Labor Unions Angry At Obama Over Job Growth & Economy

For Labor, there's always next year


It’s not been the year that labor had hoped for when it helped Democrats seize control of both Congress and the White House in 2008.

The top labor legislative priority, a measure easing union organizing rules, hasn’t seen so much as a committee vote after negotiations over modified language took a back seat to passage of health care reform.

Some members have grown frustrated with President Barack Obama’s decision to push health care as his first domestic priority, rather than focusing on economic recovery.

And those feelings only intensified as the unemployment rate rose and automakers and other labor-dominated industries took debilitating blows during the economic downturn.

Now, labor leaders are trying to defeat a Senate proposal to raise money for health care reform by taxing so-called Cadillac health insurance packages, which could apply to some union members.

Gerald McEntee, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, recently applauded Senate Democratic leaders for working to produce a reform bill but insisted there be “no taxes on middle-class health plans” in it.

To be sure, health care reform has been a goal of union leaders for a long time, and they are still working with Congress to win passage. But labor’s top priority — passage of the Employee Free Choice Act — was in trouble almost the moment the Democrats were sworn in, stalled by the unexpectedly long effort to fill their filibuster-proof Senate roster.

First, labor advocates had to wait until the contested Senate race in Minnesota was settled and Democrat Al Franken was seated. Then the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) caused further delay.

Backers of the bill are hoping it will re-emerge as a congressional priority once health care moves from center stage. But even then, it’s unclear whether Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has been able to hash out language acceptable to the moderates and conservatives in his caucus — a task made all the more difficult by the looming midterm elections.

Still, labor advocates remain hopeful.

“The Employee Free Choice Act fell victim to the same thing a lot of legislation did: to the health care debate,” said Josh Goldstein of American Rights at Work.

As the White House and Congress prepare to shift their focus to job creation and the economy, Goldstein said, the labor bill may have a more natural place in the debate.

The act, which aims to make it more difficult for management to interfere with union-organizing elections, “plays into the broader debate because it raises the question about what kind of jobs we are creating — good-paying jobs that can’t be outsourced,” said Goldstein.

All this is not to say that labor hasn’t seen any rewards from the new administration.

Obama’s pro-labor appointments are shifting the balance of power away from long-held management advantages.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has revoked and eroded several policies that were opposed by union leaders, including Bush-era disclosures of labor union spending.

The National Mediation Board, which oversees airline and railroad worker unions, is currently taking comment on a rule change that could significantly ease the ability of workers in those industries to unionize.

Expected early next year, the ruling could have real-time impact. The Northwest and Delta airline merger last year brought together a mix of workers, with some Northwest employees unionized and some Delta workers not unionized. The Association of Flight Attendants is holding off until the mediation board acts to organize a vote that could unite the merged work force of flight attendants under one contract in the new Delta structure.

The proposed rule change affects how the unionizing votes are counted. For 75 years, transportation workers, unlike others, have had to win the votes of a majority of the work force in order to unionize. Under the new rule, the workers could organize if they won a majority of the votes cast, even if the number of workers voting didn’t represent a majority of the entire work force.

Historically, the higher standard has been justified because of the critical nature of the transportation infrastructure in interstate commerce. Rail and airline unions also are required to negotiate longer contracts, another condition aimed at limiting disruptions in the free flow of people and products on those systems.

The Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, which is seeking the ruling, argues that the higher bar is unfair and imposes a standard on unions that is higher than that for electing U.S. senators.

“There are tens of thousands of airline and rail employees that would like a fair and unfettered chance to choose if they’d like a union,” said Ed Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department, which includes 32 unions.

“This is no longer the 1930s or the 1950s. The employers just want to keep everything the way it is because it works really well for them,” he added.

Katie Packer, executive director of the Workforce Fairness Institute, argues the system is working as intended and shouldn’t be changed.

“These people are responsible for keeping things moving in our economy, [which] makes [them] different than a hotel worker,” she said.

If a hotel union stages a work slowdown or a strike, “then somebody’s hotel room doesn’t get cleaned,” she added. “If that happens in the airline industry, the entire airline system could come to a halt for a period of time.”

Opponents of the rule change are also challenging the process the mediation board is employing to make the change.

In 1987, the last time the board dug into the issue, it held an evidentiary hearing that included testimony and the cross-examination of witnesses. The board had competing petitions then: one to change the voting process and another to make it easier to decertify a union.

The board ultimately rejected both. In a similar showdown last year, the board declined to address the issue but said, if it did, it would follow a similarly formal review of the arguments.

This time, the two Democratic members of the three-person board — including Obama appointee Linda Puchala, a former labor leader and board mediator — decided to hold a public hearing and accept written testimony rather than hold an evidentiary hearing.

The decision prompted a strong objection from the board’s lone Republican and a threat from the airline industry.

“The board’s dramatic and unexplained abandonment of its prior procedural and substantive standards in order to push through an ill-advised rule change in a manifestly politicized manner simply means that once the political winds change — and the board’s composition changes with them — organized labor will pay the price,” with a return to the higher voting standard and new rules to make it easier for workers to kick a union out, warned Bob Siegel, an attorney for the Air Transport Association, an airline trade association.

But Wytkind dismisses the criticism. “This is a shift in policy that is long overdue and the other side just doesn’t like, and they are throwing grenades,” he said.


Sources: Politico, AFL-CIO, Facebook