At the banquet table of nature there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold. If you can't take anything, you won't get anything; and if you can't hold anything, you won't keep anything. And you can't take anything without organization.
-A. Philip Randolph, Founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, civil rights leader, and all-around American hero.
At this point, even the most casual reader of Daily Kos has probably heard of the Employee Free Choice Act. Labor unions are pushing Congress to move on it quickly, big business and its astroturf front rackets are spending untold millions to kill it, and in general, the atmosphere surrounding the bill is more akin to that of a nasty political campaign than a policy debate. But why do labor organizers care so deeply about Employee Free Choice? Why are astroturf groups funded by some of the worst employers in America popping up everywhere purporting to be deeply concerned about the rights of employees? Why is the Chamber of Commerce spending $20-30 million to poison the minds of Americans against the bill?
Why? Because the Employee Free Choice Act is, quite simply, not only the most necessary and important labor law reform in 75 years -- it's the cornerstone of any serious effort to reestablish a real middle-class in the United States. And Wal-Mart, and Grover Norquist, and the Chamber of Commerce, and the institutional Republican Party don't want a real, secure middle class. They want a docile, subservient class of workers who are utterly dependent on the tender mercies of their employers for every meal. They realize far better than many progressives that organization in the workplace -- unionization -- is the single greatest tool that workers have to ensure that they get a piece of the pie. They know that they have to do whatever it takes to prevent working Americans from joining together to "get what they can take, and keep what they can hold." And so, they will do whatever they have to do to try and kill the Employee Free Choice Act.
We can't let that happen. We have a golden opportunity to pass the Act in this Congress -- what with a Democratic president, 58 Democrats in the Senate plus Lieberman (who is a reliable vote on this issue), and a solid House majority. There hasn't been an opportunity for real labor law reform like this in 40 years. This is not a time for incremental change -- not when we have the chance to reorder the economic rules of the nation so that everyday Americans have a chance to claim what's theirs.
Now, I can hear some of you saying, "man -- that's some pretty bold claims about this bill. With the credit crunch, and Iraq, and the health crisis, how can the Employee Free Choice Act be so important?"
Well, that's what I'm going to try and answer here.
Employee Free Choice is Essential Because Unions Are Essential to a Real Middle-Class
Before we can really understand why the Employee Free Choice Act is so critical to improving the health of the middle class, we need to talk about why unionization is so critical to the health of the middle class. Too often, unionists assume that progressives outside of the labor movement share our understanding about the centrality of organizing to the progress and security of working people. So here's a synopsis of the argument for unions.
I love the A. Philip Randolph quote at the top of this post, because it really sums up why people form labor unions. For the most part, they don't do it because it's ideologically satisfying -- they do it because they want their share. They want a safe workplace. They want better wages. They want the security of health insurance. They want retirement security. They want fair treatment on the job. And as Randolph said, it's nigh impossible to get those things without organization in the workplace - without all the employees of a company standing together to demand their fair share. You don't have to look far to see evidence of this fact:
- The average union worker earns at least 11% more than the average non-union worker, and union workers in lower-wage occupations earn over 20% more than their non-union counterparts.
- Federal and most state wage and hour laws don't call for overtime premiums for hours worked over 8 in a day -- but 93% of union agreements ensure that workers receive an daily overtime premium, usually time-and-a-half.
- Over 80% of employees working under union contracts enjoy the security of a defined benefit pension -- that is, a guaranteed pension, backed by the PBGC, that provides a consitent payment every month for the life of the retiree. Many union employees participate in multi-employer defined benefit plans, which pool the costs and risk of the plan across dozens or hundreds of employers. Less than half of non-union employees have a defined benefit pension, and that number is plummeting -- troubling at a time when the average 401(k) lost 30% of its value in the past 12 months.
- Only about 10% of union workers lack health insurance, compared to about 50% of non-union workers. Moreover, union workers with insurance pay out significantly less -- about 25% less -- of their total income in health insurance premiums than do non-union workers.
- Because union employees work under contracts that spell out meaningful health and safety regulations, and because they consequently don't have to rely on ineffectual and underfunded government health and safety regulatory agencies, union jobsites are safer than non-union jobsites.
The list could go on, but the point is clear: union workers earn significantly more money, enjoy more significantly more retirement security, are significantly more likely to have health insurance, and have significantly safer workplaces than similarly situated non-union workers. It's not close.
And it's not magic -- simply joing a union doesn't in and of itself dramatically improve your quality of life. The reason there's a union advantage in all these areas is because union workers stand together, as an organized unit, to "get what they can take, and keep what they can hold" from their employers. But you don't have the opportunity to create that union advatage, to take what's yours, without unionizing. And it's that union advantage that's the difference between a family being solidly middle class and a family that's fundamentally insecure.
The sad thing is, most Americans don't understand the magnitude of the union advantage -- the massive difference in wages and in general familial security. And those who do, and who try to organize, find the deck stacked against them.
Employee Free Choice Is Necessary Because Labor Law Is Broken and Anti-Worker
To put it plainly -- it is a dangerous endeavor for employees to try and organize themselves into a union. Over the past 40 or so years, a combination of factors -- most importantly, the defunding of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB -- the agency that oversees union-management relations) and the increasing sophistication of union-busting approaches -- have made it extremely difficult for employees to choose to unionize.
Cornell University scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner studied hundreds of organizing campaigns and found that:
Ninety-two percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions; and 78 percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.
Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, often based on mass psychology and distorting the law.
Half of employers threaten to shut down partially or totally if employees join together in a union.
In 25 percent of organizing campaigns, private-sector employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union.
Even after workers successfully form a union, in one-third of the instances, employers do not negotiate a contract.
And it's not supposed to be that way. In fact, even after Reagan and Bush, the United States government's stated, legislated policy is still to promote collective bargaining, to promote unionization -- as seen in Section 1 of the National Labor Relations Act:
It is declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.
Got that? It's supposed to be the sole decision of workers, not their employers, whether to join a union and demand their fair share. But as the statistcs above show, that's not the way things work.
When employees come to their employer as a unified group and ask to be recognized as a union, the employer can force tham to go to the NLRB and file for an election. Then, the employer can force the NLRB to delay the election for months, if not years, by raising all sorts of ticky-tack legal issues. During the delay, the employer can (and probably will) harass, intimidate, and even fire employees to coerce them into abandoning their support for the union -- a workplace that was 90% in favor of unionization can easily be scared into voting against unionization. And even if the employees stand strong, and vote to unionize after all the threats and harassment, the employer can refuse to bargain with the union for years, instead litigating the results of the election. And even if the employer is finally ordered to bargain with the union, it can eseentially get away with refusing to do so -- and there's nothing meaningful that the NLRB can do, because the legal remedies available to it are completely ineffective and unintimidating.
In short, federal law is suppposed to preserve the free choice of employees to choose unions, but in practice it does no such thing. And that's why we need the Employee Free Choice Act -- to restore the right of workers to choose whether to unionize, and in so doing, to restore a real, secure middle class.
The Employee Free Choice Act has three simple components:
- Toughen the penalties against employers who break the law. As discussed above, there's currently no serious penalty for coercing employees and intimidating them into forsaking support for a union. Under the Employee Free Choice Act, employers will face treble damages and civil penalties for violating the rights of employees.
- Allow employers and/or unions to request mediation or arbitration of a first contract. No longer will employers be able to drag out bargaining and refuse to deal in good faith with their employees' chosen union, with the goal of using that time to intimidate employees into going non-union. Under the Act, if the parties aren't able to agree on a first contract after unionization, either the union or the employer can refer the matter to a mediator or arbitrator to help craft a fair collective bargaining agreement.
- Restore the right of employees, not employers, to make the unionization decision, by allowing workers to form a union through majority sign-up. The Employee Free Choice Act would vindicate the original goal of American labor law by returning the unionization decision to employees. As Al Franken says, "Right now, there are two ways to form a union: majority sign-up or a secret ballot election. And management gets to decide which is used. The Employee Free Choice Act would protect the same two ways of joining a union (majority sign-up or a secret ballot election), but leave it up to workers to decide which is used."
It's a simple bill. But because it's a bill that once again would give workers the real ability to choose to organize, and significantly better their lot in the workplace, it's anathema to the big business interests that have built and benefited from the Reagan/Bush America of economic insecurity. And that's why they're fighting it so hard.
But we need to fight even harder to pass Employee Free Choice. Because there's no other bill that can have as long-term, broad, and powerful an effect to build a stable and secure middle class. It's the key to real economic stimulus.