Collective Bargaining For America

After trillions of dollars in federal spending to lift our economy out of the greatest economic crisis in 75 years, we now know that besides financial deregulation and insatiable greed, the biggest cause of our crisis is 30 years of stagnant and declining wages. We also know that we cannot get out of this economic mess without increasing consumer demand.

Thirty years of stagnant and declining wages are the result of the systematic, intentional, strategic destruction of the freedom of American workers to form unions and bargain collectively. That is why we are working so hard to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

But, corporate America did not erase these freedoms by itself. Radical right wing Republicans like those in Congress and the now disgraced Bush Administration did all they could to destroy collective bargaining.

They removed millions of workers from coverage of any labor laws including graduate workers at universities, misnamed and ill-defined supervisors, some disabled workers, and others.

But, it is in the federal government itself that the Bush Administration really concentrated on destroying collective bargaining. They destroyed collective bargaining for 160,000 workers at the Department of Homeland Security including 40,000 screeners in the Transportation Security Administration. They tried to destroy collective bargaining for almost a million workers in the Department of Defense. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and a coalition of AFL-CIO unions stopped the assault at the Department of Defense.

And AFGE has waged a remarkable creative, strategic and energetic campaign to give TSA workers collective bargaining and organizing freedoms. In the absence of collective bargaining AFGE has organized a union of TSA workers to demand and campaign for collective bargaining rights.

Now AFGE has introduced legislation called the Transportation Security Workforce Enhancement Act (HR 1881) to grant TSA workers the same collective bargaining rights and workforce protections as other federal workers and end TSA's flawed personnel rules that have denied their workers thousands of dollars in increased wages.

It is critical that the Democratic Congress and the Obama Administration pass HR 1881 and reverse the Bush Administration's assault on collective bargaining in the federal workforce.

It should be abundantly clear and obvious by now that unions and collective bargaining are not economic culprits but are essential to long term, sustainable economic well being.

Collective bargaining is by far the best, more efficient and cost effective way to increase consumer demand by allowing workers to negotiate a fair share of the fruits of their work and productivity. Collective bargaining is the only way to build, expand, strengthen, and deepen the American middle class. The destruction of collective bargaining freedoms is the reason we all feel the squeeze on the middle class.

And unions are the most effective counterweight to Corporate Power. The thirty years assault on workers and their unions are the major reason that Corporate Power is out of control in America.

The cozy relationship between the Radical Right wing Republican Party and Corporate Power brought us a war in Iraq and billions of dollars to Dick Cheney's Halliburton Corporation and KBR in sole source military contracts, a deregulated financial services sector, insatiable corporate greed, a corrupt you're on your own business and government ethos, the destruction of the notion of the common good, our deep, painful economic crisis, and the consequent loss of trillions of dollars of U.S. wealth.

At least in part change we can believe in, means changing where the nation's wealth and bounty goes.

As 1000 business owners have shown, everyone benefits when working families have more to spend.

Comments

[tsaunion]

There's another labor union fighting to protect and expand the collective bargaining rights of Homeland Security employees.
With chapters nationwide representing thousands of TSA Officers (TSOs), the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) is full of momentum in its ongoing TSA organizing efforts. NTEU’s work on behalf of H.R. 1881 opens the door to a huge opportunity to make TSA the best-run airport security agency in the world.
NTEU worked closely for months with House Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) to craft H.R. 1881, which Lowey introduced in early April. The bill will provide two changes that will fundamentally change TSA: moving TSA employees onto the General Schedule pay system and providing full civil service protections under Title 5. Given the crucial position of TSA employees in safeguarding our nation’s airports and traveling public, providing them with fair pay and giving them a seat at the bargaining table will serve our country well.
NTEU is uniquely qualified to represent TSA employees given its 30-year history of representing U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employees.
It was NTEU which led the successful legal effort shutting down the Bush administration’s attempts to limit the collective bargaining rights of employees at the Department of Homeland Security. In that fight, NTEU beat the administration three times in federal court as it tried to reduce employee rights guaranteed in federal law.

[billw8017]

Whether you call them unions, brotherhoods, or guilds, combinations of workers are the single most effective organizations to secure economic justice for people who do the country's work. As we can expect the contemporary high federal deficits to lead to high inflation, we need the unions to see that the inflation "tax" is equitably distributed.

Otherwise, the broad population cannot fully perform their function as consumers and distribute the goods they produce. Then, we will continue as we are with manufacturing depressed, its profits declining, and a huge financial sector of those who get the newly inflated money and are reduced to investing in hoaxes and frauds. This is a recipe for disaster as financial profits must decline as well.

At the last, the dollar can only have value when it can buy real things: food, shelter, education, health care, and the toys.

[Pablo175]

Let's go back to the 19th century!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hatterbal]

AFGE did not introduce HR 1881, although they like to claim credit for it. Nita Lowey of NY introduced it, without much input from AFGE. NTEU, with Rep. Lowey, has been fighting for this legislation and fighting for TSO's rights since George Bush insisted they not be allowed.

[BadDayInProgress]

Wow. You became a member just to bash a fellow union?? Jealously.

[MerhabaAbi]

I remember when Ronald Reagan fired the Air Controllers for going on strike. That was the largest single blow to collective bargaining since the Great Depression. Prior to the Depression/New Deal era, companies engaged violently and overtly against start-up unions and spent great effort busting unions where they already existed. FDR’s policies created the first era of stable protections for worker's rights and lasted 50 years. I foresee a renaissance coming where a new generation picks up the mantle discarded by my generation and demands a more fair distribution of the bounty that their work produces.