November 4
Earlier today, “It’s Our Money” reported that Willie Brown, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 234 – the guys on strike – had told reporters that Mayor Nutter was “cut off” from future negotiations:
Nutter “has brought nothing†to the table, Brown said, adding, “I will not meet him†because of the attacks the mayor has leveled at the union.
About half an hour ago, Office of the Mayor Press Secretary Doug Oliver emailed me the following statement, reprinted here in its entirety:
The Mayor was only involved because he was asked to participate in the discussions. Â To the extent that his participation is helpful, he’s willing to participate. Â If his participation is problematic, he’s willing to stay out of the discussions. Â It’s always been the Mayor’s position that his number one obligation is to the 1.5 million people who are trying to manage their way through this TWU strike.
There should be no reason why the negotiations can’t move forward. Â But with a deal like the one that was offered (11% wage increases over five years and no increase in contributions to healthcare) during a time when so many people are taking pay decreases and even losing their jobs, one can’t help but wonder why a deal wasn’t struck already. Â Again, if the absence of the Mayor is the only thing needed to strike a deal, the Mayor is more than happy to allow the negotiations to continue without his involvement.
Posted in Labor, News, The Mayor | 2 Comments »
Nothing makes my Friday quite like a column from the furious pen of Christine M. Flowers, regular contributor to the Daily News and defender of oppressed conservative values of everything from the right not to see children breastfed in public to the right not to see the homeless to the right not to be bullied into patriotism by the liberal establishment.
That’s what her column today is all about:
“We non-Obama voters shouldn’t be bullied into supporting our new president,” she writes, promising not to be “quiet” — not that we’re worried about Christine M. Flowers ever closing her vociferous mouth — in the face of policies that she says will hurt America.
One of those polices she mentions specifically:
“. . . If Obama has his way, the Employee Freedom of Choice Act will become law, thereby eliminating the secret ballot (how un-American) that allows employees to decide whether they want to belong to a union. Under EFCA, employees will be forced to publicly declare their vote.”
Her passion for defending America’s workers is undoubtedly genuine. Unfortunately, her writing is disingenuous — well, completely inaccurate is more like it.
Flowers, as we’ve pointed out before, doesn’t let truth stand in the way of her opinions — and that’d be fine, if her opinions weren’t appearing between the pages of an actual newspaper.
Flowers is wrong on a couple of fronts. Let’s start with her mention of the “Employee Freedom of Choice Act,” which is in fact called the “Employee Free Choice Act.”
Flowers may have come across this incorrect title by firing up the old Google and stumbling across an article by the ultra-conservative Media Research Center, which also gets the name of the act wrong, and which contains — coincidentally? — the second inaccuracy in her article.
The Act does not, in fact, eliminate the secret ballot vote that allows workers to unionize.
I verified this by a method Flowers might want to adopt for future columns: Checking facts before publishing them. I actually called somebody who knows something and asked them.
“[The Act] wouldn’t eliminate secret ballots, but it would provide an alternative,” affirmed Charles B. Craver, Freda H. Alverson Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School, an expert on labor law.
Currently, workers can unionize only by petitioning for a secret ballot election, in which a majority must vote to unionize. One problem with this is that current labor law allows for a 30- to 40-day period between the filing of the petition and the vote itself, an interval during which employers may try every trick in the book (and there are plenty of them) to discourage workers (sometimes by firing them) from voting “yea” on the union.
The Employee Free Choice Act, however, would allow workers to organize by means of signed authorization forms. Once a majority of workers authorizes union representation, they could be certified immediately.
To be fair — a burdensome process which Flowers has the strength of character to reject — I should add that Prof. Craver said he suspects most unions will opt for this form of authorization over the secret ballot.
Flowers’ statement that the act eliminates secret ballots is, however, plainly inaccurate.
If she wants to be an ideologue, fine, but she ought to leave the facts out altogether if she can’t get them right.
And if she insists on taking a stab at non-fiction, the Daily News ought to check her “facts” before publishing them.
Staff Blog
