Davis City Council Passes Resolution in Support of Employee Free Choice Act
On Tuesday on the North Steps of the Capitol, a crowd exceeding 500 people and probably approaching 1000 people gathered in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Numerous elected official came to address the crowd.
Lt. Governor John Garamendi:
“Why is it time to change, because the working men and women of California have taken the short end of the paycheck for too long. In 1965 the CEO’s had a ratio of 24 to 1 on their paycheck. What happened in the ensuing years? In 1980 it went to 42 for the CEO and one dollar for the working men and women. Get your boos together because in 2006 it went to 364 dollars for every dollar. Enough already. It’s time to put equity and fairness back to America and the Employee Free Choice Act is the way to do it.
It’s time for equity in America. It’s time to recognize that the top one percent is getting more than one-quarter of all of the wealth in America. Right now we see in Wall Street. We see it in AIG. We invest billions of dollars and what $165 million in bonuses, for what? Taking America down.
It’s time for the Employee Free Choice Act, it’s time for Congress to get it done. Send it to Obama and let’s go forward.”
Assemblymember Jose Perez:
“Sometimes when people talk about this act they forget what’s really at stake. They say you already have a right to vote. What they fail to understand is the way that the vote has been manipulated by too many employers in this country. In my union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, we know what happens when workers come together and employers stand in their way.”
Told a story about a worker who tried to form a union after he had his wages cut. He got a petition and worked to form the union. They told him they would follow US labor laws. But a few weeks later they fired him for no other reason than he was trying to form a union.
Said Assemblymember Perez:
“They fired him for no other reason than he was trying to form a union and bring Democracy to his workplace. That’s what the current system does. The solution is the Employee Free Choice Act.”
Said the Assembly Democratic caucus is united with them to tell Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
Labor Organizer from United Farm Workers Dolores Huerta:
“This Employee Free Choice Act is about more than Democracy in the workplace, it’s about Democracy in the United States of America. You cannot have a Democracy if you do not have a middle class. The only way we can have a middle class is that we allow workers to be involved in organized labor.”
She went on to list a whole host of things that a signature is good enough to get.
“So if your signature is good enough to do all of these things, shouldn’t your signature good enough to say what union you want to represent you? I think that a signature of a worker who can choose his union in confidence, in his living room, by signing a card, that is a promise that has to be kept and it needs to be respected.”
She urged the workers to organize their community and to be organizers to save Democracy and America.
Assemblymember Dave Jones:
“There are some questions in life that are complicated, this is not one. Unions mean better wages. Unions mean health care. Unions mean pensions. Unions mean job protection. Unions move people in the middle class. Unions built the United States of America.
Not far from here we have an example of a business that allowed its workers to have a free choice–the Sheridan Hotel. I’m proud to have stood with the workers from the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union making sure that the employees there had a free choice and chose to voluntarily have a union. Now those workers are unionized and those workers have decent jobs and decent pay.
Not far from here is an example of a different choice, where a choice was not provided to employees. That’s Blue Diamond. At Blue Diamond the employees have not been given a choice. They’ve not been allowed to organize without intimidation. They’ve been harassed. They have been stymied in their effort to have a choice at Blue Diamond.”
Frank Garcia a worker at Blue Diamond spoke about the ordeal that he went through along with his fellow workers as they tried to organize in the face of retaliation, retribution, harassment and abuse.
Later Sara Steffens who had been a reporter with the Contra Costa Times spoke. Like many in the newspaper industry, the reporters at the Times faced job cuts and pay cuts. She tried to organize a union among her fellow reporters to help stand up for their rights. She got signatures, but then the company like Blue Diamond hired an anti-union consultant to help defeat the effort. Eventually they were successful in forming a union however she was a casualty of the process and lost her job.
As these and many other stories attest, companies will go to great lengths to form a union. Opponents of unions and this process have argued that the secret ballot protects the rights of workers from harassment and intimidation. What they neglect to mention is the process to get the vote to the secret ballot requires an open signature process, scrutiny, and the opportunity for harassment and intimidation by companies who have increasingly hired anti-union consultants to break the will of the workers.
The Employee Free Choice Act would streamline this process. Allowing by signature card workers to expressed their desire to form a union and if a majority of workers sign the card, they will gain the right to form a union.
The process would still need to be validated by the National Labor Relations Board to validate the signatures. This would enable the process to have checks and balances but it takes the power out of the employers to intimidate and threaten those who want to form a union. Companies like Wal Mart and Target that have specialized in union-busting activities. Companies like Blue Diamond more locally who have abused workers.
Employees are fired in roughly one-quarter of private-sector union organizing campaigns according to the NLRB. 78 percent of private employers require their supervisors to deliver anti-union messages to the workers whose jobs and pay they control. And even when workers form a union, one-third of the time they are not able to get a contract.
The Employee Free Choice act would strengthen penalties for companies that illegally coerce or intimidate employees in an effort to prevent them from forming a union. It would bring in a neutral third party to settle a contract when a company and a newly certified union cannot agree on a contract after three months. And it established a majority sign-up, whereby the majority of the employees who sign a union authorization card would be a recognized union.
The current laws allow for intimidation, harassment, coercion, and retaliatory firing of those who try to organize unions and the penalties are so low that many companies treat them as the cost of doing business.
Last night at the Davis City Council Meeting, the Council unanimously passed a resolution supporting the Employee Free Choice Act.
“While the National Labor Relations Act is supposed to protect and encourage collective bargaining, in reality our laws are so outdated and broken that workers are routinely denied that freedom form and join unions and bargain collectively with their employers for a better life; and
WHEREAS, each year, more than 20,000 American workers are illegally threatened, coerced, or terminated for attempting to form a union; and…
WHEREAS, according to a research paper commissioned by the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission, 92 percent of companies respond to union organizing by forcing employees to attend anti-union presentations, 50 percent threaten to close the plant if workers vote for a union, and 25 percent actually fire workers for trying to organize; and…
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Davis City Council supports the Employee Free Choice Act, which would authorize the National Labor Relations Board to certify a union as the bargaining representative when a majority of employees voluntarily sign authorizations designating that union to represent them; provide for first contract mediation and arbitration; and establish meaningful penalties for violations of a worker’s freedom to choose a union; and
THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Davis City Council urges Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to protect and preserve for America’s workers their freedom to choose for themselves whether or not to form a union.”
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Wasn’t it Obama who wants to pass a law making it necessary for union workers votes to be made public, not kept private?
Isn’t it true that it is the teachers’ unions that are insisting the teachers not take a paycut, to the detriment of newly hired teachers?
Isn’t it the firefighters union that has gotten out of hand in Davis?
Isn’t it the public safety unions (police and fire) that are bankrupting this state, e.g. Vallejo?
Isn’t it true that often labor union execs get big fat salaries, just like the execs of companies, while the union worker receives very little compensation in comparison.
Just asking…
Obama supports this legislation.
Look it’s very simple and this is my view on it. If Unions go unchecked by management then they can be problematic.
The other side of the story is that if workers are not allowed to unionized, then we see what happens, and it’s happened throughout the history of modern Capitalism.
We need the system of checks and balances. All this legislation does is give them the right to unionize without fear retaliation from their employers. This legislation does that.
That does not mean that we give unions Carte Blanche and have management fail to act as a check against them. That’s what has happened with some of the public sector unions you have cited above.
Lt. Governor John Garamendi is a shameless hustler of populist class warfare to advance his political career.
While we are blaming CEOs for everything wrong with our economy, let’s also include all the leftist movie stars that make $5-30 million per movie because it is hundreds of times more than the average stagehand makes. Let’s include professional athletes like Michael Phelps and Tiger Woods who make tens of thousands of times more than most of the people that work in their industries.
The unions broke the US auto industry and they are breaking cities across the country. There is no question that many CEOs in the financial sector are culpable for many of the problems we are facing, but most CEOs are talents that have risen to the top through a filtering process as competitive as Phelps and Woods doing their thing over several years.
Also, Garamendi fails to acknowledge the influence of a global economy on CEO salaries. Multi-nationals are hyper-complicated business models with a much larger economic footprint than prior norms.
The US needs more jobs, not more unionized labor… because the later will result in less of the former.
To me there hasn’t been enough class warfare. We’ve let Wall Street run amuck and meanwhile the little guys are living on dirt, in some cases literally.
We need need unionized labor because we see what happens to workers who do not have protections.
“Obama supports this legislation.”
Meanwhile he is supporting legislation that forces a union member’s vote to be made public. Does this make sense to you?
“The other side of the story is that if workers are not allowed to unionized, then we see what happens, and it’s happened throughout the history of modern Capitalism.”
What we see is that WITH UNIONS, top execs at companies are walking away w huge salaries, bonuses, perks, as the company goes under or takes bailout money. So Garamendi’s statement “Why is it time to change, because the working men and women of California have taken the short end of the paycheck for too long. In 1965 the CEO’s had a ratio of 24 to 1 on their paycheck. What happened in the ensuing years? In 1980 it went to 42 for the CEO and one dollar for the working men and women. Get your boos together because in 2006 it went to 364 dollars for every dollar. Enough already. It’s time to put equity and fairness back to America and the Employee Free Choice Act is the way to do it.” is a load of horse manure. We’ve had unions around for a long time, and they have not curbed the financial abuses of top execs in companies one iota. Union bosses have just gotten into the game, of excessive salaries for top execs!
“And btw, I’ve never once ever argued that firefighters shouldn’t organize in unions and shouldn’t fight for what they believe they deserve. My only problem is with the city failing to stand up and act as a brake against their unreasonable demands and siding with the voters and taxpayers.”
Problem is there needs to be a check on unions, bc politicians are paid in campaign contributions by the unions. We saw this very thing w our Davis firefighters. So the City Council will not act as a brake on union misbehavior.
And you still haven’t answered my question about 1) union execs getting huge salaries; 2) teachers unions urging teachers not to take a paycut in the face of so many potential layoffs.
Unions may not be the panacea you make them out to be. I have had first hand experience w unions, when I refused to strike as a teacher. It got very nasty. The striking teachers did all sorts of things to me and the others that did not strike. I did not strike bc I promised not to in my contract – and unlike the other teachers, I am a man of my word.
I was surprised to see such a major rift between unions and George McGovern: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afjp4Cx-3W0
He’s no doubt on to something. As Dolores Huerta can attest, public votes mixed with union politics and rivalries can result in ugly intimidation of the sort many of her people were subjected to in the Nevada Democratic caucuses.
Is there a way to re-tool the bill for secret ballots?
What is the down-side of secret ballots?
[u]”Man”[/u]
It makes sense to me, because the way it’s set up now it’s a public vote. The only way that you can get it up to a vote is to sign a public declaration that the employers scrutinize and they basically use that step to coerce employees.
Unions aren’t there to curb the financial abuses of top execs, they are there to protect the rights of workers from those abusive top execs.
I agree with you, in the case of the city of Davis, I don’t think that the city has done its job. And I’ve been fighting that fight as well.
Most union organizers are workers themselves. There is paid staff, most of them do not get a lot of money, believe me. There may be a few at the top who do get huge salaries, I don’t really see that as a reason to oppose unions. Most unions have leadership that is democratically electly and that leadership is either not compensated or done so at standard rates. For instance one of the public employee unions their President makes $40K per year.
“teachers unions urging teachers not to take a paycut in the face of so many potential layoffs.”
That’s unfortunate but their choice ultimately as to whether to accept a paycut or layoffs. I think it’s a very unfortunate situation that leads to that. I don’t think that’s a reason to oppose unions. In fact, I can only imagine what would happen to many of those teachers if they didn’t have a union and a collective bargaining agreement.
[u]John:[/u]
Good to you on here. I don’t think there’s a down-side to secret ballot per se, but there is a down-side to have a two-step sequence of events to have an election which allows employers to go after those who sign cards. Those workers are unprotected in the interim without having a recognized union to defend them.
[i]”In fact, I [b]can only imagine[/b] what would happen to many of those teachers if they didn’t have a union and a collective bargaining agreement.”[/i]
You [b]can only imagine[/b] bad things?
I don’t think it would make much of a difference at all in the long-term in Davis.
Before Davis teachers were organized by the CTA, their wages and benefits amounted to most of the budget of the DJUSD; and since they formed the DTA, the teachers’ wages and benefits amount to most of the budget of the DJUSD at the same percentage.
It might have been slightly easier to fire a bad teacher prior to the creation of the DTA. But teacher tenure predates unionization; and tenure is a strong protection, regardless of classroom performance.
If the DTA did not exist now, the Board might be bolder in proffering a slight wage reduction; and I guess the teachers would have to accept it. However, whether there is a small wage reduction or a mass firing (40 teachers), the percentage of the budget dedicated to the classrooms will stay the same. What is unclear to me is how the alternative of firing 40 teachers is pro-teacher, while cutting the wages of non-teachers in the district by 4% and saving those 40 teaching jobs at 96% of last year’s wage (which is higher than the previous year’s) is anti-teacher? The teachers need a union to accomplish [i]that[/i]?
Like President Obama, I support basing teacher remuneration on performance — paying much more to the best teachers; and less to the bad ones — while teachers’ unions, like the DTA, abhor the idea. But the salient fact about merit pay in Davis is that we never had in prior to unionization and we don’t have it now and won’t likely have it in the future. Hence, if the DTA disappeared, that probably would have no impact on issues like that.
I am confounded as to what good the DTA really does for its membership as a whole.
“We need need unionized labor because we see what happens to workers who do not have protections.”
Unions do not create jobs. Unions have the oposite effect. With our strong labor laws protecting private workers, why do we need unions? If a company can run effecively with one highly paid CEO, and 100 non-union employees, why would anyone think the same company could run better with a much less highly paid CEO and 200 unionized employees? The argument is just plain stupid.
“The unions did not break the auto industry, the lousy products of the US auto manufacturers did.”
The unions contributed to the decline of the US auto industry. Even if you disagree with this, how did unionization help all these workers in this case? Did their collective bargaining for more job security result in more job security? All it did was inflate their rate of pay and benefits to the point that the highly-paid CEO could not make any early moves to correct the broken business model. The union broke the US auto industry after it created fewer, higher-paying jobs. I’m sorry but this is another stupid argument.
I agree with Mr. Greenwald that Union’s protect workers but must be offset by management. Business is better for everyone when both sides of the table are strong.
Examples of bad unions do not invalidate their usefulness, just as examples of bad business invalidates capital models… The problem here isn’t Unions or Business but rather the lack of a truly independant politic. Politicians are generally either in one camp or the other and this has largely contributed to the abuses of both Unions and Businesses.
This isn’t the place to have this discussion but I just want to comment on Mr. Rifkin’s comment about merit based pay for teachers. In a society where teaching is mandated this isn’t feasible. Merit based pay in higher education makes a lot of sense. If we agree Universities are there to educate people and no conduct research. Everyone in college wants to be there and are paying for it. Students in public schools though are not there by choice, are crowded into rooms with 20-30 others, and then shuffled every 30-40 minutes between teachers. This is not the ideal format for learning or teaching. Teacher’s can’t insure that once out of their care their pupils have the time and atmosphere for studying and learning.
The issue is much more complicated than pay good teachers more. An issue that is largely based on factors outside of the teacher’s control. My father has been teaching math in a disadvantages school for 10+ years now, he’s been nominated by his peers for teacher of the year on more than one occasion, his students respect him, many of them love him, the ones who move on to college have returned to thank him for his efforts. If you looked at all his student’s standardized test results my dad would be punished by these merit based schemes though.
[i]”If you looked at all his student’s standardized test results my dad would be punished by these merit based schemes though.”[/i]
Hi Jonathan — nice to talk with you “electronically.”
The merit-based pay systems that Obama supports — as do I — would benefit your father, especially if he is working with “disadvantaged” students.
The merit pay would not be based on your dad’s students’ average test score at the end of a term compared with the mean of another teacher’s whose students were “advantaged.” That’s not how merit pay works.
The question is about progress. If your dad’s class started out scoring in the 20th percentile on a standard test, and at the end of the year, they scored in the 65th percentile, your father would be rewarded for the 45 points of improvement. Another teacher, whose kids began at the 89th percentile, but finished at the 80th, would have ended up 15 points ahead of your dad. However, because they did not show progress, their teacher would not get a merit bonus.
Also, most merit-pay programs are not exclusively based on standardized tests. They include rewarding teachers for mentoring new teachers, peer review and principal review. Most importantly, they have worked. That is why Arne Duncan and Obama support them. [url]http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2009/03/duncan_thinks_his_boss_did_a.html[/url]
I don’t think any of that matters in Davis, because our Board won’t support merit pay, no matter what the data show.
Rich:
There are problems with what you accurately describe as Obama’s merit pay proposal.
Measuring improvement via standardized testing is asking for trouble. The higher the stakes with standardized testing, the more people use tricks to get better scores. Famously, Texas’ TAAS, the program developed by Bush Sec Ed Rod Paige, and the basis for NCLB, created a number of problems. Children were held back from, then skipped over, the key tested grades. Dropout rates increased, and readiness for UT decreased.
The micro problem is that teachers and schools are tempted to focus resources on children who yield the most improvement per classroom-hour, those who move the average most easily.
We see this now, with some school districts reassigning staff to those just below grade level, and pulling staff from children who are a few grade levels behind, and children a few grade levels ahead. These two groups simply do not improve as rapidly as those just below average.
We then have stories about districts (one of which is in the Sac’to area iirc) that get sued for breaking federal IDEA law for not offering adequate services to children with learning disabilities.
Most of all, the merit pay discussion, offering something for nothing, reinforces the same myth of failure that Obama does. For 40 years, PDK/Gallup has found that about 2/3 of all Americans say their own schools deserve an A or a B, but most also say other schools (that they don’t happen to have experience with) deserve a C or lower. It’s almost as if they are responding to a smear campaign.
The tip off that this is an unserious proposal is it’s paired with increased support for charter schools. Charter schools have lower average performance than public schools, so if progress is a problem, charter schools are the answer?
Of course there are other problems with merit pay, like teachers will likely face a politicized work environment, kissing up to whoever is on the review board.
Those teachers who welcome troubled children and do anything other than punch up the tested curriculum will be punished.
There are serious problems with k-12 in pockets, but it’s hard not to think merit pay is a cynical diversion from more expensive solutions to deeper problems.
Pacific,
Take a look at this 2007 New York Times article. [url]http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/education/18pay.html[/url] It might change your view.
I think this quote from that article is telling:
[i]John Roper-Batker, a science teacher here, said his first reaction was dismay when he heard his school was considering participating in the plan in 2004.
“I wanted to get involved just to make sure it wouldn’t happen,” he said.
But after learning more, Mr. Roper-Batker said, “I became a salesman for it.” He and his colleagues have voted in favor of the plan twice by large margins.[/i]
I’m sure there are some unintended consequences with merit pay. However, the problems you have described are not happening more in merit systems than in traditional ones, as far as I know. I read a 2008 academic survey of merit pay schemes — done by a woman at Stanford — which concluded that student performance in all demographics benefitted, ceteris paribus, from merit pay, but students in the lowest socio-economic group benefitted the most. The largest such pilot program for these kids was run by Arne Duncan, now Obama’s Sec. of Education.
The Stanford study is, alas, not on-line; you can get it at Shields. Look at the Harvest catalog for UCD.
Rich:
Merit pay might work in some circumstances, but at best it’s tinkering with a system of standardized testing that many parents and professionals would like to scrap altogether.
I do know that Duncan is running experiments in Chicago, and is claiming credit for improved test scores. I also know that the Obamas were not able to find a public school good enough for their daughter and that test scores in Chicago follow a general nationwide trend that started well before major federal experiments (Where’s the merit in that? ;-). Duncan is also controversial since he twice fired the entire teaching staff at one school, and is an advocate of military style academies within the public system, with no clear justification in discipline or academic performance.
Duncan’s major problem is that he’s not a teacher and doesn’t have a particularly strong record of accomplishment. He is one of Obama’s basketball buddy…
I’m willing to admit that merit pay is a minor issue, but wonder why we aren’t talking about something more impressive out of a Democratic administration. I’m pretty sure Jack O’Connell could write something on a bar napkin better than what this administration wants to spend the next four years on.
John
This will bring organized crime into every business in the United States. I wouldn’t want to be a worker content without a union when the “union” thugs come to inquire about how they will vote in the very public card check process.
As these and many other stories attest, companies will go to great lengths to form a union. Opponents of unions and this process have argued that the secret ballot protects the rights of workers from harassment and intimidation. What they neglect to mention is the process to get the vote to the secret ballot requires an open signature process, scrutiny, and the opportunity for harassment and intimidation by companies who have increasingly hired anti-union consultants to break the will of the workers.
So your argument is that two wrongs make a right? Your argument (assuming it is true) is that corporations have an unfair advantage in harassing and intimidating its workers over unions. I’m sorry, but this is about civil rights. No individual should be harassed at the ballot box for a vote by either his/her employer or his or her union. I don’t give a crap which has an advantage. It doesn’t make it right. Neither entity should be able to do it. Democracy means we as individuals should have the right to do whatever we please when we go to the polls.
Furthermore, there shouldn’t be anykind of process to get a secret ballot. People should be able to vote anonymously period. It is not my boss’ business how I vote.
8)
Fred: what you’ve described happens now with the employers who have far more power than the unions you seem to fear. They have the power to fire employees in retaliation for trying to form a union. Interesting that you seem so concerned about what might happen but don’t seem to give a damn about what is happening now.
“No individual should be harassed at the ballot box for a vote by either his/her employer or his or her union.”
So the question is what are you proposing to do to prevent the abuse that has led this legislation to come forward. It does not come from isolation, it comes from years of abuse. Some of the stories Greenwald shares are typical examples.
The secret ballot is one of the fundamental underpinnings of a democratic system.
In demanding its removal, Obama is launching an attack on basic freedoms beyond anything proposed by Bush.
It won’t be long before we start seeing “Impeach Obama” bumper stickers.
Well, I’m all for unions, but the teacher’s union, the fireman’s union, prison union and police unions all practice the same policies and selfish acts that AIG execs do. Ironically, they are government entities and they fully exploit their positions of power. Why are we still overpaying these unions while people in the private sector are suffereing immensely. Even unions in the private sector have taken a beating and have had to renegotiate thier contracts. Why are we demonizing unions when we need to be going after the ones that are truly in power. The other unions in the private sector are good and i’m all for the employee free choice act, but please, don’t forget the government unions. They are the ones that are really leaching the budget dry.
Jack:
I agree with you, the secret ballot is one of the fundamental underpinnings of a democratic system. But imagine a democratic system where the only way to vote on something is you had to send in a card and have your employer scrutinize it before it gets on the ballot where you then can vote by secret ballot. That’s what the current system does. Kind of undermines the idea that it’s a secret ballot.
“Also, most merit-pay programs are not exclusively based on standardized tests. They include rewarding teachers for mentoring new teachers, peer review and principal review. Most importantly, they have worked. That is why Arne Duncan and Obama support them. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek…did_a.html”
I read the article, and it was not a ringing endorsement of merit pay. Did we read the same article? Like everything else, there are up sides and down sides to the idea of merit based pay. The biggest problem w it is who gets to decide, and what are the criteria? Frankly, reading the article, it seemed to me as if it is being supported bc it results in pay increases for some teachers. Who is going to turn down the possibility of an increase in pay. Call me a cynic, but it sounds as if it is just another way for more money to be spent on public education. It has a feel good sound, but in practice doesn’t always work very well. But Obama sounds like he is doing something to improve education.
Bush had the right idea, then backed off it, bc he doesn’t have the courage of his convictions. Test schools regularly, and if the school doesn’t come up to snuff, then give kids vouchers to go elsewhere. This has been tried in inner city schools that are abysmal, and it has worked to improve the educational opportunities for our children.
“There are serious problems with k-12 in pockets, but it’s hard not to think merit pay is a cynical diversion from more expensive solutions to deeper problems.”
This is exactly right!
“Furthermore, there shouldn’t be anykind of process to get a secret ballot. People should be able to vote anonymously period. It is not my boss’ business how I vote.”
Exactly right. To do anything less in unAmerican! My understanding is that Obama is pushing for legislation that would make votes within the union public – THIS IS WRONG! Intimidation by the union is no better than intimidation by the company. We’ve seen this at the local level w our firefighters union and Bobby Weist.
“Well, I’m all for unions, but the teacher’s union, the fireman’s union, prison union and police unions all practice the same policies and selfish acts that AIG execs do.”
Absolutely!
“Kind of undermines the idea that it’s a secret ballot.”
So does Obama’s legislation to make union voting public.
Can somebody explain why we need unions today? Provide me examples where unionized organizations aren’t in trouble (auto industry) or aren’t causing trouble (fire fighters and prison guards) or aren’t under-performing (teachers and public employees). I can only think of two… the screen actors and writers guilds. I think judgment day is around the corner for them too. Even professional sports athletes seem to be headed toward a crisis with their unionized business model.
I get the best products and best service at Nugget… the only non-union large grocery store in Davis.
The job requirement for an executive manager of a unionized private company is to have experience in collective bargaining. Unionized labor effectively creates an “us against them” company culture that harasses managers into spending too much time on non-strategic issues. It is a broken mindset: more a vision that business and organizations should take care of people rather than a business or organization taking care of customers so workers continue to have jobs. The US auto industry is a perfect example of what unionized labor will eventually do to a private company in our fast-moving global economy. Note that it wasn’t just one US auto company that is failing… it is all of them (although Ford managers seem to find enough strategic-planning time to maintain more cash liquidity).
Especially in California, individual workers benefit from a myriad of labor-friendly laws and services to prevent exploitation and unfair treatment by employers. What then does a union provide a worker other than inflated wages and benefits that will eventually cause the company or city to fail?
“Especially in California, individual workers benefit from a myriad of labor-friendly laws and services to prevent exploitation and unfair treatment by employers.”
Only way to enforce those laws without a union to back you is to sue.
“Can somebody explain why we need unions today?”
Talk to the guy who worked for Blue Diamond, he’ll tell you.
“Talk to the guy who worked for Blue Diamond, he’ll tell you.”
Please explain this statement!
One of the speakers was a worker from Blue Diamond. They were working under horrendous conditions, tried to form a union, and the company hired an anti-union consultant, and retaliated against him. It was a pretty horrific story. Blue Diamond is notorious for their union-busting activities.
It was not one consultant, IT WAS A Team of ten anti union consultants. who were on site 24 hours a day WALKING AROUND DURING WORK HOURS TALKING TO EMPLOYEES WHILE THEyY WORKED. meeting 3X a week and these consultans were present during the “vote” where employees were lead to vote by supervisors and security to vote at work during work just hours after being told a vote for the union was a vote against your employment. and being asked the question how will you support your family when the union comes in here and your forced out of work. political campaigns have nothing compared to the campaign Blue Diamond forced upon us employees. WE NEED THE EFCA!