at any time for any reason or no reason."
>>> Obviously there are a few legal restrictions there, too: racial, sexual or
>>> religious discrimination, etc.  Can you be fired even if you did nothing
>>> wrong?  Absolutely.  For voting Democrat or Republican or Green?  If you're
>>> not a public employee and you don't have a union, absolutely.  You can be
>>> fired because you wear socks the boss doesn't like.  You can be fired just
>>> because.  Does this really happen?  Yep - the relative operation of the
>>> employers' "economic interest" can be debated, but it happens - and there is
>>> nothing illegal about it – at least not in this country.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Workers in the US who are eligible for union rights and who wish to take
>>> full advantage of union protections can't just sign up and BANG they get
>>> union rights.  No, workers in the US have to win an election process – one
>>> in which workers could be prohibited from union organizing on the job, union
>>> organizers could be barred from the premises entirely, and employers and
>>> managers were permitted to hold "captive audience" meetings to slander the
>>> union and threaten mass layoffs or plant closings.  Employers and managers
>>> also frequently call individuals into the office for a nice, quiet,
>>> intimidating "chat," one on one.  Employers frequently fire the ringleaders
>>> if they can identify them, even though this is illegal (it's hard to prove),
>>> and hire union-busting law firms to run intimidation campaigns, spy on
>>> workers, spread rumors and sew any kind of dissent they can think of.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Employers may also hire new employees – such as family members – who they
>>> know to oppose unionization, or to whom they can promise the moon, and thus
>>> dilute the vote.  They may also declare that certain employees are
>>> "supervisors" and thus ineligible to vote, and so on.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Penalties for employer misbehavior are woefully inadequate: often the
>>> sentence is posting a notice in the workplace stating that the employer has
>>> violated such and such provision, blah, blah, blah.  Penalties for the
>>> workers and their unions who violate guidelines, on the other hand, can
>>> amount to one of the worst things that can happen, besides being fired and
>>> having a pay cut: they lose their right to a union.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Even if the workers win a union election, employers may keep them tied up
>>> in court for years afterwards or may refuse to bargain a fair contract.
>>> According to the law, if the union cannot win a contract with the employer
>>> there could be another election to get rid of unionization, and under the
>>> oppressive circumstances that prevail the disgruntled employees may change
>>> their votes (if they are even the same workers – employers often use this
>>> time to drive off the strong union supporters).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> So what does the Employee Free Choice Act do about all this?  It doesn't
>>> address all of it.  There are a lot of things I'd like to see fixed in labor
>>> law, primarily who's eligible.  But one thing it does establish is a right
>>> that Canadians, for example, take for granted.  If more than half the
>>> workers at a workplace want a union, they get it.  Period.  They sign a card
>>> or petition and it's done.  If they don't want a long drawn-out expensive
>>> election, rife with intimidation and legal battles, they don't have to have
>>> to do it that way.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The bill would also strengthen penalties on employers who coerce their
>>> employees or otherwise violate their right to join a union.  And it
>>> establishes a mediation and arbitration if workers and their employer cannot
>>> agree on a first contract.  But the main provision is establishing the much
>>> beleaguered right to unionization in the first place, and employers are
>>> already fighting tooth and nail to block this bill.  That says something,
>>> right there.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> AWARE can help by endorsing this campaign.  It costs no money, just a
>>> decision.  And I'll bring postcards for anyone who'd like to sign one.
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Ricky
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "Only those who do nothing make no mistakes." - Peter Kropotkin
>>>
>>> ________________________________
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>>>
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>>>       
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>>     
>
>
>
>   
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