Labor

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.

Last Tuesday, congressional champions for working families reintroduced key bills that would update and strengthen America's fair pay laws. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that would amend the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and that saw considerable action last Congress. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) introduced their Fair Pay Act, a bill designed to address the occupational segregation that can exacerbate the pay gap.

These bills were reintroduced on Equal Pay Day. This unhappy "holiday" represents the day when women finally catch up to what men made, on average, in the previous calendar year.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) may be on the brink of making a major change in national labor policy without resorting to the basic strictures of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), which requires federal agencies to adhere to certain standards when issuing new regulations, including conducting cost benefit assessments and providing the public notice and a full and fair opportunity to comment. 

Specifically, the Board has announced its intent to reconsider the standards that have governed for decades what constitutes an appropriate unit for purposes of union representation and collective bargaining. The Board, over a strident dissent by the lone Republican member, has done so in the context of adjudicating a single case, one in which no party requested such a sweeping review of existing law. The Board’s actions are questionable both as a matter of substantive policy and administrative procedure, and smack of an effort to achieve through agency fiat radical statutory changes Congress has declined to enact. 

With America engaged in military action abroad on multiple fronts, as well as waging our own war on unemployment and spending here at home, the issue of who is actually manufacturing our military equipment seems particularly relevant. Just weeks after Boeing’s hard-fought win over European rival EADS for the $35 billion tanker contract comes another U.S. Air Force (USAF) request for a new plane. And in much the same fashion as the tanker contract, this new request is also pitting America’s manufacturing labor force against that from a foreign country.

The Boeing selection was a win-win for America not only because they produce the finest, state-of-the-art air tankers with generations of American know-how behind them, but also because tens of thousands of aerospace jobs across numerous states were either protected or created along the supply chain that supports this industry. And the same would hold true in this latest case.

On Wednesday, March 30th, the Congressional Caucus on Homelessness hosted its first briefing of the 112th Congress, entitled: A Growing Epidemic: Homeless Children, Youth, and Families. An epidemic is exactly what homelessness is in our country. In 2009, the nation’s family homeless population was 243,156, an increase of 6,252 people from 2008. The number of homeless children and families throughout the United States is appalling. Overall, more than half a million people in the United States do not have a place to call home each night and half of them are without shelter.  This was the fourth briefing the Caucus has hosted since its founding last year by myself and Co-Chairs, Representatives Judy Biggert (IL), Geoff Davis (KY), and Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX). 

My mother used to say to me: “Who you pass on your way up are the same people you pass on the way down.” The families that we spoke about at last week’s briefing are just like yours and mine. All it takes is an unexpected bill, a company downsizing, or a bad mortgage—to create a situation where a family cannot maintain housing. 

The nightmare for far too many is Cyborgs. 

The public fears HAL, the 2001 Space Odyssey computer that killed astronauts rather than forfeit its objective. 

So terrified of the sentient machine, citizens overlook the allegory. The soft-spoken, reasonable-sounding HAL behaves exactly like a greed-driven, multi-national corporation. The corporate mission is profit. With 29 workers massacred in a Massey mine explosion and 11 slain in the BP oil rig explosion in just one month last year, greedy corporations have shown they’re willing to kill rather than forfeit their profit objective. 

A much maligned American labor movement had lost much of its appeal to today’s workers, but all that is changing, thanks to some over-reaching Republican governors led by Wisconsin’s Scott Walker.  In their clumsy efforts to take away worker collective bargaining rights, these Ronald Reagan wannabees are revitalizing union support all across America.

For years, hostile employers and right-wing think tanks have told workers that in this enlightened age unions are not relevant to their needs, that unions only wanted their dues dollars and they’d get nothing in return.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his crew of country club conservatives this week brutalized the nation’s democratic traditions to secure legislation demanded by big corporations and billionaire conservative financiers like the Koch brothers – legislation stripping workers of collective bargaining rights.

Walker & Crew succeeded in terminating workers’ rights – but they achieved that only by violating traditional American democratic values. They positioned themselves with dictators who act against the will of the people, deny free speech rights and suppress protests. 

For the past two years, unions have aggressively been seeking to do away with the right to a secret ballot in favor of their preferred method of recognition: a simple check of signed cards requesting a union. Card-check allows the workplace to be organized if 50 percent of workers at the site sign a union card. For me, there is no right more precious for any American than the right to a secret ballot. It’s how the President of the United States, members of Congress, and even union leaders are elected. I strongly believe in preserving the individual worker’s right to vote by secret ballot before joining a union, and I am pleased that card- check legislation did not advance. From an economic and a regulatory standpoint, we must continue to protect the individual’s right to a secret ballot.