Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor
Last week, Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee “ramped up his anti-union rhetoric” in hopes of persuading workers at Volkswagen AG’s plant in Chattanooga to vote against representation by the United Auto Workers. According to Reuters, on February 12th, Corker said he had been “assured” that if workers at the Volkswagen plant in his hometown rejected representation by UAW, the company would “reward the plant with a new product to build.” Bernie Woodall of Reuters said that Corker dropped that “bombshell” on the “first of a three-day secret ballot election of blue-collar workers” at the Chattanooga plant. The most troubling part—as I see it—is that Corker’s claim actually ran “counter to public statements by Volkswagen…”
The following day, Corker said that he was “very certain that if the UAW is voted down,” the automaker would announce new investment in the plant “in the next couple weeks.” It seems Corker hadn’t heard—or chose to ignore—a statement made earlier by Frank Fischer, chief executive of VW Chattanooga, “that there was ‘no connection’ between the vote at its three-year-old Tennessee plant and a looming decision on whether VW will build a new crossover vehicle there or in Mexico.”
Volkswagen officials acknowledged “their desire for a works council, arguing that their model of labor-management relations serves them well in every other country in the world, except China.” Under U.S. law, however, the company would not be able to “set up a works council without first having its employees vote for a union.”
The UAW “was dealt a stinging defeat” when a majority of employees at the Chattanooga facility voted against joining the union “after a high-profile opposition campaign led by Republican politicians and outside political groups.” According to the Washington Post, the auto union’s loss “came in spite of an unprecedented level of support from the company being organized.” Fischer who had actually “encouraged the idea of starting a German-style ‘works council’ at the plant, like those in place at Volkswagen’s other factories'” apparently was “saddened by the outcome.”
Fisher speaking after the union vote (Washington Post):
“Our employees have not made a decision that they are against a works council. Throughout this process, we found great enthusiasm for the idea of an American-style works council both inside and outside our plant,” Fischer said, reading from a statement. “Our goal continues to be to determine the best method for establishing a works council in accordance with the requirements of U.S. labor law to meet VW America’s production needs and serve our employees’ interests.”
Gary Casteel, organizer for the UAW’s Southern Region, said, “Unfortunately, politically motivated third parties threatened the economic future of this facility and the opportunity for workers to create a successful operating model that would grow jobs in Tennessee.”
Casteel was making reference to anti-union remarks made by “Tennessee’s Republican lawmakers, who threatened to withhold tax incentives from Volkswagen if the workers unionized, and attention from D.C.-based activist Grover Norquist.” UAW officials said they noticed that workers began “to turn against the union as they started hearing ‘threats and intimidation’ against the company.”
It appears that the Chattanooga auto workers may have made a big mistake when they rejected UAW membership last week. According to Huffington Post, theirs is the only “Volkswagen plant worldwide without a formal mechanism for workers’ representation.”
Huffington Post:
The German “co-determination” model mandates works councils, which connect employees to management, at all large German companies. Following the union vote, the head of Volkswagen’s works council told German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the automaker would hesitate to expand in the U.S. South.
“I can imagine fairly well that another VW factory in the United States, provided that one more should still be set up there, does not necessarily have to be assigned to the South again,” said works council leader Bernd Osterloh.
“If co-determination isn’t guaranteed in the first place, we as workers will hardly be able to vote in favor” of building another plant in the right-to-work South, Osterloh added.
UAW chief says Bob Corker intimidated workers at Chattanooga Volkswagen plant
Now, thanks to Senator Bob Corker and others who spoke out against UAW representation for workers at the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant it looks like the company probably won’t be rewarding the facility with any “new product” manufacturing there…or anywhere else in the “right-to-work South.”
SOURCES
Turns Out Anti-Union Volkswagen Workers May Have Screwed Themselves And The South (Huffington Post)
As Volkswagen workers vote, Tennessee senator ramps up anti-union talk (Reuters)
VW workers may block southern U.S. deals if no unions: labor chief (Reuters)
U.S. senator drops bombshell during VW plant union vote (Reuters)
Auto union loses historic election at Volkswagen plant in Tennessee (Washington Post)
All eyes on Chattanooga: VW’s workers are deciding the future of unions in the South (Washington Post)
labor unions violate private property rights using the full force of government to do so.
The Shameful Attack on Public Employees
Robert Reich, Fmr. Secretary of Labor; Professor at Berkeley; Author, Aftershock: ‘The Next Economy and America’s Future’
Posted: January 5, 2011
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-shameful-attack-on-pu_b_805050.html
Excerpt:
In 1968, 1,300 sanitation workers in Memphis went on strike. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to support them. That was where he lost his life. Eventually Memphis heard the grievances of its sanitation workers. And in subsequent years millions of public employees across the nation have benefited from the job protections they’ve earned.
But now the right is going after public employees.
Public servants are convenient scapegoats. Republicans would rather deflect attention from corporate executive pay that continues to rise as corporate profits soar, even as corporations refuse to hire more workers. They don’t want stories about Wall Street bonuses, now higher than before taxpayers bailed out the Street. And they’d like to avoid a spotlight on the billions raked in by hedge-fund and private-equity managers whose income is treated as capital gains and subject to only a 15 percent tax, due to a loophole in the tax laws designed specifically for them.
It’s far more convenient to go after people who are doing the public’s work — sanitation workers, police officers, fire fighters, teachers, social workers, federal employees — to call them “faceless bureaucrats” and portray them as hooligans who are making off with your money and crippling federal and state budgets. The story fits better with the Republican’s Big Lie that our problems are due to a government that’s too big.
Above all, Republicans don’t want to have to justify continued tax cuts for the rich. As quietly as possible, they want to make them permanent.
But the right’s argument is shot-through with bad data, twisted evidence, and unsupported assertions.
They say public employees earn far more than private-sector workers. That’s untrue when you take account of level of education. Matched by education, public sector workers actually earn less than their private-sector counterparts.
The Republican trick is to compare apples with oranges — the average wage of public employees with the average wage of all private-sector employees. But only 23 percent of private-sector employees have college degrees; 48 percent of government workers do. Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be — all need at least four years of college.
RR wrote: The Republican trick is to compare apples with oranges — the average wage of public employees with the average wage of all private-sector employees. But only 23 percent of private-sector employees have college degrees; 48 percent of government workers do. Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be — all need at least four years of college.”
He’s still playing the B.S. adversarial game? He’s basically a bureaucrat working for the central banksters, like so many in government do. That’s the part nobody really likes to talk about.
I wonder why so many people with college degrees choose to work for government instead, of I’m told, how much people in the private sector make? Answer, there are not enough jobs in the private sector anymore. All the companies are either bankrupt, closed down or jumped ship to other countries so they can actually make a profit. 44,000 factories have closed down in the last 15 years alone and the multinationals are making most of their profits overseas. That must be because of the extremely low taxes and lassie fare system making it so cheap for companies to operate and profit here in the U.S.?????
And will still have a really crappy public education system. Do you know why? Because the kids coming out of predominantly liberal colleges have no real life experiences and therefore don’t ‘t teach the kids the truth about how the world really works. They know almost nothing about the law, nothing about economics, finance and banking or even what an unalienable right is and we place them in charge of educating our children. I’ve always thought the best teachers would be those with thirty or forty years experience in banking, manufacturing, international relations, running small businesses, real estate brokers, insurance agents, etc. It would give some of the old people something to do instead of going to all these doctors all the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYVAxNqRTKY
Myth: The Government and Labor Unions Saved Us From Low Wages and Poverty
Just about everything that people think they know about labor unions and wage rates is wrong.
The standard tale that practically every student hears over the course of his education is that before the emergence of labor unions, American workers were terribly exploited and their wages were consistently falling. The improvement in labor’s condition was due entirely or at least in large part to labor unionism and favorable federal legislation. In the absence of these, it is widely assumed, people would still be working 80-hour weeks and children would still be working in mines.
This oft-heard tale is, however, almost entirely false, and those parts of it that are true (the low standard of living that people enjoyed in the nineteenth century, for example) are true for reasons other than those alleged by pro-union historians, who see in them only confirmation of their prejudices against the market economy.
Tom Woods
http://mises.org/daily/1685
Why the Republican War on Workers’ Rights Undermines the American Economy
By Robert Reich
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
http://robertreich.org/post/6538345540
Excerpt:
The battle has resumed in Wisconsin. The state supreme court has allowed Governor Scott Walker to strip bargaining rights from state workers.
Meanwhile, legislators in New Hampshire and officials in Missouri are attacking private unions, seeking to make the states so-called “open shop” where workers can get all the benefits of being union members without paying union dues. Needless to say this ploy undermines the capacity of unions to do much of anything. Other Republican governors and legislatures are following suit.
Republicans in Congress are taking aim at the National Labor Relations Board, which is likely to consider a relatively minor rule change allowing workers to vote on whether to unionize soon after a union has been proposed, rather than allowing employers to delay the vote for years. Many employers have used the delaying tactics to retaliate against workers who try to organize, and intimidate others into rejecting a union.
This war on workers’ rights is an assault on the middle class, and it is undermining the American economy.
The American economy can’t get out of neutral until American workers have more money in their pockets to buy what they produce. And unions are the best way to give them the bargaining power to get better pay.
For three decades after World War II – I call it the “Great Prosperity” – wages rose in tandem with productivity. Americans shared the gains of growth, and had enough money to buy what they produced.
That’s largely due to the role of labor unions. In 1955, over a third of American workers in the private sector were unionized. Today, fewer than 7 percent are.
With the decline of unions has come the stagnation of American wages. More and more of the total income and wealth of America has gone to the very top. The middle class’s purchasing power has depended on mothers going into paid work, everyone working longer hours, and, finally, the middle class going deep into debt, using their homes as collateral.
But now all these coping mechanisms are exhausted — and we’re living with the consequence.
Elaine,
I don’t know if MA has passed laws that prevent the right to strike….. But some states have passed it for teachers, cops, nurses… Etc….
The union vote in defeat in WV was caused by the Koch foundation…. I am looking for the article…. But the grafted, excuse mr made donation to various legislators that passed bills or introduced legislation that makes it hard for anyone to strike…. Much less unionize…l
Volume 24, Number 10
October 2004
The Union Myth
Thomas J. DiLorenzo
In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises wrote that labor unions have always been the primary source of anticapitalistic propaganda. I was reminded of this recently when I saw a bumper sticker proclaiming one of the bedrock tenets of unionism: “The Union Movement: The People Who Brought You the Weekend.”
Well, not exactly. In the US, the average work week was 61 hours in 1870, compared to 34 hours today, and this near doubling of leisure time for American workers was caused by capitalism, not unionism.
As Mises explained, “In the capitalist society there prevails a tendency toward a steady increase in the per capita quota of capital invested. . . . Consequently, the marginal productivity of labor, wage rates, and the wager earners’ standard of living tend to rise continually.”
Of course, this is only true of a capitalist economy where private property, free markets, and entrepreneurship prevail. The steady rise in living standards in (predominantly) capitalist countries is due to the benefits of private capital investment, entrepreneurship,technological advance, and a better educated workforce (no thanks to the government school monopoly, which has only served to dumb down the population). Labor unions routinely take credit for all of this while pursuing policies which impede the very institutions of capitalism that are the cause of their own prosperity.
The shorter work week is entirely a capitalist invention. As capital investment caused the marginal productivity of labor to increase over time, less labor was required to produce the same levels of output. As competition became more intense, many employers competed for the best employees by offering both better pay and shorter hours. Those who did not offer shorter work weeks were compelled by the forces of competition to offer higher compensating wages or become uncompetitive in the labor market.
Capitalistic competition is also why “child labor” has all but disappeared, despite unionist claims to the contrary. Young people originally left the farms to work in harsh factory conditions because it was a matter of survival for them and their families. But as workers became better paid—thanks to capital investment and subsequent productivity improvements—more and more people could afford to keep their children at home and in school.
Union-backed legislation prohibiting child labor came after the decline in child labor had already begun. Moreover, child labor laws have always been protectionist and aimed at depriving young people of the opportunity to work. Since child labor sometimes competes with unionized labor, unions have long sought to use the power of the state to deprive young people of the right to work.
In the Third World today, the alternative to “child labor” is all too often begging, prostitution, crime, or starvation. Unions absurdly proclaim to be taking the moral high road by advocating protectionist policies that inevitably lead to these consequences.
Unions also boast of having championed safety regulation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) over the past three decades. The American workplace has indeed become safer over the past century, but this was also due to the forces of competitive capitalism, not union-backed regulation.
An unsafe or dangerous workplace is costly to employers because they must pay a compensating difference (higher wage) to attract workers. Employers therefore have a powerful financial interest in improving workplace safety, especially in manufacturing industries where wages often comprise the majority of total costs. In addition, employers must bear the costs of lost work, retraining new employees, and government-imposed workman’s compensation whenever there is an accident on the job. Not to mention the threat of lawsuits.
Investments in technology, from air-conditioned farm tractors to the robots used in automobile factories, have also made the American workplace safer. But unions have often opposed such technology with the Luddite argument that it “destroys jobs.”
Mises was right that unions have always been a primary source of anti-capitalistic propaganda. But since he wrote Human Action, American unions have also been at the forefront of lobbying efforts on behalf of the regulation and taxation of business—of capital—that has severely hampered the market economy, making everyone, including unionists, worse off economically. The regulation of business by the EPA, OSHA, FTC, DOE, and hundreds of other federal, state, and local government bureaucracies constitutes an effective tax on capital investment that makes such investment less profitable. Less capital investment causes a decline in the growth of labor productivity, which in turn slows down the growth of wages and living standards.
In addition, slower productivity leads to a slower growth of output in the economy, which causes prices to be higher than they otherwise would be; and fewer new products are invented and marketed. All of these things are harmful to the economic well-being of the very people labor unions claim to “represent.” (Incredibly, there are some economists who argue that unions are good for productivity. But if that were true, corporations would be recruiting them instead of spending millions trying to avoid unionization.)
Mises also pointed out that as business becomes more heavily regulated, business decisions are based more and more on compliance with governmental edicts than on profit-making. American labor unions continue to call for more regulation of business because, in order for them to survive, they must convince workers—and society—that “the company is the enemy.” That’s why, as Mises noted, union propaganda has always been anticapitalistic. Workers supposedly need to be protected from “the enemy” by labor unions.
However, the substitution of bureaucratic compliance for profit-making decisions reduces profitability, usually with little or no benefit to anyone from the regulations being complied with. The end result is once again a reduction in the profitability of investment, and subsequently less investment takes place. Wages are stunted, thanks to self-defeating unionist propaganda. The well-paid union officials may keep their jobs and their perks by perpetuating such propaganda, but they are harming the very people who pay the dues which are used to pay their own salaries.
Viewpoint: The Decline of Unions Is Your Problem Too
The weakness of labor hurts all employees in every sector
By Eric Liu
Jan. 29, 2013
http://ideas.time.com/2013/01/29/viewpoint-why-the-decline-of-unions-is-your-problem-too/
Excerpt:
Last week came news that the share of America’s workforce that’s unionized hit a 97-year low. A mere 11.3% of workers now belong to a union, and a great chunk of those are in the shrinking public sector. In the private sector, unionization fell to an abysmal 6.6%, down from a peak of 35% during the 1950s.
Most Americans yawned at this news. On one level that’s understandable. After all, most Americans aren’t in a union. It’s a vicious cycle: as unions decline, fewer people see their fates as bound up with unions, which just accelerates the decline.
But on another level, America’s non-reaction is striking. We remain in the wake of the Great Recession. Inequality and wealth concentration are at levels not seen since just before the Great Depression. This would seem as ripe a time in modern memory for a revival of organized labor. Instead, a basic assumption now shapes most Americans’ mindset about labor: the belief that the death of unions isn’t my problem because I’m not in a union. That assumption is wrong in two critical ways.
First, the fact is that when unions are stronger the economy as a whole does better. Unions restore demand to an economy by raising wages for their members and putting more purchasing power to work, enabling more hiring. On the flip side, when labor is weak and capital unconstrained, corporations hoard, hiring slows, and inequality deepens. Thus we have today both record highs in corporate profits and record lows in wages.
Second, unions lift wages for non-union members too by creating a higher prevailing wage. Even if you aren’t a member your pay is influenced by the strength or weakness of organized labor. The presence of unions sets off a wage race to the top. Their absence sets off a race to the bottom.
Unfortunately, the relegation of organized labor to tiny minority status and the fact that the public sector is the last remaining stronghold for unions have led many Americans to see them as special interests seeking special privileges, often on the taxpayer’s dime. This thinking is as upside-down as our economy.
This country has gotten to today’s level of inequality because, ironically, those who work for a living think like atomized individuals while those who hire for a living organize collectively to rig policy in their favor. Today’s 97-year low is the result of decades of efforts to squeeze unions and disperse their power.
To be sure, unions bear part of the blame for their own decline. Some of the work rules they’ve achieved through bargaining made their companies and their own unions less adaptive to change. That’s why a few national labor leaders, from Service Employees International Union and elsewhere, have launched a “Labor 3.0″ project to reimagine unions. And it’s significant that innovative forms of worker organizing are now emerging, like Coworker.org or the National Domestic Workers Alliance, that bypass traditional union structures altogether.
The Real Reason for the Decline of American Unions
Jan 23, 2013
By Kris Warner
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-01-23/the-real-reason-for-the-decline-of-american-unions
Excerpt:
Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual summary of unionization in the U.S. It reports that in 2012, the union-membership rate of wage and salary workers was 11.3 percent, compared with 11.8 percent in 2011. The trend has been downward for some time: Fifty years ago, the figure was almost 30 percent.
It’s conventional wisdom that the post-industrial workforce doesn’t want to be unionized. But survey data show that workers’ desire to join unions has been growing since the 1980s, and a majority of nonunion workers would now vote for union representation if given the opportunity. So if workers want unions, why is unionization falling?
Commentators have also blamed the decline on everything from globalization to technological advances to the hollowing-out of American manufacturing. But those factors are only part of the story.
Canada’s experience offers another answer. Canada has gone through many of the same economic and social changes as the U.S. since the middle of the 20th century, yet it hasn’t seen the same precipitous decline in unionization. The unionization rate in the U.S. and Canada followed fairly similar paths from 1920 to the mid-1960s, at which point they began to diverge drastically.
Differences in labor law and public policy are at the root of this disparity.
Union-Friendly
First, Canadian law is simply far more hospitable to unions. Several provinces have bans on temporary or permanent striker replacement, which don’t exist in the U.S. And there is no Canadian equivalent of the “right-to-work” laws that have been enacted in 24 U.S. states, which prohibit unions and employers from requiring employees covered by union contracts to pay for representation.
A second distinction is the manner in which Canada enables unions to be formed. In the U.S., most private-sector workers who wish to unionize must sign authorization cards, petition the National Labor Relations Board and then vote in an election. The time between the petition and the election often stretches to months, and sometimes for longer than a year. In Canada, the process is relatively quick. Card-check authorization, which is used in almost half of Canadian provinces, allows a majority of employees to form a union at their workplace simply by signing cards stating that they would like to do so. The other provinces have a system similar to the U.S.’s, where cards are signed, a petition is submitted to the labor board and then an election is held. In Canada, however, the election is typically required to occur within five to 10 days after the petition, which allows for far less anti-union campaigning by employers.
Good piece, Bron. I believe we have both said this MANY times.
Union Myths
Private-sector workers haven’t been immune to unions’ deleterious effects as government workers have.
by Thomas Sowell
The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians.
Nothing shows the utter cynicism of the unions and the politicians who do their bidding like the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” that the Obama administration tried to push through Congress. Employees’ free choice as to whether to join a union is precisely what that legislation would destroy.
Workers already have a free choice in secret-ballot elections conducted under existing laws. As more and more workers in the private sector have voted to reject having a union represent them, the unions’ answer has been to take away secret-ballot elections.
Under the “Employee Free Choice Act,” unions would not have to win in secret-ballot elections in order to represent the workers. Instead, union representatives could simply collect signatures from the workers until they had a majority.
Why do we have secret ballots in the first place, whether in elections for unions or elections for government officials? To prevent intimidation and allow people to vote the way they want to — without fear of retaliation.
This is a crucial right that unions want to take away from workers. The actions of union mobs in Wisconsin, Ohio, and elsewhere give us a free home demonstration of how little they respect the rights of those who disagree with them and how much they rely on harassment and threats to get what they want.
It takes world-class chutzpah to call circumventing secret ballots the “Employee Free Choice Act.” To unions, workers are just the raw material used to create union power, just as iron ore is the raw material used by U.S. Steel and bauxite is the raw material used by the Aluminum Company of America.
The most fundamental fact about labor unions is that they do not create any wealth. They are one of a growing number of institutions which specialize in siphoning off wealth created by others, whether they are businesses or the taxpayers.
There are limits to how long unions can siphon off money from businesses without facing serious economic repercussions.
The most famous labor union leader, the legendary John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers from 1920 to 1960, secured rising wages and job benefits for the coal miners, far beyond what they could have gotten out of a free market based on supply and demand.
But there is no free lunch.
An economist at the University of Chicago called John L. Lewis “the world’s greatest oil salesman.”
His strikes that interrupted the supply of coal, as well as the resulting wage increases that raised its price, caused many individuals and businesses to switch from using coal to using oil, leading to reduced employment of coal miners. The higher wage rates also led coal companies to replace many miners with machines.
The net result was a huge decline in employment in the coal-mining industry, leaving many mining areas virtually ghost towns by the 1960s. There is no free lunch.
Similar things happened in the unionized steel industry and in the unionized automobile industry. At one time, U.S. Steel was the largest steel producer in the world and General Motors the largest automobile manufacturer. Not any more. Their unions were riding high in their heyday, but they too discovered that there is no free lunch, as their members lost jobs by the hundreds of thousands.
Bron, I was just going to write something to this effect. you wrote: Union Myths
Private-sector workers haven’t been immune to unions’ deleterious effects as government workers have.
Sewell doesn’t go much into the issue of public and private unions either. We have been suffering with lower wages, unemployment and underemployment for a several decades now, arguably since the recession of the early 1980s. Many small and medium businesses just have not been able to sustain themselves under the heavy levels of taxation and regulation. Thus, why so many companies have either closed down, bankrupted, outsourced or left the country. Those that remain have had to cut costs to make it and between government, company management, shareholders, and labor, guess who is going to usually loose. Surely not government and their unions, if they can legally print money to pay themselves.
Labor unions surely can help, but if government is unwilling to establish “reasonable” levels of taxation and regulation, there obviously isn’t enough money on the table to make ends meet for all the participants or so many companies wouldn’t be just shutting down, going bankrupt or having to move off shore to survive, as only the very strongest companies are able to survive in this environment and many of them have huge profits from international markets. This is one area that progressives just will not acknowledge as a part of the problem.
FYI: I like Jefferson’s definition of “reasonable; “that government is best which governs least.”
How unions help all workers
http://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp143/
Excerpt:
Unions have a substantial impact on the compensation and work lives of both unionized and non-unionized workers. This report presents current data on unions’ effect on wages, fringe benefits, total compensation, pay inequality, and workplace protections.
Some of the conclusions are:
Unions raise wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise compensation, including both wages and benefits, by about 28%.
Unions reduce wage inequality because they raise wages more for low- and middle-wage workers than for higher-wage workers, more for blue-collar than for white-collar workers, and more for workers who do not have a college degree.
Strong unions set a pay standard that nonunion employers follow. For example, a high school graduate whose workplace is not unionized but whose industry is 25% unionized is paid 5% more than similar workers in less unionized industries.
The impact of unions on total nonunion wages is almost as large as the impact on total union wages.
The most sweeping advantage for unionized workers is in fringe benefits. Unionized workers are more likely than their nonunionized counterparts to receive paid leave, are approximately 18% to 28% more likely to have employer-provided health insurance, and are 23% to 54% more likely to be in employer-provided pension plans.
Unionized workers receive more generous health benefits than nonunionized workers. They also pay 18% lower health care deductibles and a smaller share of the costs for family coverage. In retirement, unionized workers are 24% more likely to be covered by health insurance paid for by their employer.
Unionized workers receive better pension plans. Not only are they more likely to have a guaranteed benefit in retirement, their employers contribute 28% more toward pensions.
Unionized workers receive 26% more vacation time and 14% more total paid leave (vacations and holidays).
Unions play a pivotal role both in securing legislated labor protections and rights such as safety and health, overtime, and family/medical leave and in enforcing those rights on the job. Because unionized workers are more informed, they are more likely to benefit from social insurance programs such as unemployment insurance and workers compensation. Unions are thus an intermediary institution that provides a necessary complement to legislated benefits and protections.
*****
Unions, inequality, and faltering middle-class wages
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib342-unions-inequality-faltering-middle-class/
Excerpt:
Between 1973 and 2011, the median worker’s real hourly compensation (which includes wages and benefits) rose just 10.7 percent. Most of this growth occurred in the late 1990s wage boom, and once the boom subsided by 2002 and 2003, real wages and compensation stagnated for most workers—college graduates and high school graduates alike. This has made the last decade a “lost decade” for wage growth. The last decade has also been characterized by increased wage inequality between workers at the top and those at the middle, and by the continued divergence between overall productivity and the wages or compensation of the typical worker.
A major factor driving these trends has been the ongoing erosion of unionization and the declining bargaining power of unions, along with the weakened ability of unions to set norms or labor standards that raise the wages of comparable nonunion workers. This preview of the forthcoming The State of Working America, 12th Edition presents a detailed analysis of the impact of unionization on wages and benefits and on wage inequality. Key findings include:
The union wage premium—the percentage-higher wage earned by those covered by a collective bargaining contract—is 13.6 percent overall (17.3 percent for men and 9.1 percent for women).
Unionized workers are 28.2 percent more likely to be covered by employer-provided health insurance and 53.9 percent more likely to have employer-provided pensions.
From 1973 to 2011, the share of the workforce represented by unions declined from 26.7 percent to 13.1 percent.
The decline of unions has affected middle-wage men more than any other group and explains about three-fourths of the expanded wage gap between white- and blue-collar men and over a fifth of the expanded wage gap between high school– and college-educated men from 1978 to 2011.
An expanded analysis that includes the direct and norm-setting impact of unions shows that deunionization can explain about a third of the entire growth of wage inequality among men and around a fifth of the growth among women from 1973 to 2007.
Very good, Karen. Real facts. Why this is can be found in Henry Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson, the perfect primer for any nation, government or economy. Sometimes they are needed. Less so in America today. I wonder how it would be if strong unions ever got control in the Philippines, where I am now. Perhaps they might help raise the standard of living to a livable wage on less than 6.5 days a week, but a reasonable employer could do the same. In other words I think they had their uses in Europe & America in the past but are less needed today & sometimes make it worse.
Why do people “fear the spread of unions”? Because in California, for instance, unfunded government pension liabilities heavily contributed to multiple large cities going bankrupt. Teachers unions have defended teachers while placing students in jeopardy. They have defended convicted pedophile teachers and blocked their firing, leaving them with lucrative pensions, earned while preying on kids at schools, that will support them when they get out of prison. In a recent case, heroin and used needles were found in a faculty bathroom at a public school. The Teachers Union advised teachers to refuse a drug test, and not to cooperate with an investigation. In Detroit, the UAW demanded such high benefits that eventually manufacturers left the city, which is now in economic ruin.
So, it is not an irrational “fear of unions” or a desire to abuse employees that lead people to be very skeptical of unionizing. It’s history.
UAW files complaint about Tennessee GOP’s interference in the VW vote
By Michael Hiltzik
February 21, 2014
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-uaw-20140221,0,5849912.story#axzz2uFHdPsv9
Good for the United Auto Workers. The union has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over the flagrant interference in its recent election at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant. The workers voted narrowly against affiliating with the UAW.
Whether the UAW complaint will result in the NLRB calling a new election, or whether another election would lead to a UAW victory, is impossible to gauge. Erik Loomis of the University of Rhode Island and the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog thinks both are long shots, but agrees that the NLRB complaint is the right thing to do.
The details in the UAW filing are damning. The Tennessee Republicans’ conduct was nothing sort of shameful. As some 1,500 VW workers were preparing to vote, Gov. Bill Haslam, an assortment of GOP state regulators and Sen. Bob Corker staged a “coordinated and widely-publicized campaign” to interfere with the union representation vote, which under the law must take place “free of coercion, intimidation, threats, and interference.”
The Republicans threatened that the state of Tennessee would withdraw incentives for Volkswagen if the UAW was voted in. Since the incentives are integral to VW’s operation and expansion of the plant, these threats packed a wallop. We reported on the GOP’s contemptible campaign here.
Especially shameful was the behavior of Corker, a former Chattanooga mayor, who flew down from Washington, spending taxpayer funds, to deliver an almost certainly fabricated claim that VW executives had “assured” him that the company would open a new SUV manufacturing line at the plant — if the workers turned the UAW down. A local VW executive disputed that.
In this case, the employer did not oppose the union vote. In fact, Volkswagen wished to establish a labor-management works council at the plant, which can’t be done unless the workers are represented by a union.
Put it all together, and it raises an important question about Tennessee’s Republican officeholders: Who do they represent? Not the workers, certainly; if they really cared about their welfare, they would have stayed out of the election. If they really cared, they wouldn’t be threatening to withhold financial incentives from a business that employs 1,500 of their constituents, for any reason. But they didn’t care.
Elaine M. – You are correct, Corker is just about everything we should loath about most of our elected representatives. His involvement in the sale of protected wetlands to Wal-Mart is typical of these guys. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bob_Corker
Democrat Senator Bob Graham from Florida, while Governor would get together with his buddies, buy up wetlands and then use State funds, he had personal discretion over to buy the properties for Environmental Conservation from his buddies, netting a nice little profit. These lands for the most part were extremely “undesirable” properties and would not have ever been developed. While appraising properties within The National Crocodile Wildlife Refuge, I was almost carried off by swarms of mosquitoes. You could not physically be out on the property without repellent after dusk. There are a couple hundred American Crocs and the Key Largo Mouse, they apparently believe are in endangered in the upper Keys. It was an obvious scam to any discerning person, but who was going to do anything about it. Bob Graham was the nephew of Phillip and Katherine Graham, TV and the Washington Post. happen to be working as an appraiser that did the land appraisals for the State. It wasn’t just one project either, after speaking with other appraisers, the wetland gang, as I started calling them, was doing this all over the State, using some of their own sales as comps to bring up the purchase prices and thus the appraisals. His gang used to hang out at the Ocean Reef Club: an Exclusive Resort in North Key Largo.
It will be interesting to see if this law suit will determine if political speech is protected or if he violated it by either coercion, intimidation, threats, and interference.”as is applicable under free speech.
UAW organizing loss in Tennessee not final word
By AL SWANSON, UPI Auto Writer
Feb. 23, 2014
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2014/02/23/UAW-organizing-loss-in-Tennessee-not-final-word/UPI-31041393151400/?spt=rln&or=1
Excerpt:
On Wednesday, Bernd Osterloh, a top labor leader at Volkswagen AG in Germany, vowed to continue the fight for a German-style works council at the Tennessee plant.
Works councils, which exist in nearly all 105 other VW plants worldwide, typically deal with workplace issues like scheduling and safety, vacations, grievances and represent workers in labor-management disputes and planning.
In an interview with the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Osterloh blamed the UAW’s defeat in Tennessee on anti-union pressure by outsiders and said he is working with the United Auto Workers on bringing an employee works council to the factory.
“Outside conservatives created a massively anti-union sentiment,” he said in a statement. “It’s possible that one would come to the conclusion that this influence represents an “unfair labor practice.”
In Germany, workers hold half the seats on the world’s No. 2 automaker’s 20-member supervisory board. Osterloh indicated they would be reluctant to approve more plants in the U.S. South without an agreement on employee representation being part of the deal.
Yeah, & vote again in three days time so there’s not enough time to significantly influence the outcome.
Okay, seeing half of one of Elaine’s videos convinced me: Corker should have stayed out of it & be fined a huge sum for influence pedaling, tax bribery, etc.
Do American auto workers have an inferiority complex?
VW workers get paid $67 an hour in Germany. They make under $20 in the US. GOP lawmakers want to keep it that way
Sadhbh Walshe
theguardian.com
Wednesday 19 February 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/19/vw-uaw-tennessee-auto-workers-stupid-or-coerced
Excerpt:
Do American auto workers have an inferiority complex? Do they suffer from such low self esteem that they believe they should be paid significantly less than their counterparts in other countries who build the same cars for the same company? Would they really prefer to have no say whatsoever in how their companies are run, even when their employers are keen to offer them a seat at the table?
Sadly, these are questions that need to be asked in the wake of last week’s decision by auto workers at a Volkswagen (VW) plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee to reject an effort by the United Automobile Workers (UAW) to unionize the German owned factory. The no vote came as a pretty big surprise to UAW organizers, not least because a majority of the workers had reportedly signed cards favoring the union’s representation in creating a German-style works council at the plant.
There was also no opposition from VW management, who agreed to remain neutral in the process and had even invited UAW representatives onto the factory floor to explain the benefits of organizing. Still, even though their jobs were not under threat and their employers were supportive, a majority of the workers (712 to 626) voted against unionization. Much of the blame for the no vote is being assigned to the right-wing groups and Republican lawmakers in the state, who mounted a relentless, if predictable, anti-union campaign. While this blame is well deserved, the apparent willingness of so many workers to act against their own interests needs to be called into question also.
Unlike most of the VW facilities worldwide, the Chattanooga plant does not have a works council, which brings workers together with management to establish the company’s policies and procedures. (Under US law, union representation is a pre-requisite to having a works council, which is why the UAW vote was necessary.) As things stand Chattanooga workers have no say in the company’s decision-making process or in any negotiations surrounding pay or work conditions. It should come as no surprise then that workers at this plant get paid considerably less than workers at other VW plants around the world who do have a say.
In Germany, for instance, auto workers at VW plants get paid an average of $67.14 an hour. That’s more than double the average hourly rate for an established unionized worker in Detroit, and it’s more than three times what the non unionized workers in Chattanooga can hope to earn. According to a company spokesperson, new hires at Chattanooga start at $14.50 an hour, a rate that gradually increases to $19.50 an hour after three years on the job.
This brings me back to my original question – do American workers have an inferiority complex that makes them willing to accept an lower salary than they deserve, and, if so, why? According to reports from the ground, one of the reasons many workers cited for opposing the unionization plans was that they were satisfied with their job and felt they were well paid. It’s true that with Tennessee being a so called “right to work” state, where wages are generally low and poverty is high, $19.50 an hour probably seems like a pretty good salary. But when their European counterparts, working for the same employers, doing the same work, make more than three times what they do, shouldn’t these workers be feeling less satisfied than screwed?
YES!