Upgrading Obama's Stimulus Plan: End Wage Theft, Union-Busting

President-elect Barack Obama is winning kudos for his bipartisan approach to stimulating the moribund economy. But his initiatives won't be truly effective unless the administration moves quickly to pass the Employee Free Choice Act that raises living standards by allowing workers to organize without being harassed or fired. Equally important, his new Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis, should move quickly to stop the wage theft of $19 billion a year from workers stiffed by companies that won't pay overtime or minimum wage, and start enforcing unenforced workplace safety laws that let 6,000 workers get killed each year.

If practically everyone's broke, thousands are killed on the job or can be fired at will, who'll be left to do the spending needed to stimulate the economy?

As I point out in a new article in In These Times, drawing on the work of such policy experts as David Madland of the Center for American Progress, fixing the broken Labor Department needs to be a top priority both to protect workers and boost the sagging economy. And Obama and Solis could start doing all that even before an Employee Free Choice Act is passed. Some excerpts:

While labor's top legislative priority is the long-overdue Employee Free Choice Act to give workers a level playing field to organize, there are several key steps Obama's new Secretary of Labor, Rep. Hilda Solis, can take right away to boost enforcement of current laws at a broken Labor Department and such slothful agencies as OSHA.

How bad was OSHA under Bush? The Washington Post reported last week a nearly 90 percent drop-off in major oversight actions because "political appointees ordered the withdrawal of dozens of workplace health regulations, slow-rolled others, and altered the reach of its warnings and rules in response to industry pressure."

In fact, as the Post reported, OSHA's recent chief, Edwin Foulke, was a deregulation advocate who literally fell asleep on the job (at least "Brownie" at FEMA stayed awake long enough to primp himself for interviews)...

Foulke quickly acquired a reputation inside the Labor Department as a man who literally fell asleep on the job: Eyewitnesses said they saw him suddenly doze off at staff meetings, during teleconferences, in one-on-one briefings, at retreats involving senior deputies, on the dais at a conference in Europe, at an award ceremony for a corporation and during an interview with a candidate for deputy regional administrator.

It won't be easy fixing a Bush-led bureaucracy that couldn't care less if workers lived or died (or even get paid). But Madland and co-author Kara Walker outline five critical steps to toughen enforcement and accountability:

· Opportunity 1: Use penalties to create a culture of accountability.

· Opportunity 2: Increase enforcement staff and use partnerships to assist underfunded enforcement divisions.

· Opportunity 3: Target high-violation sectors with strategic initiatives.

· Opportunity 4: Use thorough record keeping to drive enforcement priorities, enhance public accountability, and improve performance evaluation.

· Opportunity 5: Strengthen immigrant protections to improve job quality for all workers.

Yet the departing Labor Secretary, Elaine Chao is engaging in Bush-like spinning about her own "legacy": "Our workers today [are] safer and healthier than they were eight years ago. The facts speak for themselves."

In truth, as the New York Times observed in praising Solis's nomination:

To enforce labor standards, the Labor Department will need more staff and more money, both of which have been cut deeply by President Bush. Only the president can give the new labor secretary the clout she will need to do well at a job that has been done so badly for so long, at such great cost to the quality of Americans' lives.

If Obama does that, it will be a change that can't come too soon after eight years of the Bush Administration's War on Workers.

Comments

[JohnBryansFontaine]

Hello non-Unionized Workers:

The Employee Free Choice Act is your answer to all the oppression, LIES, and other BS that business owners have been using against you since day one. The EFCA is nothing less than an Emancipation Proclamation for Workers.

Please visit: http://www.freechoiceact.org

and
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/workplace/117455/why_it's_so_harmful_when_fox_echoes_the_gop_on_employee_free_choice/

[petejo]

im retired now but i was in several union-organizing campaigns, and i felt more pressure from the unions than i ever did ever did from management (because i worked elbow to elbow with the people the union wanted to organize and only saw management sporadically). i appreciated a campaign period for both sides to present their thinking. even tho im pro-union, i think voting a union in should very much be a secret ballot matter so the worker can vote his conscience without fear of reprisals. it's just as important to one's life as voting for public representatives afterall.

[Persiflage]

In the mid-70's, I was an 18-year-old woman newly hired into a factory. I was routinely propositioned and accosted by members of management who felt entitled by their positions of power. I had my paycheck held for a week once because the boss said I had to pick it up at the local bar, where he would be waiting. Thank God for the Union - at least I knew I wouldn't be fired for resisting.

Several years later, I was hit in the head by a falling piece of equipment. I wasn't fired for missing the time I spent in the hospital. Thank God for the Union.

I can only imagine the havoc bosses like CornellRedneck can release given the power to be slave masters. Our country will not survive.

[CornellRedneck]

Employment at will is the law of the land, based on English Common Law. If it's my money that's paying you and I don't like the looks of your face one morning, or decide I don't need you, I can fire you.

And that's the way it should be. If you don't like it, start your own business.

[ArtLevine]

Under federal civil rights law, you can't be fired "at will" for being an African-American, for instance, regardless of what centuries-old Common Law says. And the National Labor Relations Act prevents employers from firing workers for trying to organizing a union, but about many employers just flout the toothless, unenforced law. Union contracts often protect workers from being fired for specious reasons, but employers can under such contracts generally fire workers for incompetence or improper behavior.

[LeftRight]

First, it's NOT the law of the land anymore, since you canNOT fire someone for being a protected minority, and in many states you must have CAUSE to fire someone.

Second, that's why there are unions to PREVENT such activity on the part of owners and managers! And once a contract is signed between you and the workers, you MUST abide by it, employment at will or not!

[PATina]

Then put those things in a contract so that the worker seeking employment w/ you knows all of that up front.

That's what a contract is... an agreement. The employer and the employee(s) agree to the terms of labor. All a union does is facilitate the agreement on behalf of the workers.