Government workers witnessed a scene yesterday horrifically reminiscent of the Oklahoma City terrorist attack the last time a Democrat occupied the White House. A suicide attack was launched in Austin, Texas by a man who chose to assault government workers as an expression of his rage against government policies. While it is easy to see this as an act of a deranged individual, it is not unreasonable to consider the role rhetoric against government workers plays in fueling this rage.

When Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) sees a government worker in uniform such as a TSA Officer or U.S. Capitol Police Officer he sees a potential threat. These officers, sworn to protect and serve are potential ‘union bosses’ in his mind and may use the right to collectively bargain as a tool to control security.

TSA officers continue to organize as they serve the American people while they await the fulfillment of President Barack Obama’s promise to permit them collective bargaining rights. Sen. DeMint successfully obstructed the confirmation of Errol Souther as TSA Administrator saying the appointee “has not been forthcoming about whether he’ll give union bosses control of our airport security, which is one of the most important decisions he’ll make as head of the TSA.” While Sen. DeMint may not realize that ‘union bosses’ come out of the workforce and are elected unlike corporate bosses, the recent Supreme Court decision provides millions of reasons to continue to oppose the right to organize.

But what if this rhetoric suggesting that government workers are a threat if they organize puts these workers in danger from anti-government extremists? Terms such as ‘bureaucrats’ are used to dehumanize those who serve the America people each day. It is this dehumanizing rhetoric that makes it easier to morph the person into the policy. Thus an attack on the person becomes an attack on the policy and can be justified in the mind of a terrorist. Sen. DeMint is presumably opposing TSA collective bargaining rights as a fundraising tactic (although he is protected by officers with those rights).

Yesterday that tactic, that hate speech against government workers may have contributed to a tragedy in Austin.

This article originally appeared in the Washington DC Examiner on February 19, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

Credit: Joe Kekeris

Massachusetts voters sent a strong signal to Washington lawmakers Tuesday that they want results—and aren’t seeing any. Not on health care reform, not on job creation and not on fixing the nation’s economy.

Voters also sent another powerful message for Democrats: Ignore the working class at your peril.

Some 79 percent of voters polled on election night said the most important issue for them was electing a candidate who will strengthen the economy and create more jobs. Controlling health care costs was next on their list, with 54 percent citing that issue as the main determinant of their vote.

The poll, conducted by Hart Research Associates among 810 voters for the AFL-CIO on the night of the election, also found that although voters without a college degree favored Barack Obama by 21 percentage points in the 2008 election, Democratic candidate Martha Coakley lost that same group by a 20-point margin.

And as AFL-CIO Richard Trumka has pointed out, Massachusetts voters have the same goals for reforming health care, creating good jobs and strengthening the economy as they did in November 2008—but President Obama and the Democrats have done too little:

“Voters showed they don’t think Democrats have overreached—they think that the Democrats underreached.”

In fact, voters were not worried about Democratic “overreach”—47 percent said their bigger concern about Democrats is that they haven’t succeeded in making needed change rather than tried to make too many changes too quickly (32 percent). Even voters for Scott Brown were more concerned about a lack of change (50 percent) than about trying to make too many changes too quickly (43 percent).

These results puts a lie to the corporate media spin that Democrats have gone “too far” in pushing a reform agenda.

Nor was the election result about health care reform. Brown actually lost among the 59 percent of voters who picked health care as one of their top two voting issues (50 percent for Coakley and 46 percent for Brown). Voters for Brown (55 percent ) were less likely to cite health care as a top issue than were voters for Coakley (66 percent).

The election also should be a wake-up call for those in Washington who support taxing working families’ health care. Voters who thought their health care would be taxed voted by 64 percent for Brown, while those who did not think their health care would be taxed voted by 54 percent to 40 percent for Coakley.

Our polling results show the election was not an endorsement of a Republican agenda or a call to abandon health care reform. Voters strongly disapprove of the job being done by congressional Republicans (26 percent approve and 58 percent disapprove), a much lower rating than they give to congressional Democrats (37 percent approve and 51 percent disapprove).

Other polls show the need for Democrats in Congress to take immediate action to create jobs, reform health care, stop catering to Wall Street and address the needs of America’s working class. As John Judis wrote, the election showed Democrats have lost ground primarily among white working and middle-class voters and senior citizens.

The Suffolk University poll in Massachusetts…singled out two white working-class towns, Gardner and Fitchburg, as bellwethers. Obama won Gardner, where Democrats hold a 3-1 registrations edge, by 59 percent to 31 percent in 2008. Brown won it by 56 percent to 42 percent. Obama won Fitchburg, with a similar Democratic edge, by 60 percent to 38 percent in 2008. Brown won it by 59 percent to 40 percent. That suggests a fairly dramatic shift among white working-class voters.

Summarizing the findings from election night polling conducted by Research 2000 Massachusetts Poll, MoveOn.org said the results show voters worry that Democrats in power “have not done enough to combat the policies of the Bush era.”

Both sets of voters wanted stronger, more progressive action on health care reform as well. In summary, the poll shows that the party who fights corporate interests—especially on making the economy work for most Americans—will win the confidence of the voters.

The working class has spoken. Will Democrats listen?

*This post was crossposted from the AFL-CIO blog on January 21, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

This morning, President Obama announced he will invite labor leaders, business executives, small business owners, economists and other financial experts to a special White House summit on jobs next month.

Obama says the summit will explore ways to slow the loss of jobs and quicken the pace of job creation at a time when the nation’s jobless rate is at 10.2 percent, its highest point since 1983. As Obama said,

We have an obligation to consider every additional responsible step that we can to encourage and accelerate job creation in this country.

Just this week, the AFL-CIO Executive Council met in Washington, D.C., to outline a national jobs creation strategy that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will announce Tuesday at a special Economic Policy Institute (EPI) jobs and economy panel and seminar. (Plan now to view the live webcast from 9-11:30 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 17, at www.aflcio.org/createjobs.)

The summit announcement came as a new report showed there were 502,000 initial claims for unemployment benefits last week. Dire as that is, it’s lower than expected and is the smallest number of first-time claims since January. But, according to Obama:

Even though we’ve slowed the loss of jobs—and today’s report on the continued decline in unemployment claims is a hopeful sign—the economic growth that we’ve seen has not yet led to the job growth that we desperately need.

EPI President Lawrence Mishel calls the announcement of the White House jobs summit “necessary and welcome.”

President Obama is right to say that we should take “every responsible step” to help put Americans back to work. With a double-digit unemployment rate and nearly 16 million Americans looking for work, we should take decisive action as quickly as possible to create jobs. High rates of unemployment damage our economy in ways that can take years, if not generations, to fix, by casting millions of families and children into poverty and making it difficult for our nation to invest for the future. President Obama’s focus on job creation is necessary and welcome.

Currently 15.7 million workers are jobless and when the unemployment and underemployment rates are combined they soar to 17.5 percent—more than 27 million workers.

A date for the summit will be announced soon.

This article originally appeared in AFL-CIO blog on November 12, 2009. Reprinted with permission from the author.

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. I came to the AFL- CIO in 1989 and have written for several federation publications, focusing on legislation and politics, especially grassroots mobilization and workplace safety. When my collar was still blue, I 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. I’ve also worked as roadie for a small-time country-rock band, sold my blood plasma and played an occasional game of poker to help pay the rent. You may have seen me at one of several hundred Grateful Dead shows. I was the one with longhair and the tie-dye. Still have the shirts, lost the hair.

While we take the time this Veterans Day to honor the courage and sacrifice shown by our veterans, we should also rededicate ourselves to making sure vets have a secure and stable life after they finish their service.

The U.S. Labor Department reports the unemployment rate among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is 11.3 percent, significantly above the overall rate of 10.2 percent for the nation as a whole. Some 185,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are out of work. Many of these unemployed veterans are National Guard or Reserve troops who were called to duty but found when they came home that their old jobs were no longer there for them.

The AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council is calling on Congress to strengthen and enforce the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, which ensures veterans can claim their former jobs when they return from active duty.

In his Veterans Day message, Union Veterans Council Chairman Mark Ayers quotes President Franklin Roosevelt who signed the first GI Bill into law in 1944:

What our servicemen and women want, more than anything else, is the assurance of satisfactory employment upon their return to civil life.

“For today’s veterans, that same desire holds true,” Ayers says.

Click here to read Ayers’ message.

There is good news for vets on this holiday. President Obama signed on Nov. 9 a new executive order that underscores to federal agencies the importance of recruiting and training veterans, to increase the employment of veterans within the executive branch and to help recently hired veterans adjust to civilian life.

The executive order establishes a Veterans Employment Program office within most federal agencies, the White House said. These offices will be responsible for helping veterans identify employment opportunities within federal agencies, providing feedback to veterans about their employment application status, and helping veterans recently employed by agencies adjust to civilian life and a workplace culture often different than military service.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Veterans Affairs Secretary  will chair a high-level committee to oversee the program. Click here to read the executive order.

The Union Veterans Council also is calling for other federal programs, as well:

• Expanding state and local programs for providing job training and employment counseling services.
• Increasing coverage of the new post-9/11 GI Bill to include payments for apprenticeships and on-the-job training.
• Continuing funding for the nationally recognized AFL-CIO “Helmets to Hardhats” program, which has placed tens of thousands of transitioning veterans into careers in the construction industry.

Ayers sums it up this way:

On this Veterans Day, we have the privilege of honoring these very special American men and women whose sacrifices and service are beyond most people’s comprehension. We owe them a great deal. First and foremost, we owe them our freedom. Secondly, we owe them our gratitude. And finally, we owe them the prospect of a secure and stable life upon the conclusion of their service.

This post originally appeared in AFL-CIO blog on November 10, 2009. Reprinted with permission from the author.

About the Author: James Parks had his first encounter with unions at Gannett’s newspaper in Cincinnati when his colleagues in the newsroom tried to organize a unit of The Newspaper Guild. He saw firsthand how companies pull out all the stops to prevent workers from forming a union. He is a journalist by trade, and worked for newspapers in five different states before joining the AFL-CIO staff in 1990. He has also been a seminary student, drug counselor, community organizer, event planner, adjunct college professor and county bureaucrat. His proudest career moment, though, was when he served, along with other union members and staff, as an official observer for South Africa’s first multiracial elections.

Unions and progressive coalitions are seeking to add grass-roots organizing power to President Obama’s calls for financial reform, with stepped up activism from the AFL-CIO, Jobs for Justice and the progressive Americans for Financial Reform coalition all starting this week.

Following last week’s AFL-CIO convention that aimed to jump-start reform drives and the union movement, new president Richard Trumka and other leaders will be taking their case for economic reform to Wall Street and the  public. As the AFL-CIO Now blog reported:

The team’s tour continues Sunday and Monday in Atlanta, including a rally outside Wachovia, where Trumka will condemn its predatory financial practices, such as foreclosures. On Monday night and Tuesday, the team travels to New York City where Trumka will issue a strong warning to Wall Street at a press conference outside the New York Stock Exchange.

The goal: create a fairer economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy.

On Thursday, the Jobs for Justice Coalition plans an action—one of many protests scheduled for over 20 cities over the next week—outside a meeting of the pro-banking Financial Services Roundtable in Washington, D.C., a key lobbying coalition opposed to the Administration’s proposed consumer financial protection agency, as well as other reforms.

As a Jobs for Justice press release proclaimed:

Thousands expected to participate in over a dozen cities to mark the one-year anniversary of the bank bailouts.

Nearly a year after Congress authorized hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the financial industry, major banks continue to pay outrageous salaries and bonuses, drive layoffs and foreclosures, and spend millions lobbying against the interests working people.

Rallies across the country will condemn the “bailout bandits” and “corporate criminals” at Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.

Actions will take place in at least 21 cities, and new cities are being added every week. See below for local contacts and find an up to day list of actions at www.jwj.org/recovery.

There are good reasons for all the anger. But it has has yet to lead to a massive public outpouring for progressive reform, as opposed to the corporate-abetted “Tea Party” events that also decry bailouts along with healthcare reform, while leaving the current toothless oversight of the financial industry in place.

Even though federal officials allowed a free-spending set of bailouts with no requirements and little oversight, virtually nothing has been done to make sure the money isn’t wasted and is spent in ways that benefit the economy. Indeed, nobody really knows how the $700 billion in bailout funds was actually spent.

So while inside-the-beltway analysts claim that Obama has an uphill fight in Congress, out-of-control banks and  Wall Street firms are now squandering taxpayers’ funds while returning to trading in risky investments. And credit is still largely frozen, worsening the “jobless recovery.”

As the Media Consortium summed up in its year-later review of the Wall Street collapse:

While workers experienced increasing pressure on their pocketbooks, Wall Street gambled away their retirement investments. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy one year ago today, a move which created chaos in the financial sector and heavy damage in the rest of the economy. Things were looking bad for the economy before Wall Street imploded, but the financial crisis made those problems a lot worse.

“In a modern society, a credit freeze means instant death to the real economy, since virtually every enterprise, big and small, runs on credit,” Les Leopold explains for In These Times. “When the financial sector froze, it pushed the real economy off a cliff.”

But incredibly, after a year marked by massive financial bailouts, not one new law has been signed to protect our economy–and taxpayers–from Wall Street. Not one.

Even the modest plans to rein in executive pay for taxpayer-supported companies have proved toothless. Leopold notes that President Barack Obama’s refusal to crack down on the banks has left both the financial regulatory process and other important progressive plans–like overhauling the broken health care system–in a precarious political state. The largesse we have shown for bailed-out bankers gives conservatives ammunition against other, more productive activities.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-media-consortium/weekly-audit-one-year-aft_b_287290.html

Perhaps the biggest promoter of refom, outside of the president himself, is the potentially influential coalition of 200 labor, consumer and  progressive groups, Americans for Financial Reform. It is planning grassroots actions while working with federal and state government officials to promote greater oversight of the financial system.

Indeed, to shore up support for administration proposals to rein in risky  investments, limit pay and offer a new consumer protection agency — all facing stiff industry opposition — the Treasury Department is reaching out to likely consumer allies, including the AFR organization.

So while some progressives and experts, including former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, remain skeptical about how committed this administration is to truly reforming a broken financial system, Bloomberg News reports that

Treasury Department officials are meeting with consumer allies to build support for a regulations overhaul for Wall Street as President Barack Obama ramps up a campaign to win legislation by year’s end.

The Treasury roundtables have been largely unpublicized, by invitation only and billed by some Democratic lawmakers as consumer-protection forums. The audiences are drawn in part from the rolls of a consumer-advocacy coalition that is pushing the legislation. They are designed to channel public anger at Wall Street and sidestep the financial industry, which is fighting to block the measure…

Audiences for the events are drawn largely from the membership of Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of more than 12 dozen consumer, labor and civil rights groups that joined this year to push for oversight. The coalition includes the Service Employees International Union and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

Illinois Roundtable

The group will hold its next roundtable in Aurora, Illinois, on Sept. 21. State Attorney General Lisa Madigan will lead the session, and the group has invited Representative Bill Foster, an Illinois Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee.

Another non-profit group, Boston-based American Business Leaders for Financial Reform, is recruiting corporate executives to make the case for legislation. Tim Duncan, a Republican and founder of advisory firm Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Story Street Investment Management, created the organization after a conversation with Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law School professor who oversees the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

“There are a lot of people in the industry who realize reform is needed,” Duncan said in a telephone interview. “I’m surprised at the knee-jerk reaction industry is taking.”

But long-time observers of the financial industry aren’t suprised that a major battle lies ahead—and unions hope to play a leading role in pushing for reform.

And yet if this drive for reform falters, the fate of the entire economy is at stake. As Robert Reich described the risks we’re now facing:

Put simply, the Street has been given too many opportunities to play too many games with other peoples’ money.

But, like the health care industry, Wall Street has platoons of lobbyists and an almost unlimited war chest to protect its interests and prevent change. And with the Dow Jones Industrial Average trending upward again — and the public’s and the media’s attention focused elsewhere, especially on health care — it will be difficult to summon the same sense of urgency financial reform commanded six months ago.

Yet without substantial reform, the nation and the world will almost certainly be plunged into the same crisis or worse at some point in the not-too-distant future. Wall Street’s major banks are already en route to their old, dangerous ways — now made more dangerous by their sure knowledge that they are too big to fail.

About the Author: Art Levine is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly who has also written for The American Prospect, Alternet, In These Times, Salon, The New Republic, The Atlantic and numerous other publications. He’s written investigative articles on unionbusting and other corporate abuses, and recently completed Cornell University’s Strategic Corporate Research summer program. He blogs regularly for Huffington Post, and co-hosts a weekly Blog Talk Radio show, “The D’Antoni and Levine Show,” every Thursday at 5:30 p.m. ET.

This article originally appeared in Working In These Times on September 20, 2009. Re-printed with permission from the author.

(The following post is part of our Taking Back Labor Day blog series. Many people view Labor Day as just another day off from work, the end of summer, or a fine day for a barbecue. We think that it’s a holiday with a rich history, and an excellent occasion to examine what workers, and workers rights activism, means to this country. Our Taking Back Labor Day posts in September will do that, from a variety of perspectives, and we hope you’ll tune in and join the discussion!)

*****

President Obama’s well-received health reform speech not only boosted public support for reform, but helped fire up much of the progressive base—despite his failing to draw a firm line in the sand on the public option.  

Yet as Mike Lux, co-director and CEO of Progressive Strategies, pointed out Thursday on the Web radio show I co-host, “The D’Antoni and Levine Show,” Obama accomplished a key goal of inspiring progressives, including influential labor leaders, to push harder for reform—while starting to recapture the “narrative” about healthcare back from the right-wing.

Lux observed: “In order to get big pieces of legislation passed, you have to have people who are pumped, ready to go, fired up, willing to knock on doors. He was having trouble generating that. People were confused and down in the mouth. But the speech did what he needed to do and did it in a big way.

More sparks for a reform drive are expected to start this weekend, when the AFL-CIO begins its convention, and Obama appears before them next week, following up on his fiery Labor Day rally appearance and Wednesday’s congressional speech.

Before the president’s address to Congress, Lux added, “we never really had control of the narrative. Obama, for all his eloquence, had trouble laying out a story of what was wrong and why he wanted it changed. In order to tell a compelling story, you have to tell who the villains are, and he’s not very good at that. We never really had a story being told that people could latch on to, understand and get excited about.”

“We now have that,” Lux said on Thursday about the President’s messaging. “Last night, he went after insurance companies in a big way, and went after people lying about the plan, and called them out in a big way. And now have a narrative we can take to people.”

(Of course, long before the speech, many activists in the union movement have been working hard for healthcare reform — an issue that’s now become a legislative priority ahead of the Employee Free Choice Act — but the speech can reignite their fervor while broadening the range of people involved in grass-roots activism.)

Meanwhile, insurance industry executives continue to play their part as villains: a new report by the California Nurses Association shows that up to 40 percent of claims are denied in California insurance companies, making those profit-driven bureaucrats part of the real “death panels.” On Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! show this week, she highlighted the nursing association report and featured an interview with a mother, Hilda Sarkisyan, whose daughter died after she was initially denied a liver transplant by CIGNA, which has a 33-percent claim rejection rate so far this year. After a massive public campaign, the insurance company finally relented, but it was too late:

HILDA SARKISYAN: Well, we miss her. We don’t have our beautiful daughter with us anymore. And CIGNA is doing this every day, every day. And that’s why I’m out there to help other families to stop them. It’s not only CIGNA; it’s all the insurance industry, that they are placing profit before patient, and it’s not right…You know, they should not enforce the care of the people to their deep pockets. It’s all about their pocket, all about the CEO, how much he makes. I miss my daughter. I had a beautiful, perfect daughter. I don’t have her anymore. I don’t.

AMY GOODMAN: Hilda, describe what happened to your daughter.

HILDA SARKISYAN: Well, we had insurance. We were covered. We thought we had insurance. So it’s like having insurance and not having insurance is the same thing. People who have insurance and don’t have it, they get the same care. But having insurance and knowing that you do have it, and you are recommended to a certain hospital, because the insurance company only pays if you go to that hospital, you go to that hospital, which in our case was UCLA. We were transferred there. By the way, that’s our fourth hospital within, I would say, three years, because they were jumping us around. And finally, you go there. My son gave her the perfect bone marrow transplant, perfect match. And my daughter needed a liver transplant. And so many requests, so many requests, and they were—the doctors were denied. We were denied, until the California Nurses Association stepped in, helped us out.

We had to get out and go to their headquarters in Glendale, make a scene with our family, the Armenian Youth Federation, our church. Why do we have to do that? I’m a mother who should have been next to my daughter. Only if I knew she was going to die that same day, you think I would have that energy to go out there and do that? I could have been holding my daughter’s hand and praying with her. This is not right.

With his speech to Congress last night, President Obama re-energized the forces for reform and has set a clear path for victory. We’re going to do our part and hold Congress accountable – the time has come for Congress to put people above profits and enact real health care reform. We’re also going to pull out all the stops to take on the insurance industry. The President’s right – ‘The time for games has passed – now is the season for action.’

President Obama made clear his support of a public option, which is just that – an option that will help improve quality, lower costs and keep the insurance companies in check.

Labor Day marches and rallies capped off more than a month of an incredible union member mobilization to move the health care reform debate beyond the screaming diatribes and disruptive tactics by opponents that marred the start of the congressional recess.

During the weekend, some 150,000 union members turned out for rallies, parades and picnics that not only celebrated the workers’ holiday, but showed broad support for comprehensive health care reform.

Those events followed the more than 400 August town hall meetings, health care forums and other events where more than 24,000 union members spoke up for health care and wrote letters, made phone calls and went door to door to educate their neighbors.

The Hudson Institute, which, as prior unbossed stories have shown, has historically been a shill for the tobacco industry, Monsanto products, and more, is now making a huge push to go after unions . . . Unions and their allies should take this attack seriously.

A recent Hudson Institute “study” on pensions, claims (among other things) that comparing union pensions versus company pensions (a vague division of a complex area) shows that unions underfund pensions for their members but generously fund pensions for their own employees. Holy shades of Central States Pension Fund scandal!

The charges, if taken seriously, could be the sort of thing that leads to indictments or at least investigations or at least calls for investigations. What could be a better way to knock out one of Obama’s supporters and supporters of progressive causes than to tar them with scandal and charges of corruption?

The “study” is strong on its results but fails to peel apart distinctions among pension funds that matter. For example, pensions funds are funded by employers, not unions, but you would never know that from the language used. The “study” also fails to point out that, when unions fund their employees’ pensions funds, the union is acting in the capacity of an employer.

It also fails to disaggregate data and talks about all pension funds related in some way to unions as if they were all the same. That is not the case. They differ in their form and in their roles and industries. For example, the construction industry and other industries as well, such as mining have historically used multi-employer pension and benefit funds – also known as Taft-Hartley funds – whose benefits and payments are negotiated as part of collective bargaining agreements and controlled by trustees who are representatives of the employer or union. Other unions negotiate the benefits to be provided by the employer and do not have a multi-employer fund.

For more on Taft-Hartley funds, here is a clear overview.

Consider that these funds operate in industries, such as construction, that have been under huge stress for a number of years, with job losses that may lead to pension underfunding. Without some clearer explanations, it’s impossible to assess the validity of the results.

Consider also that rather than employers being the white knights here, employer after employer has gone to the PBGC to take over and fund pensions for seriously underfunded pensions.

How did the Hudson Institute miss this bit of recent current events?

Unions need to take these charges seriously. Forbes has gone with the story, and there can be no doubt it will be pushed to the max. And getting digs in with this story will only encourage using this tactic to go after more issues that are on the political agenda now and that matter to us.

Dealing with the Hudson Institute takes more than quips. They are well funded and serious. Their “research” has been used to push bad policy in a number of areas. The study gets in a number of serious attacks on unions that may well be picked up and promote negative views about unions. Here is the study.

It should also be noted that the author of the study seems to have been responsible for issuing study after study in a short time period that are forming the intellectual basis for much of the far Right’s agenda right now. As “studies”, they are likely to be given a great deal of credibility.

Here is what the author was doing over her summer vacation.

* 09/07/2009

Union Bigs Get The Best Deals: A Sour Labor Day Lesson on Pensions

* 09/03/2009

Don’t Buy Unions’ Labor Day Bluster

* 08/27/2009

Obama’s Excessively Optimistic Deficit Projections

* 08/20/2009

Turning Uncle Sam into Peeping Tom

* 08/14/2009

Are Women Paid Less Than Men?

* 08/13/2009

Obama’s Health Care Bogeyman Is Obama

* 08/10/2009

Real Madrid, a Threat to Anyone

* 08/06/2009

The High Cost of Medical Malpractice

* 08/06/2009

Reduce The High Cost of Medical Malpractice

* 07/30/2009

The Healthcare Bankruptcy Myth

* 07/23/2009

Is America Ready for Single Payer Healthcare?

* 07/16/2009

A Very Unhealthy Health Bill

* 07/14/2009

Minimum Wage Hike Spreads Blue State Unemployment Misery

* 07/09/2009

Obama, Title IX, and Academics?

* 07/09/2009

Gender Equality: From Sports to Math and Science

* 07/03/2009

Getting a Summer Job: Entrepreneurship for Teens

* 07/02/2009

It’s Time to Go Nuclear

* 06/26/2009

What Will The Climate Change Bill Do to Your Job?

* 06/25/2009

Socialized Medicine Through the Eyes of a Recipient

* 06/19/2009

Starting a Trade War with “Buy America”

* 06/18/2009

A VAT Tax Is Not the Answer

* 06/17/2009

Workers Deserve Better Pension Plan

* 06/11/2009

High-Speed Rail: A Big-Ticket Item That Drives Deficits

* 06/11/2009

A Better Way to Fund Roads

* 06/04/2009

We Face Major Healthcare Choices

* 06/04/2009

The Health Insurance Reform Stakes Begin

* 05/28/2009

Obama Should Ditch Deadly CAFE Standards

As for the study on pensions, it says that unions pressure employers into signing onto union benefit and then use the money for other purposes in the tradition of the troubled Teamsters Central State fund, leaving the workers covered by those funds without the benefits promised. It then says to compare that situation with the funds that cover the employees of unions who get nice well funded benefit plans. This sort of charge fits nicely goes after the popular view in Gallup polls on the public’s view of unions through the years that unions do a nice job for their members.

Some of the findings verge on calling for an investigation of unions pension funds for criminal behavior.

That part of the study has now been used in an op-ed for Labor Day.

Union Bigs Get The Best Deals: A Sour Labor Day Lesson on Pensions

From The New York Daily News on September 7, 2009 by Diana Furchtgott-Roth

This Labor Day, unions are once again seeking to recruit new members with promises of higher wages and generous pension benefits. These promises are made despite pension funds’ reports to the U.S. Labor Department showing that collectively bargained pension funds are underfunded when compared with other pensions.

In contrast, pension funds for unions’ own staff and officers have been doing just fine.

In 2006, the latest year for which full data are available, only 17% of union-negotiated plans were fully funded, compared with 35% of nonunion plans.

Under the Pension Protection Act of 2006, funds with less than 80% of assets are in “endangered” status. In 2006, 41% of union funds were “endangered,” compared with 14% of nonunion funds.

Whether it’s best to go after the study directly or to take pieces of it apart and go after the ideas, without naming the source, is a matter of strategy and tactics.

It is important to go after every piece of what is claimed in that study and take them on in as serious a way as they are after unions and other progressive forces in our society.

Forbes may describe the Hudson Institute as “conservative leaning”. What it really is is a shill for the tobacco industry, pesticide use, anything made by Monsanto, and so on. It is funded by hard right groups like Scaife. Its most active activist is Alex A. Avery, Director of Research and Education, Center for Global Food Issues. Given what it is, how could anyone cite anything it says with a straight face. its stock in trade is creating astroturf groups, such as Avery’s Earth Friendly, Farm Friendly.

More on the Hudson Institute and its fellow travelers here.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hudson_Institute

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Global_Food_Issues

http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=565&name=Hudson-Institute

http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=3583&name=Dennis-T-Avery

http://www.frontgroups.org/search/node/hudson+institute

• pensions,
• unions,
• labor,
• work,
• employment

This article originally appeared in Unbossed on September 8, 2009. Re-printed with permission from the author.

(The following post is part of our Taking Back Labor Day blog series. Many people view Labor Day as just another day off from work, the end of summer, or a fine day for a barbecue. We think that it’s a holiday with a rich history, and an excellent occasion to examine what workers, and workers rights activism, means to this country. Our Taking Back Labor Day posts in September will do that, from a variety of perspectives, and we hope you’ll tune in and join the discussion!)

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At Workplace Fairness, Labor Day isn’t just another day off from work or the last day of summer. And while this former Kansas City resident has nothing against barbecues, the day is much more than one of the last chances of the season to grill outdoors with family and friends. We think that Labor Day is a holiday with a rich history, and an excellent occasion to examine what workers, and workers rights activism, means to this country. In commemoration of Labor Day, we’re excited to launch two new website features, our “Taking Back Labor Day” blog carnival, and our 2009 Labor Day Report, Change Has Come to the Workplace.

Throughout September, Today’s Workplace will be hosting our second annual “Taking Back Labor Day” blog carnival. Our guest bloggers, who will include many of the leading thinkers on labor and employment issues, will focus on why the labor movement is still important and address some of the most critical issues affecting workers today. We are also inviting YOU to participate: either by preparing a blog post for submission, or by making comments and using “Taking Back Labor Day” as an opportunity to have a real conversation about the future of the American workplace. Tune in every weekday in September at www.todaysworkplace.org to see the latest “Taking Back Labor Day” post, and join right in!

It’s also time for a look back at the previous year in the workplace, and we do so in our 2009 Labor Day Report, “Change Has Come to the Workplace.” In the past year, there was no more important development affecting the workplace than the election of President Barack Obama. After eight years of an Administration that could generally be characterized as hostile to workers’ rights and more interested in promoting business interests than ensuring employees were protected, the election of a more worker-friendly president has the potential to bring about significant change. In Change Has Come to the Workplace, by legal intern Hannah Goitein (The George Washington University Law School Class of 2011), we highlight the changes we have already seen in the last several months, as well as talk about what is on the horizon.

We hope these two new website features provide much interesting food for thought for you on this Labor Day weekend, while you’re enjoying that barbecue or last dip in the pool, or getting your children ready to start school on Tuesday. Have a great Labor Day weekend, but don’t forget who makes it possible – the American worker.

About the Author: Paula Brantner is Executive Director of Workplace Fairness, after serving as its Program Director from 2003 to 2007, writing legal content for the Webby-nominated site www.workplacefairness.org. Most recently, Paula was the Program Director for Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, and the Working America Education Fund. From 1997-2001, she was the senior staff attorney at the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA), heading NELA’s amicus, legislative/policy, and judicial nominations programs. An employment lawyer for over 16 years, Brantner has degrees from UC-Hastings College of the Law and Michigan State University’s James Madison College.

President Obama knows the value of unions to the American economy and to American workers. He has forcefully spoken in support of workers organizing to improve their lives and staunchly supported the Employee Free Choice Act. But even a popular president has to count votes. Today he spoke again on the Employee Free Choice Act and while admitting the votes may not be there for passage in its present form, he spoke of the need to reestablished balance to the workplace.

At a town hall meeting today in Rio Rancho, N.M. the President spoke about the bill and the vital role unions play in a strong economy. He said that, “one of the things that I believe in, and if you look at our history, I think it bears this out – even if you’re not a member of a union, you owe something to unions, because a lot of the things that you take for granted as an employee of a company, the idea of overtime and minimum wage and benefits, a whole host of things that you, even if you’re not a member of a union, now take for granted, that happened because unions fought and helped to make employers more accountable.”

In addressing declining union membership he admits that it, “…has declined significantly over the last 30 years. And so the question is why is that? Now part of it, the economy has changed. The culture has changed. There hasn’t been a very friendly politics in Washington when it comes to union membership. But part of it just has to do with the fact that the scales have been tilted to make it really hard to form a union. so a lot of companies, because they want maximum flexibility, they would rather spend a lot of money on consultants and lawyers to prevent a union from forming than they would just going ahead and having the union and then trying to work with, and collectively, allow workers to collectively bargain..

During the last few decades employers have aggressively opposed the right to organize in their workplaces hiring union busting consultants to place obstacles in the way of workers. Current law doesn’t provide ample protection or penalties for employers creating an atmosphere of fear in the workplace.

Obama believes that a solution is at hand. “So there’s a bill called the Employee Free Choice Act that would try to even out the playing field. And what it would essentially say is that if majority of workers at a company want a union, then they can get a union without delay and some of the monkey business that’s done right now to prevent them from having a union.”

Corporate anti-union front groups have advanced an agenda against the right to organize claiming that the bill would tilt the playing field too far in working people’s favor. Obama addresses these concerns and admits that compromises may be needed to ensure passage.

“Now, I want to give the other side of the argument. businesses object to some of the provisions in the Employee free Choice Act because one of the things that’s in there is something called card check where rather than have a secret ballot and organize a big election, you could simply have enough employees, a majority of employees, check a card and that would then form the union. And the employers argue we need to have a secret ballot. I think that there may be areas of compromise to get this bill done.”

In closing his remarks on the bill Obama reiterates his support and asserts that labor law reform will be passed. “I’m supportive of it. But there aren’t enough votes right now in the Senate to get it passed. And what I think we have to do is to find ways in which the core idea of the Employee Free Choice Act is preserved, which is how do we make it easier for people who want to form a union to at least get a vote and have an even playing field. How do we do that? But at the same time get enough votes to pass the bill. That’s what we’re working on right now. I think it’s going to have a chance at passage but there’s still more work to be done.”