LABOR MATTERS
Urge Congress to Put 'Kentucky River' in Reverse
compiled by Jeff Burman
 Jeffrey Burman |
With the swearing in of a new Congress dominated by reinvigorated Democrats, one priority should be the undoing of the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) recent so-called “Kentucky River” decisions to broaden the scope of who may be considered a manager, since managers can be excluded from union membership. I urge you to get involved with this one.
In a scathing editorial, The New York Times called this ruling “a bad decision, not only because of the specifics of the case, but also in its broader ramifications.” It went further, saying, “Far from balancing the scales, the anti-union drive comes when workers are already at a historic low in bargaining strength. Despite a growing economy and rising productivity, hourly wages adjusted for inflation have declined two percent since 2003. Corporate profits, meanwhile, are at their highest share of gross domestic product since the 1960s. We are getting closer and closer to a work force with no benefits and no substantive protections. Some unions succumbed to corruption and contributed to their own decline. But their role in giving common workers a voice is essential to a functioning society.”
 Nurses rally to protest a ruling by the Bush administration's National Labor Relations Board that would prevent nurse supervisors from belonging to a union in October in downtown Los Angeles. In a 3-2 vote, the NLRB ruled that nurses who oversee other nurses are qualified as supervisors, making them ineligible to be in a union. AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes |
Former NLRB chairman and current Stanford law professor William Gould, writing in The San Francisco Chronicle, sees the broader dilemma as “a politicization of decision-making, an ever-deeper NLRB ideological divide and the unwillingness of Congress to approve any presidential nominees without ‘batching’ the appointments, ie, providing for at least two appointments at a time, one with the blessing of labor, the other with the blessing of business. This means no more appointments like those made in labor law’s early and halcyon days of the 1940s and ‘50s, when genuine impartial neutrals were appointed by Presidents Roosevelt and Truman.”
In part, what the AFL-CIO proposes is the Employee Free Choice Act (S. 842 and H.R. 1696). The act would strengthen protections for workers’ freedom to choose by requiring employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers sign cards authorizing union representation. It also would provide for mediation and arbitration of first-contract disputes and authorize stronger penalties for violation of the law when workers seek to form a union. Take advantage of the recent election euphoria. Write to your Congressperson.
Hollywood May Benefit from the New Congress
Given Hollywood’s general orientation toward Democrats, November’s
gains made it hard for some industry lobbyists to contain their glee, writes
William Triplett in Variety. Motion Picture Association of America director
Dan Glickman, a former Democratic member of Congress, will be visiting a much
friendlier Capitol Hill.
“I used to serve on the House Judiciary Committee with John Conyers when he was the No. 2,” Glickman said of the Michigan Democrat now in line to chair that committee, which oversees copyright issues. “And John Dingell,” also of Michigan and in line for chairmanship of the powerful House Commerce Commit-tee, “is a close friend.”
Glickman also anticipates better access to the House tax committees, which haven’t been keen on Hollywood lately either. “Our industry got burned on some tax issues in the last couple years,” he said. “But I feel more comfortable, because of my personal relationships, that we won’t be discriminated against now.”
Unions Do Their Part in Mid-Term Elections
According to exit polls commissioned by the AFL-CIO, high turnout among union
members turned a win into a sweep with 74 percent of union voters supporting
union-endorsed candidates in the House and 76 percent supporting Democratic
candidates in Senate races.
“We knew that our challenge at the AFL-CIO was to provide the organizing to transform the frustration and anger into political power,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. “We responded with the biggest, most energetic grassroots program in our history, and it worked.” Sweeney said the AFL-CIO program was easily the largest voter turnout effort on the progressive side.
Sixty-nine percent of union members said they disapprove of President Bush’s job performance, according to an election night survey conducted for the AFL-CIO by Peter Hart Research Associates. The war in Iraq, the economy and jobs were union voters’ top issues.
The AFL-CIO’s program reached out to 13.4 million voters in 32 battleground states. It reached union members, members of union households, retirees and members of Working America, the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate for workers who don’t have a union.
Cinematographers Vote Against Legal Action on Film Subsidies
Leaders of the International Cinematographers Guild have decided against backing
an effort to investigate the legality of foreign government film and TV subsidies
designed to attract American productions. ICG’s National Executive Board
voted 32-28 on Sunday, November 26 against filing a North American Free Trade
Agreement Section 301(a) petition against Canadian film production incentives
as a way to curb runaway production. The ICG has 5,700 members and operates
as IATSE Local 600.
The investigation has been the brainchild of the Film and Television Action Committee, an organization of below-the-line workers. FTAC has spent most of its energy on prepping a North American Free Trade Agreement Section 301(a) petition asking the US Trade Representative to initiate negotiations with Canada to remove its subsidies, backed by the threat of intervention of the World Trade Organization, as the most effective way of putting the brakes on productions fleeing to less-expensive locations outside the US.
The vote followed presentations by attorneys who specialize in such filings. Alan Dunn, a partner at Stewart and Stewart (and former Undersecretary of Commerce), who represents the interests of several other IATSE locals that have endorsed taking such action, estimated that the filing had a 75 percent chance of success. But Michael Punke, a former senior counsel at the US Trade Representative’s office, figured the chances of success to be less than five percent, due to a lack of industrywide support from leading organizations such as the Motion Picture Association of America.
MTV Video Awards Show Goes Union
In 2006, musicians who performed on MTV’s video awards show
at Radio City Music Hall were covered under a first-ever agreement
with the network that encompasses all musicians on the entire program,
writes Mikael Elsila on the International Labor Communications Association
website, www.ilcaonline.org.
On earlier MTV awards shows, only certain acts were covered with a union contract. This past year, the entire show was under contract. This means that MTV paid union wages, health benefits, pension and premiums to backup musicians supporting Christina Aguilera, the All-American Rejects, Beyoncé, Tenacious D, Panic! at the Disco, the Killers, Justin Timberlake, Ludacris, OK Go, Pharrell, the Raconteurs, T.I., and Shakira with Wyclef Jean. It also means that these musicians will get new-use payments if the music from the show is used in any other form.
Less Dream, More Factory, Warns ‘Variety’
As media corporations fret over excessive above-the-line salaries, Holly-wood
“woke up to the fact that it has become Detroit,” write Jill Goldsmith
and Dave McNary in Variety, darkly. “Layoffs are rising as the global
conglomerates demand higher returns. Contentious negotiations loom as guilds
and unions feel they are being shut out of the growing world of digital distribution.”
NBC Universal said it will cut operating expenses by $750 million this year and eliminate as many as 700 jobs. Those disclosures riveted attention on one ineluctable reality: “Having lived in its own economic cocoon for a generation, the media and entertainment community is facing the reality that it’s just another industry and that its artisans must expect to be treated accordingly… There’s little chance that this will be accepted with equanimity. Warner Bros. CEO Barry Meyer has warned of what he calls a ‘perfect storm’ of labor unrest. What worries Hollywood’s guilds is not only runaway production but the prospect that they won’t get their fair share of revenue from such outlets as digital downloads, still in their infancy.”
More Miners Die, Pushing 2006 Total to Double 2005’s
With the death in early November of a Kentucky coal miner, 44 coal miners
have been killed on the job so far in 2006, double the 22 who were killed
in all of 2005. Making matters worse, this total is the most coal miners that
have been killed in one year since 1995.
Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward, writes Jordan Barab in the online Confined Space, “is one of the best labor writers in the country.” But Ward isn’t your usual labor writer; instead of spending time writing about organizing campaigns and labor law, he writes about workers, more specifically coal miners and what’s killing them.
Ward’s writing in the Gazette documents the situation in America’s mines––conditions that exist in many of this country’s other workplaces as well. “Ward’s observations are fairly obvious to those of us who follow workplace safety. Most miners die alone, in ones or twos, unreported by most newspapers, and unnoticed by most Americans. But more important,” adds Barab, “is Ward’s second point: that almost all of these deaths were the result of employers ignoring safety rules.”
International Labor Federations Merge into One
Many Americans are unaware of what’s going on in the international labor
movement––not surprising, considering how thinly the mainstream
media covers the labor beat. Last October, delegates from trade unions worldwide
launched a new global labor federation aimed at ensuring that workers’
rights are not forgotten in the rush toward economic globalization, writes
William Kole for the Associated Press.
Organizers said the new International Trade Union Confederation––formerly known as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions––would modernize itself to better tackle the rights of unionized workers and to strengthen its efforts to stamp out forced and child labor, Kole added.
But there’s more. At the dawn of the Cold War, according to Nathan Newman’s Labor Blog, the international union movement was divided between the ICFTU, dominated by US and Western European unions, and the World Confederation of Labor, largely serving the Soviet Union. It’s taken a decade and a half, but the irrelevancy of that division has ended as the two federations merged––bringing together 241 labor organizations from 156 countries representing 190 million workers.
The new International Trade Union Confederation is a good step for a labor movement looking to globalize itself in the taking on of global capital power, adds Newman. And Guy Ryder, the former General Secretary of the ICFTU and prospective General Secretary of the ITUC, added, “The creation of the ITUC will solidify the trade union movement’s capacity at the national and international levels.
In the photograph above, Houston police are shown trying to disperse non-violent SEIU demonstrators on November 16. Some 44 were arrested and 4 were injured. Houston janitor Mateo Portillo, 33, who works for the cleaning firm GCA at the CenterPoint Energy building, said, "The horses came all of a sudden. They started jumping on top of people. I heard the women screaming. A horse stomped on top of me. I fell to the ground and hurt my arm. The horses just kept coming at us. I was terrified. I never thought the police would do something so aggressive, so violent." Photo courtesy of SEIU Justice for Janitors Campaign - Houston |
Jeff Burman represents Sound Editors on the Guild's Board of Directors. He can be reached at jeffrey.burman@nbcuni.com.