Las Vegas Chamber takes anti-card check message to Washington

By Nicole Lucht

Friday, March 6, 2009 | 2 a.m.

WASHINGTON — Standing in the rotunda of the Cannon Building, Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce lobbyists prepared for their final two meetings of the day.

A couple of hours earlier they sat across from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada in his so-called hideout office inside the Capitol on March 3, discussing businesses’ concerns about the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, or as the business group has deemed it, the Small Business Intimidation Act.

Midway through their brief meeting with Reid, the interview was interrupted by a Senate call to vote, the senator rushing down to cast his vote on another issue. The meeting was quickly resumed afterward.

They also met with Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who has steadfastly opposed the bill.

The bill would allow union organizers to collect a majority of employees’ signatures on a card to organize a workplace. An election with a secret ballot would not be necessary to organize.

“The (senators’) reception have actually been the polar opposites,” said Steve Hill, senior vice president of materials group in CalPortland Co.’s Nevada division and chairman of the Las Vegas chamber. “They are dramatically different in how they view the legislation.”

Hill said the main reason Congress should oppose the bill is because it “kills jobs.”

“It (also) takes the voice away from the employees, it takes the ability for businesses and their employees to have a dialogue. Ultimately, people who are risking money in this environment to try to provide a job in this economy will have no control over what their labor costs are going to be.

“It discourages people from jumping out there and trying to create new jobs.”

Under the proposed bill, if the union seeking to organize the workplace collects enough votes, the employer and union will have 90 days to agree to a contract. If that doesn’t happen, then an outside mediator would determine a two-year collective bargaining agreement, another bone of contention for the chamber.

Reid said in an e-mail that as a co-sponsor of the bill his position hasn’t changed.

“I have met with the chamber today and maintain an open line of communication with Nevada business leaders as well as labor leaders about this bill,” he said.

Reid also pointed out the bill doesn’t end the use of a National Labor Relations Board election, but “it simply allows the employees to have the choice of whether they want an election or the sign-up cards. This is an opportunity to give both sides a mechanism that will hopefully allow both sides to reach equitable terms in a contract.”

The bill would apply to any business with three or more employees, said Tim Cashman of Cashman Cos. and a chamber government affairs board member.

“Generally small businesses are of the opinion that this doesn’t apply to them, and it does,” he said. “Everybody wants to say this is an anti-Wal-Mart bill, and it’s not,” Cashman said. “It’s an anti-business bill, from the dry cleaners all the way up to Wal-Mart.”

While the chamber met privately with Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., in her Washington office, laughter could be heard through the door.

But, speaking afterward with a reporter, Titus was asked whether a compromise was discussed, she said they rebuffed the suggestion and said they wanted all or nothing.

“There’s just not anything in the bill that they could see changing to make it acceptable,” Titus said. “And that’s always unfortunate.”

Cashman concurred: “No compromise. It’s a horrendous piece of legislation. It cannot be fixed.

“It fundamentally changes the way business owners relate to their employees, and as a business owner I feel it is very important to be able to communicate ... and create a great working environment without somebody else in the middle.”

When asked if she took exception to the lobbyists claiming that certain members of Congress would vote for the bill as “union payback,” Titus said, “They wouldn’t say that to my face, I don’t think. I knew most of the people in this room” as a former professor and colleague of theirs.

“I think they know I try to make good decisions and listen to all sides,” Titus said. “I don’t think they would say something like that to me.”

Titus said she hasn’t signed on as a sponsor because she hasn’t read it yet and would like to hear all sides before deciding.

“I’ve always supported the concept of it,” she said. “I said that during the campaign. I haven’t changed my position.”

In Las Vegas, a card-check program that has similarities to the proposed bill has allowed the Culinary Union to increase its membership about 150 percent, adding 30,000 members since 1989, Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor said.

“The fundamental (merit) is that the card-check provisions we had (leaves) the choice of a union up to the employees, without company involvement,” he said. “It’s a worker choice, not a company choice. It definitely does not allow for the kind of polarization you find in the workplace where you have a very contentious atmosphere in an election.”

The Culinary’s card check has also allowed for quick collective bargaining agreement negotiations.

“I think that what (Las Vegas employers) have seen is that, whether they like it or not, we are pretty good partners,” Taylor said. “We work very, very hard at having the very, very best workforce. Obviously they are allowed to make very good profits in normal times, and we have this philosophy that if they grow, the workers grow with them, and that’s really what has been the vehicle behind it.”

Labor management attorney Gregory Kamer said that when Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, the goal was to balance industrial democracy with industrial stability, with the workers giving up their rights to self-negotiate to a union representative.

Kamer said that when a worker selects union representation it has a much more direct and daily effect on that worker than any (political) election that the worker will vote on.

“It really does, because it determines moment-to-moment, day-to-day, what that worker’s working conditions are going to be like,” Kamer said. “Good or bad, regardless of how one feels about the labor movement, and I certainly have my prejudices, the reality is there’s an election to be made here, (and) it has to be a conscious, knowledgeable choice. Just as we vote for political office, it’s a conscious, knowledgeable choice.”

Kamer said although he doesn’t think the bill will pass in its current form, there may be concessions to placate the union lobby.

“From a purely selfish point of view, I won’t have enough hours in the day if this thing passes,” he said. “It will ruin the country, the pendulum will swing all the way back and we will be devastated and then they will have to rewrite the law. It would be horrible legislation, and ultimately, I don’t think it will pass.”

Unions have a better chance at passing the card-check bill this time with the Obama administration in the White House, as opposed to two years ago when it failed when George W. Bush was president.

And Vice President Joe Biden, upon meeting union leaders shortly after his and President Barack Obama’s inauguration, was reported to have said “Welcome back to the White House.”

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said in an interview earlier this year one of the reasons the American workers’ wages have stagnated for so many years is that they don’t have much bargaining leverage left.

In the 1950s, when everyone’s wages were going up, fairly rapidly ... 35 percent of American workers were unionized. That was a high enough percentage to mean that wage agreements in the unionized sector especially, suffered lower wages across the country with the degradation of a unionized workforce.

Today, in the private sector, less than 8 percent of workers are unionized, which means that most people don’t have much bargaining leverage, he said.

“The consequence of that is, even though the economy is growing, we are now in a situation where over 20 percent of all the income of the economy is going to the top 1 percent,” Reich said. “The top 1 percent cannot buy enough, and will not buy enough, to keep the economy going. We have to rebuild the middle class. Strong unions, therefore, mean a rebuilding of the middle class.

“Unless we rebuild the middle class, we’re not going to have an economy that can sustain itself.”

Labor management consultant Mark Garrity has been successful in helping businesses keep unions out of the workplace. According to Garrity, he has a 97 percent success rate over his 25 years as a union buster.

“I think what needs to take place, is we need to take an honest look at the National Labor Relations Act and see how to clarify it so that working people actually do have an open and honest forum,” he said. “Companies are allowed to have mandatory meetings, but the unions (complain) that they can’t bring people in a mandatory meeting. But, they can have a meeting at the union hall, and they can answer questions, and they can show existing contracts, and they can give an honest overview of what the costs and commitments are.

The Las Vegas chamber wasn’t alone in its lobbying efforts. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also will have lobbyists from several states in the halls of Congress in March opposing the bill.