New Orleans   

Part of the story is in the numbers which continue to slip and fall.

Bureau of Labor Statistics announced another slight drop last year of union membership compared to the overall non-farm workforce from 11.9 to 11.8%.   Steven Greenhouse in the Times reports that union membership is now 14,760,000.  The public sector percentage was 37% and about 7,560,000 and the private sector percentage is now only 6.9% with about 7,200,000.  Private sector membership is clearly heading towards 5%, unless something serious and drastic happens.

The numbers could have been worse.  There is speculation that the AFL-CIO is claiming 3,000,000 members from its Working America unit as part of their membership totals, which would be wild, since these are “canvassed” members rather than “real” dues paying members in local unions around the country.  There are still scars on the ears of AFL-CIO staffers from 2008 who did phonebanking to the call list with that group and heard in no uncertain terms from many of these “members” that they had no idea they were part of a union?!?   The BLS numbers come from the Current Population Survey of 60,000 households taken on a monthly basis so those are much more reliable indicators than those reported by unions themselves.

But, I’m grabbing at straws in saying that it could have been worse.  This is plenty bad, and there’s no sign of anything being done in the labor movement to make it much better.  Counting on the economy to make the numbers look a bit better is not a strategy!

New Orleans   

In Philadelphia members of ACTION United passed out 75 baloney sandwiches at the Comcast headquarters demanding the promised response from earlier meetings that indicated the company was considering improving its weak performance to date (“Activists Tangle Over Accessibility of Low-Income Program”).   Ironically, Comcast seems to have convinced some school principals to apologize in their behalf and accept responsibility for the limited outreach that should have been the company’s responsibility, not the public school that hoped to partner with them and benefit.  What a shell game?

There is no date for a reply in Houston yet?  The meeting in Little Rock is still “sometime” in the first two weeks of February.

The FCC had called Houston, Little Rock, and Philadelphia to ask for our permission to share the letters with Comcast and send our complaints to the company.  The Comcast lobbyist in Philly undoubtedly watched on his television as they read his email denying there were any complaints and begging the City Council to ignore our pleas.

Is the FCC trying to simply sweep this all under the rug and abandon their commitment to greater Internet access for lower income families by in effect pretending this is just Comcast’s “problem?”

Seems like we have no choice but to start having families file deceptive advertising complaints against Comcast with the FCC.  The FCC will have a harder time passing that buck back to Comcast.

This shell game has to stop.

New Orleans   

Orell Fitzsimmons, field director for Local 100, sitting in the meeting with a number of our leaders from Head Start units at Gulf Coast and Avance, who knew how little had been done to inform and enroll the children – and parents – they serve, had an excellent line for the Comcast representative.  He informed Comcast clearly that, “We are not a faith-based organization.  We can’t take your word on how well you think you are doing.  We have to know the facts and the real numbers.”  Fitzsimmons later told me he even quoted Ronald Reagan at one point from the old SALT missile days, and told Comcast we would need to be able to “verify.”

Maybe we weren’t hearing correctly, but the Comcast VP – they all seem to be VPs – seemed to be saying “make me!”  Furthermore he seemed to be insinuating that only the FCC could make them produce the numbers.  If that’s the case, then that’s where we will have to go to make this program work, if Comcast won’t live up to its promises.

On another front there was a report on possible progress for some of the homeowners facing foreclosure.  The story, as always, was disconcerting when it came to the codependence of the feds with the banks.  HUD secretary Shaun Donovan seemed to be wheeling and dealing to buy off different states to accept a deal which would reduce mortgage levels by a small number (the Times reported $20,000 per mortgage, which is a trickle in many communities), and tried to buy off California’s AG with a disproportionate share of the settlement.  Luckily, it appears that a number of the state attorneys generals are hip to the fact that the banks only real interest seems to be a “get out of court free” card from them, which Donovan and the feds seem more than willing to help facilitate.  Fortunately for many struggling homeowners a number of AGs are insisting that they will not waive their right to sue for the banks shenanigans.

At this point given how long suffering many homeowners have been and how many have already lost their houses, we all ought to hope for real justice, since clearly the time for a quick fix is long gone.

New Orleans    

Understand first exactly how draconian these rules were fashioned.  From the headlines most probably remember that the Republicans tried to hide under the sheep’s clothing of pretending to be more democratic.  In this perversion of the concept they first mandated an annual recertification process, meaning that a “yes” or “no” vote by the workers on continuing to be represented by the union.  At first glance some might thing this would be a nuisance but not that big of a problem, but the “flawmakers” put their hands on the scales against the workers and their unions.  Winning the vote would no longer be on the old rules, where a majority of those voting would decide in the same way legislators and the governor were elected themselves by a plurality of those voting.  No, the unions would have to win by 50% plus one of all of the workers who were eligible to vote, much like the very difficult, old Railway Labor Act standards for transportation workers, rather than the National Labor Relations Act standards of majority rule that have been in place for over 60 years.

And, keep in mind that that was simply the first hurdle the workers were required to jump.  So, how have unions fared under this regime?

Many public sector unions, especially the larger ones affiliated with AFSCME, which were virtually born in Wisconsin originally, announce they would not seek to recertify under these new rules.  This decision last September meant that tens of thousands of state workers and others might be informally represented, but would not be certified any longer.   The head of the largest AFSCME council was quoted flatly as saying that they thought their resources were better spent fighting for a new law and recertifying when collective bargaining returned rather than trying to survive under this mishmash.

Most teachers unions with the National Education Association (NEA) did decide to recertify.  About a third of the bargaining units had to go through the process in the fall of 2011.  The other two-thirds are not yet up or are under existing contracts that delay their decisions.  Importantly of the units eligible, workers won majorities virtually in every contest.  According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel these were the results:

The Wisconsin Employee Relations Commission, which oversaw the voting over the past 20 days, released a list of results showing that 177 teacher and other education unions voted to recertify, and 29 fell short of a recertification vote.  Of the 29 failures to recertify, only one union, made up of teachers in tiny North Cape School in Franksville, actually had more members voting against recertification than for it. The new recertification rules required a vote of 51% of a union’s membership – not just a majority of voting members, as is the case when public officials run for office. The North Cape vote was 6-5 against certification, with 18 members in what the WERC called the “unit population.”

In a “real” democracy unions would have won all of these elections except one, which they lost by one vote!  But who knows what drugs the various “flawmakers” are on in Wisconsin.  The paper further reported on one district where the union failed to recertify:

One unit that just missed certification was Northern Ozaukee School District teachers union. The WERC document lists 64 members in the voting population; the vote was 31-1 in favor of recertification.   Paul Krause, president of the Northern Ozaukee School Board, said he took the failure of recertification as a sign the majority of the district’s teachers have faith in the district. “I hope that the relationship between the board and teachers can continue to improve,” he said.

Are you following this?  The head of the school board watches the union win by a 31-1 with 50% of the eligible teachers voting, and slaps his own back that he won because the majority didn’t vote?!?  Crazy in the cold up there!

I mentioned earlier that recertification was just the first hurdle.  Another big one is the fact that even when recertified, unions by the new “flaws” are not allowed to bargain on very much of anything since all of that has been curtailed.

Oh, and just so there’s no confusion that this might even possibly be about worker democracy, here’s another juicy tidbit from the newspaper story where a legislator makes it clear this is all a game of “gotcha” on the unions, since a big part of this fight is taking away union dues as well.

Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), chairman of the state Senate Education Committee, responded, “If teachers decided they want to recertify their unions, more power to them.” But he said the next question is whether the unions are able to collect their dues; the new state law removed the ability of unions to have dues automatically withheld from members’ paychecks.  “The question is, will the dues come in,” he said. “The proof will be in the pudding.”

The proof of the pudding is here.  This is Republican class war, Wisconsin style, and being copied by other states wherever possible.  Hating unions is one thing, stacking the deck is another, and that’s where it all gets nasty.

 New Orleans   

Reading the story in the Times, it appears that at some point many connected to Gingrich (remember everyone is still pretending these are all separate and independent efforts!) thought Adelson might come up with $20 million.  For all the rest of us know, if Gingrich survives, this $5M might be a downpayment on a bigger play.

Supposedly, Adelson and Gingrich are buddies, BFF’s now.  I’m sure money never had anything to do with it.  Right?

Turns out they were brought together by their anti-union animus.  Adelson has long been notorious in the labor movement for his opposition to Culinary 226’s initial organizing efforts to win card check recognition as Adelson was building the Venetian casino on the Vegas strip.  Local 226 is probably the strongest private sector, service worker union in the country, so this fight was legendary, and unfortunately, the Venetian still stands out as one of the only operations on the strip that is non-union.  Adelson was able to recruit Gingrich for help in his anti-union campaign back to his time as Speaker of the House, and repaid his advice with a big time fundraiser in Vegas for the Republicans.  Subsequently they have worked on a number of anti-union initiatives in this blood war in the desert with national impact.   Here’s a rich irony given Adelson’s $5 M bet on Gingrich.  One of the things they worked on closely were initiatives to prevent unions from collecting political donations from their own union members!!!!

The other day we also were favored with reports of the companies Mitt Romney bought at Bain Capital and their records of union busting and unfair labor practice charges.  It was unclear he was still hanging around the building, but it was clear he was still collecting cash from Bain while this stuff was going on.

I imagine one of the Republican debate questions we can expect, especially in the upcoming South Carolina primary, will be how stridently the Republican candidates will dismantle the NLRB, repeal the National Labor Relations Act, and generally kick labor and their unions to the curb.  Maybe it won’t even be a question, since to make it a debate, there probably has to be a least some differences of opinion, and increasingly on the Republican side anti-unionism is becoming a litmus test, administered, orally by their big money backers, just like their  believe in God and their commitments to blocking abortions.

New Orleans  

This decision affects a lot of workers:  estimates are that 25% of all non-union workers have signed exactly these kinds of individual arbitrate only agreements.  The immediate decision involved a case with the big home builder, D. H. Horton, where a required employment agreement had mandated not only that the worker with an issue had to arbitrate but also barred the arbitrator from making a decision which could apply to any other workers or group of workers.  The NLRB with support of the Department of Labor, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and others ruled that this requirement was a breach of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act and its protection of “concerted” or collective activity by workers.

The last thing an organizer ever wants is to be tied up in court and arbitration is not much better, but in this case, we are so desperate for leverage and any tools that might work, it is great to have a way to force employers, even in union settings, to deal with group grievances and arbitrations and enlist some of the few remaining labor side lawyers struggling to make a living to stand up tall and represent us.  Too often even the best lawyers have looked at these arbitration bars and advised us to walk away because the time, trouble, and money to pierce them, no matter how righteous the issue, would have made the whole matter marginal.

Given the rising numbers of workers in temporary and informal settings that are home based and often find no compensation for overtime hours, transportation and other issues, I can hardly wait for more weapons in this war!

 New Orleans              

            And, judging by the billions being paid by ESPN and others to broadcast live sports as “product,” these games are passing for entertainment, and the players are either professionals or if they are not, they are being pimped out for pay by their educational institutions without hardly more than a thank you, and often not much of an education.    In recent weeks I have read several excellent articles making the case that college athletes, especially men’s football and basketball, should be paid, first in The Atlantic  by Taylor Branch, the noted prize winning biographer of Martin Luther King, and, more recently by Joe Nocera in the New York Times.   Two other articles also moved me on this question.  One was in the New Yorker and was looking at the growing “professionalism” of big time high school (yes, high school!!!) football, and the other was a brief piece in the Wall Street Journal making the case for more realistically pruning down the ranks of the top football NCAA division to get rid of huge number of schools that don’t have a chance and in fact are subsidizing the sport and losing millions in many institutions, that should know better.  Don’t they have business departments there either?

The NCAA itself walked into the mess finally by prosing to pay athletes $2000 per year.  They were forced to retreat by too many college athletic employers making the standard claim of all employers that they couldn’t afford to pay the workers who were bringing in the bucks.  Now, Nocera makes the excellent point that I had overlooked, that this coming season some players will be paid (if you call $2K a wage?), and others will not be, depending on when some athletes signed school “intent” letters.  This creates a totally ridiculous situation!

The numbers are all ridiculous.  The NCAA makes more than $770 M per year from TV rights to the “March Madness” playoffs to the basketball championship.  The combined revenue of men’s college football and basketball is estimate at $6 billion per year.  Big-time universities recognize that sports are huge moneymakers for them, which is why they pay the coaches sometimes millions per year.  In a stunning graphic the Times picture the highest paid 15 college coaches who were making a combined $53+ million per year.  All of this is built on the backs of “student athletes” who are paid nothing!

Oh yeah, the students get scholarships, though in many cases the value of the scholarships don’t pay all of the freight, as most parents of college age children know.  The fact that the scholarships exist within this revenue and exploitation model means that the athletes might be paid less.  It does not mean they should work – and get hurt – for free. 

Many of the proposals, particularly Nocera’s, are intriguing involving lifetime health insurance (everyone needs that!), bidding, salary caps per school, and so forth.  Before getting too deeply involved in any of the intricacies of various schemes, the starting point that is the huge power of the NCAA itself and the legal anti-trust implications of its operations with the institutions and of course the players, and, just like other big time professional sports programs, as we have discussed previously, the only way the NCAA can get around this problem is by negotiating directly and fairly with the students, which means U-N-I-O-N.

To some a union of college athletes might sound crazy, but they need to step back and think twice.  First, students in many, many cases are also workers, often to support the costs of college itself and certainly their lives while trying to study.  They work in every nook and cranny of the institutions, shuffling library books, making beds, serving on the line and busing the tables later, and on and on and on.  No one disputes the fact that these students work nor does anyone pretend that they are somehow not students because they are paid for their work.  Why then would the 40 to 50 hours per week athletes put into practice and preparation to play seem less like work or make them less students when they show up in class?  Secondly, in other countries the notion of unionized students is not so unique.  The associations have different levels of clout and bargaining ability but the one thing that is true is that they represent students in direct discussions with institutions. 

Looking just at men’s basketball and football at the top, Division I level, there are about 20,000 student-athlete-workers who would be part of the “unit.”  The organizing wouldn’t be a walk in the park.  Many coaches could teach regular bosses something about being autocratic and in fact sports is where some of them have no doubt learned these models, so they wouldn’t rollover easily.  The professional players’ associations could be real assets here and provide role models and advocates to offset the opposition. 

Organizing players at this level is also good for unions.  Seeing the Hornets’ Chris Paul as a player’s union representative at the NBA bargaining table or the Saints’Drew Brees in a similar position sent exactly the right messages to unionized workers in New Orleans for example.  Multiple this throughout all of the nooks and crannies of big time college athletics and let that trickle down, and the benefits to organized labor and the overall perception of unions would multiple the good will many times over of the countless union sponsored service projects which go unrecognized.

The Players’ Associations and other student advocates, like the PIRGs, should help resource such an organizing drive along with Change to Win and the AFL-CIO as the key labor federations.   Unions need to be in this conversation and let the NCAA and colleges know that it’s “game on!”

I’m down!  Sign ‘em up!  Unionize college athletes now!

 New Orleans              

“Many studies have assessed the impact of right-to-work legislation, although much of the research is from years ago, when right-to-work was a hotter issue.

Henry Farber, a labor economist at Princeton, said right-to-work laws, by allowing “free riders,” shrink union treasuries. One study found that the portion of free riders in right-to-work states ranged from 9 percent in Georgia to 39 percent in South Dakota.

In another study, David T. Ellwood, the dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Glenn A. Fine, a former Justice Department official, found that in the five years after states enacted such legislation, the number of unionization drives dropped by 28 percent, and in the following five years by an added 12 percent. Organizing wins fell by 46 percent in the first five years and 30 percent the next five. Over all, they found, right-to-work laws, beyond other factors, caused union membership to drop 5 percent to 10 percent.”

If anyone needs help with this, essentially if you weaken the resources of unions, then there is corresponding reduction in the amount of organizing, which is part of the point of such laws, and, furthermore, when workers see that the unions have been weakened in this way, they respond significantly by not voting in favor of union representation at their jobs.  Business manages to slice the heart of labor on both of the sharp ends of this sword by reducing organizing by more than one-third and sending the message that when unions do manage to organize, they have the strong hand, thereby enticing workers to vote NO more than half of the time.

This is how class war works at the legislative level.  No question that the Republicans are committed to that course when they “occupy” a state capitol.

New Orleans              

In the current fight in New York City an oft cited study that buttresses the case for coupling public investment in private development with living wage improvements on such projects was written by T. William Lester and our old friend and comrade, Ken Jacobs from the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education.  The study, “Creating Good Jobs in Our Communities:  How Higher Wage Standards Affect Economic Development and Employment,” put together a list of cities that had enacted “business assistance living wage” ordinances and created a database to compare them to a similar set of cities to determine in a unique way whether or not cities had hurt their growth and job development with such policy initiatives.  The cities  had a good dose of California in them, not surprisingly, but also included a good smattering from around the rest of the country, making the work truly national in scope.

The results contained good news for all of us who have advocated and organized for such policies to be enacted in our cities:

“Economic development wage standards are one tool that a city can use to create jobs of greater quality. We have compared two sets of cities in order to assess the effectiveness of such laws—those with enforced business assistance living wage laws and those without—and found that there is no loss in the number of jobs due to the living wage requirement. It appears that, even during hard times, economic development wage standards are an effective tool for increasing wages in a city without sacrificing the number of jobs.”

This work builds on the path breaking work done by Dr. Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst that had established in Los Angeles and later, working with ACORN in both New Orleans and Florida, that the any adverse impacts were at worst negligible, and at best wildly positive.  Walmart ran from ACORN’s big-box proposed ordinance in Chicago in 2006 which would have coupled business assistance with their development and pulled up stakes in Sarasota, Florida when we won an ordinance requiring living wages on such developments in that city, but these studies seem to conclusively argue that they simply left money on the table, rather than allowing cities to develop in equitable and sustainable fashion.

With the first hints emerging that we may be coming out of the recession, we need to dust off all of these reports and initiatives and move more aggressively to reassert these agendas in North American cities and around the