labor:

Card check compromise floated

Starbucks, Costco and Whole Foods ask to maintain secret ballot, enforce deadline

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Politics: The Early Line

Card check alternative unveiled (3-23-2009)
Card-check bill back, but with fewer supporters (3-11-2009)
Las Vegas Chamber takes anti-card check message to Washington (3-6-2009)
Past friends of card check still weighing bill (3-3-2009)
Solis confirmed as labor at issue in Nevada (2-24-2009)
Card-check bill waitin' on Al Franken (2-5-2009)
Card check battle takes center stage at Capitol (1-31-2009)
With stand on bailout, GOP signals priorities (12-14-2008)

Washington — A proposal by three big retailers — Starbucks, Costco and Whole Foods — to offer an alternative to the union-backed card check bill landed to mixed reviews Monday on Capitol Hill, where some say it will not advance.

The companies are seeking to launch a “third way” on the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would make it easier for workers to opt for union representation.

“What we’re calling for is a dialogue,” said Eileen O’Connor, an attorney with the newly formed Committee for a Level Playing Field. The group is represented by Washington power attorney Lanny Davis, a former official in the Clinton administration.

“The companies really came to us saying they were uncomfortable with the polarization of the issue, the polarization of the debate,” O’Connor said.

The bill is among the most divisive on the Hill. It would allow workers to use the majority sign-up, or card check, system to vote in a union, rather than having to prevail in secret-ballot elections.

The compromise the big three offered would continue to mandate secret-ballot elections, which management prefers, but require that elections be promptly held.

One of labor’s biggest complaints has been that management drags out the election process and uses the intervening time to intimidate workers against forming a union. Management counters that unions will be able to use the sign-up process to intimidate workers into joining.

But the proposal appears to have split the business community, while rallying the labor unions to stand firmly against a compromise.

Labor is unwilling to forgo the card check component, the centerpiece of the Employee Free Choice Act. Unions also support binding arbitration if managers and workers are unable to agree on a first contract — which the proposal from the big three retailers would eliminate.

Mark McCullough, a spokesman for the Service Employees International Union, said the proposal “maintains the status quo. It offers no serious attempt at labor law reform.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, among the chief opponents of card check, expressed mild interest Monday.

The Chamber’s Glenn Spencer said “there are some interesting ideas in this set of principles.”

But the anti-card check National Right to Work Committee said “to float compromises could derail the ability to kill the bill outright.”

Republican Sen. John Ensign, among the top opponents of card check in Congress, said the proposal is “not going anywhere.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who supports the Employee Free Choice Act, “is encouraged to hear some in the business community acknowledge that we must address existing labor laws,” spokesman Jon Summers said.

But the senator “is also aware that some of his colleagues believe this proposal falls short in very critical areas,” Summers said.

Discussion: 2 comments so far…

By EFCANOW

3/24/09 at 8:20 a.m.

Suggest removal

Employee Free Choice Act Compromise No Compromise at All

Monday Mar 23rd, 2009 4:13 PM

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/03...

Yesterday Costco Wholesale Corp., Starbucks Corp. and Whole Foods Market Inc. offered an alternative to the union-backed "card-check" legislation that U.S. business groups are spending millions of dollars to defeat. The proposal is being presented through Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton.

Inside sources have revealed to us some key problems with the proposal include:

The proposal eliminates workers' ability to choose majority sign-up, the one method for organizing proven to reduce coercion and pressure from all sides on workers. Instead, the proposal would force all workers through the broken, corporate-dominated NLRB system.

The proposal rejects first contract arbitration -- a tried and proven method for ensuring good faith bargaining and one of the core elements of the Employee Free Choice Act. Under this proposal, employers would continue to have the union-busting power to drag out bargaining indefinitely and keep employees from gaining the kind of enforceable contracts that CEOs always give themselves. First contract arbitration provides the necessary incentive for the parties to reach agreement on their own terms.

Rather than respecting employees' choice, the proposal gives CEOs the power to initiate drives to eliminate unions. Current law forbids corporate-initiated decertification campaigns, for good reason. Instead of bargaining a contract in good faith, employers would be initiating drives to get rid of the workers' chosen representative. Organizing a union or getting rid of a union should be the workers' choice, not the CEO's.

Rather than offering a level playing field, the proposal preserves CEOs' ability to force employees to attend one-on-one meetings with supervisors or mandatory mass anti-union meetings at work. We do not tolerate such undemocratic, coercive behavior in federal elections. Yet, while forcing employees to go through the NLRB election process, the proposal would preserve this coercive aspect of corporate-dominated NLRB elections.

The proposal does not offer pro-union workers or union organizers the same access that employers have to workers. In fact, the proposal does not improve access to workers one iota. According to the proposal, unions and management would be "permitt[ed] each to make presentations to employees at a neutral location concerning the issue of whether to form a union." Nothing in current law forbids such presentations at a neutral location. The problem is that the one place workers convene everyday, the workplace, is off-limits to union organizers and completely controlled and monopolized by management. While management has no restrictions on campaigning at work, both the union and workers are severely restricted.

www.TheTruthAboutEFCA.Org

http://efcanow.blogspot.com/
By Casca

3/24/09 at 11:55 a.m.

Suggest removal

We are not going to release Sen.Harry Reid(D-NV),House Speaker Nancy Pelosi(D-CA) from their responsibility to the American Worker. E-verify is not going-- away, although they connived to dismiss it secretly from the Stimulus/Omnibus package, with 48 other Democrats.

They have shown their allegiance is-- not--to THE PEOPLE of these United States, but to the US Chamber of Commerce, UCLA, subversive foreign entities and of course the 40 million illegal aliens calculated by the Heritage Foundation.

The 1986 Immigration Rule of Law is the law of our land and cannot be violated. The Simpson/Mazzoli bill that was passed by legislators has been abused, even though it was drafted on behalf of the US electorate.

E-Verify is a simple, accessible system that an identify illegal labor in the workplace. Businesses who ignore the computer friendly e-verify data base and hire foreign nationals, have no excuses in federal court. They are traitors to America and should be dealt with severely. E-Verify is funded till September and must be extended forever.

We are being--HEARD-- in Washington, but we must not stop the roar of outrage. 202-224-3121 To locate your Senator www.senate.gov/ For your Congressman www.house.gov/ President Obama: Switchboard: 202-456-1414 Comments: 202-456-1111 FAX: 202-456-2461

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