Some Costs of the EFCA

15 thoughts on “Some Costs of the EFCA”

1. Denver have to do with the EFCA?  These are already union shops.  The EFCA deals with organizing employers that are non-union.

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   1. That right, union bosses have, see nor use any linkage between existing ratified contracts and potential ‘partners’.

      Walt Isenberg (WSage Hotels) had the same virginal heart that Ohwilleke has, in his agreement with Andy Stern to make a multi million dollar business pay-off to Union Bosses in their effort to stop real employee free choice aka the Right-to-Work.

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2. A financially assisted neutral to supportive editorial from the Post.

   I predict an editorial that provides political cover to Bennet and Udall’s cloture votes first.

   Second and it may take two editorials, one that supports check-in check-out processes, supports forced arbitration, and the provides backsliding on a host of other factors. Factors that don’t assist workers, but due assist Corporate and Union Boss thuggery.

   So I guess if you don’t post otherwise, you are passively accepting this as a very likely scenario.

   Just as the union members will find out down the road, the story here is not about their paycut, but the arrangements made behind the scenes.
   

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   1. The Post went ballistic over Ritter’s support for a union-backed bill last year.

      And Dean Singleton clearly is anti-union. So I wouldn’t expect any neutrality at all, because Singleton realizes the damage increased unionization would do to his retailer advertisers and many other businesses.

      The big mystery seems to be the financial viability of MediaNews and its relationship with Hearst.

      While both papers are liberal and reflect that in their political news stories, I prefer the Rocky. Unfortunately, that’s the one that seems most likely to close.

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      1. Once bleeders, always bleeders. When kids paid up to the bully in school, the bully then owned those kids … always scared, they would forever let the bully have his way.

         I guess it is up to the Post, the RMN is gone.

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   2. If I’m in a DNA union, my number one concern is that me and everyone else in my union is going to be out of a job in a year and a half when Rocky Mountain News business columnist David Milstead’s prediction that the Denver Post will die a little more than a year after the Rocky does will come true.

      One of the other major printers in Denver has already gone under.  My union members will have no careers left if the DNA goes under.

      The EFCA and national union solidarity rate about fifteen or twenty items down the list, and asking for editorial content changes would poison the well of the neogotiations.

      All politics is local, even union politics.  Jobs first, living wages second, fellow union organizing rights somewhere around the same level of importance as a right to have employer paid donuts at staff meetings.

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   3. Both the Post and the News have already, and repeatedly, editorialized against EFCA.

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      1. The prisoners are business and labor is the law.

         Seriously, if you don’t know business is divided and compromised here in Denver then you have been hanging with Tvert & Phelps way too much.

         The business pay-off to labor last fall was just an example of a failure to cooperate for maximum economic benefit.

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3. Seriously – your post isn’t even remotely coherent.  

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4. PDF of statement,
   
   http://epi.3cdn.net/1eb9aba519…

   Although its collapse has dominated recent media coverage, the financial sector is not the only segment of the U.S. economy running into serious trouble. The institutions that govern the labor market have also failed, producing the unusual and unhealthy situation in which hourly compensation for American workers has stagnated even as their productivity soared.

   Indeed, from 2000 to 2007, the income of the median working-age household fell by $2,000- an unprecedented decline. In that time, virtually all of the nation’s economic growth went to a small number of wealthy Americans. An important reason for the shift from broadly-shared prosperity to growing inequality is the erosion of workers’ ability to form unions and bargain collectively.

   A natural response of workers unable to improve their economic situation is to form unions to negotiate a fair share of the economy, and that desire is borne out by recent surveys. Millions of American workers – more than half of non-managers – have said they want a union at their work place. Yet only 7.5% of private sector workers are now represented by a union. And in all of 2007, fewer than 60,000 workers won union status through government-sanctioned elections. What explains this disconnect?

   The problem is that the election process overseen by the National Labor Relations Board has become drawn out and acrimonious, with management campaigning fiercely to deter unionization, sometimes to the extent of violating the labor law. Union sympathizers are routinely threatened or even fired, and they have little effective recourse under the law. Even when workers overcome this pressure and vote for a union, they are unable to obtain contracts one-third of the time due to management resistance.

   To remedy this situation, the Congress is considering the Employee Free Choice Act. This act would accomplish three things: It would give workers the choice of using majority sign-up– a simple, established procedure in which workers sign cards to indicate their support for a union – or staging an NLRB election; it triples damages for employers who fire union supporters or break other labor laws; and it creates a process to ensure that newly unionized employees have a fair shot at obtaining a first contract by calling for arbitration after 120 days of unsuccessful bargaining.

   The Employee Free Choice Act will better reflect worker desires than the current “war over representation.” The Act will also lower the level of acrimony and distrust that often accompanies union elections in our current system.

   A rising tide lifts all boats only when labor and management bargain on relatively equal terms. In recent decades, most bargaining power has resided with management. The current recession will further weaken the ability of workers to bargain individually. More than ever, workers will need to act together.

   The Employee Free Choice Act is not a panacea, but it would restore some balance to our labor markets.  As economists, we believe this is a critically important step in rebuilding our economy and strengthening our democracy by enhancing the voice of working people in the workplace.

   Statement Endorsers

   Henry J. Aaron, Brookings Institution
   
   Katharine Abraham, University of Maryland
   
   Philippe Aghion, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
   
   Eileen Appelbaum, Rutgers University
   
   Kenneth Arrow, Stanford University
   
   Dean Baker, Center for Economic Policy and Research
   
   Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University
   
   Rebecca Blank, Brookings Institution
   
   Joseph Blasi, Rutgers University
   
   Alan S. Blinder, Princeton University
   
   William A. Darity, Duke University
   
   Brad DeLong, University of California/Berkeley
   
   John DiNardo, University of Michigan
   
   Henry Farber, Princeton University
   
   Robert H. Frank, Cornell University
   
   Richard Freeman, Harvard University
   
   James K. Galbraith, University of Texas
   
   Robert J. Gordon, Northwestern University
   
   Heidi Hartmann, Institute for Women’s Policy Research
   
   Lawrence Katz, Harvard University
   
   Robert Lawrence, Harvard University
   
   David Lee, Princeton University
   
   Frank Levy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
   
   Lisa Lynch, Brandeis University
   
   Ray Marshall, University of Texas
   
   Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute
   
   Robert Pollin, University of Massachusetts
   
   William Rodgers, Rutgers University
   
   Dani Rodrik, Harvard University
   
   Jeffrey D. Sachs, Columbia University
   
   Robert M. Solow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
   
   William Spriggs, Howard University
   
   Peter Temin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
   
   Mark Thoma, University of Oregon
   
   Lester C. Thurow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
   
   Laura Tyson, University of California/Berkeley
   
   Paula B. Voos, Rutgers University
   
   David Weil, Boston University
   
   Edward Wolff, New York University

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   1. Creating (and saving) 4 million jobs

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   2. I’ll bet most of the economists are liberal lefties and labor economists who lack much intellectual integrity. How many are tied in some way to unions through grants, consulting contracts and brainwashing?

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      1. I see several Dems and liberals on the list who’ve worked in Dem administrations and probably want to again. Ray Marshall, for example, I think was once Sec. of Labor under Carter.

         When I heard him speak back in the 70s he couldn’t or wouldn’t give an accurate definition of productivity, and I called him on it.

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         1. That’s why their opinions are solicited and those of discredited Friedman disciples are not.

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         2. That’s why their opinions are solicited and those of discredited Friedman disciples are not.

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