Union Lock-outs on the Increase

Lockout. It's a word that football, hockey, basketball and now the Minnesota Orchestra have put into mainstream discussion. 

First, let's be clear what a lockout is: It's the opposite of a strike. The employer withholds work in order to gain concessions from workers.

Lockouts are growing in frequency. Sotheby's auction house locked out art handlers. Cooper Tire did the same to its workers. Drivers for SuperMom's bakery in the Twin Cities were recently locked out for two weeks. One of the most egregious examples is in the Red River Valley of Minnesota and North Dakota, where 1,300 skilled, highly trained workers who turn beets into sugar have been locked out for nearly 15 months by their already profitable employer -- American Crystal Sugar.

Lockouts have not been very common in the past, because usually businesses would prefer to keep operating and getting the value of workers' labor. But in the current economic climate, even profitable enterprises are seeking to wrangle a few extra dollars out of workers.

But these lockouts have real consequences. There are the obvious ones we can see publicly. In the NFL, millions of viewers saw replacement referees blow call after call. The NHL season is in jeopardy of being canceled once again. Now, Orchestra Hall, a major Twin Cities attraction, has fallen silent.

Some lockout consequences, while not necessarily obvious, are even more painful. In the Red River Valley, the casualties have included homes and marriages.

Crystal Sugar's farmer-shareholders haven't been spared pain, either. Shareholders have typically been paid about the same per ton of sugar beets -- or more -- as shareholders in the nearby Minn-Dak Sugar Cooperative. But this year, Crystal Sugar has estimated a beet payment of $59 per ton, while Minn-Dak's latest estimate is for a payment of $74.05 per ton. At the same time, executive pay is up. In the past three years, the top four officers saw their total compensation increase upwards of 34 percent, with CEO Dave Berg seeing a whopping 52 percent increase between 2009 and 2011.

This trend represents an overreach on the part of employers. The response of fans to the NFL referee conflict is a great example of how the average American sees this issue. We are not sympathetic to rich people deciding that they want to rewrite the rules of the game when they are already winning. Nor are we sympathetic to corporate executives mismanaging their shareholders' investment and rewarding themselves with a raise.

The attacks on public-sector collective bargaining rights are similar. Most Americans continue to believe that we all benefit when workers get some say in their jobs. Just look to the overturning of restrictions on collective bargaining in Ohio, and the overwhelming support by public-school parents for the Chicago teachers' strike.

Why does this support persist despite high unemployment and decreasing union density? It's because most of us know that nobody cares more about the quality of the work than workers themselves. It's true for referees, hockey players, musicians, teachers and technicians in a sugar-beet factory.

UU Editor:  The answer to the spread of lock-outs is SIT-DOWN STRIKES.   Throw Management OUT.   Sit-down Strikes end soon in solid VICTORIES.

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Shar Knutson is president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, a labor federation of more than 3,000 local Unions that represent more than 300,000 working people.

Where Did Our Pensions Go?

A total of 84,350 pension plans have vanished since 1985. This figure shocked Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Donald L. Barlett and James W. Steele, who just released their latest book, "The Betrayal of the American Dream." Their chapter on retirement chronicles the heist of the American dream's secure retirement by the financial elite and is a very important section of the book, says Steele, who spoke with the AFL-CIO about the retirement crisis. Steele says there is another number we should pay attention to: $17,686. That's the median value of 401(k) accounts in 2011. For most working people, the amount in their 401(k) account would pay them less than $80 a month for life.

"What's happening with retirement is almost parallel to what you see happening in other parts of the economy," says Steele.

The elite has its agenda to eliminate pensions with the shift to 401(k)s, which cost companies less. Now, there's a revenue stream for Wall Street and an obligation shift to people with little or no experience understanding how to deal with their own retirement issues....This is typical of all the other things the economy elite has been doing for decades with deregulation, unrestricted free trade and tax cuts—these things are all related.

"In the '50s, '60s and '70s, the amount of workers with access to pensions was significantly rising," says Steele. "We fully underestimated the speed in which the downturn would occur, and how Congress went along and encouraged it."

Barlett and Steele write that the shift from defined-benefit pension plans to 401(k)s began in the 1980s. Companies realized 401(k)s would substantially reduce corporate costs. Workers were told that pensions no longer made sense and were outdated since people moved around from job to job. The 401(k) was marketed as more “portable.”

Steele says 401(k)s were engineered by corporations as another way for the wealthy executives to set aside money. They were never intended to be a principal retirement plan, only a supplement. 

"Once corporate America got on to this, the idea took root," says Steele. "The entire obligation shifted to the employees."

Congress ignored the concerns raised by Trade Unions and other pension rights organizations. And the consequences are dire for middle- and lower-income workers. 

"This is so typical of what has been happening over the last two to three decades," says Steele. "This is the slow, steady erosion of economic security Americans had (or thought they had)....Now economic pundits, corporate folks and Wall Street people are saying people just have to work longer, in part because retirement plans now in place will not provide much security to people as they get older."

Bartlett and Steele feature stories of average people who did everything right (saved, worked hard) but are still living on the edge of poverty because of policies that enhance the rich at the expense of everyone else. 

Over and over again, people thought they had something good. They were working hard and then, through no fault of their own, lost it all. Most people we talked to in the book are employed.

People thought it was something they had done to lose their job or benefits....They didn’t realize it was part of a broader pattern. There are great swaths of working people who are affected and we think it's our fault. For most of these people, it's not their fault, it's just the way policy has been organized. Systematically dismantling pensions and retirement is the perfect example.

With the decline of pensions, it's even more important to strengthen, not cut, Social Security benefits. Although the country dodged a bullet in 2005, when Bush's plan for Social Security privatization fizzled, Steele says we still need to be vigilant to protect our benefits from the Wall Street casino. 

Don and I make this point that the 2008 recession wouldn't look a whole lot different from the Great Depression if we didn't have Social Security and Medicare because there was no safety net then. 

The economic elite, says Steele, attack Social Security because it's a large pool of money for Wall Street to play with. 

Nobody should kid themselves that they're not going to come back and try to implement some parts of that [privatization]....The amount of money at stake is too good and that’s all they care about—access to that money, not American workers. 

You can purchase "The Betrayal of the American Dream," on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. 

Public Workers Pensions Vote GOP

How Pensions Violate Free Speech
By BENJAMIN I. SACHS

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/under-citizens-united-public-employees-are-compelled-to-pay-for-corporate-political-speech.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Cambridge, Mass.
A CENTRAL principle of American political life is that everyone gets to choose which candidates to support. The idea that the government could force us to support those we oppose is anathema. But this unacceptable state of affairs is one of the unintended consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2010 Citizens United case.
That’s because the vast majority of people who work in the public sector — state, local and federal employees — are required to make contributions to a pension plan. Nearly all states make participation in a pension plan mandatory and a “condition of employment” for public employees. To get and keep your job with the government, you have to give some of your paycheck to the pension plan.
Public pensions, moreover, are so-called defined benefit plans, which means that employees don’t have a say in how their mandatory contributions are invested. The employees cannot request, for example, that their money be used only to buy government bonds or that it be invested only in certain mutual funds or only in select corporations.
Instead, the employees’ money is invested according to whatever decisions the pension plan’s trustee makes. And, not surprisingly, pension plans invest heavily in corporate securities: in 2008, public pensions held about $1.15 trillion in corporate stock.
Here’s the problem. In its Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court held that companies have a First Amendment right to make electoral expenditures with general corporate treasuries. And they’ve done so, with relish, pouring millions into the political system.
What Citizens United failed to account for, however, is that a significant portion of the money that corporations are spending on politics is financed by equity capital provided by public pension funds — capital contributions that the government requires public employees to finance with their paychecks.
This consequence of Citizens United is perverse: requiring public employees to finance corporate electoral spending amounts to compelled political speech and association, something the First Amendment flatly forbids.
Contrast this situation with how the court treats political spending by Unions. In many states, public employees are required to pay dues to a labor union. If the public employees union were to spend any of the money raised through dues on politics, the court has ruled, the dues requirement would amount to forced political speech and association. To prevent this First Amendment violation, the court has held that no Union may use an employee’s dues for political purposes if the employee objects.
The same should be true for pension funds and corporate politics. In a world where corporations can use their general treasuries for political spending, no government should be allowed to require employees to finance the purchase of corporate securities through a pension plan, unless the government provides those employees with a meaningful way to object to financing corporate politics.
The good news is that the rules governing Union dues and political spending provide a road map for restructuring public pensions in order to bring them back into conformity with the First Amendment.
Here’s one way it could work: Pension plans would determine the number of employees that object to financing corporate political spending. They would then negotiate “opt out” rights with the corporations in which they invest. These corporations would calculate the percentage of their annual expenditures that go to politics and promise to return to the pension plan an amount equal to the objecting employee’s pro rata share of the corporation’s political budget.
Whatever the route to reform, however, public pension plans need to ensure that employees are not compelled to finance corporate political speech. Until they do, these pension funds will be vulnerable to the challenge that they are violating the First Amendment.
Benjamin I. Sachs is a professor at Harvard Law School.

Can Karl Rove Steal the Election?

Will 9 GOP Governors (with Karl Rove) Electronically Flip Romney into the White House?
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman 9/25/12 Free Press.org [edited for length]

Nine Republican Governors have the power to put Mitt Romney in the White House, even if Barack Obama wins the popular vote.

With their Secretaries of State, they control the electronic vote count in nine key swing states: Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Arizona, and New Mexico. Wisconsin elections are under the control of the state's Government Accountability Board, appointed by Gov. (Walker).

With the GOP's massive nation-wide disenfranchisement campaign, they could---in the dead of night---flip their states' electronic votes to Romney and give him a victory in the Electoral College.



Electronic voting machines with ties to Republican-connected companies have proliferated throughout Ohio. Federal money from the Help America Vote Act has helped move electronic voting machines into other key swing states in substantial numbers that are not easy to track.

The machines can quickly tabulate a winner. But their dark side is simple: there is no way to monitor or double-check the final tally. These partisan Republican vote counting companies have written contracts to avoid transparency and open records laws.



In Ohio 2004, at 12:20 election night, the initial vote tabulation showed John Kerry defeating Bush by more than 4%. This 200,000-plus margin appeared to guarantee Kerry's presidency.

But mysteriously, the Ohio vote count suddenly shifted to Smartech in Chattanooga, Tennessee. With private Republican-connected contractors processing the vote, Bush jumped ahead with a 2% lead, eventually winning with an official margin of more than 118,000 votes. Such a shift of more than 6%, involving more than 300,000 votes, is a virtual statistical impossibility, as documented in our WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA'S 2012 ELECTION (www.freepress.org).

That night, Ohio's vote count was being compiled in the basement of the old Pioneer Bank building in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The building also housed the servers for the Republican National Committee and thus the e-mail of Bush advisor Karl Rove. Secretary of State Blackwell was co-chair of the Ohio Committee to Re-Elect Bush and Cheney. He met earlier that day in Columbus with George W. Bush and Karl Rove. That night, he sent the state's chief IT worker home early. The official Ohio vote count tabulation system was designed by IT specialist Michael Connell, whose computer company New Media was long associated with the Bush family. In 2008 Connell died in a mysterious single-engine plane crash after being subpoenaed to testify in the federal King-Lincoln-Bronzeville voter rights lawsuit (by way of disclosure: Bob is an attorney and Harvey a plaintiff in this lawsuit). The King-Lincoln suit eventually resulted in a federal injunction ordering Ohio's 88 counties to turn over their ballots and election records.

But 56 of Ohio's 88 counties violated the injunction and destroyed their election records. Thus no complete recount of Ohio 2004 has ever been done. More than 90,000 "spoiled" ballots, like those in Toledo, went entirely uncounted, and have since been destroyed.

No way was found to verify the 2004 electronic vote count. There are no safeguards in place today.
Progressive Democratic Wokers - Union Election Protection - Unions United - William Floyd

Phone Workers Stand Up to Verizon

Thousands of CWA Activists Stand Up to Verizon in Philly    

Nearly 5,000 workers engulfed Verizon’s offices in downtown Philadelphia on Saturday morning, demanding that the company stop its assault on workers and bargain a fair contract.

The streets were filled with a sea of red shirts and chants. CWA International President Larry Cohen, District 2-13 Vice President Ed Moony and District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton fired up the people, and invoked the 37 IBEW and CWA members who were fired after Verizon workers went on strike last August.

CWA President Larry Cohen,standing with fired strikers, addresses a crowd of 5,000.
“Every day, especially this next week, think about your own life as if you’re walking in their shoes,” Cohen said. “Every one of these fired workers – they’re not giving up. They’re standing up, they’re fighting back. Can we do any less?”

One worker, Jennifer Travis, who worked at a call center in Pittsburgh, was fired after 15 exemplary years on the job. She told her story to 35,000 brothers and sisters gathered at the nearby Workers Stand for America rally.

“The company says that I assaulted a manager as he escorted a scab across our picket line. Those are outrageous and false allegations. And, together with my Union, we are fighting back,” she said. “But mine was not an isolated incident. Several of my brothers and sisters were fired or disciplined last

August for similarly trumped up charges. What many of us have in common is our highly visible status as union leaders and activists. It makes me wonder if the company retaliated against us in an effort to intimidate other members who would consider standing up for their union in the future. If that's true, it's flat out bullying, and it's disgusting.”

CWAers marched two miles through Philadelphia to join Travis at the rally, where sprinkler fitters, postal workers, teachers, and other union workers gathered at Eakins Oval in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Cohen told workers, “We’re not walking silently!” And block after block, stopping traffic in all directions, they shouted, “What’s disgusting? Union busting!” and “What do we do when we’re under attack? We stand up, we fight back!”

There, workers demanded that politicians on both sides of the aisle sign on to a new Second Bill of Rights, a list of priorities that workers want featured at the Democratic and Republican national conventions.

 After a great rally, CWAers are on the march to the Workers Stand for America event.

“We built this country, we wake it up and we put it to sleep and it’s time to take it back!” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the people. “Hard work alone has never led to decent wages and benefits and retirement for every American. It’s hard work and activism.”

And when Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz mentioned that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had chosen Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his running mate that very morning, the crowd booed loudly.

"I couldn't agree more," she said. "What a devastating impact a Romney-Ryan administration would have for America’s working families. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are both top-down and backward for the American worker."

Construction Jobs at Universal

PLA for NBC Universal Redevelopment in L.A. Means 13,000 Construction Jobs

by Mike Hall

A new project labor agreement (PLA) between Southern California Construction Unions and NBC Universal for a major redevelopment of the company’s movie and television studios and the Universal City theme park in Los Angeles will create about 13,000 local construction jobs.
  
The PLA reached between the Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council and NBC Universal on the 10-year project in the east San Fernando Valley was announced yesterday.

PLAs are pre-hire agreements between labor and management that require all construction jobs be filled by local workers; include diversity requirements; establish wages and work rules covering overtime, working hours and dispute resolution; and ensure that safety guidelines on the job site are enforced.

A study last year by Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations School (ILR) found project labor agreements offer a pathway to the middle class by providing job opportunities to low-income communities, minorities, veterans and others.

The $1.6 billion project will include new and improved production and post-production facilities, new media-related office space and enhancements to the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park and CityWalk, along with hotels and retail and dining facilities. It also includes major investments in area transportation and mass transit facilities.

The 300-acre redevelopment project will create an additional 18,000 other jobs and help keep movie and television production in Los Angeles. The project is now proceeding through the environmental evaluation process.

War on Unions Comes to California

The War On Workers Comes to California, in Disguise


By: David Dayen

After the victory in Wisconsin, many wondered where conservative interests would strike next to finish off unions and permanently alter the power relationship between labor and capital. It appears the next step is California. In November, voters will decide on an initiative, Prop 32, that would “eliminate unions from having any voice in politics whatsoever,” according to one labor official.

In its simplest form the measure, often called “paycheck protection” on the right, would stop unions from using automatic payroll deductions from their members for political activity. Similar measures have been on the ballot before in California, and have been beaten back both times. In 1998, voters rejected Prop 226, and in 2005, they similarly beat back Prop 75.   But those were frontal assaults against unions. The difference here is that the supporters have dressed up this initiative as a campaign finance reform measure that affects corporations and unions in equal measure. Prop 32 supporters call it the “Stop Special Interest Money Initiative.” Nothing could be further from the truth, says the opposition to Prop 32.

“The people who drafted this are the same people who twice before tried this and failed,” says Brian Brokaw, the communications director for No on 32. “They claim that it’s even-handed, in that it bans both unions and corporations from collecting political funds via payroll deductions. But corporations don’t use payroll deductions for political funds, they just use their own treasuries.”

It’s actually more insidious than that. The initiative has two parts. First, it bans direct political donations to state candidates from both corporations and unions. Neither side does a whole lot of that, as independent expenditures are more common in support of or opposition to individual candidates. But the definition of a “corporation” is made so narrow in the initiative language, granting a number of special exemptions to entities such as LLCs, limited partnerships, insurance companies, hedge funds, developers, Wall Street investment firms and more. “They carefully drafted this to exempt themselves,” Brokaw says. Any corporation could set up a shell company and continue the practice of direct political contributions.

As to why unions could not engage in such behavior, that brings us to the second part of the initiative. This is the payroll deduction part. As said before, both unions and corporations would be banned from using payroll deductions for political activities, yet only unions use this function. “Political activities,” incidentally, is so broadly defined, that it would include internal communications, i.e. unions talking to their own members and educating them about upcoming elections and legislative votes.

Unions can ask their members to voluntarily donate to political causes, say the backers of Prop 32. But the initiative contains an additional measure that requires an annual written authorization from each union member on even voluntary contributions. Unions typically have an automatic process to collect dues and use them in part for political ends. Now they would have to go through a time- and resource-consuming process of collecting all dues individually, getting written authorization for how the dues can be used, in such a way that would be logistically impossible.

“This attacks our ability to engage in politics from every conceivable angle,” says Steve Smith, the communications director for the California Labor Federation. “The whole reason to have a union is to collectively bargain. This would take political action, and say you can’t do that. In terms of those who would be able to spend resources on elections, it would be wealthy individuals and Super PACs.”

The intent of the law can be seen by looking at the leading funders who paid to get in on the ballot. So far, the leading funder is billionaire Thomas Siebel, the founder of Siebel Systems, since purchased by Oracle. Siebel, a funder of Super PACs and a huge Sarah Palin fan, introduced her at a 2008 rally with this bit of schmaltz:

“Sarah Palin has risen as if from some mythical kingdom of the north. She carries the flag of outrage for the rest of us: the employers who create jobs, the shareholders, the parents, the people who raise children … and the students, the future of America,” he said. “Sarah Palin carries the flag of outrage for each of us … who cries out, ‘We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.’”

Other funders all have companies that would qualify them for the corporate exemptions under the law. Jerry Perenchio, the founder of Univision, now has an LLC. Other funders include insurance company executives and Wall Street investment managers. “This is the least grassroots campaign in the history of America,” said Steve Smith of the Cal Labor Fed. “All of these guys are billionaires, trying to rig the system. If this goes through you open the floodgates for corporate and billionaire funding of campaigns.”

In fact, one of the driving forces behind the ballot measure has a particular history here. The Lincoln Club of Orange County, long a conservative powerhouse in California, has put up some money for the initiative. They happen to have been the executive producers behind “Hillary: The Movie,” which ended up becoming the impetus for the Citizens United decision. So the self-described backers of Citizens United are now funding an initiative purporting to get special interest money out of politics.

So far, mostly state money has gone to back Prop 32, and No on 32 has the edge in terms of fundraising. But it’s very early yet, and given that this plays into a national movement to constrain union power, we could easily see national money play here. “What keeps us up at night,” Smith said, “is the chance that a Koch brother or a national guy needs to drop some money and comes to California to bring it.”

Indeed, passage of Prop 32 would have a national impact. It plays into the recent dynamic of the rise of SuperPACs and big money at the national and state levels. “Without having a couple million workers pooling their money in California to counter-balance corporate cash, it’s not going to happen,” Smith says. “There would be a domino effect. If California falls, what chance does a smaller state have?” The goal, according to Smith, is a two-step maneuver. First, they pass this measure to de-fang union power and allow for corporate spending to dominate political campaigns. Then, the money flows into California, to elect corporate Republicans and Democrats and change the system from within. “We couldn’t fund anything to stop them,” Smith says. “You’ll see ballot measures stripping away the minimum wage, family leave. The electoral dynamic would completely shift immediately.”

With Prop 32 on the November ballot, it has the potential to get lost in the shuffle. It will be one of 11 initiatives before voters, and not the most high-profile one. Governor Jerry Brown will probably turn all his attentions to a tax measure, Prop 30, that is needed to secure the state budget. And there’s a Presidential election and a multitude of high-profile state races that will garner more attention.

But the No on 32 team, which is fighting this as the “Special Exemptions Act,” specifically on the grounds of how this measure makes a mockery of campaign finance reform by granting exemptions to all kinds of corporate actors, sees that as a possible benefit. “The fact that we will see such a disgusting display of corporate-backed campaign spending is good for us,” says Brian Brokaw of No on 32. “It will be an example of what happens when you take away transparency.
 
http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/07/12/the-war-on-workers-comes-to-california-in-disguise/