Labor

With all the challenges facing our aviation system, we’re also having to worry about in-flight fires due to poorly regulated lithium battery transport. Why? Because some members of the House of Representatives want to put profits before safety by blocking needed in-flight battery safety rules as part of the pending aviation safety bill. Anti-government ideology and special interest corporate lobbying trump common sense safety reform. We’ve seen this move before.
 
Lithium-ion batteries are commonplace in everyday life – they power smartphones, laptops and power tools. Lithium-metal batteries power watches, flashlights and digital cameras. But when they are defective, damaged or exposed to a significant heat source, they can self-ignite. That’s a bad outcome anywhere, but especially at 35,000 feet.

At first glance, the debonair Barack Obama who had European leaders fawning over him does not appear to have much in common with the gruff Richard Nixon, the only U.S. President to have resigned to avoid impeachment.

But according to conservative critics of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Obama, like Nixon before him, has an “enemies list” and South Carolina and Boeing are on it (somewhere below Osama Bin Laden, presumably – and look what happened to him!).

Imagine that someone presented you with the following proposition: You can have $10, with more to come. You’re just asked to pitch in a penny to improve your neighborhood. You’d probably be quick to take that deal, right? Well, that’s basically the offer on the table right now for the American economy, yet some in Washington are waffling.

Each year international trade adds one trillion dollars to our economy – translating into $9,000 in annual benefits for the average household. Trade supports 1 out of 5 American jobs, and jobs sustained by exporting products pay 13-18 percent more than the national average. Overall, trade is a very good deal for America.

But, even as the vast benefits of trade are broadly enjoyed, we can’t pretend that they come for free. It’s been estimated that about 500,000 jobs are lost due to trade each year. These displaced workers, who represent about 3 percent of the large churn in our permanent labor market, essentially foot the bill for the greater good that trade does for our economy.

Morale – the esprit de corps or "spirit of the body" – is the capacity of a group of people to hold a common spirit of loyalty and comradeship. We think of morale as being deep seeded in the psyche of the individual or group.

Execution, on the other hand, is the process of reaching an objective as the result of performance. A team's ability to execute is more of a surface measurement that's easily evaluated by an outside observer.

Morale and execution are the cornerstones of powerful sales organizations. Most organizations recognize the importance of a sales team's ability to execute, since that is measured by numbers. However, some underrate the importance of morale, which is difficult to measure and is often confused with enthusiasm or situational motivation generated from, for example, a spirited sales meeting. Situational motivation is generally short-lived, but morale is ingrained and tends to have a lasting quality, unless conditions degrade it.

This week marked National Small Business Week, with a series of activities and events recognizing the special impact made by outstanding entrepreneurs and small business owners. 

As small business owners ourselves and co-chairs of the Main Street Alliance of Oregon, a statewide network of small business owners, we support any effort that highlights the hard work of small business and advances policies that will help us grow, create jobs, and compete. 

We all knew it was only a matter of time before the president’s choice for the head of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) showed his true colors.

Even with a Democrat controlled Senate, President Obama couldn’t get Craig Becker approved to head the NLRB because of his connections to labor unions and his career as an attorney for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). So, as he has done before when he can’t get his way in Congress, the president opted to sidestep the constitutional authority of the Senate to approve his appointments and gave Becker a recess appointment.

And although he was slow to start, he’s worked himself into a frenzy gaining favor with unions all across the nation.

Since the National Labor Relations Board announced its complaint against Boeing last week, members of the National Association of Manufacturers have expressed alarm at what the outcome of the complaint would mean for their companies, their ability to create jobs and compete in a global marketplace and our nation's economy as a whole.

They, and all Americans, should be concerned about the impact of a negative outcome in this case. If the NLRB succeeds, no company will be safe from them stepping in at any time to second-guess their business decisions on where to locate and whom to hire.

At the heart of the debate on this issue is whether an employer has the right to consider past work disruptions in decisions about where to expand or locate new operations.

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The Clearwater Paper Corp. in Lewistown, Idaho chose the king cobra to symbolize its workplace safety program. A cobra. One of the deadliest snakes on the planet.

Every day on his way to and from work at Clearwater, John Bergen III drove past a billboard in the company parking lot sporting a picture of a king cobra and the explanation that it represented the company’s behavior-based safety program – Changing Our Behavior Reduces Accidents – COBRA.

Bergen, a devoted father, a gifted artist and a conscientious worker who urged everyone to observe safety rules, died last summer after inadvertently stepping through a gaping opening in the floor of the Clearwater Paper mill.

Behavior-based workplace safety programs like COBRA are attempts by corporations to shirk responsibility to eliminate hazards by blaming workers instead. When workers die, behavior-based programs disrespect the deceased by blaming them for their own deaths. These safety programs say to Bergen’s young son, “Your daddy’s dead because he wasn’t careful enough.” 

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Arizona and Wisconsin may seem like a world apart. But they have more in common than you think. In these states and many others, working people – immigrant and native-born alike – are under fierce attack by corporate-backed politicians.

From Arizona laws that mandate racial profiling to Wisconsin laws that strip workers’ rights to collectively bargain for a middle class way of life, working families everywhere are under assault. Corporate CEOs and the politicians they finance benefit from creating a toxic environment where immigrants, public employees and working men and women are scapegoated for all the problems we face. They tell us immigrants steal our jobs – hoping we forget the millions of American jobs they ship overseas. They say firefighters and policemen are overpaid – hoping we ignore Wall Street’s colossal bonuses, million-dollar salaries and endless corporate greed. They say immigrants don’t pay taxes – hoping we don’t notice that corporations like GE and Exxon Mobil rake in billions in profit and pay nothing in taxes.

“S.C. political leaders used words such as ‘frivolous,’ ‘shameful’ and ‘ludicrous’ Thursday to describe a National Labor Relations Board complaint against Boeing, which is building a $750 million aircraft assembly plant in the state.” This was the lead in the Associated Press story from North Charleston.

If there was any doubt whether or not the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under the Obama administration had declared war on job creators, it was answered the other day when the “independent,” taxpayer-funded agency decided a company did not have the right to build a facility in a right-to-work state.

This outrageous and borderline insane notion stems from Boeing’s decision to build a new factory in South Carolina in order to meet demand for their 787 Dreamliner commercial aircraft.