GOP war on hunger isn’t new

With the Supreme Court's blessing, striking workers have been denied food stamp eligibility since 1981

By Andrew Leonard

Topics:The Labor Movement, How the World Works

So, this is embarrassing. Yesterday, along with a host of other political bloggers, I highlighted a new bill introduced by five House Republicans that contained a clause denying food stamp eligibility to the families of striking workers.

But it turns out the scoop wasn’t exactly breaking news. The language has been a standard part of legislation dealing with the food stamp program since 1981 and was even upheld by the Supreme Court in 1988.

: Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard

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America’s last hope: A strong labor movement

To achieve economic justice in the 21st century, we need to fight for democracy in the workplace

By Dorian Warren

Topics:The 99 Percent Plan, The Labor Movement, American Spring

The 99 Percent Plan is a joint Roosevelt Institute-Salon series that explores how progressives can shape a new vision for the economy. This is the third essay in the series.

The fate of the labor movement is the fate of American democracy. Without a strong countervailing force like organized labor, corporations and wealthy elites advancing their own interests are able to exert undue influence over the political system, as we’ve seen in every major policy debate of recent years.

Yet the American labor movement is in crisis and is the weakest it’s been in 100 years. That truism has been a progressive mantra since the Clinton administration. However, union density has continued to decline from roughly 16 percent in 1995 to 11.8 percent of all workers and just 6.9 percent of workers in the private sector. Unionized workers in the public sector now make up the majority of the labor movement for the first time in history, which is precisely why — a la Wisconsin and 14 other states — they have been targeted by the right for all out destruction.

The urgency is striking. Instead of being fundamentally discredited, the oligarchs and plutocrats who crashed our economy are raking in record profits and acting even more aggressively to bury the American labor movement once and for all. Over the last year, several labor leaders have told me that they believe unions have only about five more years left if they don’t figure out some kind of breakthrough strategy.

The complete collapse of unions would have devastating consequences. The labor movement has played a crucial role in advancing economic justice in the workplace and in politics. Union membership raises median weekly earnings and reduces race- and gender-based income gaps, and union workers are much more likely to receive health care and pension benefits than workers who are not members of a labor union. The decline of organized labor is directly linked to the rise in economic inequality over the last 40 years and the onset of a “Second Gilded Age.” The decline in union density coupled with the decline in the real value of the minimum wage explains one-third of the dramatic growth in wage inequality since the early 1970s.

Over the past 30 years, American employers have become even more aggressive at violating their workers’ rights to organize under a toothless and outdated labor law regime. Contrary to the intent of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which made it national policy to encourage and promote collective bargaining, the NLRA now provides incentives for employers to break the law routinely and ignore any compulsion to negotiate collective agreements. When there is little outrage for the daily violations of workers’ liberty (employers fire workers illegally in 1 in 3 union campaigns for attempting to exercise freedom of association), our democracy is in peril.

As worker power has eroded in the workplace, the labor movement’s political clout has also declined. Measured by both members and money, unions are still the most influential and resourceful left-wing constituency in American politics. Organized labor also remains the most powerful core of the national Democratic Party by several measures, including campaign contributions, grassroots mobilization efforts, lobbying and setting the party’s legislative agenda. Indeed, the labor movement spent a record amount of money to help get a Democrat elected to the White House in 2008.

With a labor-friendly White House and a Democratic Congress, organized labor began strategizing about how and when to push for its No. 1 priority, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Labor law reform would not only help the flagging movement survive but also offer an indirect solution to our growing problems of economic inequality and the catastrophic Great Recession. By leveling the playing field between workers and employers, higher union density decreases wage inequality in the American labor market while increasing purchasing power of consumers.

But the move to pass EFCA failed, revealing just how weak organized labor has become. Now, with no hope for labor law reform in sight, is the time to rethink the role of the labor movement in the 21st century. Progressives need a strong and vibrant labor movement that focuses not just on workers’ rights, but can also act as a democratizing force advancing social justice and expanding worker, citizen and resident power in the workplace and in their communities.

The labor movement is the critical anchor and enabler of democracy grounded on a notion of freedom. Most people have an intuitive understanding of what democracy means: rule by the people (as opposed to rule by the few or an elite). Yet, as Corey Robin so eloquently points out in his book on fear, Americans give up their individual freedom and democratic voice every single day they walk into work. The workplace is an authoritarian dictatorship, and we accept this as legitimate.

Now is the time to challenge that feudal relationship. We need to call into question the assumption that Americans believe democracy stops at the workplace door. If we would not stand for a despot to rule over us with impunity, why do we let the boss do so every day of the workweek? Any progressive advance needs a strong labor movement to achieve a fully free and democratic workplace and society. This vision of freedom and democracy manifests in two domains: the workplace and the southern region of the country.

First, labor’s role must be made much more central at the workplace and in the economy more broadly. Labor can, and should, be a governing co-partner with business and government in the economy. What labor brings to the table is a vision of growth with equity. And there are already examples of this kind of union and worker organizational influence in the economy at the regional level. The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and Working Partnerships USA, both in California, have shown how labor can become a governing partner in economic decision-making at the regional level.

Another aspect of centralizing labor’s role in the economy and advancing workplace democracy is to expand workers’ voice and power at the bargaining table. A 21st century vision of the American labor movement is one that destroys the divide between labor and community that has long governed the politics and practices of unions. What the emergence of new forms of worker organizations have taught us is that workers are also residents in communities, while residents are also workers, and there are organizational models available that take all workers’ identities into account.

While labor law constricts the scope of issues that unions can negotiate at the workplace, it doesn’t prevent worker organizations from bargaining in the political arena for affordable housing, equitable development, local, regional and national economic policy, criminal justice, or the wide range of issues that affect poor and working class people. Stephen Lerner, among others, has outlined what a wider scope of collective bargaining might look like. Imagine, for instance, that the United Auto Workers could negotiate over the environmental standards of the cars they produce instead of just wages and benefits. Such a vision requires a far-reaching campaign to redefine the scope of collective bargaining and workers’ voices at work. This is a 10- or 20-year effort to be sure, but one that will be crucial to any future the labor movement has in the U.S.

Directly related to expanding labor’s role in the economy and expanding the scope of collective bargaining is advancing freedom in the workplace. In short: democracy, over autocracy, at work. This would go beyond the softer slogan of the AFL-CIO’s “voice at work.” This is an admittedly long-term project. But several concrete demands arise out of the broad notion of a workplace democracy. For instance, the Employee Free Choice Act would have allowed workers a modicum of political liberty at the workplace; it aimed to restore workers’ rights to freedom of association. But a deeper and even more controversial demand proposes an end to management prerogative over all workplace decisions. Workplace democracy means truly giving workers a “voice” at work. Whether through work committees or required seats for employee representatives on the company’s board of directors, a deeper vision of workplace democracy enables workers’ voices to have a real impact.

The second domain for a 21st century labor movement is geographic: finally democratizing the South through the building of a Southern labor movement. After the CIO’s Operation Dixie failed to organize Southern workers in the late 1940s, with a few exceptions mostly in the public sector, organized labor gave up on the South. We’ve been suffering the consequences ever since. The Southern, Walmart model of low-wage labor markets is being imported to the North. We only have to look at the attack on public sector workers in Wisconsin and Michigan and the recent passage of Right-to-Work legislation in Indiana to understand that Northern governors and the Republican Party are trying to turn their states into Yankee versions of Southern Right-to-Work (for less) states.

Instead of retreating to a defensive posture, organized labor should launch an ambitious and bold campaign to organize the South. A Southern labor movement would galvanize workers in the region who, contrary to popular belief, would like to become dues-paying union members. Given the dramatic demographic changes occurring in the South involving increased migrations of people of color who tend to be the most pro-union and pro-worker organization (see the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ recent victory over Trader Joe’s), the opportunity for organizing and building a Southern labor movement is greater today than even 60 years ago under Operation Dixie. This effort would not only transform the low-wage economic model of the South, it would prevent the race to the bottom from North to South, and most important, it would transform the politics of the region and fundamentally the country.

What grounds this vision of a 21st century labor movement is the core idea of extending what Americans claim to cherish in politics and civil society to the workplace: democracy, liberty and freedom. The consolidation of income, wealth and political power by the 1 percent over the last several decades is directly related to the decline of workers’ voice and power. Rebuilding a truly countervailing (and democratic) power, as the labor movement did in the 1930s and 1940s, will require a bold and convincing vision of workplace democracy and freedom. Workers and their organizations have historically played this anchoring role for progressive politics throughout American history. Now is the time to reclaim this historic charge for the 21st century.

: Dorian T. Warren is a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He is also an Assistant Professor of Political Science & Public Affairs at Columbia University. You can follow him on Twitter @dorianwarren. More Dorian Warren

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Obama to unions: See you later

His labor allies are undermined as the president signs a law that will discourage workers from organizing

By Josh Eidelson

What me worry about unions? (Credit: AP/Susan Walsh)

Topics:The Labor Movement, Barack Obama

On Tuesday President Obama signed a bill that will make it harder for workers to form a union. This bill, the FAA Reauthorization Act, passed Congress last week despite an outcry from major unions. Dozens of House Democrats voted for it, as did most Democratic senators.

To appreciate what that means, try to imagine a Republican president and Republican Senate majority leader signing off on a bill with pro-union language despite thundering objections from most big businesses. Your imagination may not be good enough to picture that, which tells you everything you need to know about the asymmetry between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to labor.

The signing of the FAA bill ends a long-running legislative fight. It began with something President Obama did right: He appointed members to the National Mediation Board who, in 2010, adopted a new rule governing elections for railroad and airline workers seeking to unionize. Such workers are covered by the 1935 Railway Labor Act, rather than the National Labor Relations Act that covers most American workers.

For decades, one downside of the RLA regime was the requirement that, in order to succeed in an election, a union had to win a majority of all potential voters in a bargaining unit, rather than just a majority of all voters. (Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker imposed a similar requirement on public workers as part of his anti-union bill last year.) If political elections were counted the same way – with all non-voters counted as “no” votes — very few of our current members of Congress would be in office.

The new rule from Obama’s appointees changed that. Now, votes are counted in RLA elections the way they are in other union elections, or in presidential elections: Whichever side gets the most votes wins. Predictably, Republicans were furious. In a series of showdowns over the past year, the GOP insisted that the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization, which funds FAA functions like air traffic control, be amended to include language overriding the National Mediation Board’s new rule. Democrats resisted, and President Obama threatened to veto any FAA bill with such a provision. The short-term politics of these showdowns – one of which included a 13-day FAA shutdown last summer — were never great for the GOP, and each one ended with a short-term extension.

On Jan. 20, with both parties saying it was time to resolve the issue once and for all, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced a compromise with the GOP: The FAA bill would stay silent on how union election votes are counted – meaning the NMB rule stays in place until future NMB appointees reverse it. But labor will face a steeper obstacle earlier in the process. Rather than being required to submit signatures from 35 percent of workers in a bargaining unit to trigger an election (as had been required), unions would have to submit signatures from a majority just for a vote to be held. It wasn’t immediately obvious what was so bad about this; in most cases, filing for a union election without a strong majority committed to vote yes is organizing malpractice. Many unions were slow to issue reactions, and a few voiced support.

But the devil was in the details. In a Jan. 30 letter, 18 international unions called on the House and Senate to reject the deal, writing that otherwise “Airline and rail workers would suffer significant losses as contracts are jettisoned, collective bargaining rights are cut and legal hurdles will be placed in the way of gaining a voice at work.” (Full disclosure: I used to work at UNITE HERE, one of the signing organizations.)

“This is our Wisconsin,” Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Veda Shook told a Communications Workers of America crowd before Congress voted on the deal. Shook said that while “Reid and Republicans are falsely claiming” the compromise would only require unions to win majority support, its effect would be much worse than advertised: By packing an employee list with ex-workers or challenging voter eligibility, management would have new opportunities to delay or avert an election despite majority support. By legislating election rules, the bill would enable management to call workers who signed cards to be questioned as part of discovery in an anti-union lawsuit. When a larger non-union company merged with a smaller unionized company, the bill would make it possible for management to cease recognizing the union, with no election at all.

In a furious speech, CWA International president Larry Cohen charged that Democratic leaders had refused past requests to attach pro-union provisions to appropriations bills, but were allowing Republicans to use the FAA appropriation to force an anti-union change.

“The leadership in the Senate didn’t even see fit to include [the pro-labor NMB rule] in this gutting of the statute …” yelled Cohen. “Our little crumb of an advancement is left as a rule, so the day that there’s ever a Republican president elected … they’re going to strip the rule. The statute will remain. It’s worse than it’s ever been.”

The Democrats passed the bill and the president signed it.

A White House official defended the deal, via email, saying, “While it is unfortunate that Republicans in Congress have injected extraneous ideological measures into this important legislation that will create jobs and improve air traffic safety, the provision referenced in our veto threat has been removed and the President will sign the compromise bill.”

The White House is unlikely to expect tremendous blowback from the bill, given that the AFL-CIO took no public stance on the FAA deal. An AFL-CIO spokesperson declined to comment, but the federation’s silence may be related to the lack of unanimity among the 22 unions in its Transportation Division: While most were opposed, a few came out in support of the bill.

In a statement following its Senate passage, Air Line Pilots Association president Lee Moak said the bill “could have been improved by omitting provisions unrelated to aviation safety, but that compromise was necessary … to garner the very real benefits” of a reauthorization.

Unions’ division on this question illustrates U.S. labor’s political predicament as compared with Europe. Labor’s political influence over either major party is “180 degrees opposite from Germany, where both parties have a connection to the labor movement,” author and labor attorney Tom Geoghegan says. “It’s a very sad and dangerous thing.”

Even with a presidential election looming, historian Steve Fraser says the Democratic Party understandably takes labor’s support for granted, because “the labor movement sees it has no other option, so its loyalty can be counted on.”

Indeed, the Republican primary campaign provides daily reminders of how much worse the political leadership in Washington could be: stacking the National Labor Relations Board with professional union-busters, refusing to bargain with public workers, reviving child labor.

The decline in union density, argues Fraser, creates a vicious cycle of decreasing power and increasing dependence. “A big part of the picture is the sense that there’s no exit from this strategy … The weaker they get, the more that they feel boxed in.”

On Feb. 2, four days before the FAA deal passed the Senate, CWA officially endorsed Obama’s re-lection.

There are many factors that explain the willingness of prominent Democrats to back a deal that makes union organizing harder: the broken Senate; the influence of big money; questionable tactics from all sides. But the most fundamental one is the half-century decline in unionization, and with it, in labor’s role in American life. Episodes like this one offer a stark challenge to those still hoping that transformed political fortunes will be the cause – rather than the consequence – of the labor movement’s revival.

: Josh Eidelson is a freelance journalist and a contributor at The American Prospect and In These Times. After receiving his MA in Political Science, he worked as a union organizer for five years. More Josh Eidelson

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Unions in a “death spiral”? Not on my job site

In the building trades, labor is flourishing

By Steve Cooper

A worker shovels wet concrete at a residential site in Los Angeles, California

Labor working (Credit: Lucy Nicholson / Reuters)

Topics:The Labor Movement

With his assertions in Salon that “unions are in a death spiral” and “private sector unionism has all but vanished,” Arun Gupta advances a shortsighted and incomplete narrative promoted too often by the mainstream media. His blanket assertion that organized labor has no response to today’s challenges, other than to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at the Democratic Party, demonstrates an unfamiliarity with the nuances of today’s union movement. As a close observer of the labor movement, I am confident in stating that, at least in the construction sector, Gupta’s portrait bears little resemblance to what is actually occurring.

To be fair, Mr. Gupta is not alone in his supposition that national, across-the-board union membership statistics apply to all industries. The falsehood is broadcast daily by anti-union zealots and lobbyists in the construction industry. When calculating union density in construction, however, a more accurate reflection is achieved by parsing out residential construction. With the exception of metropolitan markets where the building trades maintain significant residential market share, the strategic decision was made years ago to concentrate building trades union resources in commercial, industrial and heavy/highway construction because of the advent of a “race to the bottom” business model in the residential market. Once residential construction is removed from the calculation, union density numbers are significantly different. Today, the union construction sector enjoys a market share approaching 50 percent of all non-residential construction dollars spent in the United States.

These results were not achieved by accident or happenstance. Rather, the building trades unions have collectively embarked upon a comprehensive campaign to change the culture of the union construction industry, on the inside and out. Through the establishment of stringent local union accountability standards, as well as rank and file codes of conduct and excellence, these unions are setting the bar for value-added on the job site and political achievement in state capitols.

Everyone in the union construction trades will tell you that high standards are a reflection of the fact that, in their world, the only guarantee is the first eight hours on the job. If expectations are met or exceeded in the performance of their craft, then a union tradesperson has simply won the right to come back for the next eight hours. This kind of self-accountability is encouraging to contractors, owners and newcomers to the trades alike.

Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the building trades’ collective renewal, from an outsider’s standpoint, has been the attempt to reverse the perceived legacy of being “stale and pale” organizations that were, at one time, reluctant to embrace diversity. The new age of construction unionism has insisted on forging important and mutually beneficial community partnerships and pursuing higher safety and diversity standards than the competition.

In dozens of cities nationwide, the building trades have pursued new members in historically disadvantaged communities. These members have not simply been given a pen and asked to sign, or been given a sign and asked to march, they have been offered unmatched apprenticeship opportunities that provide a clear path to the skills needed to realize the goal of a supporting a family and making a future.

Through the increased embrace of Project Labor Agreements by major corporations and public sector agencies, these unions are creating structured pathways to increase the number of minorities and women who gain access to the skilled trades. The non-union construction industry has no such standards, no such goals, and no apparent interest in pursuing them.

The uptick in PLAs has brought increased interest in military veteran hiring practices. Almost 10 years ago, the building trades unions of the AFL-CIO created a program, Helmets to Hardhats, expressly designed to provide job and career training opportunities to transitioning military veterans. To date, the program has placed thousands of veterans in jobs and in union apprenticeship programs all across the nation.

This story line of rebuilding lives and reinvigorating communities was recently on display in Los Angeles where the L.A. Metro Board of Directors unanimously approved a multibillion-dollar PLA (my wrap-up on it here). The agreement includes a formal plan to help increase the number of workers from disadvantaged areas that will be hired on the agency’s transit and road projects. This PLA, negotiated with the Los Angeles/Orange County Building Trades Council, is believed to be the first of its kind for a transit agency in the U.S. Under the Metro L.A. PLA, 40 percent of work hours on future projects will be done by workers who live in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and 10 percent of work hours will go to workers struggling with poverty.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the L.A. Metro PLA, though, was the unanimous vote of the board. This vote included five Republican members. This represents the less publicized element of the building trades’ campaign of cultural change. These unions have achieved results by doing what the Occupy movement and the labor movement at large have often refused to do: by working with the GOP.

Despite this or, rather, because of this, one of the most under-reported stories of the past year was the broad and stable level of support offered by a number of Republican senators and representatives for building trades union policy goals. On several occasions over the course of 2011, roughly 50 Republican House members voted to sustain Davis-Bacon Act prevailing wage protections on federally funded construction projects. Similarly, two dozen GOP representatives repeatedly stood with the building trades on the issue of federal PLAs as promoted by President Obama’s Executive Order.

These outcomes were not the result of simply throwing money at politicians, although it is relevant to note that the building trades unions of the AFL-CIO are collectively, according to Federal Election Commission data, one of the top five contributors to the Republican Party over the course of the last 10 years. More important than political donations, however, has been the building trades’ consistent pattern of inclusiveness — from the job site to the nation’s capital — that has enabled these private sector unions to do everything but vanish as Mr. Gupta suggested they have.

: Steve Cooper is the founder and editor of the labor blog We Party Patriots, . He is also an occasional private chef and an avid musician whose songs have been featured on TV programs including 30 Rock, Chuck, and New Girl. He lives in Brooklyn, NY. More Steve Cooper

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What’s the matter with Indiana?

The state's union busting provokes little opposition compared to what went on in Wisconsin

By Leon Fink

Muted union protestors in the Super Bowl Village on Sunday. (Credit: AP/Michael Conroy)

Topics:The Labor Movement, Mitch Daniels

I, for one, felt there was one thing missing from an otherwise exciting Super Bowl Sunday in my hometown of Indianapolis. There was nary a public peep from union workers about the twin hammer blows — the second delivered only days before the big game — brought upon their heads by the state’s conservative Republican lawmakers.

Just last week Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels led state legislators to pass a “right-to-work” law — the first in the Midwest — striking at the heart of union dues collection and further weakening a union movement that makes up only 11 percent of the labor force, a shade below the national average. Upon taking office in 2005, Daniels had also terminated collective bargaining with all public employee unions by executive order. Together, Indiana’s anti-union blows were decidedly tougher and more brazen than those delivered by Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

Yet, the popular reaction and public protest in Indiana were relatively mild compared to the seizure of the state capitol and subsequent wave of teacher strikes and extended mass protests centered last year in Madison. Other than leafleting festive crowds with a “remember-the-workers” message, state labor officials and Occupy Indianapolis activists kept a low profile. “We don’t want to disrupt anything. We just want to protest, for people to see us and hear our message,” said one Occupy Indianapolis organizer. Indeed, the Indiana State Federation of Labor reportedly counseled against any Super Bowl demonstrations for fear that politics would be resented at a sporting event. What, then, explains the relative passivity?

In Indiana, union forces never found a way to align their plight with the perceived interests of a majority of Hoosier voters. The Wagner Act of 1935, keystone of labor rights in the private sector, pointedly identified “inequality of bargaining power” among “employees who do not possess full freedom of association” as a cause of business depressions, “by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners in industry.” In that spirit, Indiana union leaders assailed the right-to-work law as an attack on high wages. Yet the argument is no longer self-evident. Today’s Republicans assert, to the contrary, that weaker and fewer unions will relieve the recession by attracting more jobs, even if with reduced pay and benefits. This is a difficult debate to win. No one wants a race-to-the-bottom, says one side. Is there another game in town, asks the other.

An argument centered on the economy already puts the union forces on the defensive. Why should they have to rest their case on statistics of employment growth and business investment over income standards over which they have only limited influence? They are far stronger if they hold to unionism as a principle — i.e., labor rights are human rights. People are better off if they have a say at their workplace. No one today, for example, would publicly advocate restrictions on African-Americans’ or women’s rights in order somehow to jump-start the economy. Note that even Newt Gingrich’s call for sub-minimum wage jobs for poor children did not find a receptive audience. Today, discrimination is taboo in all aspects of society except one: union preference.

Yet, how much do workers themselves — private sector or public sector — value their own union rights? In Wisconsin, the union presence seemed wedded to a deep sense of civic identity, including connection to a long-standing state tradition of “progressive” innovation and peaceful reconciliation of differences among competing social and economic interests.

In Indiana, despite the fact that Indianapolis had once hosted more union headquarters than any other city in America, legislated reduction of the union presence triggered no visible sign of larger public hurt. That the union leaders themselves viewed the issue as “mere politics” betrays their own skepticism that worker rights can truly appeal to the public conscience. Yet they stopped short of making the effort: Had thousands of workers — machinists, teachers, nurses, construction workers, et al. — assembled in a disciplined, nonviolent ring around Lucas Oil Stadium, they might have changed the chemistry for the next round of statewide elections.

Political leadership and strategy were equally absent inside the arena. Like Indiana workers, the NFL Players Association, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, ultimately depends on state and national labor laws that set the framework and standards for collective bargaining. Yet, beyond a press release and letters of protest from a few Indiana-born players to their state legislators, the Players Association dropped the ball in response to the governor’s anti-union assault.

I could only think of how different was the determination of the 1968 Olympic athletes who raised a black-power salute at their official Olympic awards ceremony. If a similar sense of solidarity had been on display in Indianapolis, players from each team might have unfurled a “union” banner — Norma Rae-like — at halftime and carried it aloft to their respective locker rooms. Better yet, they would have handed off the emblems to Madonna, a long-established member of both the Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild of America.

I’m dreaming, of course. This is Indiana.

: Leon Fink, who graduated a year prior to Governor Mitch Daniels from Indianapolis’ North Central High School, teaches labor history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and is the author of "Sweatshops at Sea" (2011). More Leon Fink

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Arizona’s vicious war on workers

Gov. Jan Brewer is pushing a radical anti-union bill that makes Wisconsin's law look lax

By Sarah Jaffe, Alternet

(Credit: AP/Ross D. Franklin)

Topics:AlterNet, Arizona, Jan Brewer, The Labor Movement

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

Not content to let Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Ohio’s John Kasich get all the fame (and recall elections, and ballot referenda) for their attempts to curtail union workers’ rights, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators have jumped into the fray and proposed their own anti-union bills in recent weeks.

Along with South Carolina’s Nikki Haley and Indiana’s Mitch Daniels, Arizona’s Jan Brewer, not content with making her state the least friendly to immigrants and people of color, has decided to get in on the union-busting action as well, introducing a bill that makes Walker’s and Kasich’s attacks on public workers look mild.

Brewer, the Republican left in charge of the state after President Obama tapped Janet Napolitano to be his secretary of Homeland Security, has been planning anti-union moves since last spring with the backing of the Goldwater Institute. (Named for Barry Goldwater, the think tank pushes for “freedom” and “prosperity” — as long as it’s not the freedom or prosperity of state workers.)

It’s not just Arizona’s right-wingers who are pushing Brewer to beat up on unions – John Nichols at the Nation notes that Walker may have had a hand in helping push an anti-labor agenda, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is involved. In a speech to the right-wing policy shop behind many of these anti-union bills last year, Brewer complained about her inability to fire government employees and supervisors’ difficulty “disciplining” workers.

This week, the Republicans in the state Legislature introduced moves that would make collective bargaining for public workers completely illegal. Here, we break down what you need to know about Brewer and the GOP’s anti-worker agenda.

1. The bill would go further than Wisconsin’s, making collective bargaining completely illegal for government workers.

SB 1485, the first of the bills to take on union rights, declares that no state agency can recognize any union as a bargaining agent for any public officer or worker, collectively bargain with any union, or meet and confer with any union for the purpose of discussing bargaining.

While Wisconsin’s law bans public employees from bargaining over everything but very small wage increases, Arizona’s bill bans collective bargaining outright and refuses to recognize any union as a bargaining unit. Existing contracts with unions will be honored, but not be renewed if this bill passes.

2. Arizona includes police and firefighters in its ban.

Scott Walker famously exempted public safety workers — police officers and firefighters — from his attacks on union workers, but many of them joined the protests anyway. In Ohio, John Kasich’s bill, overturned by his constituents this past November, included the police and firefighters in its elimination of bargaining rights. Now Brewer and her legislative compatriots have decided that police and firefighters should lose their bargaining rights as well.

Arizona, as Dave Dayen at FireDogLake noted, “is changing to a purple state because of an extreme legislature which first demonized immigrants, in what could start a backlash among the Hispanic community. Now, flush with that success, the legislature will demonize police and firefighters. It’s not exactly a textbook strategy for a lasting majority.”

Walker’s attempt to divide and conquer public sector unions by attacking some and not others didn’t work; perhaps that’s why later attempts at similar bills didn’t bother giving special treatment to public safety workers. But as we saw in Ohio, the support of the traditionally conservative police and firefighters’ unions helped unite the state’s voters and bring out record numbers to vote down the bill. Arizona seems to be asking for trouble by targeting police and firefighters with this bill.

3. The state would ban government employers from deducting union dues automatically from a worker’s paycheck.

Not content with banning bargaining, the Arizona legislature is also out to make sure unions can’t collect any money for the work they do. SB 1487 inserts language into existing law that says “This state and any county, municipality, school district or other political subdivision of this state may not withhold or divert any portion of an employee’s wages to pay for labor organization dues.”

This move obviously is aimed to hit unions right in their wallets — taking away the funding they need in order to do more organizing, and carry out political activity.

4. Arizona would ban the government from allowing employees to do union work on company time.

Laura Clawson at Daily Kos notes that in addition to the other measures, Arizona’s Republicans also want to eliminate “release time,” a practice “in which union stewards and other representatives are allowed to spend work time on certain union functions, such as contract negotiations or handling grievances.”

Union stewards and representatives are full-time employees who take on additional responsibilities on top of their jobs—a move like this makes it harder for them to carry out those responsibilities to their fellow workers without fear of facing sanctions from their bosses. Specifically banned by the bill, SB 1486, are “activities that are performed by a union, union members or representatives that relate to advocating the interests of member employees in wages, benefits, terms and conditions of employment.”

5. Brewer also wants to eliminate any job protections for workers, buying them off with pay raises.

Brewer plans to offer public workers their first pay raise in years, a 5 percent increase. The tradeoff? They have to opt out of job protections some of them currently enjoy, including the right to appeal demotions and protection from being fired without cause – they have to become at-will employees.

Like most “merit pay” arrangements, this one sounds good at first — hard-working people will get raises! — but workers see right through it. Odalys Hinds, who works in the state health lab, told the Arizona Republic, “No way will I do it. I won’t take it — it basically would take away our rights. My retirement’s gone up. My insurance has gone up. There’s going to come a day when I’m going to have to pay the state to work.”

6. Arizona is already a “right-to-work” state

The kicker to all this? Arizona workers already enjoy fewer protections than those in Ohio and Wisconsin. Arizona is a so-called right-to-work state, where unions cannot collect a fair share of the direct costs of representation from workers who opt out of joining the union — even though the union is compelled to represent all workers.

This means that unlike the Midwestern states, Arizona has few union members already and that means there are fewer people who are likely to be outraged and moved to protest by attacks on collective bargaining. Yet Brewer, the Goldwater Institute and the Republicans in the Legislature aren’t content with what they have and are moving to make public sector unions all but irrelevant, by making it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs.

Arizona now has a strong Republican majority in the Legislature, and so barring a change of heart by a handful of GOPers, the anti-union measures are likely to pass. But if Brewer continues to antagonize working people in her state, John Nichols notes, Arizona does have something else in common with Wisconsin — provisions that allow for the recall of the governor and state legislators, provisions that were used just last year to remove Russell Pearce, the state senator responsible for the state’s hideous anti-immigrant law, from office.