Massachusetts Supremes Send Wal-Mart Back to Court in Wage Case

A teacher asked her 6th grade class how many of them were Obama fans.
Not really knowing what an Obama fan was, but wanting to be liked by the teacher, all the kids raised their hands except for Little Johnny.
The teacher asked Little Johnny why he had decided to be different...again.
Little Johnny answered, ‘Because I’m not an Obama fan.’
The teacher asked, ‘Why aren’t you an Obama fan?’
Johnny replied, ‘Because I’m a Republican.’
The teacher asked him why he was a Republican.
Little Johnny answered, ‘Well, my Mom’s a Republican and my Dad’s a Republican, so I’m a Republican.’
Annoyed by this answer, the teacher asked, ‘So, if your mom was a moron and your dad was an idiot, what would that make you?’ With a big smile, Little Johnny replied, ‘Now that would make me an Obama fan....’

‘So, if your mom was a moron and your dad was an idiot, what would that make you?’..............A Republican?

Come on kids,
Larry are you going to try to use this board for lame ass political humor? You need to get back on track. this is an Anti Wal*Mart board. We all know your unwavering support for the party of your choice.

Wal*Mart is taking your money and giving it to the “bad guys”. Even if you don’t shop there. So we need to get the big box legislation passed, so they can pay the taxes on their workers benefits that those of us who are living are paying right now.

I think that Larry does business with Walmart therefore closing the loop with communist China. Larry and communism. Larry and communism. Long live Larry and his Communists. Working hand in hand with communism destroying the American dream. A home for every American with a car in every driveway has been traded down for a low income housing near a bus stop and a lead toy in every childs front steps.
You go Larry. You fight for Walmart and the wealthy republicans.

Do You Share the Same View Larry?

Do you feel the same way as John McCain, Larry?

Did America get out of Vietnam too soon?  Did we run like a dog with its tail between its legs?  Was that war winnable?

In 1956, South Vietnam, with American backing, refused to hold unification elections with North Vietnam.

In April 1975, South Vietnam surrendered to the North and Vietnam was reunited.

Do you think 58,000 lives and more than 10 years of war is a fair price to pay for the privilege of buying pants made in Vietnam and selling for $10 at WalMart?

Obama’s Early Campaigns Financed by Lobbyists

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman

While Sen. Barack Obama takes great pride in having recruited more than 1.2 million donors to his presidential campaign — many of whom contributed less than $100 — he hasn’t always been a man in touch with the grass roots.

Indeed, his early campaigns for the Illinois state Senate were heavily financed by well-connected business leaders, lobbyists, trial lawyers, and labor unions, a Newsmax review of campaign finance records shows.

Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate in July 1995 with a $5,000 loan from Al Johnson, a prominent Cadillac dealer in Chicago who was a close crony of Jesse L. Jackson Sr.

Johnson boasted of having provided luxury cars to Jackson free of charge, as I reported in my 2002 book, “Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson.”

Johnson added another $2,000 to the pot as a contribution to the campaign in September 1995, making him Obama’s single largest supporter.

Not all of the Friends of Obama campaign reports are available online through the state of Illinois Web site. While there is no specific record available showing that he paid off the $5,000 loan to Al Johnson, his June 30, 1997 financial statement shows that his campaign’s debts had been reduced from $12,494.38 to $3,637.01.

The connection to Johnson came through Michelle Obama, who reportedly had been close to Jesse Jackson and his family since childhood.

Obama’s only other contributor in the early days of his campaign was Tony Rezko, the Chicago slumlord and developer convicted in July on 12 counts of wire and mail fraud.

Rezko gave Obama $2,000 in July 1995 as corporate donations from Lakeside Refreshments and Rezko Foods, both of which he controlled.

Obama has said he never intervened on behalf of Rezko in state or federal business, and did not benefit from a sweatheart land deal with the convicted felon, although Rezko sold him a lot next to Obama’s house in Chicago at what appeared to be below-market prices.

But in the 1990s, Obama’s Chicago lawfirm represented Rezko and his company, Rezmar Corp, as Rezko won government grants to build low-income housing for the poor. Both Rezko and his wife, Rita, worked on Obama’s first state Senate campaign in 1995, in addition to contributing money directly and through corporate entities.

Once Obama was elected as a first-time state senator in 1996, he turned increasingly to big labor and big donors. Money from Political Action Committees (PACs) — the vehicles used by lobbyists and labor unions — often outweighed contributions from individuals by as much as 10-to-1.

For the first half of 1997, for example, he collected $12,200 from PACs and trial lawyers, and just $4,175 from individuals. But even here, $2,000 of the money accounted for as individual contributions came from Rezko Concessions and Rezmar Corp, both of which were controlled by Tony Rezko.

For the first half of 1998, this trend continued, with just $1,505 collected from individuals and $13,500 from PACs. Tony Rezko provided food valued at $457.70 that was listed as an “in-kind” contribution.

As the 1998 elections approached, Obama picked up close to $30,000 from individuals, and an additional $23,850 from lobbyists.

His single largest contribution — $5,000 — was from the Illinois Political Action Committee for Education (IPACE), the political arm of the state teachers’ union.

His second largest — $3,000 — came from the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association. Next, with $1,000 each, came PACs representing the Teamsters, Social Workers, lawyers, dentists, the Chicago Teacher’s Union. A wide variety of local and federal labor unions gave him smaller amounts.

By January 1999, lobbyists and lawyers had become his single largest source of funding.

For the first half of 2000, Obama no longer bothered to solicit individual campaign contributors, while raising $14,600 from the lobbyists.

Even though 2000 was an election year, he only raised $2,400 from individuals that fall, while raking in $28,560 from lobbyists and lawyers. And of the $2,400 from individuals, more than half came from Evanston, Ill., lawyer, Larry Suffredin Jr.

“Obama’s source of support comes from the very far left of the Democrat party — unions, trial lawyers, social workers — not individuals,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm Foley and Lardner, which specializes in campaign finance law.

“So, now they try to say they have all this money from little people. He didn’t get there with small contributions from little people. He got there with being financed for a number of years by ultra left wing interests.”

It was those larger interests that provided the seed money and expertise that allowed the Obama campaign to build the broad base of smaller donors that his campaign now boasts of having recruited.

Share McCains view- NOT at all
Believe Obama is good for America- Not at all
Shop at Walmart- NEVER, NOT even once.
Own Walmart Stock- Not a chance.
Think Walmart is evil- With out a doubt.
Politicians- All are crooks, & to lazy to earn an honest living.

Wealthy Republicans or Democrats- If you didnt earn it honest- your a crook and belong in Jail, and the dis-honest wealth should be given back to the tax payer!

Where do I shop?
I enjoy Commissary and BX privelages and have no need to shop any where else.

I thought that the Navy had NEX,not BX or PX.

Larry in USN WWII (Ret),
Our strength is in our unity. The Wal*Mart economy is a bipartisan problem. They know that they can only thrive in a polarized environment. It’s so funny, actually Ironic that the word Union has been so badly demonized in todays political landscape. The last time I checked We live in the “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”. Land of the free and home of the brave. Well, I don’t think they were talking about Wal*Mart’s “Free*Ride”.  If Wal*Mart has a problem with that well, all of their supporters, including Warren Buffet. Should go take their business elsewhere.

Larry and anyone who cares,
I just mentioned that Warren Buffet was a big Wal*Mart supporter in my last post and about 2 seconds later, someone sent me a quote:

“Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it. “
Warren Buffett\

“Profit from Folly”, There it is straight from the horse’s mouth. That’s what the big Wal*Mart share holder’s think about America.

Bobby’s Ghost: Is WalMart still holding the position that their employees should vote Republican? From your vantage point,can you provide an overview ?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Nation US Politics & Government John McCain

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
McCain and the POW Cover-up By Sydney H. Schanberg
This article appeared in the October 6, 2008 edition of The Nation.

September 17, 2008

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the
McCain and the POW Cover-up John McCain

Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain’s role in it, even as McCain has made his military service and POW history the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War have also turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn’t talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a Special Forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington and even sworn testimony by two defense secretaries that “men were left behind.” This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number--probably hundreds--of the US prisoners held in Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.

The Pentagon had been withholding significant information from POW families for years. What’s more, the Pentagon’s POW/MIA operation had been publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers and POW families for holding back documents as part of a policy of “debunking” POW intelligence even when the information was obviously credible.
Included in the evidence is a transcript of a senior North Vietnamese general’s briefing of the Hanoi Politburo, discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar in the 1990s. The briefing took place only four months before the 1973 peace accords. The general, Tran Van Quang, told the Politburo members that Hanoi was holding 1,205 American prisoners but would keep many of them at war’s end as leverage to ensure getting reparations from Washington.

Throughout the Paris negotiations, the North Vietnamese tied the prisoner issue tightly to the issue of reparations. Finally, in a February 1, 1973, formal letter to Hanoi’s premier, Pham Van Dong, Nixon pledged $3.25 billion in “postwar reconstruction” aid. The North Vietnamese, though, remained skeptical about the reparations promise being honored (it never was). Hanoi thus held back prisoners.
Two defense secretaries who served during the Vietnam War testified to the Senate POW committee in September 1992 that prisoners were not returned. James Schlesinger and Melvin Laird, secretaries of defense under Nixon, said in a public session and under oath that they based their conclusions on strong intelligence data--letters, eyewitness reports, even direct radio contacts. “I think that as of now that I can come to no other conclusion...some were left behind,"Schlesinger testified.
For many reasons, including the absence of a constituency for the missing men other than their families and some veterans’ groups, very few Americans are aware of McCain’s role not only in keeping the subject out of public view but in denying the existence of abandoned POWs. ~~~~~~~~The Nation~~~~~~~~Note : The ENTIRE article ,quite lengthy and exacting,is available at the Nation website.

ddrb

“Bobby’s Ghost: Is WalMart still holding the position that their employees should vote Republican? From your vantage point,can you provide an overview ?”

Wal*Mart has let that ship sail… All they had to do was have the initial meetings. They have their employees wooped! It doesn’t take much. They are busy figuring out how they are going to cash in on the bail out! This is a win/win deal for them. The more America gets screwed, the more $$$ Wal*Mart makes. Wal*Mart is a slippery bunch. If the company were a living biological organism they would be pretty grotesque. Think along the lines of a giant Malignant Leech/tapeworm/Heartworm/with dead peoples pulled gold teeth protruding out....

“The more America gets screwed...”

I like your choice of words, Bobby’s Ghost!

“I thought that the Navy had NEX,not BX or PX. “
ddrb in

The Navy does have NEX, however a veteran can shop on any Base.

More Liberal spin again, ddrb?

Bobby: I think the wind just MIGHT just be knocked out of their sales,I mean sails! .........I saw on TV last night that John McCain voted AGAINST the minimum wage increases for a total of 19 times!  No wonder he’s a WalMart favorite. WalMart........."OUR profit is YOUR loss"- Always!

I thought that the Navy had NEX,not BX or PX.

As Larry said “BX”, he most likely lives near an Air Force facility, as that’s their jargon for their big-box retail store.

The Navy does have NEX, however a veteran can shop on any Base.

Lar, your statement is a little misleading—not just any veteran can shop on a military base (they usually have to be retired or 100% service-disabled).

But you are correct in stating that anyone who is authorized to do so can shop on any DoD facility in the U.S.

Top Ten Reasons Why American Women Suck

1) Selfish - to the point where they don’t know the difference between love of self and plain downright greed--and drilled into believing that whatever happens is the fault of whatever man is in their life because of the feminist crud drilled into them by the cadre of asexual closet cases called “therapists” who appear on “Ricki”, “Oprah” or other such electronic drivel

2) Deluded - into thinking they “deserve” a rich, model-handsome husband who will “take them away from all of this"--whatever the “this” might be--and leading to resentment when they discover that the universe does NOT revolve around them

3) Angry - ALL the damn time about things which are so far out of their control as to be nonsensical--and constantly wanting to “discuss” this mind numbing drivel ad nauseam

4) Psychotic - multiple personalities in the same woman - as “Nomad” put it in the “Star Trek” episode: “Woman...a mass of inconsistencies...”, and also when the feminist voices in their heads start with the regrets and victim acculturation

5) Worthless - anything that does not immediately resolve itself in her favor or to her benefit is meaningless to her, especially husband and family

6) Lazy - drilled into their head that they “deserve” a maid, nanny and personal slave to take care of every detail - and that their husband/boyfriend is REQUIRED to cater to their each and every mindless whim

7) Resentful - especially of other women who have things that they do not, in material, spiritual and esoteric senses

8) Greedy - to them, “housekeeping” means getting the house in the divorce (thanks to Zsa Zsa for that immortal line) and sucking the guy for every last cent, even if they had nothing to do with the building of the nest egg

9) Mindless - constant, irritating, idle prattle about topics they read about in some women’s magazine and then become instant experts--particularly pop psychology and the latest crap they see on “Oprah” or “Ricki”

10) Vain - believing that they are irresistible to everything in pants and therefore are allowed to behave sluttish and without any honor.

(Continued from “The Nation” article by Sydney Schanberg) re: Legislative action by McCain~~~~~~~~~~"An early and critical attempt by McCain to conceal evidence involved 1990 legislation called the Truth bill, which started in the House. A brief and simple document, the bill would have compelled complete transparency about prisoners and missing men. Its core sentence said that the “head of each department or agency which holds or receives any records and information, including reports, which have been correlated or possibly correlated to United States personnel listed as prisoner of war or missing in action from World War II, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam conflict, shall make available to the public all such records held or received by that department or agency.”

Bitterly opposed by the Pentagon and by McCain, the bill went nowhere. Reintroduced the following year, it again disappeared. But a few months later a new measure, the McCain bill, suddenly appeared. It created a bureaucratic maze from which only a fraction of the documents could emerge--only the records that revealed no POW secrets. The McCain bill became law in 1991 and remains so today.

McCain was also instrumental in amending the Missing Service Personnel Act, which was strengthened in 1995 by POW advocates to include criminal penalties against “any government official who knowingly and willfully withholds from the file of a missing person any information relating to the disappearance or whereabouts and status of a missing person.” A year later, in a closed House-Senate conference on an unrelated military bill, McCain attached a crippling amendment to the act, stripping out its only enforcement teeth, the criminal penalties, and reducing the obligations of commanders in the field to speedily search for missing men and report the incidents to the Pentagon.

McCain has insisted again and again that all the evidence has been woven together by unscrupulous deceivers to create an insidious and unpatriotic myth. He calls it the work of the “bizarre rantings of the MIA hobbyists.” Family members who have personally pressed McCain to end the secrecy have been treated to his legendary temper. In 1996 he roughly pushed aside a group of POW family members who had waited outside a hearing room to appeal to him, including a mother in a wheelchair.

The only explanation McCain has ever offered for his leadership on legislation that seals POW information is that he believes the release of such information would only stir up fresh grief for the families of those who were never accounted for in Vietnam. Of the scores of POW families I’ve met over the years, only a few have said they want the books closed without knowing what happened to their men. All the rest say that not knowing is exactly what grieves them.

Also, no outsider I know of has ever seen a nonredacted copy of McCain’s debriefing when he returned from captivity, which is classified but can be made public by McCain.
But even without answers to what may be hidden in the recesses of someone’s mind, one thing about the POW story is clear: if American prisoners were dishonored by being written off and left to die, that’s something the American public ought to know about.~~~~~~~~~Amen.

Sydney H. Schanberg

Sydney H. Schanberg, a journalist for nearly 50 years, has written extensively on foreign affairs--particularly Asia--and on domestic issues such as ethics, racial problems, government secrecy, corporate excesses and the weaknesses of the national media.

Most of his journalism career has been spent on newspapers but his award-winning work has also appeared widely in other publications and media. The 1984 movie, The Killing Fields, which won several Academy Awards, was based on his book The Death and Life of Dith Pran - a memoir of his experiences covering the war in Cambodia for the New York Times and of his relationship with his Cambodian colleague, Dith Pran.

For his accounts of the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, Schanberg was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting “at great risk.” He is also the recipient of many other awards - including two George Polk awards, two Overseas Press Club awards and the Sigma Delta Chi prize for distinguished journalism.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Speaking of bailouts,McCain is attempting to bailout of Friday’s scheduled debate with Barack Obama,by suspending the McPain campaign until the BIG bailout is settled,according to media reports,late this afternoon.McCain plans to go to Washingon and “work” on settlement. Interesting,for some one who misssed 80% of his Congressional votes this quarter.

Jesse LeePosted September 24, 2008 | 12:41 PM (EST)
41 Days Out (Rick Davis Day): “He was John McCain’s campaign manager and it was felt you couldn’t say no.”

Maybe it’s better that John McCain’s top advisors are spending their time during this crisis in a losing war on the New York Times. The less people like Rick Davis have time to advise him on the economic situation, the better for America. Almost patriotic of him.

Washington Post: “The lobbying firm founded and co-owned by Rick Davis, the campaign manager for Sen. John McCain’s White House bid, received payments from Freddie Mac in recent months, despite assertions by Davis earlier this week that the firm’s work for the mortgage giant had ended three years ago. An industry source told The Washington Post that Davis’s firm, Davis Manafort, continued to receive monthly payments in the $15,000 range from Freddie Mac until very recently, confirming an ongoing financial relationship reported last night in several other publications. The source said Davis Manafort was paid for being on retainer to Freddie Mac but did little actual work after early 2007.”
Newsweek: “...Davis’s lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, based in Washington, D.C., continued to receive $15,000 a month from Freddie Mac until last month--long after the Homeownership Alliance had been terminated. The two sources, who requested anonymity discussing sensitive information, told NEWSWEEK that Davis himself approached Freddie Mac in 2006 and asked for a new consulting arrangement that would allow his firm to continue to be paid. The arrangement was approved by Hollis McLoughlin, Freddie Mac’s senior vice president for external relations, because ‘he [Davis] was John McCain’s campaign manager and it was felt you couldn’t say no,’ said one of the sources. [McLoughlin did not return phone calls].”
New York Times: “They said they did not recall Mr. Davis’s doing much substantive work for the company in return for the money, other than to speak to a political action committee of high-ranking employees in October 2006 on the approaching midterm Congressional elections. They said Mr. Davis’s firm, Davis Manafort, had been kept on the payroll because of his close ties to Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who by 2006 was widely expected to run again for the White House.”
One would think that might bother the McCain campaign, given that McCain’s said that “At the center of the problem were the lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the administration to ignore the festering problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” Sadly, no! It’s all the boogeyman New York Times’ fault! So out went yet another McCain campaign screed (this time with a special shout-out to HuffPo). Without spending too much time debunking, the Politico headline, “McCain camp attacks Times, doesn’t deny report,” and HuffPo take, “McCain Camp Whacks And Misses In Latest NYT Attack,” probably tell you all you need to know.

So what’s the next question, given that Rick Davis apparently was taking hundreds of thousands of dollars for basically nothing except for being John McCain’s friend?~~~~~~~~~~~~~Huffington Post~~~~~~~NOTE: Rick Davis said this campaign would NOT be about issues,but personalities. I somehow don’t think he thought it would be about HIS, now that the FBI is investigating Fannie Mae,Freddie Mac ,AIG, Countrywide and others.Wonder if he will assisst and advise McCain on “bailout” ?

Screwed Buddy,
There ain’t no Wal*Mart’s in Heaven!

ddrb,
“.........I saw on TV last night that John McCain voted AGAINST the minimum wage increases for a total of 19 times! “

Well this minimum wage thing is a bit of a sticky wicket… I think minimum wage was originally brought about to support teens and such looking for summer jobs. Sort of an extension of child labor laws. It was also put into place to help protect minorities.

In a Land of “Equall Oportunity” The minimum wage should ideally only be needed to help kids entering the job market for the first time.

This is one thing that outrages me and is absolutly a product of America’s New Wal*Mart Economy. And I’ll debate anybody including Bill Clinton, anytime on this one.

A healthy economy should produce decent paying jobs!!!
This is the great failure of Reaganomics. We are now living in a society where some of the best and the brightest, would be entrepreneurs and college grads are working at McDonalds and Wal*Mart (who PROUDLY boasts that they are America’s Largest Private Employer)!!! Again, simple math. There is a big problem with the fundementals of our economy, when we have to raise the minimum wage because there just are not enough decent paying jobs to go arround. I remember the fall of the Soviet Union when Scientist and surgions were taking work as clerks at stores, etc. We shouldn’t even need a minimum wage.

PS:
That being said. Istead of fixing the problems wit the economy. A good portion of the politicians who voted against the minimum wage increase did so at the bidding of companies like Wal*Mart, who are just greedy and don’t care if America survives or not. In a global economy, when the host dies, the parasite moves on to another host.

“In Heaven There is No Beer”

So the song says!

But Bobby’s Ghost, “There ain’t no Wal*Mart’s in Heaven!”

That’s great news!  Open up those pearly gates!

Bobby’s Ghost,

Are you sure you are in Heaven, or is that just where you assumed you would go?  After all, remember, Satan is the “Great Deceiver” and he may just be supporting your delusion!!  Some clues may be, you have a ‘small’ office, there are no Wal-Marts and the fact that your A/C runs 24/7!!  And, from some of your posts, it is evident, that there IS beer there!!  Lastly, Screwedby wants to join you, and he LOVES his beer!!

FRIDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 2008

Labor Unions Protest in New York Against Bailout
Friday 26 September 2008

»
by: Christian Wiessner, Reuters

New York - Hard hats, transit workers, machinists, teachers and other labor unionists railed against the U.S. government’s proposed bailout of Wall Street on Thursday in a protest steps from the New York Stock Exchange.

Several hundred protesters yelled their enthusiastic support as union leaders decried a proposed $700 billion plan aimed at reinvigorating the credit markets by relieving financial institutions of distressed debt.

“The Bush administration wants us to pay the freight for a Wall Street bailout that does not even begin to address the roots of our crisis,” said AFL-CIO National President John Sweeney.

“We want our tax dollars used to provide a hand up for the millions of working people who live on Main Street and not a handout to a privileged band of overpaid executives.”

Signs read “No Blank Checks For Wall Street” and “Our Hard-Earned Pensions Are Not Up For Grabs.” Protesters cheered repeated calls for the government to spend money on education, health care and housing as freely and readily as it was proposing to do for Wall Street.

“We know that the economic situation has to be solved. But we want a responsible rescue, not an opportunistic bailout,” said United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

“And that means, just like every single boss says to me, that there should be accountability for the teachers, then there should be accountability for Wall Street,” he said.

“The bailout is a sellout unless it includes the victims of the tyranny,” civil rights activist the Rev. Jesse Jackson told reporters after the rally. “The homeowners need long-term, low interest rate loans and the restructuring of loans, not the repossession of homes.”

“This is a Roosevelt moment,” Jackson said, referring to former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s program to lift the United States out of the Great Depression. “It’s time for reconstruction of manufacturing law, trade law and banking transparency.”

---------

(Editing by Daniel Trotta.)
»

“Labor Unions Protest in New York Against Bailout”

But, I bet they didn’t protest against the $25 billion UAW (big 3 automakers) ‘Bailout’!!  Guess ‘bailing out’ unionized companies is okay, but saving the ‘U.S. Economy’ is a ‘bad’ thing!!  Especially, since it was those ‘high paid’ union workers who spent more than they earned and bought those ‘high priced’ houses that they couldn’t afford and ran up thousands in credit card debt!!  Remember, the worst financial problems are in the ‘high wage’ states, where house prices ‘skyrocketed’!!  But, then again, didn’t those unions guarantee ‘Job Security’?  Ask an unemployed auto worker, how much ‘Job Security’ they had!!

RDS: YOU were a union organizer and member yourself. YOUR bone of contention with unions seem to stem from your unsuccessful organizing effort and the allegation that the union stole your pension. However, there seems to be a contradiction in your statements about a “stolen pension”,RDS, from whay I have read. I recently ran across an older post where you stated that your pension required 15 years to be vested,but you quit three years shy of that designated time frame. If you leave of your own volition before the required period, how can you accuse the union of stealing your pension? I asked you on an earlier occasion,if you were robbed of your rightful pension,why didn’t you sue?

“Take it from me, being a union representative is a hard job and can be quite heartbreaking.  Think about it, you put all of your effort talking to people, trying to get them to unionize.  You get them to sign the cards, thinking that you now have enough votes.  Then comes the election and your heart just sinks as the union is voted out.  A years work, all for nothing.  And, you have to wait another year, before you can have another election.  Then, for that next year, people come up to you,(people you know voted against the union), telling you how they got screwed over this or that and all you can do, is say, “What do you want me to do about it, I’m not a union steward, you helped vote it down, so figure it out for yourself”.  I know that I sound anti-union, I used to be as gung-ho as you are, but seeing other members and how they acted, turned me off, example: they used to have beer at our Teamsters meetings, most of the people came for the beer, not to find out what the meeting was about.  Then, about 15 years ago, I found out that I would not be able to get my Teamster pension, because I had only been a member for 12 years, that was a bummer, so I had to concentrate on putting money in my 401K, if I wanted to retire early.  Unions have let me down, that is why I don’t promote them. “

Bob in
Saturday, August 26 at 11:40 PM~~~~~~~~~~~Note: This was in 2006.Correction: You stated you found out 15 years AGO that you only had 12 years,not enough to receive your pension. Was it not YOUR personal responsibility to KNOW how many years required to qualify for eligibility,Bob? Is that really STEALING your pension,IF you left before being fully vested and/or eligible to receive pension benefits?

FRED,

“Of course another lie is that you don’t want to see wm taken over by unions by force.  WHAT DO YOU CARE . Its going to happen without force ,WATCH.”

Mainly because I am sick of seeing democracy going down the drain!!  I think people should be able to CHOOSE, whether they want to have a union or not!!  And, what exactly do you think Wal-Mart’s employees will GAIN by having a union, that they DON’T already have, except for paying union dues?  A union can’t force Wal-Mart to pay higher wages or give better benefits, that’s why they call it “bargaining’!!

RDS in
Monday, September 01,2008 at 11:22 PM~~~~~~~~~Note: In your 2006 post (previous post)you mention nothing about “Democracy “as a motivating factor,as you do when you oppsoe the Free Choice Act,now,two years later.l Weren’t you concerned about our country’s Democracy all along?As a matter of fact the Free Choice Act would have made it EASIER for you to organize,wouldn’t it?

BTW: Isn’t Tyson unionized?

ddrb,

“I recently ran across an older post where you stated that your pension required 15 years to be vested,but you quit three years shy of that designated time frame. If you leave of your own volition before the required period, how can you accuse the union of stealing your pension?”

You are right, but the reason I said I was ‘robbed’ of my pension, was because I have never worked for a non-union company, that required 15 years, to get vested in the pension!!  The worst non-union plan I had, was 7 years, but every year after the first year, it went like this;

2ND YEAR -10%
3RD YEAR -20%
4TH YEAR -40%
5TH YEAR -60%
6TH YEAR -80%
7TH YEAR -100%

so, even if I quit at 5 years, I would still have gotten 60%!!  You would think that a UNION pension plan, would be “Better” than most non-union plans!!

“As a matter of fact the Free Choice Act would have made it EASIER for you to organize,wouldn’t it?”

Yes it would have, but, as I said, 75% signed cards, but only 33% voted FOR the union in the voting booth, so, that would suggest that many people who signed cards, didn’t really want the union and just signed them to get the organizer out of their face!! 

Tell me, how would you like it, if tomorrow, they announced that they were getting rid of the ‘voting booth’ for elections and replacing it with people from the parties going ‘door to door’, getting cards signed?

“Isn’t Tyson unionized?”

Not to my knowledge!!  But, they have bought out some beef and pork companies, which may have been unionized!!

:
Tyson Foods Corporate Record
December 2004

Company Background

“Tyson Foods Inc. is the largest poultry processing company in the U.S. with 50,000 employees at 59 plants in 15 states. It dominates the market with 27 percent of sales nationwide.  Tyson is also the world’s largest supplier of premium beef and pork, as well as a diversified producer of hundreds of consumer-ready food products. The beef and pork operations depend upon independent livestock producers to supply their plants. The company buys millions of cattle and hogs each year to supply ten beef plants and six pork plants.”1 For the first nine months of 2004, Tyson earnings were $337 million, or 94 cents per share, on sales of $19.3 billion.3 Tyson is a Fortune 500 company, ranked 177th, has a total market capitalization of $5.8 billion and represents 0.71% of the S&P;400 Mid-Cap Index.

Tyson Foods has numerous collective bargaining agreements with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union; the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Union; the International Union of Electrical Workers; the Confederacion de Trabajadores de Mexico; the Sindicato Industrial de Trabajadores de Nuevo Leon; the Confederacion Reginal Obrera de Mexico; and the Confederacion Reginal de Obreros y Campesinos covering 32,408 employees (or roughly 27% of the total global workforce of some 120,000). Of the total unionized employees, 28,556 are employed in the United States.1

Corporate Legal Record

Tyson Foods is currently facing a national wage and hour Class Action Suit lawsuit brought by a group of Alabama workers for failure to pay overtime wages. The suit charges the poultry giant with violating federal overtime provisions. The suit charges that Tyson fails to pay workers for all the time spent working on the line and time spent putting on and taking off required safety equipment such as gloves, hairnets, aprons, etc. The company could face fines of nearly $600 million in back pay to its employees.

In June 2003, Tyson Foods pleaded guilty to 20 federal violations of the Clean Water Act.  Tyson agreed to pay $5.5 million in fines to the federal government, $1 million to the Missouri Natural Resources Fund, and $1 million to the state of Missouri. The company also will be on probation for three years, and also must hire an independent consultant to perform an environmental audit and implement an improved environmental management program. The fines are the result of Tyson’s confession that between September 1998 and March 2001 they continually drained untreated wastewater from a poultry plant into a tributary that empties into the Lamine River. Under the federal Clean Water Act, a meat packing company is required to treat their wastewater before draining it into any water source.5

In December 2001, the U.S. Justice Department filed a 36-count indictment against Tyson Foods and six of its employees, executives and managers charging them with conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America to work in 15 of its U.S. poultry processing plants, including the Albertville, Alabama plant.  The Justice Department also alleged that Tyson and their co-conspirators assisted the workers in obtaining fraudulent identification and employment documents. Three employees pleaded guilty and were fired.  In February 2000, the company agreed to pay $230,000 to settle allegations of discriminatory hiring practices against women and minorities at its Forest, Miss issippi poultry plant.  The administrative complaint stemmed from a compliance review of the plant conducted by the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.  The agency’s investigation found that, from January 1, 1996 through June 30, 1997, Tyson discriminated against qualified women who applied for entry-level laborer jobs and qualified African Americans who applied for craft positions.

“In February 2000, Tyson’s Henderson, Kentucky complex was slapped by Kentucky OSHA with a record-breaking $269,000 in fines from citations for 73 serious health and safety violations.”

In July 1999, Tyson Foods agreed to pay $2.3 million to settle sexual harassment claims at some of its Alabama plants. The payout was part of a record $10.79 million paid in fiscal 1999 by Alabama companies investigated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“In December 1997, Tyson Foods pleaded guilty to giving former USDA Secretary Mike Espy over $12,000 in illegal gratuities and agreed to pay $6 million in criminal fines and investigative expenses.  Two Tyson executives were also eventually convicted and sentenced to prison terms.

Various corporate watchdog organizations have cited Tyson as a poor corporate citizen.  In 1999, Multinational Monitor, an organization which tracks corporate activity, named Tyson one of the “Ten Worst Corporations of 1999” citing seven worker deaths at its facilities in just seven months (the poultry giant had recently been targeted by employees of its packing houses for ongoing violations of worker health and safety). Tyson also made the Corporate Crime Reporter’s list of the nation’s ten worst corporations in 1999 and in 2002 Tyson Foods earned a place as one of Sierra Club’s “Ten Least Wanted”.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wal-Mart is now fighting to keep disability benefits from non-employees and well as employees.

Former Pine Bluff Police Officer Jimmy Singleton was shot in the ankle and knocked unconscious from a blow to the head in 2003 while patting down a suspect. Today he suffers frequent migraines, and the bullet remains lodged in his ankle making it difficult to walk or stand up for long periods of time. For the past 4 years he’s been waging a nasty court battle to receive disability benefits.

So where does Wal-Mart come in? To flex it’s political and legal muscle, and push the Arkansas court to set a Wal-Mart-friendly precedent by denying him benefits. Both Wal-Mart and Tyson, Arkansas’ largest employers, “tendered friend-of-the-court briefs with the state Supreme Court this month arguing his claim should be denied.”

*Jeff Hess Over at Writing on the Wal has a post up on the Singleton case as well.

Wal-Mart, Tyson Oppose Injured Officer’s Claim [NW Arkansas Morning News]:

Former Pine Bluff police officer Jimmy Singleton was patting down a suspect on March 1, 2003, when the man stuck a gun in his stomach.

Singleton received a gunshot wound to his left ankle and a blow to the head that knocked him unconscious in the ensuing struggle. He says he sustained neurological damage that affected his thinking and that he walks with a limp because of bullet fragments.

“If I stand on my foot too long my foot will swell up,” Singleton said. “I can’t stand loud noises and bright lights. I get migraine headaches all the time.”

For the past five years, Singleton, 43, has been fighting a court battle to obtain disability benefits. It’s a fight that has pitted him against some unexpected opponents, including Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Springdale-based Tyson Foods Inc.

Singleton was puzzled when the world’s largest retailer and the world’s largest meat processor, along with the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce and two other employers’ associations, tendered friend-of-the-court briefs with the state Supreme Court this month arguing his claim should be denied.

“That just blows me out of the water,” he said. “I have no clue. My attorney told me, and I couldn’t understand it. I don’t know why they’re getting involved.”

A Fort Smith lawyer who is representing Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods and the Arkansas Self-Insured Association in the matter, said the scope of the case goes beyond Singleton and his former employer.

“I think it’s an issue that’s of interest to employers, period,” she said.

Since Singleton first filed his claim for benefits, the state Worker’s Compensation Commission has twice voted to deny it. The commission said there was no objective evidence showing that Singleton sustained permanent physical impairment.

Singleton’s attorney, Kenneth Harper of Monticello, said he wasn’t sure how the commission could say that about Singleton’s ankle injury.

“He’s got a bullet in the dad-gum thing,” Harper said. “That’s pretty objective to me.”

On June 12, the city of Pine Bluff petitioned the state’s highest court to review the case and overturn the Court of Appeals’ rulings.

Four days later, lawyers for Wal-Mart, Tyson, the Arkansas Self-Insured Association, the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce and the Association of Independent Industries tendered two friend-of-the-court briefs also asking the state Supreme Court to reverse the lower court’s rulings.

“Now we’re going from the legal realm and we’re moving into the political realm,” Harper said. “Somebody is wanting to assert some influence.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~WMW

If you leave of your own volition before the required period, how can you accuse the union of stealing your pension?”

You are right, but the reason I said I was ‘robbed’ of my pension, was because I have never worked for a non-union company, that required 15 years, to get vested in the pension!!  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~NOTE: So all this time that you have been yelling “ROBBER” at the unions, you are now saying it really wasn’t theft at all. You assumed facts that were not in evidence regarding the time frame for being vested. That doesn’t sound like personal responsibility to me,RDS. Wasn’t that YOUR job to find out the terms of your company’s pension plan before you CHOSE to leave? Aren’t you blaming unions for what really constititutes your OWN irresponsibility?

Tell me, how would you like it, if tomorrow, they announced that they were getting rid of the ‘voting booth’ for elections and replacing it with people from the parties going ‘door to door’, getting cards signed? `RDS~~~~~~~~~~~NOTE:For all intents and purposes, voting booths have become a tool against fair elections since the use of electronic voting machines.  Electronic machines providing a paper receipt, would result in far more fairness, reliabity ,and accountabilty to the voting public,IMHO. Hey,if “going door to door and getting cards signed “ included a paper receipt for the signor(voter) hey, its more than we’re getting now in the voting booth!

“many people who signed cards, didn’t really want the union and just signed them to get the organizer out of their face!! “RDS~~~~~~~~~~YOU WERE the organizer,correct?

ddrb,

“YOU WERE the organizer,correct?”

No, I was one of 8 organizers!!  And, it was our job, to get people to sign cards to get an ‘election’, therefore, we were to keep talking to the other employees, until we could get them to sign a card!!  Once they signed a card, there was no reason to keep talking to them to try to get them to vote for the union, because the card meant they agreed to the ‘election’!!  How they ‘voted’, was up to them, once the ‘election’ took place!!

NLRB Union Elections Safeguard Workers’ Rights
by James Sherk
WebMemo #1359
Revised and updated June 20, 2007

Since the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, secret-ballot elections have been a key part of the government’s effort to protect the privacy of workers who are considering joining a union. Recently, however, labor unions have alleged that secret-ballot elections are so inherently unfair that they do not reflect workers’ true choices. They want Congress to require companies to recognize a union when a majority of their workers publicly sign cards stating their desire to organize. This is known as card-check organizing. But secret-ballot elections do not stack the deck against union organizing, and Congress should not take away workers’ fundamental right to a private ballot because of unions’ anecdotal claims to the contrary.

The facts show that current National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election procedures are fair and do protect workers’ free choice. The system carefully balances the rights of union organizers and employers and ensures that workers can express their choice in a neutral environment. The NLRB investigates and processes alleged violations of the law in a timely manner, and there is little evidence that the NLRB is failing to enforce the law. Over 97 percent of elections took place without any illegal employer activities, and unions won over 60 percent of organizing elections held in 2005.

Alleged Election Abuses

A private choice expressed through a secret ballot is a fundamental part of American democracy, but many labor activists now allege that, despite the privacy of the voting booth, organizing elections are coercive and unfair and should be replaced with publicly signed cards to protect worker’s “free choice.”

Union activists argue that companies have complete access to workers during the day, when unions do not.[1] They also say that it takes so long for the NLRB to investigate violations that employers routinely ignore laws protecting workers.[2] Supporters of card-check allege that many companies illegally threaten or fire workers who support unionizing.[3] Private balloting thus takes place in “an inherently and intensely coercive environment."[4]

Wholly aside from the bizarre nature of the argument that making the choice of whether or not to join a union public will prevent companies from intimidating workers, the facts show that government-supervised organizing elections carefully balance the interests of unions and employers while protecting employees from retaliation by either side.

Employers May Not Threaten Workers

Under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, employers have the right to communicate their views to their employees and may express their opposition to a union. A supervisor may remind workers that many union negotiation demands would be set by union bosses who know little about the company’s day-to-day operations or that union dues are expensive and fund those bosses’ six-figure salaries. Every story has two sides, and employers have the right to point out to their employees the drawbacks to union membership that they are unlikely to hear from union organizers.

Employers may not, however, threaten their workers. They may not threaten to fire individual workers for joining a union, much less actually do so, or “predict” that unionizing would lead to strikes that would bankrupt the company and force it to undertake mass layoffs.[5] If the government finds that a company did threaten workers, it discards the election results and holds a new election. A company that illegally fires workers for joining a union must reinstate them and provide them with back pay.

CON’T

Unions Free to Make Their Case

The First Amendment similarly guarantees union activists the right to express their views to potential recruits, but not to recruit new dues-paying members while workers are on company time. Union organizers may speak to workers during lunch breaks and other unpaid time at work, unless the company has a policy prohibiting solicitation by anyone--not just unions--on its premises. The law does not guarantee union organizers a special exemption to policies designed to avoid disruption at work.

To ensure that unions have an equal chance to make their case, the law requires that companies provide union organizers with a complete and accurate list of all employees’ names and addresses within seven days of the NLRB order to conduct an election. If a company fails to do so or provides an inaccurate list, the NLRB will set the election aside and order a re-vote.[6] Union organizers are free to contact employees at home or by phone to make their case; employers are not. It is actually an unfair labor practice (ULP) for a work supervisor to visit workers in their homes to discuss the election.[7] The law strikes a balance between the legitimate needs of both employers and union organizers, allowing both to make their case while protecting workers from intimidation.

Timely Investigation

Union activists agree that workers’ legal protections look good on paper, but they claim that it takes so long for the government to investigate violations that these protections are meaningless in practice.[8] The AFL-CIO argues that “in 50 percent of the decisions issued by the NLRB in 2002 in unfair labor practice charge cases, workers waited more than 889 days for the NLRB to reach a decision."[9]

This claim is misleading. The National Labor Relations Board is the labor law equivalent of the Supreme Court. Only 3 percent of cases make it to the NLRB, and many of those embody novel legal issues, not the routine enforcement of the law.[10] Most cases are either settled by the parties or handled by lower levels of the NLRB bureaucracy.

It takes an NLRB regional director a median of only 95 days--three months--to investigate an unfair labor practice charge, determine whether it has merit, and file a formal “complaint."[11] Only 13 percent of all cases reach that stage.[12] Fully 87 percent are closed before the complaint stage, either dismissed for lack of merit or the subjects of settlements in which the company makes restitution. It takes a median of three more months from the filing of a complaint to an administrative law judge’s decision. Only 5 percent of cases, overall, get to that stage.[13]

Ninety-five percent of all alleged violations of worker rights are settled through procedures that typically take between three to six months. That is no reason to take away workers’ right to a private vote.

Most Allegations Dismissed

Unions allege that employers systematically violate the law, but these allegations are only one side of the story. Government investigations usually result in the dismissal of these allegations. The majority of unfair labor practice charges filed against employers in 2005 were either withdrawn or dismissed.[14] Unfair labor practices include intimidation, threats, and coercion by employers against workers at any time, not just during an election campaign.

CON’T

Almost All Employers Obey the Law

The argument by labor activists that corporations systematically violate workers’ rights and fire workers who want to organize is seriously undermined by the fact that government investigations show otherwise. Firing a worker because he or she wants to organize is an unfair labor practice that the government investigates. Companies who break the law must rehire their workers with full back pay. NLRB records show that companies rarely fire workers for trying to join a union. Fully 97.3 percent of organizing campaigns in 2005 involved no illegal firings.[15] Organized labor’s claims are more anecdotal than real.

It is true that a small minority of employers do violate the law. Companies did fire workers in 2.7 percent of organizing campaigns in 2005. Additionally, unfair labor practice complaints in 2005 led to 2,000 workers being offered reinstatement and 31,000 receiving back pay.[16] Unions frequently use this fact to argue for replacing private balloting with card-check organizing drives,[17] but these numbers need context. They include all labor-management disputes that took place in the United States, not just those related to organizing campaigns. About 15.4 million Americans belong to a union, meaning that just 1 in 500 union members received back pay because of illegal employer discrimination.[18] These violations are rare exceptions, not the rule. By the numbers, the vast majority of employers follow the law.

Unions Usually Win

Labor activists argue that NLRB elections “look more like the discredited practices of rogue regimes abroad than like anything we would call American."[19] If, contrary to NLRB investigations, employers systematically violated the law and intimidated workers, unions would lose most elections, but unions actually win 61 percent of all organizing elections.[20] This is strong evidence that employers are not tilting the playing field against union organizers.

Conclusion

NLRB organizing elections are free and fair. They balance the legitimate rights and interests of both union organizers and employers while preserving workers’ privacy and protecting them from coercion and intimidation. Unions win most organizing elections. The government also investigates and resolves most cases of employer misconduct in a matter of months, and the majority of those allegations have no merit. Investigators found that employers intimidated or coerced workers in just 2.7 percent of organizing election campaigns in 2005.

The vast majority of employers follow the law. They respect their employees’ right to decide whether or not to join a union without fear of intimidation or coercion. Congress should do the same by allowing workers to vote their conscience in the privacy of the voting booth.

[5]National Labor Relations Board, Office of the General Counsel, An Outline of Law and Procedure in Representation Cases, July 2005, Chapter 24, Sections 200-230, at www.nlrb.gov/nlrb/legal/manuals/outline_chap24.html.

[10]National Labor Relations Board, Seventieth Annual Report of the National Labor Relations Board for the Fiscal Year Ended September 30 2005, May 1, 2006, Table 8: CA Cases, at www.nlrb.gov/nlrb/shared_files/brochures/AnnualReports/Entire2005Annual.pdf.

[14] National Labor Relations Board, Seventieth Annual Report of the National Labor Relations Board for the Fiscal Year Ended September 30 2005, Table 7.

[18]Department of Commerce, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Union Members in 2006,” news release, January 25 2007, at www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf (February 13, 2007).

This post went up on American Rights at Work earlier this week. It’s just frustrating and sad.

A Gift to Wal-Mart from the NLRB [American Rights at Work]

The National Labor Relations Board just found Wal-Mart guilty of illegally firing a union supporter, bribing employees, and discriminatorily refusing to protect union supporters from the harassment of their anti-union coworker, all in an effort to prevent workers from forming a union at its Kingman, AZ, store.

How is this decision a gift to Wal-Mart?  Because it was issued eight years after the organizing effort began—eight years after it could have had any impact on the union effort.  Thus Wal-Mart breaks the law, successfully squashes the union effort, benefits from the slow case-handling procedures at the NLRB, and merely has to pony up a little backpay and interest to the employee it fired.  It’s no wonder this country’s largest private employer has managed to stay entirely union-free.

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, July 11, 2008~~~WMW

Ninety-five percent of all alleged violations of worker rights are settled through procedures that typically take between three to six months. That is no reason to take away workers’ right to a private vote. ~~~~~~~~~~~~NOTE: I guess that 8 years to issue a decision in the WalMart unioniization case would fall in the 5% margin of cases NOT settled in a timely manner,as delineated in RDS’ NLRB “press release.”

There is no such thing as a secret ballot under NLRB elections
Much has been made about the importance of the secret ballot in NLRB elections. But, as this report documents, the NLRB safeguards the secret ballot in name only. The principle of the secret ballot in the American democratic tradition encompasses more than the fact of casting one’s ballot in a private booth on election day. More broadly, it is the principle that voters have the right to keep their political opinions to themselves, and that they cannot be forced to reveal which party they’re supporting before, during or after election day.

But this principle has been eviscerated by the NLRB. Federal law allows anti-union managers to force individual employees into repeated, intimidating one-on-one conversations with their personal supervisors that are designed to make employees reveal their political leanings long before election day. “Union avoidance” consultants typically script supervisors’ conversations, train them how to read employees verbal and non-verbal reactions, and have them ask indirect questions without explicitly asking employees how they will vote. Supervisors often adopt a sophisticated grading system to mark the political tendencies of each of their subordinates; for those whose leanings are unclear, consultants require that supervisors go back for repeated conversations until employees’ political sentiments have been flushed to the surface. Unlike political elections, employee voters have no right to walk away from such conversations or to insist that they don’t want to discuss union-related issues with their supervisor. They can be forced to engage in such conversations daily, or multiple times a day, in an atmosphere of dramatically increasing pressure.

Unsurprisingly, all but the most skilled actors end up revealing their union preferences in these conversations with supervisors. One management consultant recalls that he would commonly initiate a pool among managers, in which each supervisor would predict the number of anti-union votes, with a $100 prize for the closest guess. “It was amazing,” he reports. “In pool after pool the supervisors were astonishingly accurate.”

To the extent that such tactics are effective, the technically secret ballot has ceased to provide any meaningful protection to voters subject to the intense scrutiny of those who control their work lives. ~~~~~~~~~~~"Neither Free nor Fair”,American Rights at Work website

Getman: Don’t undermine workers’ rights
Jack Getman, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SCHOOL OF LAW
Monday, September 29, 2008

The Employee Free Choice Act has been an easy target for uninformed anti-union commentators like George Will, who by singing the praise of the National Labor Relations Board process ending in secret ballot elections attempt to strike a blow against unions and those Democrats such as Barack Obama who support them.

In a recent column, Will once again criticized the act , describing the act as: “The exquisitely misnamed Employee Free Choice Act [that] would strip from workers their right to secret ballots in unionization elections. Instead, unions could use the ‘card check’ system: Once a majority of a company’s employees — each person confronted one-on-one by a union organizer in an inherently coercive setting — sign cards expressing consent, the union would be certified as the bargaining agent for all workers. Proving that the law’s purpose is less to improve workers’ conditions than to capture dues-payers for the unions, the law will forbid employers from discouraging unionization by giving ‘unilateral’ — not negotiated — improvements in compensation and working conditions.”

The commentary demonstrates Will’s exquisite LACK of UNDERSTANDING of how union organizing works and how it will work under EFCA. He talks about “each person confronted one-on-one by a union organizer in an inherently coercive setting.” Where does he think this will happen? If he imagines the workplace, he is wrong because employers have the right to keep organizers from entering the workplace and even parking lots. Does he imagine home visits?.... That is why the card-signing campaigns are, in a majority of cases, conducted by fellow employees — members of the internal organizing committee. “

Will claims that a one-on-one meeting between an organizer and a worker is “inherently coercive.” Perhaps he imagines organizers straight from the set of “The Sopranos.”

In fact, organizers today are overwhelmingly drawn from the ranks of idealistic college graduates and committed union members, many of them woman and minorities. They are not taught to coerce. Rather, their main task is overcoming fear of EMPLOYER REPRISAL on the part of employees eager to have a union.

What IS inherently COERCIVE is the NLRB representation process that precedes the secret ballot. It is a system that permits employers to deliver, over and over, CAPTIVE audience speeches intended to increase fear and which give the union NO right to respond. In addition, the system provides NO adequate REMEDY for employer unfair labor practices such as threats and discriminatory discharges.

The law says that once a union obtains recognition an employer may NOT make unilateral changes in wages and working conditions without bargaining with the union. The Employee Free Choice Act does NOT change that.

Getman, a law professor, co-wrote ‘Union Representation Elections: Law and Reality.’~~~~~~~~~~~Austin Statesman

ddrb,

“Unsurprisingly, all but the most skilled actors end up revealing their union preferences in these conversations with supervisors.”

And, how would the ‘Card Check’ change this?  In fact, it would make it worse for employees, because they would be afraid to sign a card before the 51% was obtained, for fear that their supervisor would find out!!  Under the present system, signing a card, only means you are FOR an election, not that you are for a union, but, under the ‘card check’ system, you reveal that you are FOR the union, when you sign!!  And, don’t believe, that signing a card makes you ‘Fire Proof”, you can still be ‘fired’ for many reasons!!

RDS;: I’m still confused about your agenda against unions. Bear with me. You were a group of eight who attempted to unionize and organize a non-union foundry. Your collective efforts failed. (Prior to attempting to unionize the foundry,you were a UNION truck driver,as had been your father.) Your wife owned a NON-Union (?) dairy farm,and the two women(wife and daughter) ran the farm while you worked at the foundry,part-time. Upon the failure of you and your seven other fellow organizers to organize the foundry, you CHOSE to quit the foundry. Due to your OWN negligence to NOT verify the NON union foundry’s pension requirements as to how many years you must be an employee to qualify to draw pension(vested), you have called said you were ROBBED BY UNIONS of a pension FOR WHICH YOU WERE INELIGIBLE-ESPECIALLY SINCE IT WAS A NONUNION FOUNDRY!  HOW COULD A UNION PAY YOU A PENSION WHEN YOU WORKED FOR A NONUNION COMPANY?

ddrb,

“I’m still confused about your agenda against unions.”

Your confusion stems from the fact, that you think I am anti union and anti labor!!  I am NOT against unions or against people becoming unionized!!  I am just pointing out, that unions don’t always deliver what they promise, especially the ‘big’ ones!!  And, if you would have read my last post, you would see, that I was ‘warning’ people that they might be worse off, with the “card check” program, than they would be with the ‘secret ballot’ election!!  Also, I believe that people should CHOOSE whether or not they want a union, not that the Union chooses them!!  As an organizer, I chose to represent the union, we contacted them, they didn’t tell us that we needed to have them represent us, it was OUR choice!!  If Wal-Mart employees want a union, I say ‘good fo them’, as long as it is THEIR choice!!  Thing is, if you want something bad enough, you will do what is necessary to obtain it, Wal-Mart employees haven’t done that, therefore, they must not want it that bad!!

“Your wife owned a NON-Union (?) dairy farm,and the two women(wife and daughter) ran the farm while you worked at the foundry,part-time.”

Wrong, my family owned a dairy farm and I worked full time at the foundry (40 to 76 hours a week) and worked part time on the farm!!

“Upon the failure of you and your seven other fellow organizers to organize the foundry, you CHOSE to quit the foundry.”

Wrong again, I worked at the foundry for 10 years AFTER our last union vote failed (we tried 3 years in a row), I worked at the foundry for 13 years!!

“Due to your OWN negligence to NOT verify the NON union foundry’s pension requirements as to how many years you must be an employee to qualify to draw pension(vested),”

Wrong, one more time, I received my full pension money from the foundry!!

“you have called said you were ROBBED BY UNIONS of a pension FOR WHICH YOU WERE INELIGIBLE-ESPECIALLY SINCE IT WAS A NONUNION FOUNDRY!  HOW COULD A UNION PAY YOU A PENSION WHEN YOU WORKED FOR A NONUNION COMPANY?

Once again you are wrong, I said that I didn’t receive the pension from the Teamsters union, when I was a truck driver for 11 years, not the foundry!!  The reason I said I was cheated out of that money, was because the “company” put money in the Teamster’s Pension Fund ‘for me’, but when I quit, the union kept the money that was earmarked ‘for me’!!  Had it been a ‘company pension fund’, I probably would have been vest in less than 15 years!!  And, people like Jimmy Hoffa stole money from that Fund, that could have been given to me, for time served!!  Besides, I admit, that I didn’t pay attention to the aspects of the pension, but, I was 19 at the time and didn’t think much about ‘retirement’!!

Take it from me, being a union representative is a hard job and can be quite heartbreaking.  Think about it, you put all of your effort talking to people, trying to get them to unionize.  You get them to sign the cards, thinking that you now have enough votes.  Then comes the election and your heart just sinks as the union is voted out.  A years work, all for nothing.  And, you have to wait another year, before you can have another election.  Then, for that next year, people come up to you,(people you know voted against the union), telling you how they got screwed over this or that and all you can do, is say, “What do you want me to do about it, I’m not a union steward, you helped vote it down, so figure it out for yourself”.  I know that I sound anti-union, I used to be as gung-ho as you are, but seeing other members and how they acted, turned me off, example: they used to have beer at our Teamsters meetings, most of the people came for the beer, not to find out what the meeting was about.  Then, about 15 years ago, I found out that I would not be able to get my Teamster pension, because I had only been a member for 12 years, that was a bummer, so I had to concentrate on putting money in my 401K, if I wanted to retire early.  Unions have let me down, that is why I don’t promote them.

Bob in
Saturday, August 26 at 11:40 PM~~~~~~~~~NOTE: Did you start driving trucks at eight? At 19, you had been driving trucks 11 years for the union?

BTW: According to your story,you left driving union trucks to work in a non union foundry whom you and others attempted to organize ,unsuccessfully,for three years. You continued on at the nonunion foundry for 11 years hence. Now,do you expect me to believe that your familiarity with unions when attempting organizing,did NOT give you pause about the requirements regarding your “truck driving pension”?

ddrb,

“Did you start driving trucks at eight? At 19, you had been driving trucks 11 years for the union?”

Are you really that dense?  Where did you see me say anything about being in the union for 11 years at the age of 19?  I said I started driving truck at age 19 and did it for 11 years (actually, I was in the union for 12 years, but they didn’t count the first year, as I was ‘part-time’!!

“According to your story”

First, it’s not a STORY, it’s my life!!

“Now,do you expect me to believe that your familiarity with unions when attempting organizing,did NOT give you pause about the requirements regarding your “truck driving pension”? “

I don’t expect YOU to believe anything, what you do or do not believe, is insignificant to me, I just tried to answer your question!!  Tell me, do you expect ME to believe that you continue to live next to a Wal-Mart store, when you hate it so much and that you didn’t know anything about it, until they started building it?

RDS: What YOU do or do not believe, is insignificant to me, because ,over time ,I’ve come to have no respect for you or your opinion,whatsoever-based upon the contents of your postings.

ddrb,

“RDS: What YOU do or do not believe, is insignificant to me, because ,over time ,I’ve come to have no respect for you or your opinion,whatsoever-based upon the contents of your postings.

Well then, STOP posting in responce to my posts or about my posts!!  Thank you!!

RDS: Why don’t you pass that sentiment t onto bb? He continuously refers to my posts and Bobby’s posts as irrelevant ;saying,"nobody listens to you folks anymore”.Yet, turns right around and posts multiple responses to our comments,over and over.