Chicagoans had a great picketline April 4 at the Logan Square branch of Bank of America. Signatures were collected from the community in support of Employee Free Choice Act. Lots of cars honked in support. Bank of America opposes the Employee Free Choice Act and used some of its taxpayer bailout money to organize corporations against the worker rights bill.
A full story will be posted later.
Here are some photos by Scott Marshall that capture the spirit of the event.
Showing posts with label Employee Free Choice Act. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Employee Free Choice Act. Show all posts
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Picketline for EFCA in front of Bank of America
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Counting heads on EFCA -- from Congress Matters
Interesting take on the Senate vote shape up...
From Congress Matters http://www.congressmatters.com/story/2009/3/11/134348/804/242/769
EFCA head-counting
by Nathaniel Ament Stone
Wed Mar 11, 2009 at 10:43:48 AM PDT
The Employee Free Choice Act was introduced yesterday as H.R.1409 (George Miller with 222 cosponsors) and S.560 (Ted Kennedy with 39 cosponsors). With 223 total sponsors in the House, obviously the House is ready to approve EFCA, no questions asked. But what about that darned Senate? 40 total sponsors, with 60 votes needed for cloture.
Well, all 40 sponsors are Democrats (including Lieberman and Sanders in that definition). Knowing that Franken hasn't yet been seated but likely will be by July, we can be close to 100% sure that there are 41 votes locked in for cloture (the Dems won't be dumb enough to miss out because of Kennedy's ailing health...nor would he miss that vote for the world. If he resigns before then, his replacement will make it, but either way, there will be a second Massachusetts vote for cloture.)
Which 18 Democrats aren't signed on as cosponsors?
Arkansas: Lincoln and Pryor (Pryor is supposedly leaning toward support, but doesn't want to be too vocal, while Lincoln is wavering. Both are getting their arms twisted by Walmart, the unchallenged corporate king in Arkansas.)
California: Feinstein (I'm nearly 100% sure she supports it, though.)
Colorado: Bennet and Udall (pretty sure they both support it...it's just that they're both rather quiet folks.)
Indiana: Bayh (here's a fun fact: he's been the least loyal Democrat, other than Ben Nelson, so far in the 111th Congress, bucking us frequently on amendment votes though rarely bucking us on cloture. But Indiana is hurting economically, and is pretty pro-labor as swing states go.)
Louisiana: Landrieu (getting tons of pressure from the mucky-mucks in the oil, natural gas, and fishing industries, all of whom hold a lot of sway in right-to-work Louisiana. She's worth working over, though...)
Missouri: McCaskill (I'm pretty sure she's on the right side...like Bennet and Udall of Colorado, she doesn't like being identified too obviously with union bosses, but she's one of the biggest common sense populists in the Senate. Missouri is a major labor state, at that...Dick Gephardt built his career on it.)
Montana: Baucus and Tester (not a right-to-work state or an especially anti-union one, though nowhere in the Mountain West is labor very powerful except Nevada. They might want to avoid the shrillness of this controversy and stay out, but Baucus chairs the Finance Committee and was the manager of SCHIP expansion and the stimulus in the Senate. I think they'll go for it in the end, Baucus being a major Dem wheeler-dealer and Tester being a freshman who needs to stay on Reid's good side.)
Nebraska: Ben Nelson (says he opposes the bill in its current form. A right-to-work state, and an especially anti-union one at that. He'll be the toughest to get back. Lincoln, Pryor, and Landrieu are more worthwhile efforts. The good news is that, once Kennedy is back/replaced and Franken is seated, we can get 60 without Nelson if Specter stays on the right side of this one. Tough, but doable.)
New Mexico: Bingaman (a Feinstein Democrat...he's low-key but will come down on the right side.)
North Carolina: Hagan(also rumored in the Politico article. North Carolina is probably the second-most anti-union state in the nation, following only South Carolina. Remember that this is the land of Norma Rae, and has a union membership of...get this...2%! By comparison, even famous right-to-work states like Georgia, Florida, Alabama, etc. are more unionized. But, Hagan is a moderate-to-progressive and is a freshman needing to stay in Reid's favors.)
North Dakota: Conrad and Dorgan (both rather quiet, but Dorgan is avowedly pro-labor and Conrad is a key Obama ally and budget guru. They'll vote for it.)
Virginia: Warner and Webb (both fiscal conservatives and social moderates-to-progressives. Another right-to-work state with low union membership. But like Hagan and Tester, these are freshmen and Reid can keep them from moving up the ladder if he chooses. They'll be kept in line...if Reid is as smart as we hope he is.)
Wisconsin: Kohl (a businessman, but one of the more reliable liberals in the Midwest. Don't worry about him.)
Some of these people were cosponsors in 2007...what's up with that? I suppose the stakes were lower when cloture was impossible, and now that it's within reach, the "moderates" are getting cold feet. Special props to people like Tim Johnson, Bill Nelson, Mark Begich, and Sherrod Brown, who are cosponsoring S.560 despite coming from swing or conservative states. Johnson and Nelson hail from right-to-work states, at that.
So, some counting...40 sponsors of the bill + Feinstein, Bennet, Udall of CO, McCaskill, Baucus, Tester, Bingaman, Hagan, Conrad, Dorgan, Warner, Webb, and Kohl = 53 "lean" votes for EFCA (including Kennedy or his replacement in MA). 60, of course, are needed. Lincoln, Pryor, Bayh, Landrieu, and Nelson of NE are all serious concerns, and the latter may be lost for good. If so, the best case scenario is 57 right now, meaning we need Specter, Franken, and someone else (Voinovich of Ohio, a relatively pro-union Republican who is retiring?). Of course, those five Democrats all voted for cloture in 2007, so what real reason other than pressure from business hacks do they have to switch?
This will be the most dramatic cloture vote of 2009.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Labor editor on BlogTalkRadio tonight #EFCA, #topprog
Should Workers be Allowed to Form Unions?
March 9th, 2009
Employee Free Choice Act - Debate - Today, Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 7 PM EST
If drivers were allowed to form Unions, could this lead to many small business trucking companies closing their doors?
Employment Law Attorney-Eric Meyer, People’s Weekly World Labor Editor John Wojcik… and 15 year trucking veteran, Damien, are the special guests.
Employee Free Choice Act - DEBATE - Only on: Truth About Trucking “LIVE”
Come join the conversation!
Call-in Number: (347) 826-9170
Online: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/TruthAboutTrucking/2009/03/09/Employee-Free-Choice-Act-DEBATE
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Bailed out banks conspire to block workers' rights
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/bank-of-america-hosted-an_n_161248.html
Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority.
Participants on the October 17 call -- including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG -- were urged to persuade their clients to send "large contributions" to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.
Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse.
"This is the demise of a civilization," said Marcus. "This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I'm watching this happen and I don't believe it."
"If a retailer has not gotten involved in this, if he has not spent money on this election, if he has not sent money to [former Sen.] Norm Coleman and all these other guys, they should be shot. They should be thrown out their goddamn jobs," Marcus declared.
Audio of the conference call, which was obtained by the Huffington Post, is excerpted throughout this piece to provide a clearer insight into the pitched battle surrounding the Employee Free Choice legislation. At one point, relatively early in the call, Marcus joked that he "took a tranquilizer this morning to calm myself down."
"This bill may be one of the worst things I have ever seen in my life," he said, explaining that he could have been on "a 350-foot boat out in the Mediterranean," but felt it was more important to engage on this fight. "It is incredible to me that anybody could have the chutzpah to try and pass this bill in this election year, especially when we have an economy that is a disaster, a total absolute disaster."
The legislation -- which would allow workers to form a union either by holding a traditional election or having a majority of employees sign written forms -- is virtually certain to face a Republican filibuster. Obama and Senate Democrats have stated their commitment to the bill, though the timing of the vote remains a topic of heated debate.
Weeks before the November election, Marcus, Berman, and others saw this ominous political landscape taking shape. Hoping to aid opponents of EFCA in the Senate, they pleaded with participants on the call, mostly stock analysts or individuals with investment portfolios, to urge clients to prop up the campaigns of endangered Republican candidates, including Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.
"If there are not enough Republicans operating as a firewall, after this election it is going to be very difficult to hold the line," predicted Berman. "The only way after these elections if we don't have a filibuster proof Senate... is to make this issue so hot in some states so that even a Democrat who is up for election in 2010 has to think twice about whether or not they are going to let this thing go by."
Citing the massive war chests that unions have brought to the EFCA fight, Marcus asked participants to make campaign donations rather than lobbying payments. "Fire all these guys in Washington," he said of the K-Street operators, "they are worthless anyway."
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Berman said that there "was nothing on that call that spoke to funneling money to anybody." Indeed, at a separate point, Marcus discussed the need to contribute to issue advocacy and education activities. The call, Berman continued, was designed to explain some of the economic implications of passing EFCA and was "one of a series with people around the country who are connected to businesses."
"There has been, though it has changed in the last few months, a fairly significant deficit in terms of understanding what this law is about," Berman said. "I know a number of business groups have held calls with people about the impact of this legislation... The unions who are a proponent of this have not made it a high profile issue. I think they have learned from their polling that it doesn't poll well, which is why they don't' want to make it a public issue."
As for the business community, Berman added, "I do think that most businesspeople fully appreciate the damage that out-of-control labor leaders have caused for other businesses. There is no appetite for finding out if you are going to have to be the next business to deal with other labor issues."
A Bank of America spokesman declined a request for public comment, and the bank's representative on the call played a minor role. The conference call was referenced in a November 5 Bank of America research document, in which the company noted that EFCA "increases the likelihood that retailers would be unionized, which could drive higher labor cost at retail." On "the flip side," however, the document said the bill would increase the "spending power of lower income consumers as this would be a de facto wage and benefit increase."
As evidenced by its dual interpretation of the legislation, Bank of America's role in the EFCA fight is a bit murky. The company, as stated by an official there, hosted the call for the purposes of equity research, meaning that their goal was to represent the opinions of clients and not the bank itself. But their involvement in an effort to drum up support for defeating the labor-backed legislation, so soon after getting bail out funds from the federal government, left a bad taste in the mouth of some union officials.
"Bank of America is now not only getting bailout money. They are lending their name to participate in a campaign to stop workers from having a majority sign up [provision]," said Stephen Lerner, Director of the Private Equity Project at SEIU. "The biggest corporations who have created the problem are, at the very time, asking us to bail them out and then using that money to stop workers from improving their lives."
Monday, December 29, 2008
New York Times endorses Employee Free Choice Act
Dear friends -- from Rick in Ohio
Great news! This morning the New York Times, the most influential voice in the major media, called on President-elect Obama to ignore corporate pressure and push for quick passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.
"The measure is vital legislation and should not be postponed," the editorial said. "Even modest increases in the share of the unionized labor force push wages upward, because non-union workplaces must keep up with unionized ones that collectively bargain for increases."
It goes on to say that "if pay continues to lag, it will only prolong the downturn by inhibiting spending."
The editorial also calls for greatly increasing staff and resources of the Labor Department, hopefully under the direction of Rep. Hilda Solis, Obama's nomineee for Secretary of Labor. The Department, it says, should do far more to enforce and strengthen labor standards, including safety and overtime regulations.
The editorial should strengthen the hand of centrist Democrats and Republicans who have supported the bill but will be the main targets of the campaign, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to defeat it. It also gives us another weapon to pile the pressure on Sen. Voinovich who has so far opposed the bill.
Here is the link to the editorial:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
Rick
Thursday, August 28, 2008
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