CNN Versus Labor Law
I read the news today:
Judge Arthur Amchan found that CNN violated the rights of more than 250 employees at the network’s bureaus in Washington, D.C., and New York City when it ended its subcontract with Team Video Services (TVS) [in 2003-2004], whose employees were represented by NABET-CWA. He also ruled that CNN discriminated against TVS employees who wanted to continue working at CNN’s bureaus to avoid having to recognize and bargain with the union.
A couple of points. One is just to observe that labor law and its enforcement in this country are a joke. You want to engage in some illegal union busting in 2003-2004 and, at worst, you’ll get mild punishment for having done so years in the future. Two, this is what makes about 98 percent of the protestations I’ve read about the evils of the Employee Free Choice Act such a joke. People’s fussy concern about the integrity of union-management relations somehow doesn’t seem to manifest itself amidst these constant violations of existing law by employers. Related, this is what I actually like about Mickey Kaus’ take on labor issues — he just believes, without any evidence whatsoever, that unions and unionization are bad and they should be crushed by any means necessary and he firmly grounds his EFCA opposition in that principled point of view. Fourth, I don’t think we should expect to see anything remotely resembling fair coverage of the EFCA issue when it comes before congress. Fifth, there’s a lot the new congress and new administration could do in terms of stiffer penalties and more expedient justice to improve the state of labor law short of a card check bill.
35 Responses to “CNN Versus Labor Law”
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November 25th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Kaus will tell you that he opposes unionization out of a fear of 1970s-style wage-price inflation spirals.
Never mind the fact that no one is forcing management to agree to absurd COLA arrangements.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Gaucho, doesn’t that more or less amount to “without any evidence whatsoever”?
Beyond that, isn’t the television industry pretty heavily unionized?
November 25th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Mickey Kaus has 2 favorite horses he rides; welfare and union. Clinton signed the Welfare Reform bill, so he can’t ride that horse anymore, so now he’s left with union. (Well, I guess he’s replaced welfare with immigration.)
Hey, this is a guy who said 60 Democrats in Senate is a horrible idea because he’d rather have less health care than have card check pass. Right. It’s much more important to bust those eevil union than to provide universal health care.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
You want to engage in some illegal union busting in 2003-2004 and, at worst, you’ll get mild punishment for having done so years in the future.
Apparently the Justice Department has access to a working flux capacitor.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Here is a good piece making similar arguments in support of the EFCA:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6126578.html
November 25th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
@John
I agree it’s stupid and it melts my brain every time I am suckered into reading something he wrote, but it’s still “evidence,” just the same way any downturn in the economy is an excuse for Republicans to advocate a capital gains tax cut.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
My firm handled this case and it was great to kick these rat bastards in the balls. But the bottom line is that CNN has two levels of appeal that it can exhaust before these workers see dime one or their jobs returned. This will take a minimum of two years and more likely three or four, given the delay tactics so easily available in these cases. The current system is so badly broken it makes you want to weep.
The need for labor law reform is very hard to understate.
Kaus is a right wing know nothing. I would personally like to kick his ass.
November 25th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Mickey Kaus has 2 favorite horses he rides; welfare and union.
And one favorite goat he blows. But that goat wants to join a union.
November 25th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
This brings back memories labor people who paraded around with “CNN sucks” signs during the 2004 Democratic primaries, trying to get on news cameras (especially CNN).
November 25th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
The auto unions have been a disaster for Detroit. The teacher unions have been a disaster for schools. These are two gigantic pieces of evidence that unions suck.
I am grateful for the eight-hour work day, and all the work that unions did in the past. But today they impede change and drive up costs.
November 25th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
“whatabout,” you cannot make that assertion without evidence. Citi Group is not unionized, and neither is Circuit City. Buisnesses fail for all kinds of reasons; the presence of a union does not guarantee failure by any means.
As for your second point, this book is pretty heavy on research and statistics, and suggests that unions are by and large beneficial to employers and the broader workforce.
November 25th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
whatabout,
You really don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
November 25th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
whatabout: has the intellectual depth of Mickey Kaus.
And to ‘ole Mickey. Does anyone remember Seinfeld? Remember when Elaine drew huge eyebrows on Uncle Leo at the dermatologist?
That is exactly what Kaus looks like. A unabrowed Uncle Leo.
And yeah, it’s a shame about all those innocent goats.
November 25th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Just an idle thought for a possible compromise on the EFCA: how about a retention election by secret ballot after the first year under the new union contract?
November 25th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Fourth, I don’t think we should expect to see anything remotely resembling fair coverage of the EFCA issue when it comes before congress.
This is a good point, because as we all know, CNN is the single sole news outlet in the entire United States. I, too, wish we lived in a culture where there was more than one network. You know, maybe national newspapers could put their product on-line. Or maybe smaller publications could provide an . . . what’s the word . . . alternative to those dailies. And this is gonna sound crazy, but you might even get individuals to run their own web sites and provide commentary from a host of different perspectives.
Sadly, we all know that all media everywhere will always report the same thing — Fox News, the BBC, Pacifica Radio, Hustler, etc. I really wonder what a world would be like with multiple media options.
November 25th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Glad to hear that CNN folks finally got justice – over where I am, the News-Press workers are still waiting for theirs.
Whatabout:
Unions existed at the Big Four from 1930s-today. For half that time, things went well; for half that time, not so well. Doesn’t sound like good evidence for unions=bad.
Second, given the high unionization rates of teachers and the extreme variability of school districts, I don’t think you can show that unions always cause bad schools if some unionized teachers do well in poor urban areas (NY and Boston) and poorly in other poor urban areas (DC).
November 25th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
So.. arguments for:
1. This bill makes it harder for employers to punish employees for organizing unions. Good, no argument there.
2. We often see evidence of employers punishing their workers for trying to start unions, or delaying the elections. Good; let’s fix that with #1.
3. This bill “augments” the secret election mechanism with a card check mechanism; the cards can be signed in public.
3a. Argument against: But now a union boss can intimidate workers into signing the cards; this is exactly the scenario that led us to make governmental elections private.
Counter to 3a: It may not be the perfect election system, but man, you should see what those awful business owners do!
Counter to 3a: Well, the workers can still decide to do a secret election instead of a card check.
(counter to that: Yes, but you haven’t solved anything; if unions can intimidate workers into signing the cards, there’s no election to be held).
Supporters of EFCA seem to think that management intimidation of organizers is bad enough to justify using card-check, which is admittedly susceptible to union intinimdation. I don’t know if I agree with it, but I think it’s at least an honest line of thinking.
It’s all the lies – “No, the workers still have full choice” – that I don’t get. These aren’t the same answers we’d get from the same people if a poll tax came down…
November 26th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Counter to 3a:
A union organizer lacks the tools to coerce 50% of the workforce – he or she can’t fire, demote, discipline, suspend, or transfer workers. Intimidation by organizers is illegal, and given the need for 50% at card check, you’d have to be doing it to hundreds or thousands of people – which would increase the potential for a fatal leak that would kill the organizing drive via criminal and media investigations. In the case of any such cases, the NLRB has the right to de-certify unions.
Counter to 3a:
It’s tactically insane for organizers to intimidate people they’re trying to sign up. A coerced signee cannot be counted to go on strike, to walk picket lines or man phonebanks, to participate in meetings and union elections, to become the activist that unions cannot survive without. Especially given the critical importance of winning trust of so many employees, intimidation in this context would likely result in a failed union drive.
November 26th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Jay, the larger point is the way I see coercion is a matter of power relations – the employer has a huge amount of power over the employee, the union doesn’t.
Unless we’re assuming people roving around beating the shit out of recalcitrant workers by the hundreds, then the only coercion an organizer has is: verbal persuasion and social pressure. However, this in my mind doesn’t really qualify as coercion, because by that rationale, so does most political organizing for campaigns.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:03 am
A final point:
Unions != governments. A union is an independent organization of people. You don’t vote to join a Democratic Party Club or the Rotarians, you sign up. Sure, elections have been one way of historically certifying unions, but the real actual democracy happens within the group – the election of union officers, decisions about what to bargain over, when to accept contracts, etc.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I agree: corporations have much more actual coercive power over employees than union organizers do.
But I think we underestimate the ability of union organizers to exert more subtler pressure. If you’re at a union meeting, and all your buddies (OK, bad argument, how about 50% – 1 of your buddies) are signing the card, it’s going to be very difficult to turn down the “offer” to sign. Who wants to be the scab even before the union forms? It’s not a question of them actually going around beating people up; I don’t think this is is the 1970s-era mafia. (Although anyone from New York who remembers the garbage-carting scandals…) It’s that it’s much harder to refuse “just a signature” in public, in front of your co-workers.
In addition to the peer pressure, there’s also the opt-in/opt-out effect. Combined with peer pressure, card-check is an opt-out system. Anyone who’s indecisive is going to take the easy way out and sign. (I’m assuming that everyone here understands the power of the negative option; it’s what fueled 11-for-a-penny record clubs, magazine subscriptions, etc.)
Now, there’s an argument that says: Even if this is true, and even if it’s a real problem, the corporation still has more power, truly fair elections are impossible, and we’re just balancing it out. I don’t know if I would agree with that argument; I do know that nobody seems to be even making it. They’re just ignoring the fact that card-check will end up getting more signatures than would a fair, secret election.
Worse is the argument that “union organizers can’t/won’t exert pressure because it’s illegal or in their best interests”. By that argument, we don’t need card check, because corporations wouldn’t prevent elections! We know that they do.
Put it this way: Let’s say that card-check worked in reverse. Let’s imagine a factory where there were meetings at which you were urged to sign a “non-unionization” petition. The boss walks around the room, hands you the petition, and you can either sign it or give it back to him unsigned.
In this hypothetical factory, there are no potential job consequences for signing the petition. Your boss would know if you signed, of course. But maybe he’s been implanted with a special mind-control chip that prevents him from firing you, giving you poor assignments, whatever. So the pressure’s purely social.
Card-check supporters, would you also be in favor of such an “anti-card-check”?
November 26th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Put it this way: Let’s say that card-check worked in reverse.
It already does. A union can be de-certified on the basis of card check.
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