Pro-union bill under attack

Fight to save Employee Free Choice Act!

The economic crisis continued to batter the working class in April with an official job loss of 611,000. This brings the total number of jobs lost since December 2007 to 5.7 million.

Unemployment is at 8.9 percent and is expected to continue climbing with no end in sight. Total unemployment, however—which includes another 8.9 million workers forced into part-time work and those who have given up looking for a job— rose to 15.8 percent, or more than 25 million.

More than a quarter of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months, the highest rate since 1948 when the government first started keeping track.

The U.S. government does not publish statistics on how many union jobs have been lost in this crisis, but at a minimum it is many hundreds of thousands. The toll this is taking on all the unions—from manufacturing to services, from steel workers to hotel workers—makes the effort to pass the Employee Free Choice Act now pending in Congress all the more urgent.

Workers need EFCA

The bosses are using the crisis to lower wages, shorten hours, reduce or take away benefits and worsen working conditions. Workers everywhere are made to swallow concessions out of fear of losing their jobs and having to compete against masses of other jobless workers.

Where there is no union, the bosses are all-powerful. For the unorganized workers, from Wal-Mart to Starbucks to Home Depot, their only defense in this crisis of mass unemployment is to have a union.

The bosses know this. That is why they are waging an all-out campaign to destroy the central provision of EFCA—the card check system—which allows workers to form a union when a majority sign union cards.

Right now the boss can demand a

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) supervised election before allowing a union in. The election process is dominated by the employers. Companies engage in spying, intimidation, forced anti-union meetings on company time, illegal firings, and threats to close down while the union is completely restricted. And if the workers manage to get organized into a union, the companies drag out the bargaining process so that the chance of getting a contract signed is minimal.

EFCA was designed to limit the bosses’ advantage and give the workers and the unions a greater chance. The bill is a vital piece of legislation that has the potential to assist the entire working class. The bill alone is no substitute for the class struggle, but its passage could serve to stimulate that struggle from down below on many new fronts, and this is what has the bosses running scared.

Studies show that 50 million workers in the U.S. who don’t have a union would join one if they had a chance. EFCA could provide a legal basis for broadening the struggle for union representation on a wide scale.

Potential for union organizing

Shortening the legal road to union recognition and weakening the employer-dominated NLRB election process could encourage militant activists inside and outside the labor movement to organize in areas that had been thought unwinnable.

The passage of EFCA could even open up challenges to the right-to-work laws of 22 states in the South and Southwest. It could form the legal basis for challenges when the bargaining rights of workers in the public sector are outlawed.

Federal legislation encouraging and removing legal obstacles to the formation of unions could be used as a basis to challenge all state laws that contravene federal legislative intent with respect to union organizing.

The capitalist class knows this and is going all out to stop this bill in its tracks. Despite all the hundreds of millions of dollars given to the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party by the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, the pressure of the bosses has endangered passage of the essential features of EFCA.

This danger must be met by mass

mobilization of labor and the community to let the capitalist political establishment in Washington know that, without EFCA, there will be no peace. Lobbying the Democrats, waiting for them to pay back the labor movement for its support during the elections, is a dangerous strategy. The Democrats are still a party loyal to big business, no matter how much money they get from the labor movement.

Bosses in all-out offensive against EFCA

Three days after getting $25 billion in federal bailout money, Bank of America on Oct. 17 organized a conference call against EFCA. Among those on the call was the former CEO of Home Depot,

Bernie Marcus.

Marcus called the bill “the demise of a civilization” and said, “If a retailer has not gotten involved with this ... if he has not sent money to Norm Coleman [a Minnesota Republican who lost a close senatorial election—FG] and those other guys,” then those retailers “should be shot; should be thrown out of their goddamn jobs.” Those on the call were encouraged to make “large contributions” to sink the bill.

Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, one of the leaders in the anti-EFCA campaign, told an analysts’ meeting on Oct. 28: “We like driving the car and we’re not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us.” (All quotes above from Wall Street Journal, Nov. 19, 2008)

On March 11, in a conference call organized by Citigroup, which has received $75 billion in bailout funds, Glenn Spencer, a senior executive at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called for stirring up opposition to the EFCA. (Huffington Post, March 12)

Leading Democrats water it down

This pressure has come down on the Democratic Party. Right now the 60 votes needed in the Senate to keep the Republicans from stopping the bill are not there. The Democrats are caught between the labor movement and big business. As a party whose leadership relies on the labor movement but is fundamentally tied to the capitalist class, it is wavering in the direction of a rotten compromise that would gut the bill.

Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, the sponsor of EFCA, has said the card check may have to go. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California is offering a mail-in ballot to the NLRB as a substitute. At least five Democratic senators have said they won’t vote for the bill with card-check in it. And Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who just switched to the Democrats, is exerting his right-wing pressure.

In this connection it is worth recalling a statement made in frustration recently by Sen. Dick Durban of Illinois. A bill he had introduced to permit judges to modify homeowners’ mortgages was defeated in the Senate after 12 Democrats voted against it. “Frankly, the banks control the place,” blurted out Durban.

The right to collective bargaining was won in the first place through the class struggle of the 1930s. It is dangerous to think that legislation strongly favorable to the union movement and the working class can be secured without struggle.

The unions have organized small demonstrations around the country supporting EFCA. Thousands of signatures on petitions have been sent to Congress. Tens of thousands of phone calls have been made. All that is helpful. But it is fear of the workers and their organized strength that can be decisive in securing an EFCA that contains the card check, negotiating requirements and sanctions on employers who violate the law.

The reservoir of resources that was drawn on to get the Democrats elected should be turned instead into a mobilizing fund to force the politicians to pass EFCA in its original form. This is the time to declare: No card check, no peace!

Fred Goldstein is the author of “Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus with Feet of Clay” which can be ordered at Leftbooks.com.

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