The legislation was showcased at a hearing before the Senate Labor Committee and a follow-up press conference by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif. Union members also rallied in Washington, D.C., and more than 100 other cities to urge support for the law, which is organized labor’s No. 1 priority in this Congress.
In the hearing room, Harkin and other Democrats gave the law a sympathetic hearing, repeatedly emphasizing that it would amend the National Labor Relations Act to give workers – not bosses – the right to either elect unions to represent them in workplaces or to have automatic legal recognition of the union at a worksite once a verified majority of workers signs union authorization cards.
Republican senators have described the legislation as an attack on “the secret ballot,” even though workers would be free to use a secret-ballot election to choose a union if they wish. The GOP also maintained that higher union membership would lead to increased unemployment.
Harkin acknowledged that the $300 million ad campaign launched by business against the law has produced some wavering Democrats, but is confident of 60 Senate votes to stop a GOP filibuster against the measure. He said the language of the bill might be tweaked, while not compromising its basic principles, to achieve that majority. The Senate will consider the law first, Miller said. It has 223 House sponsors, including 3 GOPers, plus 40 Democratic senators.
“Let’s lower the thermostat a little” on hot rhetoric against the law, Harkin said.
The law is designed to help level the playing field between workers and bosses by legalizing majority signup, which Harkin noted at the press conference was the preferred union recognition method in the National Labor Relations Act, signed in 1935. The law has been eroded through federal legislation, National Labor Relations Board decisions and court rulings since then, he added.
All this would not matter so much if there wasn’t a direct correlation between the growth of the middle class, the growth of unions after World War II and the growth in productivity, witnesses said. But that link was broken, Harkin said, and since then productivity has grown while wages have lagged, then went into reverse over the last eight years. Meanwhile, union density in private industry is down to 7.6%.
The witnesses took turns describing the current state of the economy and how their individual unions helped them.
Sharon Harrison, a Communications Workers member who works at an AT&T Mobility center in far Southwestern Virginia – an area that is both poor and majority-Republican – led the witnesses, describing the difference at her company before and after AT&T bought it and it was unionized under a majority signup agreement between the union and the company.
“Before we had our union, favoritism was a problem. Raises didn’t depend upon your job performance but upon whether your manager liked you. The same was true for job security and even when someone was a top performer, he or she could be told, like I was, that ‘I can get rid of you for any reason, for anything, at any time,” Harrison said.
But when Cingular Wireless – now AT&T Mobility – bought the call center in 2005 and had a company neutrality pact with CWA, everything changed, she said. The anti-union campaign stopped, she noted. Such campaigns elsewhere feature illegal harassment, spying, firings and plant closure threats. The company pledged a new attitude towards its workers after the majority sign-up succeeded.
Now the union and management work together on workers’ rights, they “have a framework to solve problems, and there’s a way to address critical issues like turnover, training and new technology,” Harrison said. “There’s a clear path to improving our jobs and our work and that’s important to AT&T Mobility and very important to us,” given the lack of well-paying jobs in places like southwestern Virginia.
Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.
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The legislation was showcased at a hearing before the Senate Labor Committee and a follow-up press conference by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif. Union members also rallied in Washington, D.C., and more than 100 other cities to urge support for the law, which is organized labor’s No. 1 priority in this Congress.
In the hearing room, Harkin and other Democrats gave the law a sympathetic hearing, repeatedly emphasizing that it would amend the National Labor Relations Act to give workers – not bosses – the right to either elect unions to represent them in workplaces or to have automatic legal recognition of the union at a worksite once a verified majority of workers signs union authorization cards.
Republican senators have described the legislation as an attack on “the secret ballot,” even though workers would be free to use a secret-ballot election to choose a union if they wish. The GOP also maintained that higher union membership would lead to increased unemployment.
Harkin acknowledged that the $300 million ad campaign launched by business against the law has produced some wavering Democrats, but is confident of 60 Senate votes to stop a GOP filibuster against the measure. He said the language of the bill might be tweaked, while not compromising its basic principles, to achieve that majority. The Senate will consider the law first, Miller said. It has 223 House sponsors, including 3 GOPers, plus 40 Democratic senators.
“Let’s lower the thermostat a little” on hot rhetoric against the law, Harkin said.
The law is designed to help level the playing field between workers and bosses by legalizing majority signup, which Harkin noted at the press conference was the preferred union recognition method in the National Labor Relations Act, signed in 1935. The law has been eroded through federal legislation, National Labor Relations Board decisions and court rulings since then, he added.
All this would not matter so much if there wasn’t a direct correlation between the growth of the middle class, the growth of unions after World War II and the growth in productivity, witnesses said. But that link was broken, Harkin said, and since then productivity has grown while wages have lagged, then went into reverse over the last eight years. Meanwhile, union density in private industry is down to 7.6%.
The witnesses took turns describing the current state of the economy and how their individual unions helped them.
Sharon Harrison, a Communications Workers member who works at an AT&T Mobility center in far Southwestern Virginia – an area that is both poor and majority-Republican – led the witnesses, describing the difference at her company before and after AT&T bought it and it was unionized under a majority signup agreement between the union and the company.
“Before we had our union, favoritism was a problem. Raises didn’t depend upon your job performance but upon whether your manager liked you. The same was true for job security and even when someone was a top performer, he or she could be told, like I was, that ‘I can get rid of you for any reason, for anything, at any time,” Harrison said.
But when Cingular Wireless – now AT&T Mobility – bought the call center in 2005 and had a company neutrality pact with CWA, everything changed, she said. The anti-union campaign stopped, she noted. Such campaigns elsewhere feature illegal harassment, spying, firings and plant closure threats. The company pledged a new attitude towards its workers after the majority sign-up succeeded.
Now the union and management work together on workers’ rights, they “have a framework to solve problems, and there’s a way to address critical issues like turnover, training and new technology,” Harrison said. “There’s a clear path to improving our jobs and our work and that’s important to AT&T Mobility and very important to us,” given the lack of well-paying jobs in places like southwestern Virginia.
Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.