The first “labor day” celebration was a march—10,000 workers took an unpaid day off to demonstrate in New York’s Union Square in 1882 to promote the union cause. Now, the federal holiday is supposed to be a day of paying tribute to the American worker and recognizing the contributions that unions have made to American prosperity. It should remind us that we didn’t always have an eight-hour day, a minimum wage, unemployment compensation, pensions, or other reforms that are fundamental to the quality of life we enjoy as Americans.
Most of us probably spent Labor Day at a barbecue or an end-of-summer sale rather than a march, but we can’t forget that there’s still a lot to do to ensure fairness in the workplace. Today, too many workers can’t take a sick day without losing their pay or jeopardizing their jobs. A benefit considered standard by most professionals—paid sick time—is unavailable to millions of lower-paid workers, including 22 million women.
At Women Employed, we listen to the stories of women who have to choose between going to work sick and paying the bills. They have to send sick children to school to avoid losing a day’s pay—or losing their jobs. Some work for companies with sick time policies, but they’re told by supervisors that if they take a sick day they’re entitled to, they shouldn’t come back. They face impossible choices. They’re among the 48 percent of private-sector workers who don’t have a single paid sick day to use for themselves or to care for an ill family member.
And it’s not just these workers who are paying a price. When workers come to work sick, they infect other people. So do the kids they have to send to school sick. It’s a public health issue when people preparing food, working in hospitals, or coming to your office to fix the copier feel the pressure to go to work when they’re ill. Experts estimate that “presenteeism”—coming to work sick—is costly for employers in terms of lost productivity. And research shows that paid sick leave policies reduce the rate of contagious infections by ensuring that sick workers stay home.
Bills have been introduced in state legislatures and the U.S. Congress to establish basic sick leave requirements. The bills require employers who do not already provide paid sick leave to allow employees to accrue up to seven sick days per year that could be used when a worker is ill or needs to care for an ill family member, as well as for medical appointments. Leave under these laws would be earned over the year so employers would only pay if and when workers accrued time off and needed it. These measures are modest and reasonable ways to improve the quality of our worklives and ensure better health for our families and communities. It’s time to add this simple guarantee to the list of workplace reforms that we enjoy today. Urge your elected representatives to honor workers by passing a guarantee of paid sick leave. Next Labor Day, we’d really have something to celebrate.
About the Author:Anne Ladky is Executive Director of Women Employed, a 35-year-old organization whose mission is to improve women’s economic status. Women Employed is widely recognized for its groundbreaking work to ensure enforcement of affirmative action requirements, outlaw sexual harassment, and promote family-friendly policies. Today, Women Employed focuses on women in low-paying jobs; its priorities are to improve workplaces by fighting for paid sick time, fair schedules, and better pay; and expand access to and improve the quality of post-secondary education and training. Ladky was a founding member of Women Employed, joined the staff in 1977, and was named Executive Director in 1985. She is a nationally recognized expert on women’s employment issues, equal opportunity, and workforce development. For more information on Women Employed, visit www.womenemployed.org.
Okay, it’s not as bad as it was in the ‘80’s when even non-business magazines had smiling CEOs on the cover, but I still think most of us want our CEO to have a certain amount of star quality. Call it the Trumpification of the corporate world.
Who would you rather have leading your company? Casper the friendly ghost or a Genie who can make all of the company’s wishes come true (even if he does have a comb over)? Let’s face it, shy and retiring just doesn’t cut it when you’re responsible for the livelihood of lots of people. When it comes to effective CEOs, bigger always seems better. Or does it?
Arizona State University’s Crocker Liu and New York University’s David Yermack have a really interesting take on rock star CEOs and how much they can cost a company. Even better is the creative way that the two professors came up with to study this issue—they compared the size of the CEO’s home with corporate performance. Call it entitlement, focusing on the wrong things, an inferiority complex, short man’s syndrome or a bunch of guys spending other people’s money—this study found that we all pay when the CEO literally lives in a castle.
Let’s start with the numbers. In 2004, the median home price for CEOs was $2.7 million.
Compare that to the median price for all homes in U.S., $195,200. The average size of the CEOs home, 5,600 square feet. Heck, if you are a titan of industry, wouldn’t you want 4.5 bathrooms? Actually I’m shocked the number isn’t at least 7, if you are so darn important, how could you possibly use the same bathroom more than once a week? Come on, these are really important people. (Okay, I’ll attempt to reduce the sarcasm for the remainder of this blog.)
But the study gets really interesting when it examined 12 percent of the S&P 500 CEOs with homes that were larger than 10,000 square feet or were on at least 10 acres of land. The companies that were run by this group of landed gentry lagged the S&P 500 by 25 percent over the three years following the home purchase.
That bears repeating. The biggest CEO houses significantly increased the odds of poor corporate performance.
I’m guessing that those of you reading this article are in one of two camps right now. The first group is ready to storm the Bastille and scream about CEOs living large off the sweat and tears of the rest of us.
But I’m sure there are also readers who still believe that a big ego is a necessary part of the mix. That these two professors, and me, are making a mansion out of a molehill. I may be, but you may feel differently after you read this.
Approximately a third of CEOs exercised stock options and sold shares in the year before they bought a home. Consistently the shares peaked right before the purchase. Given the brouhaha over backdating stock options, I find it fascinating that the stock prices tended to peak so consistently just before a mansion was purchased. Maybe that big house isn’t something that was earned but rather something that was scammed.
Ironic isn’t it. Putting a CEO in a mansion, more often than not, puts you in the poor house.
About our Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. His web site, workplace911.com, contains a comprehensive archive of strategies for surviving today’s workplace. He is a fan of Workplace Fairness and can be reached via bob@workplace911.com.
The Labor Day holiday implies adults in the workforce, but this day involves younger generations, too. Witness the millions of parents, and their kids, getting used to quickly changing schedules as the latter group goes back to school.
It’s fitting, then, that this post start off as a generational footnote to a post I wrote recently on a BlessingWhite survey of thousands of workers, and some of their managers, in the context of working women in Generation Y. Among other “pitiful” results, their survey found that employees in this generation are the least engaged among the three generations it measured.
In looking for the root cause of this disengagement, I went back to the long-held notion that people don’t quit companies, they quit people. Turns out that three other new studies prop up this perception further. What’s more, the root cause seems to be your boss, and even your boss’s boss.
organisations that have commitment from senior executives to monitoring employee engagement will reap rewards in improving staff morale, and therefore improving customer satisfaction.
So if a company’s leadership is on board with actively and frequently engaging employees, two important metrics – one inside and one outside – are positively affected.
A corollary to improving morale turned up in another study of over 2,000 organizations by human capital management consulting firm HR Solutions. According to this press release, they found that whether employees are engaged or disengaged by their supervisors makes a huge difference when it comes to whether and how they pitch suggestions to fix problems in an organization, as well as how much value they’re perceived to be adding in a group or team building setting.
“These scores underscore the importance of the immediate supervisor in engaging the workforce,” Murat Philippe, a principal consultant at HR Solutions, says in the release. “A supervisor’s chances of having productive … employees can hinge on whether the employees feel valued and empowered.”
So now we know (if we didn’t before) that buy-in and long-term commitment of both senior and middle management is needed to ensure productivity is at its highest. But what lessons can small businesses take from this?
One answer emerged from yet another survey. As BusinessWeek recently announced – they got the exclusive on this – a joint study of 1,000 public and private companies by IBM and the Human Capital Institute found that small companies, with one to 1,000 employees,
were 4% better than the total sample [which included firms with up to 50,000 employees] at collaboration and sharing knowledge, 6% better at promoting virtual working, and 4% better at identifying relevant skills.
I read these results as integral to (respectively) task completion speed and accuracy; increasing average employee tenure; and recruiting ability, including effectively promoting from within.
So if you’re the leader of a small firm and you want to improve any or all of the following…
attracting and retaining top talent,
productivity,
driven-down decision making, or
customer satisfaction
…then you really need to look closely at how both you and your managers are engaging the rest of your workforce.
Bonus: To help in this regard, this pdf provides a number of low-cost, high-impact employee engagement methods focused on learning. We created this list based on our experience helping small businesses and nonprofits improve their work environments. Enjoy!
About the Author:Mark Harbeke’s role is to ensure that content on Winning Workplaces’ website is up-to-date, accurate and engaging. He also writes and edits their monthly e-newsletter, Ideas, and provides graphic design and marketing support. His experience includes serving as editorial assistant for Meredith Corporation’s Midwest Living magazine title, publications editor for Visionation, Ltd., and proofreader for the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. Mark holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Drake University. Winning Workplaces is a not-for-profit providing consulting, training and information to help small and midsize organizations create great workplaces. Too often, the information and resources needed to create a high-performance workplace are out of reach for all but the largest organizations. Winning Workplaces is changing that by offering employers affordable consulting, training and information.
Every year nearly 6,000 American workers are killed on the job and many more are bilked out of an estimated $19 billion in wages by their employers. Unfortunately, workers do not have the protections they need and deserve because President Bush’s Department of Labor has failed to effectively police low-road employers, and unions—which give workers a voice on the job and help to ensure laws are followed—have been under attack and therefore shrinking in size.
Laws exist to protect workers from unsafe working conditions and employer wage theft. Unions lobbied hard and won comprehensive wage-protection laws passed during the FDR administration and occupational safety laws enacted during the early 1970s. Minimum wage and overtime rules, anti-discrimination laws, and workplace safety standards create a guaranteed floor for all American jobs. They also require the Department of Labor to police American workplaces and penalize scofflaw employers.
However, negligent firms often ignore these rules, and Bush’s Department of Labor has shirked its role as top labor cop. Irresponsible employers know that they will be rarely penalized for workplace abuses, and when they are, penalties will likely be so low they will not hurt the firm’s bottom line. In recent years, wage theft investigators assessed fines on only 6 percent of known lawbreakers. Moreover, in 2006 the average workplace safety penalty for serious violations that “pose a substantial probability of death or serious physical harm” was only $881.
The risk of employer abuse is especially high for workers in traditionally low-wage and potentially dangerous industries. According to recent reports, at least 50 percent of garment, nursing home, and poultry employers are in violation of the basic minimum wage and overtime protections. At least one in ten meatpacking workers are injured on the job every year, but safety inspectors are only able to inspect about 75 of the more than 5,000 meatpacking plants each year.
And it’s not only workers who get cheated. Employers who play by the rules and treat their workers with respect can’t compete with irresponsible firms who cut corners with employee safety and wages.
Although Bush’s Labor Department is leaving workers to fend for themselves, unions can give workers an important voice in standing up to employers who flout the law. Labor unions empower workers to speak out against employer abuses and can defend whistleblowers from employer retaliation. Moreover, as on-the-ground experts, unions can provide important targeting information to worker-protection agencies. Indeed, the workers that are the most abused by their employers are frequently low-wage, non-union labor. These disempowered workers are also the least likely to report workplace abuse.
Unfortunately, these days it is rare for any American worker to be unionized—only 8 percent of the American workforce belongs to a labor union compared to one-third of private-sector workers in the decades after World War II. The reason: Existing laws make joining a union a Herculean task that few are able to undertake. Employers legally can force workers to attend anti-union meetings, including “one-on-one conversations” with supervisors, and often pressure workers to reveal their private preferences for the union. When employers who oppose unionization break the law, penalties are weak and insufficient. Workers are illegally fired in about one-quarter of union organizing campaigns, but they can at best hope to recover their lost wages and get reinstated in their jobs, often after years of legal battles. And if workers prevail against these odds, employers often refuse to negotiate with the union.
An important step toward improving workplace safety and wage standards is to give workers a stronger voice through increased unionization. Congress can reduce the barriers to joining a union by passing the Employee Free Choice Act. The bill would allow an employee to choose to join a union by signing a membership card—a system that works well at the small number of workplaces that choose to permit it—and also promotes good-faith bargaining so that employees can negotiate a first contract. The act does not deny workers their right to vote in a union election, as some conservatives maintain, but rather allows workers to choose between signing a membership card and having an election.
The House of Representatives has already passed this important legislation, and although a majority of senators support it, opposition from a few conservatives has prevented the bill’s passage. The next president must prioritize the protection of workers’ rights both through better enforcement of existing wage theft and worker safety law, and through inducing the Senate to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
About the Authors:Dr. David Madland is the Director of the American Worker Project at American Progress. He has written academic articles and books as well as op-eds and commentaries on a range of economic issues, including retirement, economic insecurity, health care, campaign finance, taxes, and public opinion. He has a Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown University and received his B.S. from the University of California at Berkeley. Madland’s dissertation was about the political reaction to the decline of the defined benefit retirement system.
Karla Walter is a Policy Analyst with the American Worker Project at American Progress. Karla focuses primarily on the improving the economic security of American workers by increasing workers’ wages and benefits, promoting workplace protections, and advancing workers’ rights at work. Prior to joining American Progress, Karla was a Research Analyst at Good Jobs First, providing support to officials, policy research organizations, and grassroots advocacy groups striving to make state and local economic development subsidies more accountable and effective. Karla earned a master’s degree in Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Today was the conclusion of the first week of Take Back Labor Day, a Today’s Workplace blog project which invited many of the best and brightest in the workplace community to write about the continuing significance of Labor Day in these troubled times for workers. And what a week it was! By the end of the week, we registered 13 posts from a wide variety of contributors, including some of our top labor and workplace reporters, several authors of best-selling books, and an assorted bunch of law professors, policy experts, and bloggers, all of whom contributed very thoughtful posts reflecting their diverse perspectives.
On Labor Day itself (September 1), we launched the series with four posts from Steven Greenhouse, Phil Dine, Diane Stafford, and Lew Maltby. Steven, Phil and Diane are all part of a dying breed: they are labor and workplace reporter for mainstream American newspapers. Lew is part of a group that was very small to begin with: national organizations addressing workplace issues. (I know: Workplace Fairness is part of that small community as well.)
This Labor Day, workers are caught in “The Big Squeeze,” which is the title of Steven Greenhouse’s new book. (He’s also the labor and workplace reporter for the New York Times.) Workers get far too little respect: “Far too often the accomplishments of the nation’s workers—whether it’s producing the food we eat or protecting us from hurricanes—are ignored, instead of honored.” Unfortunately, “To put it crudely, many companies seem to treat their workers like chumps—to be squeezed on wages, pushed to the limit and discarded when no longer needed.”
Lewis Maltby, executive director of the National Workrights Institute, talks about a number of benefits that unions provide, one being that “A fundamental rule of employment is that compensation is a zero sum game. Workers and management can cooperate to increase productivity and increase profits. But when it comes to dividing up the pie, a dollar that goes to management bonuses or shareholders is a dollar that will not go to workers.”
Diane Stafford, workplace reporter at the Kansas City Star and author of the Workspace blog, says that workers are jittery this Labor Day, with a new study that shows “more than 8 in 10 workers are worried about the state of the job market,” and another which shows that the “top 1 percent of earners enjoyed income growth of 204 percent from 1979 to 2006, while the lower 90 percent of earners gained 15 percent.”
While you might think it’s time to give up on unions, “in light of labor’s weak vital signs,” Philip Dine, labor reporter and author of State of the Unions, reminds us that Labor is as Relevant as Ever. Here’s why: “One key if often-overlooked reason the United States has long enjoyed economic and political stability has been a robust industrial relations system where management, labor and government voice their concerns….The current unbalanced system, however, generates the skewed policies and practices that have left so many Americans disillusioned.”
Tuesday (September 2) gave those returning to work after the holiday plenty to think about, with three posts from David Kusnet, Paul Secunda, and Art Levine, an author, a professor, and a blogger, respectively.
David Kusnet, who wrote the new book Love the Work, Hate the Job, tells us about four different groups of Seattle workers who despite their vast differences, all understood the importance of working collectively. Kusnet says, “[T]hese workers – and many others across the country – care deeply about the future of their companies and professions….They’re joining together with their co-workers and taking issue with their employers for the same reasons that they entered their professions. Unions, companies, and public policymakers should take notice of–-and tap into–this concern for quality.” (See Working Americans Want “More” and Better.)
Professor Paul Secunda, law professor at Marquette and co-editor of the Workplace Prof Blog, correctly notes that with the upcoming election, we have a choice to make regarding whether we want fair pay in the workplace, after the Supreme Court’s Ledbetter decision made it difficult if not impossible to bring an equal pay claim: “Let’s hope that regardless of who is elected president that women are no longer afforded merely second-class status in the workplace and the Ledbetter decision’s days are numbered.” (See The Importance of Fair Pay this Labor Day.)
Art Levine, blogger and contributing editor of the Washington Monthly, takes us inside the minds of unionbusters (it’s a scary place!), reminding us “[I]t’s time not only to remember workers in unions but those who want the opportunity to join them for the economic and benefits protection they offer, but can’t do so by the legalized unionbusting enabled by today’s feeble laws.”
On Wednesday, September 3, the quantity decreased to two, but the quality did not, as Nathan Newman and Cynthia Estlund joined us. Again, we provided the matchup of a policy expert, regular blogger (Nathan is both of these) and a law professor (Cynthia).
Nathan Newman, Policy Director for the Progressive States Network and a regular contributor to TPM Cafe, takes us back to earlier this century, relating the harrowing story of Southern slavery which persisted well into the 20th century. Newman tells us, “This southern gulag involved millions of black workers enslaved through a combination of capitalist employers, farm owners and a legal system that promised a brutal fate for anyone defying their de facto masters. And it is a key story for understanding the ultimate weakness of the overall U.S. labor movement, since having a deunionized Southern region was an essential tool in disciplining Northern workers who feared loss of jobs to a region without labor rights.” (See Southern Gulag: How 20th Century Slave Labor Undermined the Labor Movement.)
Cynthia Estlund, law professor at NYU, points out the importance of the choice we make on Election Day, if we care about the rights of workers. “Indeed, divisions are especially sharp over two major pillars of New Deal labor policy – the labor law’s regime for enabling workers to unionize and bargain collectively, and the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage and overtime protections – both of which were intended to secure for ordinary workers a fair share of the rewards of economic prosperity.” (See Labor Day Reflections on Election Day Decisions.) (As a nonprofit organization, Workplace Fairness does not endorse candidates, but we can give you publicly-available information about the candidates’ positions on workplace issues, and Cynthia does a great job of that in this post.)
On Thursday, September 4, the hit parade continued with best-selling workplace author Tom Jackson and Internet strategist and web producer Michael Whitney. Tom and Michael are from different generations, but they both understand the importance of treating workers with dignity.
Tom Jackson’s exquisitely written piece, The Dignity of Work, is a wake-up call to everyone who works:
The erosion of human values at all levels, in mainstream work is so pervasive and heartless, that even to have a chance at rewarding work, you will need to reconsider everything you know about companies, jobs, work, skills, careers and personal mobility. And included in that is redefining your own self-definition: union member, hourly worker, factory worker, supervisor, manager or “I’ll do anything.”
Michael Whitney tells us about an exciting new ad campaign from American Rights at Work to educate the TV-watching public about the Employee Free Choice Act. I could tell you more about it, but why don’t you just watch it?
Friday, September 5 wraps up the first week with posts from Bruce Goldstein and Morra Aarons-Mele. Bruce is a lawyer and expert on farmworker issues, while Morra Aarons-Mele specializes in work redesign and management training for the flexible workplace after a career as an online strategist and blogger.
Bruce Goldstein, executive director of Farmworker Justice, is readying us for an attack on the rights of farmworkers which could happen at any moment: “Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff…will announce extensive changes to the H-2A guestworker program, slashing wages and reducing worker protections for hundreds of thousands of our nation’s farmworkers.” Read “A Labor Day Attack on Farmworkers to find out what you can do, and how to keep informed about the progress of these changes.
Morra Aarons-Mele, who blogs about organizational change at Women and Work, reminds us that increased workplace flexibility is not just the job of employers and policy makers, but of ourselves as well. She says, “This Labor Day season, let’s think about how we can hold our leaders accountable to their promises to support more life-friendly work policies. But let’s also think about our role in managing work and life…the important work of cultivating a leisure ethic.”
Many of us will have seen the neat educational drawing from the 1950’s: “eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for leisure” for a balanced life. It feels so quaint, and speaks to a phantom work-family life that is reality for few Americans.
Over 50 years ago most women did not work outside the home, and the prevailing philosophy of effective work was Taylor’s scientific management, which prescribed minimal worker control over time and task. On the plus side, workweeks were shorter and more regular. On the minus side, people had little control over their time at work.
Management theory in the following decades has led to an emphasis on worker control. As O’Toole and Lawler note in their 2006 study The New American Workplace, employees have much more choice than they did forty years ago: more choice in benefits and family care options, choice in work scheduling, team design, and project design. And yes, many Americans are working differently, making up schedules that fit their lives, often through trial and error.
Trial and error isn’t enough. For dual-earner couples with children, combined work hours are now 91 hours per week, up from 81 hours per week in 1977. For the first time, the 2007 census recorded more American households headed by singles rather than married people. According to the Labor Project for Working Families, 40% of people caring for elders also have childcare responsibilities.
Many business policies, programs, benefits, and practices in place today were designed for the needs of the “traditional family,” those people who make up only 20% of the actual workforce. National data shows that over 80% of workers polled would prefer more flexible work options and would use them if there were no negative consequences at work. And there’s the rub: if there were no negative consequences.
Work is still changing too slowly to fit our new culture, and so we make it fit around us, often with negative consequences. It’s a cliché, but how many times has your mind been fixated on the BlackBerry during family dinner?
The good news is that many employers are more flexible about implementing flexibility, but the majority of smaller firms, where most Americans now work, don’t offer such benefits to all employees. Terms are negotiated on a case-by-case basis. Without public policy mandates, many companies are confused about how to implement change. In the 2008 National Study of Employers, those most likely to have implemented flexibility include employers with a large percentage of female senior management, companies in the nonprofit, finance, real estate and insurance industries, and those companies without union representation.
And what if employers are only part of the problem? The by-product of too many workers trying to do it all is stress on workers and their families. Ellen Galinsky, President of the Families and Work Institute says, “In my book Ask the Children, a nationally representative group of children ages eight to 18 were asked for their number one wish to improve their lives. The largest proportion wished that their parents were less tired and stressed, and one in three young people feels very stressed themselves.”
Politics has given workers a window: In perhaps the most significant signal that flexibility is on the agenda, in 2008, both the Democratic and Republican Party platforms state flexibility as a critical solution for helping families balance work and life.
Leaders and policy makers can help by looking to states and (gasp) other countries for models. They can help by raising awareness around these issues, and removing gender and class biases. Mandated time off for family needs enforces the message that leaving work is not for wimps and for lower wage workers, that it’s not a firing offense. For example, according to MomsRising.org, “Twelve states require employers to allow time for employees to participate in their childrens’ educational activities….California…gives parents 40 hours per year to participate in school activities.” (See MomsRising.org piece on Open Flexible Work.)
Motivated voters need to keep these issues on the agenda, and Democrats have an ideal ambassador in Michelle Obama, who has made better work-family policy her personal platform.
And what can we, the workers, do to make flexibility feasible? If we manage people, we can model change. We can be conscious about our choices and if we so choose, be willing to accept trade offs between life and work. Galinsky suggests,
Ask yourself: What decision will I wish I had made in five years? What will I remember in the future? And make your decision accordingly.
We have to create our own boundaries, our own times when we turn it off. And it isn’t just turning off the electronics, it is turning off our minds going over our to-do lists for work. Kids know when we aren’t focused. Many kids said they had techniques for seeing if their parents were really listening to them (throwing in a nonsense word in a middle of what they are saying to see if their parent noticed) or even putting their hands on our faces and saying: Earth to Mom or Earth to Dad.
I like to think Barack Obama modeled change when he took a family vacation right before the Convention. Hillary Clinton never took one day off during Primary season. That’s not a realistic or healthy example to set.
This Labor Day season, let’s think about how we can hold our leaders accountable to their promises to support more life-friendly work policies. But let’s also think about our role in managing work and life, what Joshua Halberstam, in his book Work: Making a Living and Making a Life, calls the important work of cultivating a leisure ethic.
About the Author:Morra Aarons-Mele specializes in work redesign and management training for the flexible workplace. Before focusing on organizational change, Morra worked for ten years on online campaigns for politics, advocacy groups, and corporations. Through her work as an Internet strategy consultant, she became committed to helping employers and employees create and manage programs that increase flexibility and self-directed work. Morra returned to graduate school and internships to learn this new field.
Morra writes weekly columns for BlogHer.com, the Huffington Post, and guardian.co.uk. She is also a frequent media commentator for CNN. Morra has a degree in Political Science from Brown University and a Master’s from the Harvard Kennedy School. Morra is active in local politics, and represented Washington, DC’s ANC for Ward 2B. She is married to Nicco Mele and lives near Boston.
Note: Workplace Fairness is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by our guest bloggers are their own.
Amid all the hype of political conventions, analysis of the Republican VP pick and Labor Day celebrations for the rest of the country, the Bush Administration will launch an attack on the nation’s farmworkers.
Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, at any moment, will announce extensive changes to the H-2A guestworker program, slashing wages and reducing worker protections for hundreds of thousands of our nation’s farmworkers. These policy changes deserve our attention.
The H-2A program is a temporary agricultural guestworker program that permits employers to apply for permission to hire foreign labor for jobs lasting ten months or less. To bring in H-2A guestworkers, employers must show that they cannot find U.S. workers who want the jobs. These will be the most far-reaching changes in the laws regulating guestworker programs since 1942. If the changes are finalized, as we expect them to be next week, and take effect, this Administration will have returned us to an era of agricultural labor exploitation that many thought ended over 65 years ago.
What a Labor Day gift to farmworkers!
The Administration will finalize plans that were published several months ago. They called for cutting wage rates and wage protections for both domestic and foreign workers, minimizing recruitment obligations inside the U.S., ending the requirement to provide workers with free housing that meets federal and state safety requirements, curtailing or eliminating transportation reimbursement payments, and removing much of the government oversight that is supposed to deter and remedy illegal employer conduct. There is much more and it’s almost all terrible.
U.S. farmworkers will be denied jobs and forced to quit due to the onerous conditions. The aim of the Administration is to create an endless supply of guestworkers who our government will allow to be exploited at low wage wages and suffer grueling productivity standards that U.S. workers cannot afford to accept. By enticing employers to use vulnerable guestworkers at less than the cost of U.S. workers, the Administration theorizes that it will wean employers from hiring undocumented workers.
This low-wage, low-road strategy is not just morally reprehensible, it is economically destructive. Most farmworkers are undocumented. The Administration’s proposal does absolutely nothing to address that reality. They are already here doing this back-breaking work. Most of them are law-abiding people seeking to support their families, embodying those All-American values such as “self-sacrifice” and “hard-work”. Employers need them. The Bush Administration cannot make them go away.
For decades government commissions have told agriculture that it must stabilize its workforce and improve productivity by increasing wages and modernizing its labor practices, rather than relying on new waves of exploitable foreign labor to overcome high employee turnover.
We call on Congress, including Senator McCain and Senator Obama, to do whatever it takes to stop the Administration from issuing its planned changes to the H-2A guestworker program. There are reasonable alternatives that have won bipartisan support. Both Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama support those alternatives.
During this Labor Day season, amid the election year hype, we must think about the people toiling to put food on our tables. If the Administration issues the final regulations, as we expect they will any day, we plan to ask you to tell Congress to prevent those regulations from every taking effect.
About the Author:Bruce Goldstein joined Farmworker Justice as a staff attorney in 1988, then served as Co-Executive Director starting in September 1995, and was named Executive Director in July 2005. At Farmworker Justice, Bruce has focused on litigation and advocacy on immigration issues and labor law, with a special emphasis on the H-2A temporary foreign agricultural worker program. Bruce’s activities on “guestworker” issues have included litigation against private employers and the government, advocacy in administrative agencies and Congress, training of lawyers and paralegals, building nation-wide coalitions, advising grassroots organizations, and testifying before Congress. Bruce has also sought to address the problem of “farm labor contractors” and other labor intermediaries used by farming operations, often in an attempt to avoid responsibility for complying with labor laws. Bruce received his bachelor’s degree in 1977 from the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, and his law degree from Washington University in St. Louis (1980). He has worked at the National Labor Relations Board, at a legal services office in East St. Louis, Illinois, and in private law practice concentrating in labor law, personal injury and civil rights.
September 1 is Labor Day — a day to celebrate America’s workers. Our country has celebrated Labor Day for more than a century as an official national holiday, a day to honor those who work to build America. Unfortunately there hasn’t been much to celebrate for Labor Day lately; the middle class is being gutted, income inequality is the greatest since 1928, and only 12% of our workforce can say they’re members of a union. Let’s just say the last 8 years haven’t helped, either.
But starting Labor Day 2008, workers’ rights advocacy group American Rights at Work is taking to the airwaves with a national TV ad campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act. You can see the ad — part of a $5 million effort — on CNN and MSNBC, and in 7 states: Alaska, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and Oregon. The state-based ads will focus on educating the public on the positions’ of political leaders, and urging the public to call them to express their support for the legislation in the Senate.
The Employee Free Choice Act is a bill that will take on the critical issues facing America’s struggling middle class by making it easier for people to form or join a union. One of the main aims of the bill is to bring back balance to the workplace; right now, even if 100% of your coworkers wanted to join a union, your CEO could veto your decision. What the Employee Free Choice Act does is take away CEOs’ veto power, giving workers a free choice to have a union if they want it.
It passed the House last year and got 51 votes in the Senate before it was blocked by a Republican filibuster (a vote for which John McCain actually showed up…to vote against the bill).
Our ad campaign also comes out to set the record straight in response to anti-union, corporate-funded front groups stopping at nothing to mislead the American public about the Employee Free Choice Act. The corporate special interests that are against improving workers’ standard of living do not represent a majority of the public. A poll released last week by the nonpartisan Drum Major Institute found that 68 percent of middle class Americans wish their member of Congress had voted in favor of the bill.
We need the Employee Free Choice Act because we need more America to have more union members. When unions are strong, the economy is strong. Not only do unions you the ability to negotiate in your workplace, but they lift up even those who aren’t union members. And get this: if you have a heart attack, you’re 5.5% more likely to survive if your nurse is a union member.
So during this Labor Day season, take the time to reflect on America’s workers, past and present, and how they’ve helped our country. Then get ready to help make our economy work for everyone again by joining our campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act. (And if you like our ad, chip in to help keep it on the air.)
About the Author:Michael Whitney is a progressive Internet strategist and web producer who got his start in online politics as one of the co-founders of Generation Dean, the youth outreach organization of Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. Now he coordinates the new media efforts of the workers’ rights advocacy group American Rights at Work, where he’s worked since 2004. Michael says, “Rush Limbaugh called me “clueless” once. He went into rehab two days later. I win!”
It’s easy to forget the historic meaning of Labor Day, lost as it is in the haze of BBQ smoke, back-to-school sales and that last long weekend of summer’s vacation season.
In the diminished ranks of organized labor, now down to 8% of the working population, the holiday, once a celebration of victory over corporate greed and heartless work reveals nostalgia for days gone by, a nostalgia haunted by worries about the future.
Unless you are a savvy entrepreneur, talented specialist or fat-cat equity holder, you are probably concerned about the future of your work, your finances, and the quality of your life. If not, you should be. The erosion of human values at all levels, in mainstream work is so pervasive and heartless, that even to have a chance at rewarding work, you will need to reconsider everything you know about companies, jobs, work, skills, careers and personal mobility. And included in that is redefining your own self-definition: union member, hourly worker, factory worker, supervisor, manager or “I’ll do anything.” What you call yourself is how you see yourself, and how you see (and define) yourself shapes your future.
So, my vote is for Labor Day as a holiday for all, and not as a model for our future. This doesn’t mean that I am anti-union or won’t fight for the right to organize; what I am most interested in is the way work can expand human dignity and encourage development, learning, pride of self and accomplishment. That’s where the real payoffs will come for individuals and for our nation. And that is what we need to focus on to enhance our competitive edge.
The dignity of work is a human right; it goes to the essence of human value. When this dignity is present in employment, loyalty, productivity and creative solutions leap forward. Continuity and shared outcomes rise, civility and pride increase, and the company and its workers become an empowered community.
Joe Biden, in his recent speech at the Democratic National Convention, defined the dignity of work this way: “That’s how you come to believe, to the very core of your being, that work is more than a paycheck. It’s dignity. It’s respect. It’s about whether or not you can look your children in the eye and say: We’re going to be all right.”
Unfortunately working in mainstream corporations today is often the furthest thing from dignity or community. Millions of Americans are questioning the ethics and purpose of today’s winner-takes-all capitalism as they struggle to make ends meet and worry about their future. According to national studies, the vast majority feel they are playing by rigged rules and cooked books that, far from giving them a fair deal, leave them short-changed. Employees are giving more and getting less from their work. Whether you look at job security, career opportunity, income, time spent on the job, health care, retirement security, or the right to organize, it’s indisputable that most working people are far worse off today than they were a generation ago.
Given the political season, we have and will continue to hear about the American Dream. Perhaps it is time to revive it. The American Dream stands for a place and time when opportunity invited hard work, optimism and vision, and our nation encouraged people to do their best, and supported them, regardless of class, wealth or political connections. Its forerunner was the Declaration of Independence and the particularly American form of capitalism (Democratic Capitalism) that rose out of it.
This popular ideal was far more generous in its abstraction than in its reality: (racism, gender and ethnicity were barriers that only dedicated opposition has broken); nevertheless the belief in a bright, optimistic working population with mobility, development, stability and rewards has been woven into our collective consciousness and is still alive in the thinking of millions. Unfortunately, many now realize, as I do, that this dream, based on America’s core values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is sinking fast, and to a growing part of the population is being replaced by a nightmare of heartless work.
How do we get it running again? The community of work, where all players are stakeholders in the game, is one way; emphasis on the importance of education aligning with people’s life needs is another; and providing employees the basic protections of health benefits, family time, learning time and freedom from poverty and depletion is another. And, along with this it is important to raise our guard against the negative effect on the workforce from the widespread practice of “deskilling.”
Corporate kingpins are fattening their bottom lines by consciously stripping away uniquely human talents — judgment, reason, imagination, and learning — from the work of the broad middle ranks of the workforce and replacing these with jobs that are mechanical, scripted, shallow and by the numbers. By downgrading the aspirations, talent and potential of their workers, industry monarchs trash the resourcefulness of the nation as a whole.
Well over 50 million jobs have been deskilled, decoupled and relegated to commodity status in the past decade. Millions of people a year, including a high population of college graduates, are shunted away from the once broad field of corporate citizenship to jobs that entrap them into digital assembly lines, using only a small portion of their talent and education and rewarding them with marginal incomes with little upward mobility. Deskilling is a known practice, justified by stockholder demands to cut the human cost of productivity regardless of the deadly consequences.
So, here at the juncture of summer’s end and the challenge of going back to school, I propose we acknowledge the values and needs for organized labor to continue to fight for workplace rights, and also add in the 21st century imperative for revitalizing the American workplace, improving its role in the whole society, and to press more strongly for the inherent dignity of work.
About the Author:Tom Jackson has authored eleven books in the field of careers and the quality of working life. He has created, developed and executed hundreds of popular programs, software, lectures, corporate initiatives, and consultancies on career transition, performance enhancement, resumes, job search, and entrepreneurial development. His own life is a testimony to self-direction and to moving with shifting values: from pilot, to consultant, to computer pioneer, from author and lecturer, and to entrepreneur. His theories are born from his own hero’s journey and his inspired work with tens of thousands.Tom’s books combined have sold well over a million copies. He has presented hundreds of workshops, lectures, and speaking engagements at conventions and colleges, from the state universities in California, up to McGill in Canada, over to William and Mary College and Duke University, out to the University of Michigan, and down to Austin, Texas. With his interviews on “Good Morning America,” “Regis & Kathie Lee,” “Nightline,” and other TV shows, he has pushed human technology to people at every level and profession. His work introducing outplacement and career counseling to hourly workers opened a new chapter in how unions serve their members. For the last ten years, Jackson has worked in the application of breakthrough thinking applied to personal and corporate cultures. The Breakthrough Method™ has inspired major changes in the way fresh ideas are translated into extraordinary results. This work is woven throughout the new book. Jackson has been a pioneer in the development of interactive capability and skills development software and web sites, and continues to stay close to this field. Currently Tom is studying the revolutionary shifts in the nature of careers, jobs and work itself, and the implications for workers at all levels.
Note: Workplace Fairness is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by our guest bloggers are their own.
Labor Day puts an exclamation point at the end of summer, and sounds the traditional starting bell for our election campaigns. And it is the one day of the year that honors working people – those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold,” in the words of one 19th century proponent of the holiday.
These days find fewer workers delving and carving, and more of them word-processing or telemarketing. How are they doing this Labor Day?
That depends on whether we look at the top of the labor market or further down the ladder, among the modern-day delvers and carvers. Those at the top –- say the top ten percent of earners with scarce skills and years of higher education –- are doing well indeed. (The top one percent is doing even better.) (See Economic Policy Institute data.) The globalization of markets and growing mobility of capital seem to have increased the market power of the top echelon of workers.
But gains at the top have not trickled down to the bottom. Instead, companies’ intense pursuit of lower labor costs and higher profit margins has eroded job security, wages, and working conditions for many workers. (See Economic Policy Institute data)
The fact of growing inequality seems clear. Yet a major political fault line runs between those who believe it is a serious problem calling for government action and those who do not. Of course, the one-two punch of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and rising oil prices has raised alarms across the political spectrum. But the failure of ordinary working people to secure a fair share of productivity gains and spectacular corporate profits has not. That brings us back to the election campaign that is already well underway this Labor Day.
On one side, news of growing economic inequality is met with a mix of complacency and fatalism. After all, global market forces are behind these developments, and have produced more by way of fabulous wealth at the top than impoverishment at the bottom. Those in this camp – let’s call them Republicans – often portray those who complain about economic inequality as captives of misguided economic populism and class envy. Or, in the words of McCain supporter Phil Gramm, as “economically illiterate” and “whiners.”
On the other side of the aisle are those who are committed to using public policy to foster the well-being of those least favored by the market. Recent studies indeed show that low and middle-income Americans do better economically in Democratic administrations (while higher income Americans do about equally well). In this respect, the Democrats remain the party of the New Deal.
Indeed, divisions are especially sharp over two major pillars of New Deal labor policy – the labor law’s regime for enabling workers to unionize and bargain collectively, and the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage and overtime protections – both of which were intended to secure for ordinary workers a fair share of the rewards of economic prosperity.
On the issue of unionization, there is less disagreement over what is happening than over what to do about it. Mainstream economists, including current Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, agree that growing inequality is partly due to the decline of unions. Unions give workers leverage to bargain for a fair share of company profits. No wonder so many workers who don’t have union representation say in surveys that they wish they did.
The question for political leaders is whether to do anything to make that possible. Senator Obama and the Democrats support the Employee Free Choice Act, which makes it easier for workers who want union representation to get it, and harder for employers to browbeat their workers out of seeking representation. Republicans, with a few exceptions, appear content to let unions continue their slide toward irrelevance, and to leave workers to their solitary fate within the labor market. (See NYTimes article.)
Disagreement over minimum labor standards is less voluble, but only because one side is largely silent. A recent GAO report finding lax enforcement of wage and hour laws provoked calls for action from the Democrats, and silence from Republicans. Evidence of widespread employer evasion of employee rights and payroll taxes through misclassification of employees as “independent contractors” led Senator Obama, joined by several Democratic co-sponsors, to propose a legislative fix. Republicans remain silent.
The ideological divide here is familiar. But there is a common thread in these debates over labor policy that ought to create some common ground: Both employees’ right to join a union and their right to decent labor standards are being undermined by employers that break the law, sometimes brazenly. Many employers illegally threaten and intimidate workers who seek union representation, risking little more than a legal slap on the wrist long after the union drive’s defeat. For some employers, compelling employees to work off the clock, or even doctoring time sheets to reduce payroll costs, has become business as usual, as Steve Greenhouse shows in his new book, The Big Squeeze.
When scofflaw employers get away with violating workers’ legal rights, they undermine the ability of workers to secure a decent life for themselves and their families, and they undercut and demoralize responsible employers.
The Democrats and Republicans have often diverged over the wisdom of expanding protections for workers. But enforcing the laws that are already on the books ought to be a goal that unites the parties. Unfortunately, when it comes to the law that protects employee rights, that seems not to be the case.
About the Author:Cynthia Estlund is the Catherine A. Rein Professor at the NYU School of Law. Recent work chronicles the crisis of workplace governance – the decline of collective bargaining and the failings of both regulation and litigation – and charts a potential path forward. Her book Working Together: How Workplace Bonds Strengthen a Diverse Democracy (Oxford U. Press 2003) argues that the workplace is both comparatively integrated and intensely cooperative and social, and explores the implications for democratic theory and for the law of the workplace. Other writings focus on freedom of speech and procedural fairness at work; affirmative action; and the significance of property rights in labor law.
Note: Workplace Fairness is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by our guest bloggers are their own.
