Labor

Postville Plant's Recruiting Woes

Adam Doster — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:19:05 -0700

It seems Agriprocessor is having problems attracting new workers to its gigantic kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa after Immigration & Customs Enforcement arrested 389 allegedly undocumented workers in May. I wonder why?

Some residents said they're aghast at stories they've heard about conditions inside the plant, the town's biggest employer, where workers have complained of physical abuse by managers, wage violations and the hiring of underage employees.

"It would be great to have the plant but have it run by a different company or a different family," said the Rev. Lloyd Paul Ouderkirk of St. Bridget's Catholic Church.

Some Somali immigrants are beginning to to fill the void. Let's hope they are treated with a little more respect -- and paid a living wage.

Wal-Mart Facing FEC Complaint

Adam Doster — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:20:07 -0700

Kudos to organized labor for calling out Wal-Mart on their shady (and likely illegal) "mandatory political meetings." The Hill has the detaiils:

The AFL-CIO and several union-friendly groups filed a formal complaint against Wal-Mart on Thursday, charging that the retail giant is pressuring employees to vote against Sen. Barack Obama.

Citing a Wall Street Journal report, the complaint accuses Wal-Mart of pushing its workers to oppose Obama (D-Ill.), who supports a measure that would allow workers to form unions without a secret-ballot election. The complaint calls on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to investigate whether Wal-Mart has broken federal election laws.

Unfortunately, any FEC fine will be a drop in the bucket for the mega-retailer, which netted $3.45 billion in profits last quarter. Nonetheless, worker's rights advocates need to keep their foot on the gas against exploitative companies like Wal-Mart until this country implements common-sense labor law reform.

Kirk Misleads On Paycheck Fairness Act

Adam Doster — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:37:59 -0700

That tricky Mark Kirk, always misleading his constituents. This time, Ellen of the Tenth catches the Illinois Republican justifying his opposition to the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA) while strategically omitting some crucial facts about the bill:

As for Kirk, he just voted with his party to help out corporations that fight against pay equity with the millions they save in not paying US income tax and has no problem lying about the bill to try and make it look like he's not the sexist, anti-pay equity congressman that he is.

Read her full take-down here.

Unemployment Surges In July

Adam Doster — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:17:34 -0700

Illinois continues to shed jobs at a furious pace. According to state officials, Illinois' unemployment rate jumped from 6.8 percent to 7.3 percent in July -- the state's highest jobless level in almost 15 years and well above the national average of 5.6 percent. The Tribune has more:

The number of people without a job surged to 491,300, IDES said. In the three months beginning in May, the number of unemployed workers in Illinois has soared by 121,900. During that period the state's unemployment rate, which has been moving up faster than the national rate, rose a total of 1.9 percentage points. Just a year ago, Illinois unemployment stood at 5.1 percent.

That capital bill couldn't come at a better time.

Tribune Right On Meeks, Wrong on Unions

Adam Doster — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:14:41 -0700

In an editorial today, the Tribune questions the tactics behind State Sen. James Meeks' proposed New Trier protest, while ultimately applauding his "unwillingness to let Chicago students languish for yet another school year in public schools that we've long argued are short on resources and on accountability for the money they do receive." But the Tribune's dig at teachers unions deserve some pushback. Here's the conclusion of today's editorial:

So you have a choice. You can echo the teachers unions and chant "More money for education," which likely will result in another year without funding reform. Or you can challenge the education establishment to deliver more accountability in return for a jump in the $20 billion it already consumes.

We can't guarantee that the latter strategy would get you every dollar you want, Sen. Meeks. We can, though, guarantee that it would produce better educations for the schoolkids who now are pawns of Illinois politicians from the governor on down.

Scapegoating the teacher's unions for our nation's education disparity is an old, lazy trick. It's true that some union contracts have made it difficult to fire incompetent teachers and some unions have been less than willing to implement the teacher accountability measures valued by certain segments of the education reform community. But like all workers, teachers deserve a voice in the workplace. And a school system without teachers unions, as education expert Richard Kahlenberg wrote last year, would be mighty grim:

[A]bolishing unions would hardly catapult the interest of students to the top. Instead, it would increase the power of other adults in the system -- superintendents, who sometimes jettison promising educational programs for which they cannot personally take credit; principals, who sometimes are lax on discipline because they don't want their suspension numbers to look bad; and parents, who usually look out for the interests of their own children rather than what's good for all kids.

The other big winners would be supporters of privatized education, and opponents of the American labor movement. No single organization is as responsible for the defense of public education in the United States as teacher unions. Other groups oppose private school vouchers, but only teacher unions have the political muscle and organizational and strategic capacity to beat back privatization plans. Likewise, the death of teacher unions would snuff out one of the few bright spots in an otherwise desperate landscape for the American labor movement.

The Tribune's characterization of the teachers unions' stance -- "More money for education" -- is oversimplified as well. Many of the large unions are supporting more holistic reform efforts, such as those laid out in the "Broader, Bolder Approach to Education." Proposed by an Economic Policy Institute-backed coalition, this proposal argues in favor of resolving the economic inequality that is the root of our nation's achievement gap while also improving student, teacher, and parent accountability. Hell, it's this broad perspective that led the American Federation of Teachers to join the AFL-CIO. Here's Kahlenberg again:

[Former American Federation of Teachers President Albert] Shanker understood the importance of addressing larger issues of societal inequality, which is why he insisted that the American Federation of Teachers be part of organized labor. Though he realized the political challenges, Shanker wanted the AFT to be part of the coalition fighting for better health care and housing and a higher minimum wage -- all of which would make teachers more likely to be successful in reaching low-income students.

Lots of factors stand in the way of educational equity. Isolating the unions does a disservice to the cause.

10th District Residents Protest Kirk's Vote Against Pay Equity

Josh Kalven — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:34:29 -0700

Yesterday, a group of 10th District residents protested GOP Rep. Mark Kirk's opposition to the Paycheck Fairness Act. This piece of legislation -- HR 1338 -- strengthened penalties for violations of the Equal Pay Act and required employers to show that wage disparities between men and women performing the same work stemmed from factors other than their gender. On July 31, Kirk voted against the measure, along with the rest of the Illinois Republican congressional delegation. (It nonetheless passed the House, 247-178.)

The 10th District voters delivered the following letter to Kirk's district office, which was signed by 120 of his constituents:

We are writing to you today to express our dismay at your two recent votes against ensuring pay equity for women in the workplace. Over eighty-five years after gaining the right to vote, women still face staggering wage discrimination in the workplace, making 77 cents to every dollar a man makes for the same work.

With the recent economic downturn, pay equity is more important than ever. Many of us live in two working parent homes or have daughters who do. At a time when our families are being squeezed and when every dollar matters, why do women not deserve the same rights as men at the workplace when we contribute to our households just the same?

So why, Representative Kirk, did you turn your back on the hundreds of thousands of women in your district by voting against our civil rights? While we may not yet have equality at the workplace, we do have equality in the ballot box and will be exercising that right come November.

Image courtesy of Hal Snyder.

Is Your Pension Secure?

Adam Doster — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:57:34 -0700

Following its solid muckraking on Wal-Mart's closed-door, mandatory, pro-McCain meetings, The Wall Street Journal drops another front-page doozy today. Companies are tapping their employee's pension plans to fund executive benefits:

At a time when scores of companies are freezing pensions for their workers, some are quietly converting their pension plans into resources to finance their executives' retirement benefits and pay.

In recent years, companies from Intel Corp. to CenturyTel Inc. collectively have moved hundreds of millions of dollars of obligations for executive benefits into rank-and-file pension plans. This lets companies capture tax breaks intended for pensions of regular workers and use them to pay for executives' supplemental benefits and compensation.

The practice has drawn scant notice. A close examination by The Wall Street Journal shows how it works and reveals that the maneuver, besides being a dubious use of tax law, risks harming regular workers. It can drain assets from pension plans and make them more likely to fail. Now, with the current bear market in stocks weakening many pension plans, this practice could put more in jeopardy.

Here's the shakedown. With the intention of subsidizing employee retirement packages, federal law encourages employers to offer pensions by giving companies a tax deduction when they contribute cash to a pension plan. They also let the money in the plan grow tax-free. Executives can participate as long as the pension plans do not "discriminate in favor of highly compensated employees" -- meaning the tax break isn't extended to executives if their pensions are larger than their employees. Of course, many are. So the trick, as the Journal writes, "is to find a way to move some of the obligations for supplemental pensions into the plan that qualifies for tax breaks." Sadly, with the help of so-called "benefits consultants," many companies are doing just that:

To prove they don't discriminate, companies are supposed to compare what low-paid and high-paid employees receive from the pension plan. They don't have to compare actual individuals; they can compare ratios of the benefits received by groups of highly paid vs. groups of lower-paid employees.

Such a measure creates the potential for gerrymandering -- carefully moving employees about, in various theoretical groupings, to achieve a desired outcome.

Another technique: Count Social Security as part of the pension. This effectively raises low-paid employees' overall retirement benefits by a greater percentage than it raises those of the highly paid -- enabling companies to then increase the pensions of higher-paid people.

It's unclear how widespread the practice is; neither the Internal Revenue Service nor other agencies track this maneuver and, not suprisingly, employers reveal little about it. But in a sidebar, the Journal highlights a number of companies with "blended plans." One is Illinois Tool Works, the Glenview-based Fortune 200 company that produces engineered fasteners and components, equipment and consumable systems, and specialty products. It's not the first time the corporation has faced public scrutiny. In 2002, it landed on the Political Economy Research Institutes's Toxic 100 list as one of America's largest corporate air polluters.

Wal-Mart Warns Of Big, Bad Democrats

Adam Doster — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:10:41 -0700

Wal-Mart: low prices for consumers, low wages for its workers:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.

According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise.

Coming from one of the nation's leading employers, this display is particularly egregious; Wal-Mart is taking preventive measures against a political party that may make it easier for workers to join unions, not even discouraging a specific union drive. But make no mistake about it, anti-union employer intimidation is extremely common. Via Ezra Klein, 49 percent of employers openly threaten to close down a worksite when faced with a unionization drive. The number of workers whose employers tell them in private meetings that a union will cost the company jobs -- while impossible to track -- is undoubtedly higher.

And card check is supposed to be intimidating, huh?

Obama Stands Up To Wage Theft

Adam Doster — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 07:37:26 -0700

Following two damning GAO reports and the testimony of Chicago's own Kim Bobo, Barack Obama sent a letter (pdf) Friday to U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao calling on her to address her department's mishandling of overtime and minimum-wage complaints and to instigate investigations into hundreds of additional cases:

It is important that the department put procedures into place that will lead to improvements in the enforcement of workers’ rights. This is the core mission of the department and failing to adequately enforce the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is unacceptable.

Unfortunately, the department's lax enforcement of wage theft -- a problem the affects millions of workers (pdf) -- is not its only transgression. As AFL-CIO blogger Seth Michael documents, the agency has long stood in the way of workers rights:

Chao’s Labor Department has been consistently anti-worker—Chao has even tried to outsource Labor Department staff jobs to nonunion contractors. Bush appointees in the Labor Department have been handsomely rewarded for their lack of concern for workers’ rights, getting cushy jobs at union-busting law firms and corporate lobbying groups. Appointments to federal departments and agencies matter for workers because the people in these jobs have a lot of power to choose how to implement policy. They oversee not just wage and hour protections but also workplace safety, mine safety and a host of other issues.

"On The Basis Of Union Membership"

Adam Doster — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:30:33 -0700

With only 12 percent of American workers unionized and large swaths of the working class cut off from America's economic growth, organized labor and its advocates are strongly pushing the Employee Free Choice Act. This bill would both allow employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation and establish stronger penalties for violation of employee rights during a union campaign.

As the American Prospect's Harold Meyerson wrote last year, workers need EFCA because employers constantly impede union drives, emboldened by the lack of substantial penalties and a National Labor Rights Board in need of major reform:

The EFCA would seek to remedy this by offering workers an alternative path to forming unions -- the submission of signed affiliation cards from a majority of employees would trigger union recognition -- and by mandating binding arbitration if employers stonewall efforts to win a first contract.

But are there other ways to increase union density in America, particularly if EFCA fails? In his most recent nationally syndicated column, David Sirota comes up with another plan, thanks to a shuffle pass by Chicago labor lawyer Tom Geoghegan.

History books teem with six-word phrases, from the comforting (“Nothing to fear but fear itself”) to the inspiring (“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”) to the embarrassing (“Read my lips, no new taxes”). But the six words, “on the basis of union membership”, could be more momentous than any of those. Though hardly Roosevelt’s rhetoric, Reagan’s bluster or Bush’s clumsiness, the clause could solve America’s wage crisis. [...]

Geoghegan reminded me that data show the more union members in an economy, the better workers’ pay. The problem, he said, is that weakened labor laws are allowing companies to bully and fire union-sympathetic workers, thus driving down union membership and wages.

Enter Geoghegan’s six words. If the Civil Rights Act was amended to prevent discrimination “on the basis of union membership,” it would curtail corporations’ anti-labor assault by making the right to join a union an official civil right.

Sirota explains that the threat of legal action under the Civil Rights Act could be just what's needed to protect a worker's right to organize. Multi-national corporations know the stakes and would fight tooth and nail against such an amendment. But if enacted, it could be a powerful tool for workers seeking a voice in the workplace. And shouldn't joining a union be a civil right?

Read the rest of Sirota's column here.