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Apparently, uncertainty is a fate worse than death for a CEO. Billionaires bellyache about it constantly on TV, contending they must know, right now, whether next year’s tax rates will rise. Republicans bewail uncertainty, insisting CEOs must know, right now, whether they’ll get a tax holiday for overseas profits.

Their deep, abiding concern about the ill effects of uncertainty doesn’t extend, however, to the middle class. To Republicans and far too many billionaires and CEOs, weighing down workers with uncertainty about wages, health insurance and retirement is a fate well deserved.

In fact, Republicans in the past two years have gone hog-wild heightening middle class fear and uncertainty. In addition to demanding cuts to programs crucial to middle class certainty like Medicare and Social Security, Republican lawmakers in GOP-controlled states across the country have passed laws prohibiting union security clauses in collective bargaining agreements. This results in weaker unions and lower benefits and wages, not just for union workers but for everyone in union insecurity states.  That creates financial insecurity, the worst kind of uncertainty.

Union security clauses give labor organizations some financial certainty. They require any worker who benefits from a collective bargaining agreement to either join and pay dues or to decline membership and pay a smaller fee covering the cost of union services like negotiation and grievance resolution.

Some states – union insecurity states – forbid these clauses. There’s a total of 24 now, with GOP-controlled Michigan and Indiana joining this year. These governors say their efforts are intended to assist workers in union shops who don’t want to pay anything toward the cost of union services.

So, of course, these governors wouldn’t exclude a union, which would allow that union to retain security while denying it to all the rest. Right? (more…)

Lawrence Mishel
President, Economic Policy Institute

That’s how the Washington Post fact checker, Glenn Kessler, put it in his review of the following assertion used in the Super Bowl ad (watch below) by the Center for Union Facts*: “Only ten percent of people in unions today actually voted to join the union.”

Kessler dug in to see where that came from and apparently it is an “estimate [of the] the proportion of employees who both would have voted for the establishment of a union at their companies and were still in their jobs.” As Kessler points out, this has no bearing on the extent to which workers currently covered by collective bargaining would vote to maintain collective bargaining. It is as relevant, as Jared Bernstein points out, as “saying Virginia isn’t a state because none of its current residents voted for statehood.”

What are the facts? Richard Freeman (Harvard University) and Joel Rogers (University of Wisconsin) report on page 69 in their book, What Workers Want, that 90 percent of union workers wanted to keep their union based on their answer to the question, “If a new election were held today to decide whether to keep the union at your company, would you vote to keep the union or get rid of it?”

Union workers have many special legal rights and protections. For instance, union workers by law have the right to vote for union officers and any dues increase, initiation fee or assessment. The laws protecting internal union democracy are far stricter than those for corporate governance and shareholder rights. Plus, workers also have clear rights to decertify unions. This ad and this “fact” do not capture what union worker rights are nor even attempt to reflect what union workers’ views are of collective bargaining. (more…)

Earlier this month, a former member of the United Paperworkers International Union (UPIU) wrote to the USW blog to complain that now, six years after UPIU, and its successor, PACE, joined the United Steelworkers union, he would have to begin paying the same rate of dues as other steelworkers have been paying all along. USW District 2 Director Michael Bolton responded to this member from Michigan, and his letter is published below.

Dear Brother;

In response to your email regarding the final phase of the merger agreement, which includes dues going to the full USW rate as all other Steelworkers are paying:

Not only would I like to thank you for taking the time to write, but I also want to provide a response to your comments.  It is disturbing to read that after having identified yourself as a lifelong union member, you would encourage new hires to work as scabs, or without a union – the very opposite of what your union has stood for.  Being union is not about how much you pay in dues, it is more about a personal philosophy, about who you are; and, moreover, where you stand with your coworkers and the middle class.  I am surprised that you are willing to abandon who you have been for 43 years because of a disagreement over what the right amount of union dues are.

Our dues formula is not at all out of line with that of other activist unions. In terms of how frugally we spend the members’ money, our union does more and leads the movement by example – and for that, we will not apologize because our members have decided that they wanted a fighting union.  That is why PACE decided to merge with the Steelworkers in 2005.  The PACE Union was given a six-year transition period to prepare for the USW dues structure while having access to all the benefits of the USW.

Our union doesn’t merely show up to fight for a better collective bargaining agreement that comes around once every three or four years.  We fight every day in every venue to protect our members.  For example, there is no union that has entered and won more fights to put a halt to the off-shoring of American Workers’ jobs than the USW.  There has not been a month that has gone by since the 1990’s when we haven’t been in the middle of a trade case protecting USW members’ jobs, or preparing the next attack to protect American workers’ jobs. (more…)