Labor Digest January 27, 2012

Here we go again...Right To Work (for less) Returns

Lobby Day Thursday, February 9
Representatives Hall, NH State House
1:30 pm (Check-in at America Votes at 12:30)

The Speaker of the NH House promised that despite the Governor's Veto and the number of Representatives who sustained that veto, the people of NH would see Right to Work (for less) again. In this case he was a man of his word, here it is: HB 1677.  The Labor Committee's public hearing on this bill will be on Thursday, February 9th at 1:30. This bill is pretty much the same as the House version of HB 474 last year because the anti-worker forces behind this legislation don't have any new ideas.

There will be a briefing at 12:30 for those who might wish to speak at the hearing. The briefing will be at the America Votes office at 4 Park Street room 302 (right next to the State House Lawn). The article below is about the great turn-out we had on January 19th for the all-day marathon session of union busting bills. It would be terrific to match that day's turnout so that the Representatives know just how strong our opposition is to this anti-worker agenda.

For more information, or to RSVP contact Dan Justiceat the NH AFL-CIO office at 603.623.7302

Nashua TelegraphArticle About
Our Last Lobby Day

Labor groups protest ‘union-busting’ bills in Concord
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/947105-196/labor-groups-protest-union-busting-bills-in.html

By Jake Berry

Crowded by hundreds of teachers, firefighters and other union members, state Rep. Andrew White tried to quiet the gathering Thursday morning at the New Hampshire Statehouse.

“I’d like to suggest we move to a larger room … where members of the public aren’t right at our backs,” White, D-Lebanon, said as the union members filled the small meeting room on the third floor of the Legislative Office Building.

“We’ll always be on your back,” one union member shouted in response, drawing applause from the growing crowd. “We’re not going anywhere.”

Union members from Nashua to the North Country gathered at the Statehouse on Thursday to weigh in on a series of bills they feared would collectively cripple unions across the state.

The bills, up for consideration in the House labor committee, range from a plan to eliminate automatic deductions from paychecks for union dues to one proposing to allow nonunion workers to opt out of union representation.

Another bill, proposing to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees, likely will be amended in coming weeks before it goes to a full House vote, according to its lead sponsor.

Members of the House labor committee took public comment on the bills Thursday. They’ll likely debate the proposals over the coming weeks, issuing a recommendation before sending them forward to the full House sometime next month.

Speaking Thursday, sponsors of the bills defended the proposals, saying they would save taxpayers money by allowing employers to bypass unions and negotiate directly with workers.

“The state should not be involved in dealing with withholding anything. That’s up to individual employers and banks,” state Rep. Susan DeLemus, R-Rochester, who sponsored the direct deposit proposal.

Opponents, who wore union shirts and stickers as signs of solidarity, maintained that the proposals would only erase bargaining rights for which lawmakers have fought for decades.

“This is brutal. It’s a never-ending attack. We just want what was promised to us,” Erich Weeks, a Hudson firefighter and president of the Hudson union, said Thursday. He joined hundreds of workers from around the state rallying outside the Statehouse.

“This is singling out unions as part of what is a concerted attack on unionism, collective bargaining and the idea of people working together to better their lives,” added Ted O’Brien, a retired television newsman and member of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists who testified before the labor committee. “This is ridiculous.”

Thursday’s labor fight is the continuation of a battle that has raged in Virginia, Wisconsin and other states that have voted to limit or erase collective bargaining rights.

New Hampshire legislators took up the battle last year, voting to pass a right-to-work bill that would have outlawed the collective bargaining practice of requiring nonunion members to pay a fee to cover labor costs. But Gov. John Lynch vetoed the legislation, and House Republicans failed to gather enough votes to override the veto.

Most of the bills addressed Thursday have a different effect on organized labor, union leaders said.

The proposals to eliminate automatic deductions and to free nonunion members from paying dues, among others, would tear away lightly at the unions, discouraging members from taking part.

“I call it jackhammer legislation,” said David Lang, president of the Professional Fire Fighters of New Hampshire union. “It just starts chip, chip, chipping away until the whole house falls down.”

But one proposal in particular would have a more devastating effect, undermining unions entirely, organizers said.

HB 1645, sponsored by state Rep. Gary Lambert, R-Litchfield, proposes to repeal public employees’ collective bargaining rights.

Rather than negotiating as a group, this legislation would effectively leave firefighter, police and teacher contracts to the will of local councils, select boards or other municipal governing boards, who are responsible for town contracts, opponents said.

Lambert acknowledged the complications of the bill Thursday, saying he did not mean to propose eliminating all public collective bargaining rights when he filed his bill. Instead, he intended for the legislation to allow public employees to opt out of union representation when negotiating contracts.

State legislative staff, who helped write the bill, used much stronger language, Lambert told members of the House of Representatives’ Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services committee.

He intends to rework the legislation before bringing it to a full House vote later this winter.

“I have made a classic freshman mistake,” the first-term legislator said. “If you believe people should not be locked into a contract they are not a party to, maybe you should work with me.”

Local union members further decried the proposal as denying public workers basic rights.

“This would leave us at the whim of the government. It would leave us at the whim of politicians,” said Eric Tremblay, a Nashua fire lieutenant. “I don’t think anybody becomes a fireman to get rich. We just want what was promised to us.”

Members of the House’s Republican leadership team expressed concerns about the bill.

“If you don’t have fair labor practices, you could have a town and city shut down. Consider the consequences of what would happen to the people we represent,” state Rep. Shawn Jasper, R-Hudson, the deputy House majority leader.

Jake Berry can be reached at 594-6402 or jberry@nashuatelegraph.com.

Interfaith Service on Worker Justice

Thursday, February 2, 4:00 pm Service,
5:30 Faith-Labor Dialogue Session
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
21 Centre Street, Concord

The New Hampshire Faith-Labor Dialogue Project has been working to promote fuller collaboration between labor activists and faith leaders in the state battle for worker and economic justice. In the spirit of this collaboration, Affiliate members and members of the community are invited to attend an interfaith service with Reverend Paul Sherry, D.C. Public Policy Director for the Chicago-based Interfaith Worker Justice organization. In an interfaith service open to people of all faiths (or no specific faith tradition), Rev. Sherry will deliver a message about how the moral teachings of multiple faith traditions impel us to be instruments of economic and worker justice in our own communities and beyond.

Labor leaders and activists interested in building stronger relationships between faith and labor communities are also encouraged to attend a follow-up to the initial NH Faith-Labor Dialogue Session held in October. We will receive inspiration from Rev. Sherry about working and witnessing together to achieve economically just public policy in NH. The brainstorming session will also be at St. Paul's, following the interfaith service. The service is open to all, but please RSVP if you plan to attend the meeting. Please contact Gail Kinney, 603-381-7324 or email uniongale@aol.com, for more information or to RSVP.

Nashua District Meeting

Wednesday, February 8th
5:30pm (Reps to arrive at 6pm)
Wellness Center Conference Room
Nashua Community College, 505 Amherst Street

District meetings are a good way to meet your local representatives, get to know their positions and to let them know what is important to you. It is the way the people hold elected officials accountable for the positions they take.  It is also a good way to let them know that you are paying attention to their votes and positions. If you live in Nashua, come on out for a few hours to let your representatives know how YOU think they are doing and what you would like them to work on. For more information contact Deb Howes at debhowes@myfairpoint.net.

News and Notes

Los Angeles Times OP-Ed: Not all jobs are equal
A lower unemployment rate isn't enough. Americans need work that pays the bills.

By Jonathan Tasini, an economic and political analyst

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-tasini-high-unemployment-is-just-part-of-the-20120124,0,4204870.story

Politicians bickering over private equity's impact on jobs and how to bring down the high unemployment rate are entirely missing the point about the crisis facing working Americans. The predicament we face isn't simply that there are too few jobs; it's also that an increasing number of workers don't have the kind of job that can pay the bills.

While productivity has grown by more than 80% over the last 30 years, wages have effectively been flat for 80% of Americans. So, although we're making stuff faster and more efficiently, the benefits of that hard work have not trickled into the pockets of the people who do it.

Let's turn first to the intensifying debate over Mitt Romney's role as a private equity manager. It's of course ludicrous that Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry — two veteran advocates of a vehemently anti-union, free-market agenda that laid the foundation for the newly coined "vulture capitalism" — condemned those principles while campaigning in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

But equally absurd is Romney's defense that, at the end of the day, his company, Bain Capital, created more jobs than it destroyed. Even if he's telling the truth by some measures, the fact is that private equity buyouts often enrich those who arrange them by sharp cost-cutting, including dismantling pay and benefits for most of the workers who remain or new hires who join the more "efficient" enterprise. It's simple math: To service the huge debt taken on in virtually every buyout, workers take cuts. And the new jobs aren't necessarily a path to the American dream.

Take Staples, which Romney trumpets as one of his successes. The company certainly pays some of its employees well: Staples Chairman and Chief Executive Ronald L. Sargent received a total pay package of more than $15 million in 2010. But jobs in retail — one of the fastest-growing job sectors in recent decades — tend to pay poorly, and Staples jobs don't seem to be an exception to that rule.

Although the company doesn't publish its wage scale, the website glassdoor.com, which allows workers to post their salaries anonymously to try to give a picture of wages at a company, suggests that the average Staples sales associate or EasyTech associate makes less than $9 an hour. An employee working a 40-hour week, 52 weeks a year at that rate would make significantly less than the 2010 federal poverty level threshold for a family of four of $22,314. So, although Romney likes to claim credit for creating jobs, he needs to be asked how many of those jobs were ones that allowed employees to make ends meet.

And even that question doesn't get at another issue: the number of jobs that were lost as the growth of Staples and similar companies drove mom-and-pop stationery shops and office supply stores across the country out of business.

Republicans, though, aren't alone in muddying the waters. A few days ago, the president held a political photo op, praising several companies for bringing back jobs from overseas: so-called in-sourcing. But he did not address two ugly truths — and the uninformed, lazy news media did not demand he do so.

First, companies are coming back to the United States because wages here are dropping, in real terms. At the same time, lower-wage corporate nirvanas such as China are no longer as cheap an alternative as they once were, partly because the sea of people who worked for next to nothing for so long have had enough and are rising up in protest.

Second, most of the jobs coming back are not high-wage, union jobs with full healthcare and pensions. In fact, with concerted efforts by Republican governors in the Midwest to eviscerate union rights, times have never been better for corporate leaders seeking to lower labor costs. With labor costs in the U.S. dropping relative to those in the Third World, the president's offer of tax incentives to other companies that in-source is unnecessary. As Citizens for Tax Justice points out, using a 2007 Bush administration study, corporations based in the United States already have plenty of tax incentive to locate here because "the United States takes a below-average share of corporate income in taxes compared to other developed countries."

Recent conventional wisdom holds that the president's reelection chances may have slightly improved because the unemployment rate has inched down to 8.5%. But that is a deceptive number. The true unemployment rate is over 15% if you include what the Department of Labor calls "all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons." In English, that translates into people who want to work but are not looking right now along with people who don't have full-time work, many of whom would like to.

If you add those people to the people who have full-time work at or just above the minimum wage, at least 1 in 5 Americans — 30 million people — does not have a decent job. Which explains why, according to the Census Bureau, 46 million people — or about 15% of Americans — live in poverty, the highest percentage since 1993.

There is a serious discussion we need to have about American jobs that takes into account not just the quantity but also the quality. But that isn't a conversation leaders of either party are interested in having.

We need to face up to the reality that the free-market economic principles that have been promoted for decades are an abject failure, at least if you measure success by whether people who work hard can support their families and make ends meet.

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