David Kurtz on the front page asks "If you take card check out of EFCA, what's left?"

Actually, quite a lot.  Let's rename the bill, the "Prevention of Illegal Firings Act" (PIFA) and it's still important labor law reform.  The New York Times story David referred to cited a proposed compromise, where majority signup provisions would be dropped, but elections would be held within five days, employees could not be forced into mandatory meetings, and unions could campaign on company property during the election period.  So what's that add up to in a typical election campaign (see below the fold)

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While I've been travelling in India on my honeymoon, it's mostly been to the touristy areas of the Taj Mahal and Rajasthan but the last two days were a more intense political visit in the capital city of the state of Gujurat where we met with a couple of key social justice organizations in India and made a pilgrimage to the ashram where Gandhi launched much of the non-violent resistance to British colonialism.

Gujurat is a key font for social justice organizing, both because of its legacy as Gandhi's home base, its ties to the rest of the world (40% of Indians living in New York came from Gujurat), and its more recent trials as the focus of Hindu-Muslim mob violence.

The reality of increasing wealth for some Indians is clear across the country but so is the continual grinding poverty for the vast majority of the population -- where the chance to give a 50 cent autorickshaw ride to a couple of tourists is a privileged job and most men and women sweat out jobs in rural villages for a dollar or two a day.  

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When Lech Walesa led labor unions in Poland denouncing the crushing of workers rights, he was celebrated in the American media.

But when he headlines a list of Nobel Peace Prize winners denouncing, among other things, the denial of basic human rights to American workers, he'll no doubt be largely ignored.  In commemoration of International Human Rights Day (which is Saturday), Walesa, along with Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Jimmy Carter and seven other Nobel winners have signed on to the following letter denouncing the violation of workers rights around the world, from Burma to the Ukraine.   But here is the paragraph that America should be paying closest attention to:

the wealthiest nation in the world--the United States of America--fails to adequately protect workers' rights to form unions and bargain collectively. Millions of U.S. workers lack any legal protection to form unions and thousands are discriminated against every year for trying to exercise these rights.

We cannot remain silent in the face of these and other serious abuses of workers' rights.

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According to a new Zogby poll, people are not buying the idea that Wal-Mart is good for the American economy (contra Ed Kilgore):

The poll found that 56 percent of American adults agreed with the statement - "Wal-Mart was bad for America. It may provide low prices, but these prices come with a high moral and economic cost." In contrast, only 39 percent of American adults agreed with the opposing statement - "I believe Wal-Mart is good for America. It provides low prices and saves consumers money every day."

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Even most liberals deny anti-union crime is widespread or deny that it's even a serious crime at all and anyways the folks doing it are such swell people, we can't expect us to like treat them like criminals, do you?  If unions have been decimated in American workplaces, it's must really be their fault-- they must have been asking for it.   You know, when you wear such pretty medical care and pension funds, employers are just being normal, red-blooded capitalists when they wipe out unions to get at them.

If you wonder why I get angry when folks say nice things about corporate criminal union busters like Wal-Mart, maybe you should read the new report by American Rights at Work which details the extent and severity of that corporate crime wave, a crime wave where tens of thousands of workers are victimized each year with stolen jobs and crushed lives.

As this study highlights, a typical union organizing drive starts with a majority of workers signing cards in support of having a union.    Yet in the course of the elections, corporations embark on full-scale illegal assault on their workforce:

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Verizon announced that all of its non-union employees were losing their guaranteed pensions in favor of 401(k) individual accounts.  The plan also cuts off all retiree health benefits for all workers hired in the future or currently with less than fifteen years at the company.

Two comments-- one, this is what it means to have a union.  They can't impose this change but will have to ask permission at the next bargaining session.  Just remember, there was only one group of workers at Enron, the Sheet Metals Workers union folks, who didn't lose their pensions to the company's manipulation of the stock price, since they had their own plan with guaranteed benefits.

The broader point is that the problems of Wal-Mart at other low-wage, low-benefit companies are going to cost the taxpayers and society far more than you can calculate:

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Seriously, it's not that I want to close down debate on Wal-Mart, but when literally hundreds of thousands of workers are suing Wal-Mart for violating laws and unions are in a life-and-death struggle with the company, I find the casual liberal "Wal-Mart isn't so bad" attitude by Matt and Ezra a bit bizarre.  I think their arguments are basically uninformed by the facts, but the odder question is why they feel so compelled to make them?

Folks who I'd think they'd treat as core strategic allies have, after literally a decade of internal discussions, determined that Wal-Mart is their number one enemy and have committed tens of millions of dollars in resources to fighting Wal-Mart.  

So if you are going to suddenly start heaving friendly fire at those allies, it should be done with the seriousness of fragging an officer during a war because you've decided they are so incompetent and your judgement is so superior that they need to be taken out.  

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Nothing like this has been seen in twenty-five years in Houston:  5000 Houston janitors have organized a union at the four largest cleaning companies in the city.

Now what's the big deal about 5000 members?

Tasini, with Ezra Klein chiming in, treat it as a tiny drop in the bucket.  As Tasini argues:

[W]hile 5,000 new members is nothing to sneeze at, we need to keep in mind that, as a whole, organized labor needs to recruit a NET of 1.5 million members a year to raise its overall density in the workforce by just ONE PERCENT. So, in essence, we need a Houston janitors' victory almost every day to grow the labor movement's power.

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One of the danger signs for Democrats that a Bush collapse doesn't necessarily mean much for progressive gains in policy are the polls showing that John McCain could step up and poll almost twenty points more than either Hillary Clinton or John Kerry in 2008.

Of course, a lot of this is due to the McCain image of "moderation", but it highlights why Dems can't depend on "clean government" as their whole rhetoric, since there will be GOPers like McCain happy to grab the anti-scandal banner.  So Dems need more than scandal; they need to take down the whole GOP agenda and make it clear that folks like McCain, despite his media image, is ultimately down with the whole conservative policy agenda.

Luckily, The Nation has a nice piece this week detailing McCain's hard-right record:

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One reason unions are more successful in pubic sector organizing is that governments generally refrain from the union busting tactics of the private sectors.  Teachers and other public employees have the chance to vote on whether to unionize without the illegal threats and management intimidation that is the staple of private sector organizing campaigns.

But that may be about to change in New York City charter schools, where rightwing foundations are teaming up to bring modern union busting to attack teachers unions in the expanding charter schools around the city.

This EdWize post has the details, but here's the money quotes about the rightwing Atlantic Legal Foundation (ALF) efforts to promote anti-union attacks:

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In a country of shining multi-million dollar business schools in almost every major university in the country, one of the silliest rightwing campaigns is complaints that conservatives are oppressed and somehow have no support for their rightwing views on campuses-- leading folks like David Horowitz to propose an Academic Bill of Rights.

Compare those expanding shiny business schools to the handful of labor centers around the country who are under total assault.  

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They're saying it's time to cash in!

Here's what Freepers are saying about the housing bubble and folks taking on unsustainable debt:

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A few days ago, I noted that Sam Alito was opposed to the "one person, one vote" reapportionment cases and I emphasized that in many ways, those decisions by the Warren Court were its most important, with far greater effect on modern life than Brown v. Board or Roe v. Board decisions, since both civil rights and abortion rights were moving forward on their own political steam.

But with as little as 16% of the population of some states controlling at least one chamber of their state legislatures, there was little prospect of serious reapportionment by political means.  So subtract the Supreme Court and democratic reapportionment of the states might never have happened.

And the anti-democratic rightwing recognized this and was prepared to make almost any deal to override the Supreme Court through a Constitutional Amendment, including cutting a deal with the labor movement.

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The campaign for universal pre-school for all California kids, spearheaded by Rob Reiner, will today submit signatures qualifying the initiative for the ballot next year.

A compromise bill that will guarantee funding for three hours of pre-school for every 4-year old in the state, whether they are in public or private schools, the supporters range from  Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to the California State Council of Service Employees to the Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles chambers of commerce.  

The business support is particularly significant, since the initiative is paid for with a hike in state income taxes on those making more than $400,000 per year. The Los Angeles Chamber had not endorsed a tax increase in its 117-year history.

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The progressive promise of global trade is supposed to be increased wealth for poor countries.  But the most important trade in the information economy is often people-- and discriminatory immigration laws too often give preferences to the educated of developing nations, encouraging them to leave their home countries.  The result is a brain drain that robs those countries of what is often their scarciest and most valuable resource.

As a recent Economist article details (subscription), many developing nations spend precious investments in higher education, only to see a hemmoraging of doctors and other educated workers to developed nations:

With all the discussion of health care, it's great that Illinois has passed a health care bill to extend coverage to all children in the state.  It will be free for lower-income families, but even families earning more can buy in:

A family of four earning $41,000 a year will pay $40 a month for one child or $80 a month for two or more children. The co-payment for doctors' visits will be $10 each. A family of four earning $61,000 to $79,000 will pay $70 for one child and $140 for two or more children. The co-payment will be $15.

People with higher incomes and without insurance are also eligible, though the premiums increase significantly.

The GOP is accusing the somewhat unpopular governor of playing politics to boost his popularity.  

If only more Democrats would recognize that expanding health care for all families is a vote winner.  We need more of that kind of opportunism.

And so the ideological drumbeat to kill workplace health benefits keeps expanding-- right in line with Wal-Mart's and General Motors' attempts to undermine the idea that they have a responsibility to their employees' health.

And so you get the arguments for cutting employer-based care-- it would be more efficient, more fair, allow folks to change jobs more easily, and so on.  

It sounds reasonable and if the alternative was a true universal health care system, I'd be all for it.  Except as the NY Times piece linked to above shows, that's not what's being proposed:

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It's really all about China these days-- and the assumption that we shouldn't or can't do anything about its terrible labor conditions.

James Galbraith thinks "[t]he notion that China is a low-wage, slave-labor economy is constantly repeated in these debates, and it betrays ignorance of the actual conditions of the place" since Galbraith describes a benign government providing low cost housing and other goods to make those pathetic Chinese wages go further.

Now, this isn't theoretically incompatible with Matt Yglesias saying it's an "authoritarian one-party state" which won't change its policies no matter how much pressure is applied.

Except this ignores that the Chinese Communists ability to maintain that authoritarian state is dependent on delivering the material goodies Galbraith describes.  

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Most labor activists recognize the potential gains for all countries from tariff-free trade if done right, but the reason we can't take "free trade liberals" seriously is that, time after time, they have proven that they will move heaven and earth to collaborate with Republicans to force through these trade deals, but then say very little when their trade allies undermine the programs designed to help out those who lose out under those trade deals.

Take Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA)-- under NAFTA, those who lost their jobs due to expanded trade were supposed to receive expanded and lengthier unemployment benefits and expanded funds for retraining.  This was Clinton's and the NAFTA Democrats promise to help the losers under trade deals get a fresh career.  

Yet the program has been repeatedly undermined in practice, and there's been barely a peep out of those Democrats who supported the trade deals.  

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Looking over the whole debate on Gene Sperling's book, what's striking is that advocates for trade deals accuse critics of being against "free trade"-- yet the deals they advocate are all about accepting child slavery and denial of freedom by workers to form unions as acceptable parts of the global economy.  

It the critics of these deals -- who support trade but demand that basic standards of freedom for workers be incorporated into the trade regime -- who truly support "free trade."  It is actually Orwellian that advocates for unrestricted trade with China-- where workers are thrown in prison if they advocate unionization -- can appropriate the use of the term "freedom" for their position.

What exactly is wrong with demanding that if China wants to sell goods to the US, they must extend accepted ILO labor rights, such as the freedom to form a union, to their workers?

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