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And the Winner Is…
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We have a winner in the heated contest for the Chicken Little Sky Is Falling Bizarre Corporate Panic Over Workers’ Rights Award. The award for the most egregiously over-the-top bottom comments about the Employee Free Choice Act goes to casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who said that there are two “fundamental threats to society”: “radical Islam” and the Employee Free Choice Act.
Hundreds of you voted in our contest, and Adelson had stiff competition: Other hyperventilators up for the award included Fox News pundit John Rutledge, who called the bill to restore the freedom to form a union “a Gestapo tactic,” and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who said it’s “a mortal threat to American freedom.”
Adelson won with 27 percent of the vote. Coming in second, with 20 percent, was Randel Johnson of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who promised to make the corporate front groups’ battle against Employee Free Choice “a firestorm bordering on Armageddon.”
It’s a good time to ask, why the panic by corporate fat cats? Because they know today’s labor laws are badly tilted in favor of management and against workers, and they’re terrified the Employee Free Choice Act could put things back into balance. It would give workers the freedom to choose how to form a union and to bargain for a better life without the interference management has gotten used to. Giving workers power and making corporate leaders accountable is terrifying to Adelson and his cronies—and they’ll stop at nothing to mislead and scare people.
So, a plucked chicken award to Adelson—along with a bit of advice: Tactics such as his won’t work. America’s workers demand a free choice in how they form a union and bargain and an economy that works for everybody, not just billionaires and their hired guns and favorite politicians.
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Ed Shultz just got his own show on MSNBC. It will be called the Ed Show. I think that is a great opportunity for working americans to voice their cause. On Ed’s radio program Ed has Labor friendly Congressmen, Congresswomen, and Senators on regular basis. He also interviews Union Presidents on a regular basis. America finally got the Labor show we need.
Good Luck Big Eddie. We will be rooting for you.
6.
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.
This post was sent earlier in a previous thread by Mr. Shapiro. Once again, he has failed to produce the web link that shows the commentary that he allegedly copied and pasted from the “web site.”
Ed Shultz was a sub for David Shuster one day a week or two ago. I was so struck by the difference in having someone who sees no need to be shrill, no need to bully guests, and had no great need to play any “gotcha” games.
Please, please tell me Shultz is going to replace the useless “I should have Chrissie Matthews job because I’m just as shrill, just as stupid, and a whole lot younger” Shuster. Probably no such luck; but with THREE non-neocons on MSNBC things are looking up!
so, when EFCA goes down to defeat this year (come on, you know it will now that Specter saw his ghost and Feinstein looked at her campaign account), what are WE going to do? Never mind what the AFL-CIO is going to do (I can hear the apologia for the Democrats already). Are we workers going to put up with this? Are we going to take to the streets? shut down factories in protest? What is it going to take, folks, to get people to take some action and some POWER for themselves, and stop waiting for our “leaders” to do right by us? They won’t. They are part and parcel of the problem.
What part of $8.4 trillion of OUR money being given away to the wealthiest few dozen thousands of Americans, don’t we understand? If a person broke into your house and tried to steal your television, you’d fight back! But when the richest .01% of the people in this country amass billions upon billions of dollars straight out of our pockets by rigging regulations, sewing tax loopholes, and cooking the books, what do we do? complain about $165 million dollars in bonuses. these guys lost that much money in their couch cushions.
The people have never been given power. They had to create it for themselves. What would any of our brothers and sisters who stood in front of water cannons, police dogs, and machine guns so that we could have a decent life say if they saw us now? Groveling at politicians to do right by us, then turning on the game and cracking open another beer. Pathetic, we are.
It is time that we follow the lead of the UE workers at Republic Windows and take ownership of our fate. Because if we don’t, I sure as hell know who’s gonna buy it for pennies on the dollar…
“Over-the-top bottom”? More like slithering beneath the bottom. “Right to Work” is newspeak for “Right to Rip Off”.
Mr Shapiro, I would love to get the weed you smoke, because I would like to live in the fantasy land you do. There’s so many factual errors in your ridiculous post that it’s hard to know where to start. just one might be the fact that when union density was the highest, we had the highest GDP growth in the nation’s history. Meanwhile, real GDP growth under the Reaganite Neo-liberalism policies of the last 30 years has produced 2.2% average growth! 2.2% Mr. Shapiro! That ranks 147th in the world, behind Cuba, even. Oh, and of course, income distribution has gone back to that of the first guilded age. What “primacy”? What great economy for anyone not in the top 20%? We’ve had a 70% increase in productivity with no increase in real wages, all happening with unions falling out of the picture. American exceptionalism is a snowjob perpetrated by our corporate masters to keep the deluded jingoists in bed with people like you who are selling us out. It is YOU, Mr Shapiro, that have turned the American Dream into a nightmare. It is YOU, Mr Shapiro that took the greatest economy in the world and turned it into a third world banana republic. It is YOU, Mr. Shapiro that denies workers health care coverage, a right enjoyed in EVERY OTHER industrialized country in the world. It is YOU, Mr Shapiro that exploit the vast difference in living standards that allows you to think that somehow you have helped India because, relatively speaking, a few thousand people there have gotten a job that pays them enough to own a house, while here, a few thousand just lost theirs.
Are developing countries economies performing better in the macro sense because of these “free” trade policies? Sure, some are (I won’t go into the places like Central America where they are falling because companies have now found cheaper labor) in SE Asia but income inequality is also growing in those countries. What you failed to recognize on your little tour of India is how those poor people you saw are becoming poorer because of policies you espouse. The overall economy may be improving but macro averages are terrible indicators of overall social well-being. Please explain the horrific increase in suicides of Indian farmers due to them no longer being able to compete with massive grain imports from industrial nations like Australia. Or, the privatization of rural Mexico which is forcing people off of their lands, and guess where they end up? oh, but that’s okay because that is more cheap labor for you and your cabal to exploit.
Mr. Shapiro, I know that you probably think you are really doing the world a great big favor by letting some coins fall out of your pocket for the urchins to pick up at xmas time, but you are the worst kind of Capitalist. You are not even honest with yourself about what you are doing. But that is fine, keep up with what you are doing. History has shown time and time again that eventually, the poor unwashed masses, whether they be in New Delhi, or east Kansas City, or Dayton Ohio will have been pushed just one injury on the job too far, one forced overtime hour too many, had one too many acres of land seized by a government in the pockets of the elite, and they will grab their machetes, their tractors, and yes, their guns, and they will take back what is rightly theirs. And the irony, they will organize it all using Consumer Electronics.
THIS LETTER WAS SENT TO DAY
Dear Senator: I have received your written response to my e-mail urging your support of the “EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT”. I have read your response and position with great care and consideration. I find it without surprise or change to the on-going party line. I know for a fact, by having tried to help workers get union representation that harassment by employers continues to be used, and supported by the courts, to break organizing efforts. In fact many employers hire consulting firms for this exact purpose. Your reference to NLRB protection in such matters is amusing if not absurd given the fact that top position appointments, under yours and the last administration, were given by design to anti-union pro-employer appointees. This action rendered the agency nearly useless for protecting workers rights involved in legitimate union activities. All that can be done with those politicians, such as you, is VOTE THEM OUT.
Ron Kidwell
Dear Senator: I have received your written response to my e-mail urging your support of the “EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT”. I have read your response and position with great care and consideration. I find it without surprise or change to the on-going party line. I know for a fact, by having tried to help workers get union representation that harassment by employers continues to be used, and supported by the courts, to break organizing efforts. In fact many employers hire consulting firms for this exact purpose. Your reference to NLRB protection in such matters is amusing if not absurd given the fact that top position appointments, under yours and the last administration, were given by design to anti-union pro-employer appointees. This action rendered the agency nearly useless for protecting workers rights involved in legitimate union activities. All that can be done with those politicians, such as you, is VOTE THEM OUT.
Letter to the Editor
A Mississippi Blue Dog DemoRepub Misfit
April 1, 2009
Al Bratton
Tupelo, MS
On Mar. 18, 2009 an article appeared in the Daily Journal titled “Senators, Childers Voice Opposition to Card Check Bill” by Joe Rutherford.
Republican Sens. Cochran , Roger Wicker and Democrat Rep. Travis Childers of the Mississippi First District congressional delegation all confirmed they plan to vote “no” on the proposed Employee Free Choice Act [EFCA], Rutherford wrote.
From the union’s perspective EFCA would serve to level the playing field between worker and management especially concerning union elections. One misconception about EFCA touted by Anti-union, Cheap Labor Sen. Wicker, the “secret ballot,” has been laid to rest by the New York Times recent article explaining that EFCA was designed with the option of a “secret ballot” or a “card check” election. In addition, UAW members have agreed to several concessions affecting their wages and fringe benefits even though a drop in auto sales is the main financial problem of the Big Three.
Aside from Wicker, there is an even darker side to this letter: I was really elated when Democrat Rep. Travis Childers was elected to fill the seat formerly held by Wicker. I thought we finally had a Progressive in Washington who would represent working class people. But, I was not paying enough attention to Childers campaign because I soon became aware that he wore the title Democrat Blue Dog. His reason for opposing EFCA is: “… I’m very concerned that … business leaders believe this will hurt job creation… economic development…”
So, its primarily all about what “business leaders” think. It reminds me of Daybrite Lighting Co. that located in Tupelo years ago and brought UEW union with it. Some Tupelo leaders threw a tantrum when it happened, but the company grew and contributed immensely to the community.
My elation that came with Childers’ victory has disappeared. I now realize that all Progressives really got out of his election was another version of “Cheap Labor”, “Big Corporate Bosses” Roger Wicker transformed into a Mississippi Blue Dog DemoRepub Misfit.