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Washington-Orange-Lamoille
Counties
CENTRAL LABOR COUNCIL
AFL-CIO
UNION
MEMBERS' OP EDS & LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Times Argus letter published Jul 11, 2007
Don't blame the victims
The article, "One third of Vermont youth drop out of work force," gets it wrong, blaming the victims — working Vermonters — instead of low-road employers. The article quotes Mr. Stenger about "good-paying, open positions," but provides no facts to back up his assertions. You report that Rep. Kupersmith claims that "employers have the jobs, but Vermont lacks the trained workforce to take those positions."
The so-called "drifters" may take advantage of new training opportunities, but most simply need livable wage jobs. Many of us used to find such work in factories or the building trades. Although factory jobs have declined, and wages too, the building trades could still offer a decent life. However, anti-union campaigns and policies have succeeded in depressing wages. We now have major employers using the H2B program to bring in hundreds of aliens to work (what are now) low-wage construction jobs, while some of our skilled trades-people leave the state for better pay.
As for the departing college grads, they're following the money. Many professional jobs in Vermont pay less than in other states. Actually, if every adult in Vermont had a graduate degree, many would still leave because 40 percent of the jobs require nothing more than short-term on-the-job training.
About all those "good-paying open positions." Where are they? Most entry level jobs in Vermont for new college grads are not "good paying" compared to other areas (let alone jobs for those with skills other than a degree). Mr. Stenger may be referring to mid-level professional positions, but many of those jobs are filled by in-migrants from other states.
Wage problems faced by the working Vermonters do not come because we have skill deficits, or because of skill shortages that hamper our competitiveness. We have had rapid productivity growth for the last 10 years with the very same workers who now do not participate in economic growth. Moreover, it is hard to claim that the stagnant wages of college graduates and the failure of new college graduates to locate jobs with benefits is the result of deficient skills.
No, Vermont's workers do not face a "skills deficit," rather we face a deficit in the wages and benefits that employers provide. This gap between pay and productivity growth is the result of policies that shift bargaining power away from the vast majority of us and toward big employers: the steep drop in unionization rates; unfettered globalization and off-shoring that increasingly puts us in competition with workers around the world; economic deregulation and the privatization of government services; and escalating pay for CEOs.
Unless and until Vermont employers raise wages, the exodus will continue.
Traven Leyshon
Burlington Free Press
Business groups and others that oppose the Employee Free Choice Act claim the current National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election system is a good and democratic thing. But by the time employees get to vote, the environment has been so poisoned by employer intimidation and harassment that free and fair choice isn’t an option.
Currently a quarter of employers iillegally fire at least one worker during organizing campaigns, and 1in 5 active union supporters are fired during recognition campaigns. 78% of employers conduct on-on-one anti-union meetings between employees and their supervisors, and 92% force the employees to attend anti-union talks. Three-quarters of employers hire anti-union consultants when faced organizing. The trump card: 51% of companies threaten to close if a union wins, but only 1% actually do. This is why we need new rules for forming unions
IRS data shows that the bottom 90 percent of Americans made less money in 2005 than they had in 2004. Total reported income in the US increased by 9 percent in 2005 over 2004. All of that increase, however, went to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans, and the wealthiest 1 percent experienced an increase of 14 percent. Among the remaining 90 percent, income actually decreased by 0.6 percent.
Yet 2005 wasn't a year of economic downturn. The economy was humming along. It was only the working people who weren't doing very well.
This amounts to a triumph of corporate power, and of the conservative economics that shores it up.
Once upon a time, American prosperity benefited Americans. From 1947 through 1973, productivity rose by 104%, and median family income rose by amount. Those were years of real union power in which one-quarter of the workforce, and in some years one-third, was unionized. As worker power declines, so do living standards. Secure pensions are history; employer-provided health benefits are going fast.
Restoring the right of workers to join unions, is a key to rebuilding a vibrant middle class. There's a clear way to do that. By compelling employers to recognize unions if a majority of their workers sign affiliation cards, legislation would bring balance to workplace relations and to the economy as well.
Traven Leyshon
Tue Apr 24, 2007 12:57 pm
Burlington Free Press
Unions restore productivity, pay link
By Traven Leyshon
April 10, 2007
Your editorial, "Union bill hurts workers and business" (March 29) asserts that "a bill that makes it easier to organize workers passed by the House last week sends the wrong message about the state's business climate without necessarily helping workers."
You are ignoring the positive impact of unions on working families' paychecks and the economy.
We are working harder than ever before, but our efforts are not being rewarded. The growing gaps in wages and wealth threaten the productivity of our economy and our democracy. Our middle class grew in the 1940-60s, when unions were strong and guaranteed that productivity and profit were broadly shared.
But now a decline in union membership has been a big factor in rising inequality. When unions were stronger, CEO pay was "only" 24 times the pay of average workers. Today, CEO pay is 262 times the pay of average employees.
Working people have been getting a shrinking piece of the pie. Productivity has risen almost 20 percent over the past five years, but real wages for workers have been flat. In 2005, the economy posted solid gains, yet real income fell for the bottom 90 percent of Americans!
Unions make work pay, restoring the link between productivity and pay, and by providing training, health coverage, and pension benefits.
Unions build our democracy as well as our economy. Union families are more likely to vote, and organizations from the Red Cross to United Way benefit from the disproportionate contributions and participation of union members.
In the workplace, unions promote opportunity, security, and fairness. In Vermont, employment is "at will." Employers can fire employees for no reason or any reason, except those specifically proscribed by law. Employees without a union to protect them can be fired on a whim. By contrast, union contracts require that the employer establish just cause before disciplining or firing an employee. This gives workers the security to challenge unsafe, unfair, unlawful, unproductive or wasteful practices, and to recommend better alternatives.
Comparable workers with a union contract have: 14.7 percent higher wages, 28.2 percent greater likelihood of having employer-provided health insurance, 53.9 percent greater likelihood of having pension coverage, and14.3 percent more paid time off.
Do unions help or hurt companies? Studies show that unions can have substantial positive effects. For example, unionized Costco competes successfully with non-union Wal-Mart even though Costco's labor costs are 40 percent higher -- and Costco generates almost twice as much profit per employee as Wal-Mart's Sam's Club.
Research shows that 58 percent of nonunion workers in 2005 would have voted for a union if given the opportunity. But the current system for forming unions is broken. Employers routinely block workers' freedom to decide for themselves whether to form unions by intimidating, harassing, coercing and even firing workers.
The Vermont Employee Free Choice Act for public sector workers and the national Employee Free Choice Act, just passed by the U.S. House of Representatives (of which our entire congressional delegation is a cosponsor), are steps in the right direction to restoring the right of freedom of association. They would restore the freedom to make our own choice about whether to have a union and bargain for a better life -- without interference from management. They would help restore our purchasing power and lift the living standards of the 90 percent of Americans who have endured the middle-class squeeze, or been left out of our economic gains altogether.
Traven Leyshon of Middlesex is director of High Road Vermont Ltd.
Burlington Free Press
My Turn: Union rule change good for workers
By Rabbi Joshua Chasan In its editorial ("Union bill hurts workers and business," March 29), the Free Press expresses alarm at the message the Legisla
April 4, 2007
Make no mistake about it. H.353 does not appear out of a vacuum. Workers are increasingly powerless, not only to protect themselves, but also to protect the community's interest when their work bears upon it. For example, while recent letters to this newspaper complain about COTS' workers wanting more money, the efforts to form a union at COTS has nothing to do with wages and everything to do with how the organization is run.
Democracy depends upon increasing participation by citizens in our society. Decades ago, when capitalism was faltering, labor unions were recognized by business people and the media for their ability to help create social balance. It remains the right of workers in the United States of America to associate freely and form unions of their choice, the unwillingness of COTS' management to recognize this right notwithstanding.
What is happening at COTS right now -- an anti-union campaign financed with precious funds donated by many of us with whom COTS' management has refused to speak for about six months -- would not be possible if H.353 were the law of Vermont and it extended to all workers. The Free Press is concerned that H.353 "robs managers of an assured chance to have their say with workers about the union drive." In fact, H.353 would protect some workers (state employees) from the intimidating tactics of employers who hold most of the cards, especially in a state in which workers can be fired at will.
What is missing from the Free Press' reckoning is an understanding of this inherent inequality in labor-management relationships. Union elections are different from other kinds of elections because of the inherent coercive power that management holds over employees, the power to deprive them of their livelihood and to control their pay, hours and working conditions. According to a survey of 400 NLRB election campaigns in 1998 and 1999, 36 percent of workers who vote against union representation explain their vote as a response to employer pressure. H.353 is an attempt to avoid this harassment, to which workers at COTS now are being subjected as their election approaches on April 4.
The thoughts and prayers of many of us, including business people, are with the workers at COTS, the vast majority of whom signed on to a union, and who now are being subjected to a brutal campaign to break their solidarity, at the expense of precious resources which are desperately needed by our homeless neighbors.
Rabbi Joshua Chasan of Ohavi Zedek Synagogue lives in Burlington.
Revisionist Labor History McClaughry-style
Kurt Staudter in While We Were Sleeping... 4/4 column
I’m a big fan of John McClaughry and the Ethan Allen Institute: For years now his rants are my time proven cure for writers’ block. If I want to get sufficiently upset about one of the hot topics of debate in the statehouse, all I have to do is read what John has written on the subject, and presto, I have a column. Through the years I’ve respected his right to have his say, and I do my part to steer folks in a more enlightened direction. This week however I feel compelled to respond directly to his blatant misrepresentation of Senator Robert “Fighting Bob” Lafollette (1855-1925), a Wisconsin Republican, and one of the most notable progressive voices that emerged from the Gilded Age. The implication by McClaughry that old Figthtin’ Bob would have objected to recent labor legislation passed in Vermont and Washington, DC is just plain wrong, but what’s more outrageous, and the reason I can’t just let this affront pass without comment, is his insulting, falsely stereotypical, and offensively, ethnically tinged representation of union organizers.
This week McClaughry has taken issue with the recent passage of “card check” legislation by the Vermont House, and he complains in his offering that “Labor today is desperate for card check bills for one good reason: Too many workers don’t see that union organization is in their interest and don’t want to pay the dues.” Oh really, then how come in the most recent polling 58% of workers asked said they’d join a union if they could? That could be as many as 60 million workers. Here’s another statistic: “77% (of the) public… says strong laws protecting workers’ freedom to form unions – without employer interference – are important.” The problem that John has with this legislation is that it would take the National Labor Relations Board style secret ballot out of the union recognition process. With card check workers on a job would get together and sign cards stating their willingness to join a union. Once one more than 50% the workers has signed on, the employer would be forced to begin negotiations for a first contract. John points out that there would be ample opportunity for union organizers to employ threats and “strong-arm tactics” in order to win the right to a union. I’ll talk more about what crawled out of McClaughry’s imagination on that point in a minute, but first let’s look at the real-life “strong-arm tactics” that are used by employers that want to avoid a union under the current rules.
According to statistics collected by the AFL-CIO, the largest workplace justice organization in the nation representing most of organized labor, a quarter of all employers will illegally fire at least one worker during an organizing campaign, and 1in 5 active union supporters will be fired during the campaign to win recognition. 78% of employers will conduct on-on-one anti-union meetings between employees and their supervisors, and 92% force the employees to attend mandatory anti-union presentations. Three-quarters of all employers hire anti-union consultants when faced with pro-union activities. Here’s the one I like: 51% of companies threaten to close the plant if a union wins, and only 1% actually do. And this is why we need new rules for forming unions, more than one-third of all unions that win the right to collectively bargain in a workplace never get a first contract. This has happened after a number of successful union drives in Vermont including one at Berlin Health and Rehab. The company just plays a delaying game until the workers vote to decertify the union.
In order to make his point about the strong-arm tactics that unions might employ, McClaughry conjures up some irrelevant and outdated caricatures of union organizers as Italian thugs with the names of “Guido” and “Branko,” that say to a perspective union member, “We want you to sign dis card sayin’ you want our union to be your union.” It goes on to add, “You gotta problem wid dat? Or maybe you wanna step out behind dis shed here and discuss it wid us?” I was appalled when I read this, and the offensiveness of the ethnically charged stereotype is deserving of an apology. No where does John see fit to tell of the real-life threats to one’s livelihood that workers routinely receive from the anti-union thugs brought in by management. I guess that’s because they all dress in suits, went to our best business or law schools, and don’t talk in accents that he can make fun of.
With the announcement last week that Circuit City would fire 3,400 workers nation-wide, and 7 in Vermont, in an effort to lower their wages - Then there is the fact that only 12% of the workforce in now unionized, we are left with no choice but to reexamine the ways to achieve workplace justice. The efforts of Fightin’ Bob in the early 1900s led to the Wagner Act, one-third of the workers being unionized by the 1950s, and unprecedented middle-class prosperity. My guess is that if Robert LaFollette lived to see the Republican led effort to gut Wagner with the Taft-Hartly Act, and the employer dominated union elections that came from that anti-union legislation; he would have demanded card check as an equalizer. However, according to one of McClaughry’s heroes Calvin Coolidge, Lafollette was a “dangerous radical” as he fought against the domination of workers and government by corporations: A fight still worth winning.
Published
Labor Day 2001 in the Burlington Free Press:
Labor Day 2001 Sees Growing Concerns About
Rights at Work
by Traven Leyshon,
President Washington & Orange Counties Central Labor
Council, AFL-CIO
Labor Day 2001 finds working Vermonters increasingly troubled about the
influence of powerful corporations. According to an independent survey, commissioned
by the AFL-CIO, employees don't trust corporations -- or the Bush Administration.
Sixty-three percent of workers have little or no trust that corporations
will treat employees fairly. Sixty-seven percent have little or no trust
in the White House to stand up for rights we value.
This Labor Day, picnics, parades, and other events will focus on the challenges
working people face when we try to win a measure of stability, security and
respect for fundamental rights at work. At least 175,000 workers joined unions
across the U.S. in the first six months of this year - including the UVM
faculty in Burlington. That's a 10 percent increase over last year. Most
organizing campaigns start when workers discover that they have problems
that can only be resolved through the collective voice and power a union
can bring. From IBM employees to nursing home workers, municipal employees,
and college professors, more Vermonters are striving to improve conditions
at their jobsites by joining together.
But a third
of employers fire workers who try to form unions, a shocking 91 percent
hold mandatory,
high-pressure anti-union meetings, and many bosses
make plant-closing threats. Intimidation, harassment, and surveillance have
become routine. According to a study by the international watchdog group,
Human Rights Watch: "Workers' freedom of association is under sustained
attack in the United States, and the government is often failing in its responsibility
under international human rights standards to protect workers' rights." Experience,
such as that of the nursing home workers at the Berlin Health and Rehabilitation
Center, shows that some corporations here in Vermont will use supervisors
to pressure workers in one-on-one meetings and scare tactics to stop workers
from organizing or achieving a fair contract.
Most Americans
believe workers' freedom to choose a union should be protected, and disapprove
of such employer efforts. Public attitudes and assistance
from community leaders are making what happens in the workplace an issue
of importance to entire communities. Civic leaders, clergy and ordinary Vermonters
are telling employers to respect the basic freedom for people to make their
own choice about whether to join a union. Broad participation in
recent Barre and Burlington conferences and rallies for workers' rights demonstrates
that people here want fairness.
We also want
our voice to be heard in government. Unions are mobilizing to win real
protections against repetitive stress injuries,
to protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare, and
to halt fast track authority and make sure trade agreements include worker
and environmental protections.
Americans are increasingly nervous about the economy. In the last year,
some 850,000 production jobs were lost, and more than 1 million since 1999.
Plant closings at Ethan Allen, Johnson Controls, Stanley Works, Tensolite,
and recent layoffs at Bombardier are just some of the recent Vermont casualties.
The Economic Policy Institute estimates the loss of 1,611 Vermont jobs between
1993 and 2000 under NAFTA. Ethan Allen workers will remind us that this number,
and the associated human costs, are growing. Manufacturing jobs paying decent
wages are endangered. More of us are stuck in dead end, sub-living wage jobs.
Absent more union organizing, there is nothing to stop the race to the bottom
in wages, benefits and working conditions for all workers.
If neighbors, congregations, political, religious and civic leaders stand
together with working Vermonters and our unions on this Labor Day and after,
we can hold corporations and our government accountable and ensure democracy,
freedom of association, and equality.
***
Traven Leyshon,
President Washington & Orange Counties Central Labor Council,
AFL-CIO; Questions and comments can be sent to: wovtclc@workingfamilies.com
Submitted but Unpublished
To the Times Argus:
Get off The Fast Track and onto the
Right Track
by Traven Leyshon,
President Washington & Orange Counties
Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO
With little
public debate, President Bush is urging Congress this Labor Day to grant
him sweeping new powers to negotiate trade agreements.
What he wants is called "fast track" authority; euphemistically
termed "trade promotion authority." . Under it, he could negotiate new
trade agreements behind closed doors with foreign governments, then present
the pacts to Congress for a single, up-or-down vote for passage.
Ironically, President Bush does not need fast track;
he can negotiate new trade agreements without it. But with fast track trade
authority our representatives in Congress would be handcuffed from making
changes, no matter how heavily the trade deals favored big corporations
over working families and over clean air and clean water. No president
should be given such broad and unilateral powers.
If Congress gives in and grants President Bush fast track
authority, it will be putting at risk not only good jobs, but also the
laws that protect our environment and guarantee the safety of our food
and consumer products. The last time Congress gave a President fast track
powers was in the early 1990s. What we got in return was the flawed North
American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Under NAFTA, business interests
got extensive protections, but provisions to safeguard workers' rights
and the environment have proven to be unenforceable.
The results
have been disastrous. Hundreds of thousands of once good-paying jobs have
been lost, and hardworking families pushed to
the edge as NAFTA encouraged U.S. companies to relocate in Mexico. These
policies are not so much about "free trade" as about moving manufacturing
facilities from the United States and Canada to where labor is cheaper
and environmental standards unenforced.
Some argue that
there has been a job boom under NAFTA. However, "NAFTA
at Seven," a report from the Economic Policy Institute, written by analysts
from the United States, Mexico, and Canada, reveals a continent-wide pattern
of stagnant or declining worker incomes, lost job opportunities, increased
insecurity, and rising inequality.
The trade deficit between the U.S. and its neighbors grew
from $16.6 billion in 1993 to $62.8 billion in 2000. This growing deficit
has led to the loss of an estimated 766,030 jobs in the United States since
NAFTA's implementation. Corporate globalization has put downward pressure
on workers wages. Employers have used their expanded freedom to move across
borders as a tool in collective bargaining, and to stifle workers' attempts
to organize unions.
As plant closings in Vermont at Johnson Controls, Stanley
Works, Tensolite, and Ethan Allen demonstrate, these are not just empty
threats. The Economic Policy Institute estimates the loss of 1,611 Vermont
jobs between 1993 and 2000 under NAFTA. Ethan Allen workers will remind
us that this number, and the associated human costs, are growing. Family
wage paying jobs are becoming an endangered species, and more of us are
stuck in dead end, sub-living wage jobs. Most of these companies were profitable,
the workers were productive, and the jobs paid a wage on which people could
raise a family. Yet, like so many other employers looking to fatten their
bottom line, they moved production to places where workers enjoy few rights
and toil for low wages and slim if any benefits.
In fact, for many Mexican workers and small farmers, NAFTA
has only wreaked havoc. Average Mexican wages under the treaty have fallen
while poverty is on the rise. Wages, benefits, and workers' rights are
deliberately suppressed in the rapidly growing maquiladoras (foreign, mostly
U.S.-owned, duty-free plants). As a result, migration from rural areas
to shantytowns to the United States has risen.
The benefits of NAFTA have gone to corporations that have
been granted the right to go before secret international tribunals to challenge
a nation's own laws if those laws reduce their profits. That's exactly
what the Metalclad Corporation did when it sued under NAFTA and won more
than $16 million in compensation from the Mexican government when the company
was blocked from building on land set aside for a local ecological preserve.
Nevertheless, President Bush and his allies on Capitol Hill
are working to rush fast-track authority through Congress. The President
wants fast track powers to negotiate a NAFTA-like Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA) treaty that would govern trade throughout virtually all
of North and South America. The draft FTAA includes an expansion of the
most anti-democratic features of NAFTA. Its provisions will enable corporations
to sue national, state, county and municipal governments for the removal
of regulations or laws designed to protect the environment, public health,
and labor conditions if they reduce the ability of the corporation to maximize
profits. The end result could leave Vermont with diminished clean water,
billboards everywhere, many of our environmental laws vacated, and fewer
livable wage jobs. For example, the New England Dairy Compact, which now
helps protect small dairy farms, could be declared an unlawful restraint
of trade and cease to exist.
We need to re-open the debate on NAFTA instead of expanding
it to the rest of the hemisphere. We need to pursue approaches to economic
integration that work for the continent's working people. We need strong,
enforceable environmental standards and workers' rights in the core provisions
of any agreement. A new trade agreement should include: guarantees of worker
rights at the work place, guarantees that all workers in FTAA countries
receive a living wage, an environmental code of conduct, and debt relief
for the world's poorest countries. Any agreement should strive to harmonize
upward the economic, social, and environmental well being of all peoples
living in the Western Hemisphere.
But under the leading fast track bill in Congress, neither
workers' rights nor environmental protections are mentioned once. Nor does
the measure acknowledge the many concerns that have been raised by community,
labor, and religious groups.
For trade policies to work for working families, the President
must get off the fast track and onto the right track. The right track requires
that trade treaties prioritize citizens' interests and have enforceable
measures for workers' rights and the environment. Trade agreements must
set out responsibilities for investors, not just rights. They must not
allow investors to challenge domestic laws. They must not require privatization
or deregulation of government services or prevent our government from promoting
policies to strengthen manufacturing or other key economic sectors.
Fast Track gives the President too much power. Congress should
meet its responsibility to carefully consider trade deals, and make sure
they are in the best interest of working people and the environment --
not just big corporations.
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