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Corporate Greed Behind Opposition to Employee Free Choice |
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Pundits, journalists and even economists have strained to find the reasons for our nation’s economic meltdown, stumbling over tortured concepts like “structured investment vehicles” and “collateralized debt.”
The underlying problem is much simpler. In fact, it can be described in six words: The corporate search for cheap labor.
While some people may have overextended themselves by taking out loans on their homes or piling up credit card debt for non-essentials, millions of Americans had no choice but to survive through debt. They needed to pay for health care, college tuition and car repairs. Why? Because even working two or three jobs, they aren’t paid sufficiently to support their families. Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren repeatedly has discussed how the majority of personal bankruptcies happen after a medical crisis or job loss, rather than because of too many 124-inch flat screen TV sets.
Foreclosures, credit card debt and the panoply of miseries we’re now facing are a result, not a cause. They are the consequences of nearly 40 years in which the corporate search for the cheapest possible labor has meant U.S. productivity has skyrocketed while wages stagnated.
And when the corporate masters couldn’t pay wages as low as they wanted in this country, they moved jobs abroad.
Understanding this simple premise—the corporate search for cheap labor—helps explain a lot of what’s going on right now. In our fight for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would level the management-worker playing field so workers seeking to join a union can do so without employer harassment, we’re facing a likely $200 million campaign to kill it.
The Big Money opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act are throwing out a slew of arguments against it, hoping something will stick. But at bottom, the reason for their opposition is greed. Greed at the expense of America’s workers and the nation’s middle class.
Mostly, the opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act cloak their arguments in nice-sounding phrases that disguise their real goal. But sometimes, the truth comes out. Such is the case with Gary Shapiro, president and chief executive officer of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), a U.S. trade association representing 2,200 consumer electronics companies. In attacking the Employee Free Choice Act, Shapiro was careful to drape his argument in the ol’ red, white and blue. But his real message seeped out: Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act will mean better wages, health care and retirement security for workers. And rather than support America’s middle-class, corporations should ship those jobs overseas.
Read between the lines here and see Shapiro’s not-so-veiled threat:
A fast-moving, successful tech company with differential compensation and incentive compensation and the need to adapt quickly is inconsistent with the straitjacket of a union environment. The tech industry executives I represent simply can’t believe Congress would enact a card-check law that could force jobs overseas.
The opposition can fill the airwaves with lies about the Employee Free Choice Act taking away the secret ballot (it doesn’t), or creating an atmosphere in which unions coerce workers (in fact, a review of National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] decisions found only 42 cases of union fraud or coercion over more than six decades since the NLRB was established. Compared with the nearly 27,000 instances of company violations of workers’ rights in 2006 alone, it’s clear that corporate anti-union scaremongering is a ploy to disguise the anti-worker agenda.)
And sometimes, the opposition can get carried away with its own rhetoric. Witness Bernie Marcus, former CEO of Home Depot, who in November said this about the Employee Free Choice Act:
This is the demise of a civilization…if a retailer has not gotten involved with this, if he has not spent money on this election…he should be shot.”
But fundamentally, opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act is all about corporate greed and shafting America’s middle class.
13 Comments
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Thank you for including part of my rationale for why the tech industry is so strongly opposing the card check proposal. It is also gracious of you to allow me to post a comment.
My dad was a union organizer, but we were raised to stand up for what we believe. I travel the world and I see countries that were once great (France) ruined by constant strikes. I see third world countries like India where basics (electricity, plumbing, and clean air) are lacking. I wish the union leaders pushing card check would see what I see.
I am concerned that our American way of life is being threatened by our growing debt and sense of entitlement. I know (as scores of CEOs have told me) that companies will move jobs overseas if card check passes and it will be devastating to our country. We are competing on a world stage and the higher wages made by US workers are a slight competitive disadvantage that can be overcome. What cannot be overcome are all the other challenges a union environment and government arbitration imposes on an employer which make it non-competitive.
Hasn’t the failure of Detroit auto companies because of the union platinum benefits and job halls (and bad management decisions) taught us anything?
We are Americans and share a desire to take care of our families and give our kids a better life than we had. I think our nation can do that by encouraging investment and jobs in this country. That means employers have to choose this nation to employ workers. That is not a given!
Tech is risky. Boom and bust. Workers are paid well - especially in good times. But you have to move quickly and adjust to markets and cut losses. That is painful - but that is the free market. The tech industry has spurred our national growth. I so much want it to continue and that is why a new law making overnight union creation a possibility and a government arbitrator an incentivized reality is a bad thing. I ask you to reconsider your support for it as it will send millions of jobs overseas and leave Americans unemployed.
Gary Shapiro
President and CEO
Consumer Electronics Association
http://www.ce.org.
Mr Shapiro, we don’t care if your Dad was a union organizer. You are a union buster, and that’s what’s relevant today.
You cite France and India as two countries runied by unions. Newsflash: The USA isn’t France or India.
The French have health care coverage, thanks to unions. As for India, it’s one of those sweatshop nations to which you are sending our jobs.
You pay non-union Indian labor starvation wages and you blame…UNIONS?
Detroit car companies failed because they make bad cars no one wants, then they are left holding the bag for insurance costs that in other competing countries — FRANCE, Mr Shapiro — are borne by everyone, even wealthy people like you, Mr Shapiro.
You assert that, in good times, your industry pays workers well. That is untrue. As producctivity has marched up, wages in industries like yours stayed flat.
In good times, you took the money. In bad times you run.
Shame on you, Mr Shapiro. I’ll bet your father would say the same.
You and your organization are poster children for Employee Free Choice.
Amending The Employee Free Choice Act. A Compromise Every Union Can Live With.
The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is legislation in the United States which aims to “amend the National Labor Relations Act to establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes.
Under current labor law, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board will certify a union as the exclusive representative of employees if it is elected by either a majority signature drive, the card check process, or by secret ballot NLRB election, which is held if more than 30% of employees in a bargaining unit sign statements asking for representation by a union. If enacted, this bill would require the NLRB to certify a bargaining representative without directing an election if a majority of the bargaining unit employees signed cards, the card check process.
Pursuant to the bill, a union can demand that an employer begin bargaining within ten days of certification of the union as the exclusive bargaining representative for an appropriate unit of employees via the card check. In addition, if the union and employer cannot agree upon the terms of a first collective bargaining contract within ninety days, either party can request federal mediation, which could lead to binding arbitration if an agreement still cannot be reached after thirty days of mediation.
Where government arbitration determines terms of the agreement,employees would lose their current right to ratify the terms of the agreement.
Finally, the Act would provide for liquidated damages of three times back pay if employers were found to have unlawfully terminated pro-union employees.The EFCA also would impose a $20,000 penalty upon employers for each employer violation of the proposed legislation if the NLRB and/or a court deems the violation willful or repetitive.
Why is the Employee Free Choice Act so important in leveling the playing field.
The AFL-CIO argues that, in practice, company-run secret ballots actually make the process less democratic:
People call the current National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election system a secret ballot election—but in fact it’s not like any democratic election held anywhere else in our society. It’s really a management-controlled election process because corporations have all the power. They control the information workers can receive and routinely poison the process by intimidating, harassing, coercing and even firing people who try to organize unions.
No employee has free choice after being browbeaten by a supervisor to oppose the union or being told they might lose their job and livelihood if workers vote for the union.
Martin Jay Levitt said it best when he said:
“Union busting is a field populated by bullies and built on deceit. A campaign against a union is an assault on individuals and a war on the truth. As such, it is a war without honor. The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always, always attack.”—
Confessions of a Union Buster
by Martin Jay Levitt
When corporations seek to stay union free, they often do so by hiring labor relations consultants or labor attorneys. Understanding that the union depends upon the support, confidence, and good will[of its members.
One of managements main reasons on why they will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in union-busters trying to prevent their employees from unionizing is the fact they know they will lose total control of their organization to their employees by way of unionization.
In regards to the Employee Free Choice Act one of the opponents’ biggest arguments is that by passing the Employee Free Choice Act it would takeaway the process of a secret ballot election.
Representative John Kline, R-Minn., has stated: “I cannot fathom how we were about to sit there today and debate a proposal to take away a worker’s democratic right to vote in a secret-ballot election and call it ‘Employee Free Choice”.
One of the most misleading arguments made by opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act is that the Employee Free Choice Act would strip American workers of their right to a private-ballot vote. This is not true.
Under the Employee Free Choice Act any union who receives majority support of those workers seeking to be represented by that particular union, will still have the right to file an election with the NLRB to conduct a secret ballot election if it so chooses. However I would agree this would be unlikely if a union does receive a majority support for a number of reasons.
One reason it would delay the process. Number two, why would any union take a chance conducting an election with the possibility of losing such an election based on management conducting an all out assault against its employee by hiring union-busters to defeat these workers. One of the biggest disadvantages against the union is that the union is not allowed access to the work force during their eight hours of work each day, but the union buster can occupy as much of that time as is considered necessary, which now subjects employees to mandatory union-busting meetings, harassment, fear, threats, coercing, twisted disinformation and many other tools union-busting consultants use.
The NLRA Section 7, is the heart of the NLRA.It defines protected activity.
National Labor Relations Act, Section 7: RIGHTS OF EMPLOYEES
Sec. 7. § 157. Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 8(a)(3) section 158(a)(3) of this title.
Having conducted over a thousand elections over the last 30 years I can clearly state that workers only achieve their Section 7 rights to unionize if they can withstand the torture and physiological warfare bestowed upon them during the critical period 42 days leading up to a secret ballot election.
Which now leads up to my next argument. In an effort to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and to level the playing field and at the same time to takeaway the oppositions most misleading argument that the Employee Free Choice Act would strip American workers of their right to a private-ballot vote, we should have congress amend H.R. 800 EFCA to include a provision whereby the signer (the employee) can either request a secret ballot election or request that the union membership card he just signed be used as a showing of interest to bypass an election under a card check provision supporting majority status under the Employee Free Choice Act.
By amending this provision the true intentions of the employee who signed the union membership card would now be clearly stated, giving true meaning to the Employee Free Choice Act, while taking away the oppositions argument that the Employee Free Choice Act would strip American workers of their right to a private secret -ballot vote.
A compromise every union can live with.
For More Information on EFCA please visit our website and blog
http://www.employeefreechoiceactnow.org
http://efcanow.blogspot.com/
What are Platnum benefits? Who will all these companies sell to, if they move their jobs overseas, because they don’t want to pay employees decent wages and benefits?
Thge people like Mr. Shapiro,just don’t want employees having any voice in their conditions of employment. When they move jobs to China, the Red Chinese government makes sure their employees don’t have any voice .
Americans should not lower their standards to that of China , India, Malaysa and other such countries.
Thank you
“Hasn’t the failure of Detroit auto companies because of the union platinum benefits and job halls (and bad management decisions) taught us anything?”
Mr. Shapiro’s clarion call for opposing EFCA rings hollow if he expects any thinking, working American to believe union workers are responsible for the problems facing American auto makers. We do not accept his premise.
Greed rules in corporate America and corporate International. Companies move to offshore havens because they can exploit workers, avoid environmental regulators and find tax shelters.
Bring your A-Game next time you visit our blog. This post is at best C material.
yea, right, Mr Shapiro. UAW salaries that make up less than 10% of the cost of a car are the reason for the downfall of the Big Three. The foreign transplants labor costs are 75-80% of those of the UAW, meaning at best, they save 2% on the labor cost of a car over Detroit. That 2% is the reason for the american auto industry’s problems? (let’s never mind that when those transplant workers retire, they will not have enough to live on or have decent health benefits, unlike the 500,000 UAW retirees. Who do you think will pick up their costs to society? that’s right, the taxpayers, including YOU Mr. Shapiro).
How stupid do you think we all are here? Please don’t insult us with your BS. Go back to your million dollar house and build a wall around it, because if you keep piling up your riches while the people that actually MAKE you the money you have get squat, you’re going to need to be afraid of a lot more than a union at your workplace.
To govern, means to control. Companies will not simply “pull out” of the United States if the products they manufacture are taxed as foreign imports. If other countries want to access our lucrative market, they shouldn’t mind paying for the privilege, it’s just business.
The UAW only manufacture the designs approved by the management team. They gambled on big trucks and SUV ’s. When gas spiked to $4.50 a gallon, the workers were the ones having to pay the price with layoffs and plant closures. Management failed to have a contingency plan in the event something like this would occur.
Americans have every right to expect a decent standard of living. Somehow it’s wrong for a worker to make enough money to buy a home but it’s O.K. for a single member of management to make tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars. - bull@#%!
On most union jobs it takes many years of hard work to reach a pay level that many college graduates start at. The college graduate will attain pay levels the auto worker will never see, so why attack the middle class?
Your right on the money with this.
In reality, this article is poorly written and says nothing!
First the “freedom of choice” is mentioned, and efforts to thwart it!
But then the REAL problem is simply ignored! And the real problem is, unionized or not, jobs are simply going overseas! Opening up unionism will not solve this problem, but could have the effect of making the matters worse!
Simply by unionizing does not guarantee companies stay in business, or for that matter “decent wages”!
Ask yourself how many jobs have been lost in unionized plants, and how many of these plants have been shut down?
Part of the headline is correct “corporate greed”! But it is WALL STREET GREED, and ANYBODY that invests in stocks/bonds/mutual funds that is driving the “cheap labor” thing!
The term “Corporate Greed” is simply a measure of companies trying to satisfy shareholders, as in you an me!
It looks like not all of the corporate world agrees with you, Mr. Shapiro.
Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Nissan and Renault put it very plainly and looked through the ideology which blinds you when he answered a questioner who was trying to lead into blaming the UAW for management’s troubles at the Big 3:
“Frankly, I don’t think the question is unions. The question is: Do you have the flexibility to operate and be competitive? If a union helps you be flexible, then the union is an asset. If the union forbids or handicaps this flexibility to operate, then you have a problem. We have unions in France and Japan. If you can reach agreement by which unions help you be flexible and [respond] to the market, they become an asset.”
I appreciate the dialogue (other than the insults). I appreciate the passion and the fact that everyone should be treated well and make a decent wage and sometimes that takes laws and sometimes that takes unions.
I do think as Americans we should answer Clifford ’s point - you either believe in the American free market system where investors put up risk money and create jobs or you don’t. Union pension funds own stocks and are the owners of these companies as well.
How can you hate employers/investors/owners when they are American pension funds? Clark is right - it is American individuals which directly or indirectly own these companies. How can you hate the companies and call them “greedy” when they are trying to make profits for the pension funds that own them? How can you disparage them unmercifully when when they are the ones risking money and creating jobs?
My association runs the nation’s largest trade show (and are happy to do it with lots of great union labor). But we run the show so any individual working in a garage who has an invention or idea can expose it to investors, buyers and media for a very low cost. Many of these people - entrepreneurs - are ordinary people who scrape together their life savings to risk it in the marketplace in the hope they make it big. This is how Microsoft started and that’s how a lot of the small companies started that are my most ardent members. People who lived in their cars, or packed their lunches for the entire run of the show, or bet their home or borrowed money from relatives or friends. And they bet it all on their product succeeding. These people are Americans, who you would disparage as greedy but I believe are the ones - with help from free enterprise and willing employees - who make our country great. They are high school dropouts, veterans, PhDs and yes even union workers.
My job is to encourage them - and all - from the biggest to the tiniest - have to make a decision (if they are lucky enough to get some orders to buy products) where they manufacture. They have the right to make them in the US or elsewhere. As an American I want them to choose to make them here. Many export. Many import. But they have the right to choose.
And no law will force them to make them here - but laws can discourage them from making them here and that’s what I believe card check will do.
We want the same thing - good US jobs. But card check will send the jobs away!
That’s why I am so frustrated that I am desperate enough to engage on this blog. We are Americans first and we have different views on the path to success. If the present system allows bad companies to intimidate workers then it needs to be changed - but card check steals the right of privacy and allows intimidation and is a recipe for national economic disaster. Just because politicians feel compelled to vote for it - does not mean it is actually a great national strategy. It is a horrible strategy which will hurt our economy and eliminate millions of US jobs.
Corporate greed, not working class wages is what is causing the current economic crisis.
Mr. Shapiro, I’m glad you are here and that you are listening.
I think you and others in the business community have misunderstood what Employee Free Choice Act will do. I’ve read it several times and here is my best summary:
Under current law, once workers indicate their wish to have a union, employers have the right to decide whether unionization takes place via a majority of workers signing cards to join, or via an NLRB election. Note that both methods are already in practice under current law.
The majority sign-up provision in the Employee Free Choice Act simply says that the employer no longer gets to choose how the workers certify their union. It can be done either way and it is up to the workers.
Look. No one likes having limits imposed on them, and I’m certain that businesses are equally frightened of the other provisions in the Employee Free Choice Act. But is it really so surprising to you that workers would want to reclaim some of the power that has been stripped from them over the last few decades? We have the right to do it and we are using the approved political channels to do it.
As for moving jobs overseas, do whatever you feel you have to do. Workers in every country in the world are growing angry and are organizing themselves to fight back. Turkey, Hong Kong, China, India, Zimbabwe, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Singapore, Nigeria, Nepal–all these countries have strong labor movements that will stand up for decent pay and working conditions. News stories about these labor movements are posted daily on http://www.labourstart.org .
It’s not just about good US jobs, Mr. Shapiro–it’s about making sure that everyone everywhere who has to work for a living can feed their families, be healthy and have a secure retirement. You cannot keep workers in poverty and get away with it forever.