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‘Undercover Boss’: A Fairy Tale That Ignores Grim Reality |
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As kids, we all loved the sugar-coated fairy tales of handsome and brave princes rescuing beautiful princesses from despotic kings.
The new CBS “reality” show “Undercover Boss” that debuted last night after the Super Bowl is a 21st century sugar-coated fairy tale. But this time, the brave prince is actually a CEO who goes undercover as a regular worker near the bottom of the food chain. There he finds how hard and dirty the job is; how stifling and draconian the company’s workplace rules are; and how crappy the pay is.
Then after walking so many miles in an employee’s work boots, the boss sees the light and promotes workers, raises pay, eases rules and promises a new found respect for all workers.
(If your boss isn’t going undercover anytime soon, be sure to check out American Rights at Work’s new website, Fix Our Jobs, where you can vent about how lousy—and even how great—your job is and learn how to make it better. Click here to watch the video.)
But just like our childhood stories ignored the dark, bloody and scary Brothers Grimm originals, “Undercover Boss” ignores the grim reality of too many of today’s workplaces.
“Undercover Boss” is a sweet, happy-ending tale for a handful of workers, but make-believe for millions of others. The best way to make workplace improvement and worker rights a reality is with the Employee Free Choice Act, that would restore the right of workers to form unions and bargain for a better life.
The bosses portrayed on the show may indeed be sincere and a handful of workers will enjoy the benefits of their foxhole conversions. But what about the millions of workers whose CEO’s will never be on TV? That’s where unions come in: to ensure employees have a voice at the workplace, with family-supporting pay and affordable health care and retirement security.
Along with the restoring the freedom to form unions, rebuilding the middle class means fighting for health care legislation, strong enforcement of wage and hour laws, holding Wall Street accountable and most importantly creating jobs. Unions and their members at the forefront of all these battles—out in the open—not undercover.
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I’m fully in favor of passing EFCA as it was originally written. The problem many people might be having when choosing to join a union is this: can we depend on the union hierarchy to defend our interests and work to create a society and government that truly promotes workers’ interests? As an example, look at union support for Thad McCotter in Michigan’s 11th District. McCotter is a 7% union voter, an ant-union, anti-tax, anti-government fanatic whose followers see him as the second coming of Ronald Reagan (that great friend of labor). In this election cycle, he has pulled in $66,000 in union PAC money or 17% of his total PAC money. AFL-CIO unions gave him $38,000 of that total. The Chamber of Commerce can count on his vote even if they gave him nothing, and here we are pouring our members’ PAC money down a toilet, giving it to someone who will betray us as soon as the Repuglicans get a majority again. Is this stupidity or some kind of weird sell-out?
It is true that McCotter did vote for EFCA, but that is only after the Senate weakened the card check provision in its version and after he voted for two (unsuccessful) amendments that would have given management a leg up in organizing drives. His vote was pure election year pandering because his 2008 win was so narrow that he has to court union voters this time. It was going to pass without his or any of the dozen Repuglican votes. Believe me, he’ll stick it to workers the first chance he gets.
If you have any pull with you local’s PAC, tell them to remember which side they are on and at least remain neutral if they don’t want to fund McCotter’s challenger, Natalie Mosher. She, by the way would be a 100% percent labor voter, and her philosophy is totally in keeping with working class values.
Tell your bosses and the world TO “KISS YOUR YES”.
In case you are not sure what I mean it is UNION YES.
YES for a voice.
YES for a contract.
YES for fare treatment.
YES for the Employee Free Choice Act.
Get the picture.
Go USA!
For those of us who want to avoid toxic bosses, we can always check with eBossWatch.com to see what their employees really think about their boss.
Does anyone actually believe EFCA is even going to come up for a vote? What has Obama done for labor yet? Now we can’t even get Becker on the NLRB, let’s see if he at least has the you know whats to give him a recess appointment.