Continued anxiety over swine flu is a poignant reminder that only some New York City residents can afford to stay home if they or their children fall ill. Most lower-income residents do not have the right to get sick; they are not guaranteed paid sick days. But when workers are not allowed time off for illness, they are more likely to spread disease in confined spaces, worsening their own condition and putting others at risk. City government must enact a paid sick leave policy that will serve everyone equally.

New York City has a lot to learn from San Francisco, the first city in the country to mandate paid sick days for public and private sector employees, including part-timers and temps, who accrue the days over time. The business groups originally opposed to the San Francisco law have called it “successful”. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce even admitted: “we really have not heard much about it being a major issue for a lot of businesses.”

That’s because paid sick leave is cost-effective and actually boosts the productivity of workers. New York City cannot afford any further delay of this crucial legislation.

The economic and health reasons for City Hall to move forward on this important issue transcend the politics of the moment. Long before swine flu appeared, the people who most needed paid sick days—low-wage workers, especially women, immigrants, and people of color—were the least likely to have them. That need hasn’t diminished.

Last year, the Drum Major Institute convened a Marketplace of Ideas panel on paid sick leave that showed how and why New York City should replicate San Francisco’s policy. Participants included Councilwoman Gale Brewer, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, David Jones of the Community Service Society, and Sara Flocks from Young Workers United, the San Francisco organization that developed the law and mobilized grassroots support for it.

The full transcript is available here and YouTube clips can be watched here.

About the Author: Dan Morris joined the staff of the Drum Major Institute in September 2008. A communications strategist with a policy, research, and editorial background, he specializes in issue-based media campaigns. His high-impact story placements have appeared in such outlets as The Associated Press, Reuters, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and The New York Daily News. Before joining DMI, he was the head of public relations at eChalk, an organization that empowers schools with web-based technology, where he built a new communications operation focused on message development, press cultivation, thought leadership, and issue advocacy. An experienced educator, he has taught literature to junior high students in New Jersey, and philosophy to college students in New York City.

This article originally appeared in the DMI Blog on June 3, 2009. Re-printed with permission by the author.

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The misleading attacks by Big Business on the Employee Free Choice Act now are aimed at the provision that would guarantee that workers can get a fair first contract. Their scare tactics are not only misleading, they’re hypocritical.

Right now, workers lack a legal means to ensure they get a fair first contract. Recent research shows that even after workers successfully win a union and the ability to bargain, they’re too often blocked from getting a fair first contract. Fifty-two percent of workers don’t have a contract a full year after the election, and 37 percent don’t have a first contract two years after the election. For too many workers, the promise of the freedom to bargain is out of reach because the law doesn’t offer them any help.

The Employee Free Choice Act provides a process to help first-time bargainers to reach an agreement, through mediation and, for issues the parties are unable to resolve on their own, arbitration. The reason we need first-contract arbitration is to create an incentive for companies to bargain voluntarily with their workers.

According to research from American Rights at Work, the record of first-contract arbitration provisions in the public sector and in Canada show that disputes rarely reach the arbitration stage; in most cases, the process works to help workers and their employers reach a contract on their own.

Yet corporations are increasing their negative attacks on this provision even though they frequently require consumers to commit to arbitration.

Supporters of the freedom to form unions are hitting this corporate disinformation campaign directly, in the field, online and in the press. American Rights at Work is taking on corporate hypocrisy with a new print ad running today in key newspapers. The ad demonstrates how corporations are attacking the idea of arbitration when it involves their employees—while supporting arbitration in a variety of areas where it benefits them.

As the new ad notes, corporations prefer to use arbitration in consumer disputes, personal injury claims, home construction contracts, nursing home injuries and conflicts related to real estate, credit cards and banking.

Business trade groups even wrote to Congress last year saying arbitration is an “efficient, effective” way to resolve disputes, reported The New York Times, and companies put arbitration provisions into 75 percent of consumer contracts.

So, if corporations want to require arbitration in so many other instances, why are they so afraid of the possibility of arbitration—only after months of negotiations—over a first contract for their employees?

About the Author: Seth Michaels is the coordinator of the AFL-CIO’s presidential candidate website, Working Families Vote 2008. Prior to arriving at the AFL-CIO, he worked on online mobilization for Moveon.org, Blue State Digital and the National Jewish Democratic Council. Seth spent two years touring the country as a member of the Late Night Players, a sketch comedy troupe—but the battles of U.S. politics are even more entertaining.

This article originally appeared in the AFL-CIO Blog on June 11, 2009. Reprinted with permission by the author.

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I read a great article on Karl Rove, a.k.a. the ex-President’s Svengali. In the article it talked about the fact that in politics there are two kinds of people – “lumpers” and “splitters.” Lumpers try to build the biggest possible coalition to get the policies they want while splitters use wedge issues to divide and conquer the electorate.

Anyone who has wandered the corporate hallways knows that lumpers and splitters are not limited to politics, they’re alive and well in today’s workplace.

Let’s start with splitters. The classic splitter move is to be hyper-focused on the people above you in the chain of command. They’re the ones that you have to sell for you to get any new budget or more authority. So what do you do? You present your arguments to the boss in terms of an attack. You attack competitors. You attack existing initiatives. But mostly you attack your coworkers. In short, you get where you need to go by applying negative energy. I think Bob Dylan summed it up best when he sang, “…Cares not to lift you up any higher, but rather to get you down in the hole that he’s in.”

Then there are the lumpers. Consensus builders. People who subject themselves to endless meetings to try to get “buy-in.” The people who take the time to talk to the people on the fringe. But as we all know, “buy in” is expensive because it costs time and political capital. Working the halls sure sounds great, but who has the energy or inclination?

Sure it sounds nice to be a lumper (the philosophy, not the word). But the reality is that splitting is a short cuts also have costs—they’re just not as apparent.

Okay, let me make a confession here. I’ve been a splitter for most of my career. I would attack, I would criticize, I would do whatever it takes to win. I found that negative energy, just like negative campaign ads, works.

But I’ve realized there is a different way. A better way.

I learned that working the room has its benefits because the more minds you get involved the better the result. That fighting over the last piece of the pie is silly. It’s smarter to put your energy into figuring out how to make more pies. That the best ideas usually come from others.

We need more lumpers at work. Is there anyone out there ready to join the lumpers team?

QUOTE.

“A little reciprocity goes a long way.” Malcolm Forbes

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Health care reform that requires employers to provide health care coverage for workers or pay into a fund—known as pay or play—could save small businesses as much as $855 billion during the next few years.

A new study by the Small Business Majority disproves claims by health care reform opponents that requiring businesses to provide coverage to their workers would destroy their bottom line.

The Economic Impact of Health Care reform on Small Business, written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor Jonathan Gruber, says that small businesses, more than any other sector of the economy, “suffer from our broken health care system.”

From spiraling premiums to inadequate access to health care for themselves and their employees, small business owners have seen their prospects for growth diminished and their profits slashed by today’s patchwork of inefficient health care options.

The report looks at three health care reform proposals—including President Obama’s—that call for pay or play by businesses, along with tax credits and other incentives to help offset the cost of providing health insurance to their workers.

This analysis demonstrates that the type of health care reform that is emerging from today’s debate will save small businesses hundreds of billions of dollars, protect small business wages and jobs—and allow small businesses to reinvest and grow.

Without reform, small business owners will pay nearly $2.4 trillion in health care costs for their workers over the next 10 years. But as the report points out, reform as outlined under the three plans,

could save as much as $855 billion with reform—a 36 percent reduction, money that can be reinvested to grow the economy.

Soaring health care costs are projected to cost some 178,000 small business jobs over the next decade, but health care reform, could reduce projected job loss by 72 percent job loss.

To benefit small businesses, their workers and the economy, the Small Business Majority report says that health care reform must:

• Substantially contain costs.
• Guarantee access to coverage regardless of health status.
• Be based on shared responsibility among individuals, businesses, the government and the health care industry.
• Provide appropriate assistance to small businesses to meet their health care obligations.

The Small Business Majority, founded in 2005 by executives of small companies who wanted to broaden the small-business discussion about health reform, isn’t the only small business group to back comprehensive health reform.

In January, the Main Street Alliance network of state-based small business health care coalitions, surveyed 1,200 small business owners and found they

• Are concerned deeply about the adequacy of insurance, including the breadth and affordability of services covered by their plans.
• Believe government should provide a public alternative to private coverage.
• Want increased oversight of private insurers.
• Are willing to contribute their fair share toward a system that makes health care work for small businesses, their employees and the communities they serve.

About the Author: Mike Hall is a former West Virginia newspaper reporter, staff writer for the United Mine Workers Journal and managing editor of the Seafarers Log. He came to the AFL-CIO in 1989 and has written for several federation publications, focusing on legislation and politics, especially grassroots mobilization and workplace safety. He carried union cards from the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, American Flint Glass Workers and Teamsters for jobs in a chemical plant, a mining equipment manufacturing plant and a warehouse. He’s also worked as roadie for a small-time country-rock band, sold blood plasma, and played an occasional game of poker to help pay the rent. You may have seen him at one of several hundred Grateful Dead shows. He was the one with longhair and the tie-dye. Still has the shirts, lost the hair.

Covanta Energy operates 30 incinerators in the U.S. that convert waste to energy. The company’s holdings include Hennepin Energy, an incinerator that employs members of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Minneapolis, Minn., Local 160.

Covanta, which increased its earnings in 2008 to $50 million, prides itself on being an innovative, “green,” responsible employer. But the vast majority of Covanta’s U.S. plants are nonunion. And the company, which is seeking to develop new projects in Canada, China, Ireland, the U.K. and the Netherlands, intends to keep it that way.

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As I noted yesterday in connection with the bankruptcy of General Motors, I am in favor of spending money on trying to save peoples’ jobs–we are talking about the survival of communities and the lives of thousands of people. But, having now spent the morning reading various media reports about the GM bankruptcy, it’s startling how little, if any, of the dialogue makes broader connections to other parts of the economic system. Put another way, it’s great to spend money to address a crisis but if you don’t see the crisis in a broader way, the money will be wasted. Here is what I mean.

GM, and the rest of the U.S.-based auto industry, arrives at this crisis because of at least four problems. One is mismanagement. So, you have to ask the question–why isn’t there an entire housecleaning, removing every top manager and executive who has had significant role in running the company into the ground? Why would we turn over billions in taxpayer money to people who have shown they are thoroughly incompetent?

Second problem–which would lead me to be a tad less vocal on the first problem. Part of the crisis that led GM to the brink is a worldwide collapse of auto sales brought on by the general economic crisis. So, not to at all excuse the performance among the ranks of pathetically incompetent managers, you can also give a Bronx cheer for this sad situation to the leaders of the financial system (Robert Rubin, please take a bow).

But, you know, the above two problems pale in comparison to my other two points. First, and this is a point I have made countless times over the past number of months when I’ve played the role of TV pundit-talking-head-defender of labor, the crying shame is that we could have avoided the auto industry collapse if we had had a single-payer, “Medicare for All” health care system which would have relieved the auto companies of tens of billions of dollars of costs that have dragged down their balance sheets. Here we have the most prominent example I can think of where stupid ideology (”We can’t have a government-run health care system, that’s socialism”) has triumphed over sound economics. If we don’t learn from that mistake, the GM money goes to waste.

And, finally, if an auto industry job was, thanks to the UAW, a ticket to the “middle-class” or, at least, some promise that you could retire with some dignity, then, you would think someone would say: whoa, so now the auto companies are seeing their future in moving more jobs to Mexico and other countries. Wonder why they are doing that? Huh–could that be because of lower wages? Nah, that’s just “protectionist” talk. Point being: sure, we should be fine with our tax dollars helping people save their jobs BUT where are the leaders who are ready to rethink a trade policy that put us precisely where we are: a world where competition is based on the lowest wage possible.

About the Author: Jonathan Tasini is the executive director of Labor Research Association. Tasini ran for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in New York. For the past 25 years, Jonathan has been a union leader and organizer, a social activist, and a commentator and writer on work, labor and the economy. From 1990 to April 2003, he served as president of the National Writers Union (United Auto Workers Local 1981).He was the lead plaintiff in Tasini vs. The New York Times, the landmark electronic rights case that took on the corporate media’s assault on the rights of thousands of freelance authors.

This article originally appeared in Working Life on June 3, 2009. Reprinted with permission by the author.

The debate I took part in yesterday–well, it’s hard to call it a debate when your opponent is not operating with a full deck of cards…meaning facts–on CNBC really illustrates, in the most starkest terms, the two visions of America. One vision sees unionized jobs, like those that many people have had in the auto industry, as the platform upon which you build a decent society where people can live with dignity and respect. The other vision is that that sees Wal-Mart as the model–where if you work full-time (which Wal-Mart considers as a 34-hour work week) and are part of a family of four, you don’t make enough money to get above the poverty level of $21,000 a-year.

Take a look at this:

You want to both laugh and cry listening to Stephen Moore. If you try to follow his argument, good luck–because it simply isn’t coherent beyond the point “people are lining up for Wal-Mart jobs and so that must mean Wal-Mart jobs are great”. If this is the best the right-wing, pro-business folks can throw out there, boy, it’s a thin bench.

About the Author: Jonathan Tasini is the executive director of Labor Research Association. Tasini ran for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in New York. For the past 25 years, Jonathan has been a union leader and organizer, a social activist, and a commentator and writer on work, labor and the economy. From 1990 to April 2003, he served as president of the National Writers Union (United Auto Workers Local 1981).He was the lead plaintiff in Tasini vs. The New York Times, the landmark electronic rights case that took on the corporate media’s assault on the rights of thousands of freelance authors.

This article originally appeared in Working Life on June 5, 2009. Re-printed with permission by the author.

FedEx CEO Fred Smith’s arrogant campaign of threats and intimidation continued this week when his top spokesman threatened to take down members of Congress who oppose FedEx’s position on a key piece of legislation.

When asked about FedEx’s multi-million dollar ad campaign against the legislation that is reported to launch on Tuesday, June 9, top FedEx flack Maury Lane told U.S. News and World Report in a story posted in The White House Bulletin, “I’m going to try to destroy them.”

This follows Smith’s repeated threats to cancel a $10 billion contract to purchase Boeing 777 planes if FedEx Express workers were moved under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

FedEx clearly threatened in a March 24, 2009 SEC filing, and Smith reiterated in testimony before Congress in May, that its contract to purchase additional aircraft from Boeing is contingent upon its labor relations for all of its employees being governed by the Railway Labor Act (RLA). Under this provision, if Congress dares to grant even a portion of its workers the rights enjoyed by most American private sector employees under the NRLA, FedEx has the right to cancel those purchase orders.

“Fred Smith and FedEx breed a culture of arrogance,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. “First, they cut wages, increase medical insurance premiums and eliminate pension benefits for its employees. Then they try to blackmail Congress with threats to pull the Boeing contract. Now they threaten to destroy the political careers of those who oppose them.”

Currently, all workers at FedEx Express are covered by the RLA regardless of whether they have any direct relationship with the operation or maintenance of the air fleet. This includes package delivery drivers, workers at sorting facilities and truck mechanics.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation on May 21 that is a part of the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization and would place those workers under the NLRA, the statute that protects virtually all other private sector workers. Under the NLRA, workers may organize by individual terminals while the RLA requires a more difficult path to unionization that requires a national vote by every worker at FedEx Express. The reauthorization bill is currently awaiting action in the Senate.

“It’s astonishing that Fred Smith and his flacks will go to any length to boost FedEx’s profits at the expense of American workers and the economy,” said Ken Hall, Director of the Teamsters Package Division. “By threatening to destroy members of Congress, FedEx’s efforts to manipulate the American system of government have crossed the line.”

About the Author: Richard Negri is the founder of UnionReview.com and is the Online Manager for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

This article originally appeared in Union Review on June 5, 2009. Reprinted with permission by the author.

These are challenging times for America’s families. One in 4 Americans, or about 23 percent of those surveyed in a recent Gallup Poll, report that they are “very worried” about keeping up with their monthly bills over the next six months. That’s up from 19 percent a year ago and 15 percent in March 2007.

And while many of us are working harder than ever to keep pace under the current economic pressure, workplace duties are not the only duties we have.

Family responsibilities await us at home. That is why we must pass the Healthy Families Act, introduced in the 111th Congress on May 18 by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, also a Democrat.

Workers still get sick. Children still get fevers and runny noses. Mom or Dad still needs to take them to the doctor or just stay by their bedside to nurse them back to health. No matter how dedicated workers are to hanging on to their jobs at all cost, the need to occasionally take time away from work never goes away–not even in a tough recession, not even when jobs are this hard to come by.

Unfortunately, nearly half of private sector workers in the United States don’t have a single paid sick day to care for themselves. Additionally, nearly 100 million Americans get no paid time off to care for an ailing child or an aging parent.

Fewer “Wives” at Home

While this is an issue for all workers, the reality is that women, or “wives,” have historically been tasked with the family care-giving responsibilities–and most families do not have a “wife” at home these days.

The numbers speak for themselves. According to a 2007 report by the Multi-State Working Families Consortium, “Valuing Families: It’s About Time,” less than 6 percent of all women in the U.S. were in the work force at the turn of the century. By 1950, that number had climbed to 24 percent; by 2000 to 60 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of single parents–mostly women–has also mushroomed and single mothers are working many more hours than they have in past years. Why? The Valuing Families report attributes this to pent-up demand among women for career opportunity and economic independence–and economic necessity. Simply put, over the last 35 years women’s increased work and earnings has been the only avenue for many families to attain or maintain economic self-sufficiency.

Though the flood of women into the work force has been beneficial, it has raised an obvious question for families: how to provide all the care, support and supervision that children need without jeopardizing family economic self-sufficiency. For working women without paid sick days, occasionally staying home when a child is ill could mean the loss of a day’s pay, or worse, the loss of a job.

It’s a terrible choice that strikes fear in the hearts of all workers; a fear grounded in workplace reality.

Consequences of Time Off

In a 2006 survey, conducted by the Center on Work Life Law at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, 1 in 6 workers said they or a family member had been fired, suspended, punished or threatened by an employer for taking time off to care for themselves or a family member when ill.

This is all highly counterproductive.

Healthy workers are key to a healthy national economy.

Paid sick days reduce the business costs of turnover, absenteeism and lack of productivity when workers are sick on the job. In fact, if workers were provided just seven paid sick days annually, according to information released by the National Partnership for Women and Families in 2008, our national economy would enjoy an annual net savings of more than $8 billion.

Healthy workers also contribute to a healthy public. As public health experts and our own government have repeatedly warned as we contend with H1N1 swine flu, sick workers can protect public health by staying home. But they shouldn’t have to pay the awful price of job loss and family financial instability to do so.

For all these reasons we need to pass the Healthy Families Act.

It would allow workers to earn up to seven paid sick days a year to recover from their own illness, to care for a sick family member, or for diagnostic and preventative care. Equally important, it would allow workers time to recover from domestic violence or sexual assault. Just as no worker should have to choose between pay and health, no worker should have to choose between pay and safety.

Need for Federal Policy

In the last three years, paid sick days legislation has passed in three cities: San Francisco, the District of Columbia and Milwaukee, where implementation is being held up by legal challenges.

This year, there are 15 active paid sick-days state campaigns. But what America needs most in these tough economic times is federal policy like the Healthy Families Act.

A broad coalition of women’s, civil rights, health, children’s, faith-based and labor organizations supports the act. It has more than 100 co-sponsors in the U.S. House, strong leadership from Ted Kennedy in the Senate and the steadfast support of the White House.

In accepting his party’s nomination last August, President Obama said, “We measure the strength of our economy by whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off and look after a sick kid without losing her job.” Later he reiterated, “Now is the time to help families with paid sick days, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their job and caring for a sick child or an ailing parent.”

Congress must pass the Healthy Families Act. The President must sign it.

We must ensure that all families have the tools to be as healthy and as economically self-sufficient as possible as we move toward recovery in the days ahead.

About the Author: Linda Meric is a nationally-known speaker on family-friendly workplace policy and executive director of 9to5, National Association of Women. A diverse, grassroots, membership-based nonprofit that helps strengthen women’s ability to win economic justice, 9to5 has staffed offices in Milwaukee, Denver, Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Jose.

This article originally appeared in Women’s eNews on June 8, 2009. Reprinted with permission by the author.

Having written a column entitled Workplace911 and Working Wounded for fourteen years, as you can imagine, I hear from a lot of people with terrible jobs. Last time I addressed a few of my favorites, this week the worsts continue:

• Worst Interview (some worst jobs start even before you get the job)
• Worst Coworkers
• Worst Boss
• Worst of the Worst

WORST INTERVIEW
 
“I applied for a job as a researcher. I was informed before the interview that the director was chemically sensitive. She said I shouldn’t wear any scented products or even wash my hair before the interview. I complied, but when I arrived at the office, the director pointed at me from across the room and said, ‘She’s here, Bill. Could you sniff her?’ At which point, this big, hairy guy proceeded to do so—very up close and personal. Having passed the sniff test, I was allowed to approach the director and begin the interview. I later got a call saying I got the job, which, of course, I didn’t take.”
 
I’ve heard references to the “sniff test” at work, who knew that some people took it so literally?
 
WORST COWORKER
 
“The last straw for me was the guy in the next cube who would have long, loud conversations with his wife, totally in baby talk.”
 
Okay, admit it. The dumpster cleaning gig isn’t sounding so bad right now, is it?
 
WORST BOSS
 
For many years I included a worst boss contest in my speeches. I asked over ten thousand audience members for their stories. I heard some whoppers. But by far the worst all time boss story was told to me by a guy in Los Angeles.
 
“The worst boss I ever worked for? He asked his assistant to type her own termination letter.”
 
Ouch, you’ve got to be really tough to survive today’s workplace.
 
WORST OF THE WORST
 
“I had an office mate who muttered to himself and constantly interrupted me. I complained to our boss, but he wasn’t moved. His desk was directly under an old ceiling fan. One morning I left an oily machine nut on his desk. During the day I caught him glancing up at the fan. The next day I put a rusty bolt on his desk. The next, another nut and a screw. That afternoon, HE went to our boss and asked to be moved.”
 
This email gives an entirely new meaning to the phrase just dropping a hint at work.
 
Wait a minute, you’re probably saying to yourself. This guy used creativity and guile to get what he needed. How does this qualify as a worst job story?
 
Should someone really have to work that hard just to put themselves in a position to do their job? And that sums up the insanity of today’s workplace. And this guy’s not alone. Watson Wyatt, a management consulting firm, did a study that found that 62% of us report that we don’t have the information that we need to do our jobs. And another 57% report that we’re not given the skills to do our jobs. 
 
The most important lesson we can take away from Worst Jobs is not from the few really awful jobs out there, but that so many of us aren’t given the simple things we need to make ours a great job.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.