Labor's Great Expectations

Hi JNS, Happy holidays! In you story you wrote, "Business groups oppose the open ballot provision because they claim it leaves employees dangerously open to peer pressure." Are you aware of the legal tactics employers use to discourage employees from supporting a union:
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Individual one on one meeting with employees to discuss the fact that all existing benfits and rules become null and void if a union comes in?
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I thought the article was balanced, but wanted to note that there is legal pressure from owner/ship during this process as well as the so-called peer pressure the employers are wining about.

Good piece JNS but this part "And some progressives were disappointed that Obama passed over labor activist Mary Beth Maxwell and instead chose Rep. Hilda Solis of California as Secretary of Labor." surprised me.
As far as I have read, not everything for sure, Solis has been very well received. Who were you referring to?

And of course, all the anti Big Three stuff was all about EFCA.
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Because you see, as JNS makes sure to point out, it was those crazy wages and benefits that helped drag down the auto industry.
The script is already written.

" Randy Johnson, vice president for labor issues at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents three million U.S. businesses. "Trying to pass card check would be like declaring a nuclear war with the business community. It'd be Armageddon."
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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, can a group be both large and marginalized? They have turned into a NRA without the catch phrases.

appoint labor-friendly members to the National Labor Relations Board.

Amazing.

This is the one issue more than others I am aware of where both sides are invariably wrong. My libertarian instincts tell me that any individual should be free to negotiate his own terms of employment and the idea of Union-only shops grates upon my sensibilties as a result. But history has also shown us that without the pressure that at least the possibility of organizing provides, Corporations will do their best take riduclous advantage of the greater freedom of action that comes with not needing particualr workers to the degree that workers need their jobs. And let us not even begin to discuss executive compensation in the same paragraph!

I'm against the loss of secret ballots.

Paul Dirks, how is a CEO who hires a lawyer to negotiate his own employment contract different from any worker in the same organization? A CEO hires legal representation. Should any worker be able to negotiate an employment contract? Can they select a negotiator?
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Would like to understand your thoughts about this.

I'm against the loss of secret ballots.

Card check doesn't mean the end of secret ballots, nibbly. Simply provides an alternative.

Also, the cards remain hidden from the employer unless and until the measure passes. So the employer never knows the employees who have voted for the union unless and until they are provided with union protection.

Jay could have - and should have - made this clearer in her article.

Should any worker be able to negotiate an employment contract? Can they select a negotiator?
Yes.
But in the case of a union vote, any no voters in a successful election lose the right to select their own negotiator. They may prefer to represent themselves but lose the option.
Labor laws should seek rational balance. As it is, the wildly swinging pendulum results in as I said, everybody being wrong.

Let's see. Why not go a bit further down to the root of the problem? Why do unions exist? Can any sort of quantification be made of the amount of damage done to the United States by unions and union interests vs by corporations and corporate interests? Why do we have this knee-jerk assumption that unions are bad and union-busting is good? Feudalism is just as unpleasant and bad for the country now as it has always been, despite the comfort that total control gives to the bosses. Unions are imperfect, as are all the devices of mankind; corruption, conflict and inefficiency are part of the deal. But can anyone assert with a straight face that these things don't apply to union-free workplaces? I'd suggest that there's more of this among the top corporate officers than in the most mafia-riddled Teamsters crowd.

What industry do you work in Paul Dirks? If I may ask. I just have never seen the employer and the employee on equal footing during negotiations.
Do your libertarian instincts extend to work place laws?

"Walter Reuther, whom I mention in the story, once said, walking down a Chrysler assembly line, that his workers were Chrysler's best customers. He was right -- but he was also wrong in that many of the wage and benefit structures he negotiated are what helped drag down the Big Three."
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Jay, care to elaborate on this, please? Chrysler paid its employees enough so that they could afford to buy a Chrysler, but their wages are what helped drag Chrysler down?
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And please explain exactly how paying an automobile assembler a living wage with benefits "helped drag down" the Big Three. I will ask that you dispense with the rightwing talking points, too, while you explain this. And use facts and figures please. And I mean true, actual facts and figures; you are not allowed to use overinflated distortions. Please explain why paying a UAW auto assembler a comparable wage with a Toyota assembler or a Mercedez Benz assembler "helped bring down" Chrysler, but does not "help bring down" Toyota.
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I'll help you out to get you started, here: Beat the Press Archive | The American Prospect

The problem isn't paying someone a "living wage". The problem is that the value of the work being done decreased. The big manufacturers and big unions all grew up during the 1940s and 1950s, the height of the Industrial Age. At that time final assembly was the most important part of the value chain. Now, due to a variety of reasons, it isn't anymore. Paying people like it still is doesn't work.
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I'd also like to point out that all of the Detroit three are extremely profitable outside of the U.S. market, where the union situation is different.
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Unions have a bad rap in the national consciousness because they earned it. Ask KCK police about the firefighter's union and the strike in the 1970's when cops were shot at for going to put out fires. Ask the Kansas City Star building downtown about unions and the windows that have been repeatedly broken because they were installed by non-union contractors.
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The biggest single factor in the automakers' present round of troubles is the insane speculative bubble in oil prices and the destruction of the credit markets combined with an auto bubble. Every carmaker is suffering right now, Toyota's sales are down 22% on the year, the only difference is Toyota was in good enough shape before this started to get through it. GM and Chrysler aren't. (Ford, with better management, is).

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A lot of irrelevant blather, there, buddy, without even touching on the question. I get that you think that Toyota (and Ford) area better managed companies than GM and Chrysler, which is my point, too, and then you bring up a lot of irrelevant incidents from ancient history and some kind of theory about the Industrial Age and "value of work done" and musings about "auto bubbles" that are red herrings as well. It didn't even make any sense, let alone go to the issue.
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James,
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The incidents with the KC Star building occurred over the summer. Of 2008. Talk to someone who was at some of the auto plants that closed over the last two months. Unions + Violent morons hasn't ever really gone away.
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The auto bubble is pretty well documented and acknowledged by all the auto companies (and most economists) as a temporary spike caused by excess liquidity in financial markets. Value of work/industrial age is also extremely well established business theory. All very mainstream, not really sure why you're calling it a red herring. There was a time when resource extraction was the most important step of the value chain, but that changed a long time ago too.
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I do agree with you that Toyota and Ford are better managed than GM and Chrysler, though I get the feeling that for the last decade or so Toyota has done more cruising along on its systemic advantages than leading the pack.

None of that except your last paragraph is germane to the subject. Note that JNS asserted without evidence that "many of the wage and benefit structures [Walter Reuther] negotiated are what helped drag down the Big Three." I challenged that assertion and asked for hard evidence, i.e., facts and figures, to show that was the case.
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You can go on and on with your opinions about "auto bubbles" and some isolated incidents in Kansas City and that's fine, but it isn't very meaningful and neither is your hypothesis about "value of work/industrial age."
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"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought" -- John F, Kennedy.
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I thought pointing out that Detroit was profitable outside the U.S., where it doesn't have the same wage/benefit structure. Last year GM spent $4 billion more on pensions and retiree health care than Toyota did. People generally don't point stuff like this out when discussing the auto companies problems for the same reason people don't generally explain the atmospheric effects when saying the sky is blue.
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The auto bubble and radical speculative spike in fuel prices aren't opinions of mine any more than the housing bubble is.
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Since we're throwing around quotes now, "No man is so blind as he who refuses to see." Nifty huh?
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I'm not going to keep debating you on this if you insist on pulling a Bush and putting air quotes around established facts. Good day, sir.

You aren't debating about anything buddy. What the hell does "auto bubble" and "radical speculative spike" have to do with how General Motors' wage and benefit structure, negotiated by the workers, helped "bring down" the Big Three? Nothing whatsoever. It's a red herring. Irrelevant, completely irrelevant to the issue.
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And of course, the reason GM spent more money on pensions and retiree health care is because they have been in business since 1908, okay? Toyota since 1986. GM has almost half a million retirees, Toyota around 1,000. So it isn't surprising, is it, that GM spends more money on pensions? So what?
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General Motors put pension money aside, invested it, while the retiree was an active worker, okay, that's the law. It is a form of deferred compensation. If they raided those retirement funds, that goes to poor management, doesn't it? That's no more the workers fault than the collapse of Enron's workers retirement funds were the fault of the workers. It was the criminals in management who did that. Same with GM. Poor management.
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