Labor 2008: The Battle Begins

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/08/05/labor-2008-the-battle-begins/

Labor 2008: The Battle Begins

by Seth Michaels, Aug 5, 2007

“You in the room are the people who are going to move a victorious 2008 labor program.”

That’s how Karen Ackerman, political director of the AFL-CIO, introduced the 2007 Battleground States Conference today in Chicago. It’s one of the most important political events in this election cycle. In front of an audience of labor leaders and activists from across the country, the AFL-CIO’s political team laid out the strategy to win in the 2008 elections and to improve life for millions of working families.

“America is still not working for working families,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. He pointed to the filibuster of the Employee Free Choice Act, the anti-worker decisions of John Roberts’ Supreme Court, the flawed “free trade” system and the failures of American health care. Sweeney said the union movement’s political victories in 2006 were just a start and 2008 will be a “breakthrough opportunity.” He described Tuesday’s AFL-CIO Presidential Candidates Forum as “the biggest job interview in history,” with thousands attending and millions watching on MSNBC and listening on XM Radio. (The broadcast, with “Countdown” host Keith Olbermann as moderator, begins at 7 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Central. Find out more here.)

”We are ready for the fight of our lives, and we are going to win,” said AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, who chairs the AFL-CIO’s Political Education Committee. No matter what the polls look like today, he said, the 2008 election is bound to be a difficult, close fight. He was enthusiastic and confident, though, about what the union movement will accomplish.

FULL story at link.

[simple]

1. Employee Free Choice Act !!!

From what I understand, this act will eliminate secret ballots!!!!!!?????
Isn't that something that the unions fought for in the first place?
What a piece of anti-labor junk

[Omaha Steve]

2. Not eliminate them, the workers will have the choice to or not by majority

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/07/10/labor-boards-union-election-process-neither-free-nor-fair/

by Mike Hall, Jul 10, 2007



Free and democratic elections? You won’t find them in the U.S. workplace. In fact, a new report shows that when U.S. workers try to form a union under the rules of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), they are operating under a system that more closely resembles the phony “free elections” in authoritarian regimes—those the U.S. government traditionally has condemned.



Gordon Lafer, Ph.D., a University of Oregon political scientist and author of Neither Free Nor Fair: The Subversion of Democracy Under National Labor Relations Board Elections, says:

Anti-union employers are making a mockery of the principle governing American elections. Weak labor laws allow anti-union employers to manipulate the outcome of union elections in a manner that is inherently unfair and undemocratic.

Union-busting activity in the weeks leading up to union elections resembles practices that our government routinely denounces when performed by rouge regimes abroad

He says passage of the Employee Free Choice Act is “critical” to ensuring America’s workers have a truly democratic process in choosing to join a union.

The report, released today by American Rights at Work, comes just weeks after obstructionist Republican senators blocked a vote on the Employee Free Choice Act. Echoing the multimillion dollar corporate propaganda campaign that sought to undermine support for the bill, anti-worker lawmakers claimed the bill would take away workers’ rights to secret ballot elections if employees are allowed to choose to join a union when a majority signed union authorization cards.

That argument, no matter how often it is repeated, is wrong on two fronts. First, the Employee Free Choice Act does not eliminate secret ballot elections. Secondly, under the current NLRB, government-run election process, the report points out there are a

myriad ways in which workers are denied the most basic tenets of democracy…

and in fact, Neither Free Nor Fair

addresses head-on the claim that the NLRB election process guarantees workers a truly secret ballot—the central claim of anti-union advocates who seek to keep the current NLRB system in place….

FULL story at link.