SEARCH
Update: Adelson in the Lead for Chicken Little Award |
|
Feathers are flying in the heated contest for the Chicken Little Sky Is Falling Bizarre Corporate Panic Over Workers’ Rights Award. The award “winner” is the corporate leader or anti-worker politician whose hysteria has led to the most extreme rhetoric against the Employee Free Choice Act.
With hundreds of votes in, the lead Chicken Little contender is Sheldon Adelson, the extreme-right casino billionaire who recently identified two “fundamental threats to society”—the Employee Free Choice Act and “radical Islam.” Adelson’s eggs-aerated rhetoric portends the end of western democracy if workers such as Dianne Heeley, Billy Mason and Marybeth Litcholt have a voice on the job and the ability to bargain for a fair contract.
It’s your turn to weigh in: Who’s the top at going over the top in anti-Employee Free Choice spin? We’ll announce the big winner on April 1.
Want to link to this survey from your own site? Grab the code for this chicken and use it in your blog!
8 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I voted but I have to confess that each comment is more ridiculous than the other. Having to choose just one is a severe limitation. I guess by far the most egregious is comparing organized labor to militant Islam! Boy is that over the top!!!
Rather than make light of your opponents concerns, perhaps you should try putting yourself in their shoes - maybe you will find common ground.
What seems to you to be an exaggeration, to me is an expression of genuine concern.
Most of these people are people who have taken huge financial risks with their own money and succeeded. Their success has created jobs. These jobs are freely entered and the employees generally are honest hard working Americans who appreciate the opportunity, enjoy the work and benefit through salaries.
What scares almost every employer is that a union can be created without any opportunity for the employer to give their view - thus the secret ballot is important. They are concerned about outside union organizers intimidating employees or as many employees being intimidated by their colleagues. A secret ballot protects this - just as it protects all Americans in our most important elections (despite Hoffa’s assertion otherwise).
And the concept that a government bureaucrat sets the conditions for work after 120 days of fruitless negotiations is worse than scary.
Just try to imagine someone who has given every cent they have to a business, risked their kids college education and actually succeeded enough to expand and launch new products or services and hire new people. They’ve may put in 70 hours a week, use family members and do special things for employees. Then they are being told that the government is going to tell them precisely how they will hore and fire, pay, etc, This after they are following the legal protections of the FLSA and other laws.
Can the AFL-CIO not acknowledge that this is scary, rather than have another biased forced choice poll.
I would not make light of union concerns about intimidation and unjustified firings. Nor would I make light of card check opponents who are beyond scared that this will reduce jobs and force those who can go overseas.
I represent 2200 companies in technology and have never seen any reaction among my members to any proposal like this one. These companies concerned about card check employ millions of Americans and their average compensation in 2007 was $74k plus benefits.
So I implore you to focus on what is best for our nation - what is best is job creation and investment in the United States - not sending it overseas and paralyzing our economy and discouraging investment in the United States.
Does anyone dispute that card check will reduce US jobs?
dear Mr. Shapiro i am glad to see you are at least open minded enough to read th afl-cio blog. i do have to say though that your biased and prejudiced comments should help our cause. you see when you spout this type of anti union anti worker rhetoric you sound like cheney and bush,this is the type of stand that is taken by the republican party.the idea that if you tell the big lie long enough people will beleive you.also if you are able to keep a captive audience you can scare them into beleiving the lies. this must be stopped americas workers must stop people like you and the politicans who think like you from turning back the clock one hundred and fifty years to a time when you had to do what the company said without a chance to speak what you want to. this can not be allowed to happen.
I would like to know if you have ever participated in scheduling one on one meetings with employees who are trying to organize union representation; where said employees are intimidated and coerced. Have you ever been a party to workers being fired for wanting a union in their workplace? I totally understand why these companies are spending millions of dollars to mislead the public. This type of behavior will stop. I spoke yesterday with a State Senator who at one time was a labor attorney for management. He went into specific detail as to how they would set up these union-busting meetings with a few employees at a time, and then drive home the message of what would happen to the workers if a union was voted in. This is legal under the current labor law. I am happy to say that because of the experience our Senator had with assisting companies “abuse” workers, he supports the Employee Free Choice Act. I may have more respect for these companies if they were being honest. We all know this is not about a secret ballot. It is all about the activities that these companies plan during the interim between the 30 percent sign up and the election that they get to choose the time for.
I voted for “The road to poverty” that would “quickly put our American way of life at risk.” Gary Shapiro, Consumer Electronics Association”. Obviously he is speaking of employers not willing to share profits gained by productive workers when he refers to risking “OUR” way of life.
What is really ironic, if more employees were unionized and had a few extra coins in their pockets, sales would undoubtedly improve. Prudent consumers are not going to take vacations and visit casinos or buy new electronic toys when they’re either:
A) Laid off
B) About to be laid off
C) Working class poor
D) Flat broke
The economy will not stabilize until salaries come in line with the real cost of living. You can’t pay ten bucks an hour and expect people to rush out and buy new homes and cars.
wow - I see I am quoted so out of context and inappropriately I must provide the source. This quote was excerpted from a commentary that focused on the ballooniing deficit, bailouts, trade and card check.
COMMENTARY:
Spending a day driving from New Delhi to Agra would be an eye-opening experience for any American. On a recent delegation of world technology leaders to India, I saw how plumbing and running water are rare, the air is dirty from ubiquitous two-cycle engines, and electricity is sporadic at best. Life is tough and daily survival is a challenge.
In times of economic crisis, it can be easy to forget how good we have it in this country. We have a working infrastructure and reliable electricity. Our plumbing works and we enjoy clean water. Even our poorest neighbors do not face the fear of starvation or seeing their sick children waste away without proper medical care.
Yet, we are quickly putting our American way of life at risk. In the last few months our government has spent nearly a trillion dollars we don’t have to bolster a few companies considered too important to fail. We are on the verge of spending billions more to temporarily bail out three American car companies, while doing nothing to resolve their core problem - bloated autoworker union contracts.
Those same unions gave half a billion dollars to Democrats this election cycle, with their No. 1 priority the forced unionization thanks to “card check” legislation pushed by certain newly empowered Democrats in Congress.
Card check would dramatically change U.S. labor laws, overturn a half-century of balance in labor-management relations and strip workers of core protections. By depriving workers of a secret ballot vote in union elections, this legislation would allow for coercion of workers who don’t want to unionize and could force millions of Americans to join unions against their will.
Democratic members of Congress struggle in how to say card check is good for the nation, for productivity or for creating jobs. Yet they are eager to pass this legislation to pay back unions for their support. One prominent union leader said publicly he would gladly use union opposition to pending free trade agreements as a political bargaining chip to get card check passed quickly.
I wish union leaders and the politicians supporting card check would have been with us on the road from Delhi to Agra. They would better understand that America’s success is not God-given destiny. We have come far with hard work and creativity and a focus on education and investment.
Unions once shouldered a burden of protecting worker safety, but these protections are now law and unions and their supporters ignore that we are competing on a world stage. More, they are using their political force to block free trade agreements with countries that can add to American jobs by removing tariffs on our exports. Unions are making our companies less competitive.
Today, our nation is a world leader in technology and all the content creation it allows. From our semiconductor companies to our computers, from Hollywood to music, from games to Internet services, the United States remains the world’s innovator. Our strategy should be to allow these companies to prosper and export - not to burden exports with tariffs, tax their output at the second highest rates in the world, or restrict their flexibility with union rules.
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.
We have lost our way. A misplaced sense of entitlement is creating hardships that may push our innovation economy overseas. Our mounting debt is fueling our last grasp on primacy. Our laws are discouraging innovation and investment. And soon our crumbling infrastructure and faltering economy will hasten our fall from the top.
We need not take the road to poverty. But it requires a strategy of investment and trade rather than new taxes, trade barriers, regulatory straitjackets and union intimidation.
Gary Shapiro is president and chief executive officer of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), a U.S. trade association representing 2,200 consumer electronics companies.
deficit, trade and card check:
Mr. Shapiro, if you would be so kind as to provide the link that shows your commentary on the web site that is carrying it for verification purposes, we’d be much obliged.
If you can take a drive anywhere along Appalachia, you would more or less see the same thing you saw in India. Every country has there own poverty-stricken areas and the USA has seen an increase in poverty over the last one and a half years. You can thank the caste system in India for the inequalities in wealth, but even that system is falling by the wayside, as India is slated to become one of the economic giants of the 21st century.
The government is not calling the shots when it comes to organizing. Unions are not part of the government. When employees are union members, they represent their union, but work for their employer. Your fears are misguided and need to be put to rest.
The card check will not reduce American jobs.