There is a bill in the U.S. Senate that would radically alter the process for deciding whether a union will represent you at the bargaining table with your employer. That bill’s sole purpose is to provide unions greater leverage in labor/management relations.
And while the health care issue has understandably dominated the public’s attention, you should keep an eye on this issue, too.
Lately, the debate over health care has pushed virtually everything else in Congress to the back burners. Nevertheless, unions and their allies in Congress want to force a vote on their bill. Last week, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chairman, Sen. Tom Harkin (D – Iowa), said that he was still hoping to bring the bill up for a vote this fall. However, the unions have to clear a significant hurdle first. They must secure 60 votes from among the country’s 100 senators to avoid a guaranteed filibuster by opponents.
All 40 Republican senators are against this bill, which means that all 60 Democratic senators are needed to invoke cloture to prevent the filibuster. While most of the Democrats would vote to do this, a number of moderate Democratic senators have not signed onto this bill, including Louisiana’s Sen. Mary Landrieu.
Her reluctance is understandable–and commendable. S. 560 was named the Employee Free Choice Act by its authors, but it is more commonly referred to as “card check” because it would essentially eliminate secret ballot elections and replace them with an open card registration procedure known as card check.
Existing law allows workers to hear both sides–as they would in an election campaign–and then to privately decide in a voting booth whether they want union representation. S. 560 seeks to change the rules for union organizing campaigns so that workers only get the union’s side of the story.
Currently, unions wanting to obtain bargaining rights hire organizers to solicit workers’ signatures on cards authorizing a union certification election. If 30 percent of the workers sign the cards, the union can petition the National Labor Relations Board to conduct an election, which it supervises to assure that neither the employer nor the union intimidates the workers.
Many workers are not interested in being represented by a union, but will sign the cards so organizers will leave them alone.
When the election is held, they then vote against unionization. That is why the standard goal of organizing campaigns is to collect signatures from 75 percent of workers. Unions will always choose card check because they already collect more than a majority of signatures anyway. So, S. 560 would effectively eliminate the secret ballot election procedure.
The inability of union leaders to secure outright support for S. 560 from Sen. Landrieu and other moderate Democratic senators like her has prompted Sen. Harkin and a handful of other supportive senators to attempt to develop an alternative approach to overcome their reluctance. Yet, the only alternative that would satisfy union leaders will be one that rigs the game and keeps workers from getting the full story before deciding to allow a union in their workplace.
The existing law is fair and protects workers from being unduly pressured by their employers or union organizers. S. 560 was not brought by a host of workers begging to have the law changed, but by union leaders who see their membership sinking as workers find unions less relevant and beneficial in today’s economy. Senator Landrieu would be wise not to support cloture on this bill or on any variation of it that the union leadership would support.
Jim Patterson, LABI’s Vice President of Governmental Relations and Employee Relations Council Director, contributed to this column.
Showing posts with label business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow from a State Budget Standpoint
The biggest issue facing Governor Jindal and the Legislature in 2010 will be the state budget. No other issue will come remotely close to capturing the same amount of attention and scrutiny in the run-up to the legislative session next March. Considering the fact that the governor must submit an executive budget outline in February, the countdown is on.
The budgeting process is going to be anything but fun in 2010. Soaring revenues fueled by incredibly high oil and gas prices and billions of dollars of hurricane recovery money are a thing of the past. Slower revenue growth is likely to meet a huge loss of federal Medicaid money in the budgeting process next year, and the result will not be pleasant.
To better understand the future direction of the state budget, a look at the two most recent budgets helps to put things in perspective.
In 2008 when the governor and the Legislature fashioned the 2008-2009 budget, state government was still rolling in high cotton. Money was pouring into the treasury so fast it was hard to spend it all—but Lord knows we tried. The total state budget increased by $1 billion and the state general fund portion of it (the part funded only by state generated revenue) went up by a whopping $1.24 billion. That budget also contained an increase of 1,000 state job positions. This significant expansion of the state budget came after a similar sizeable increase in the 2007-2008 budget fashioned in the last year of the Blanco administration. But what goes up must come down—and our governor and Legislature began to learn that lesson last spring when they wrote the 2009-2010 budget.
The budget debate last spring and early summer contained a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. The House members wanted to bring spending back in line with existing revenues. A majority of the Senate wanted to increase taxes and lessen the amount of cuts.
Governor Jindal did not support tax increases, so the House version of the budget became the basic blueprint. The result was that the total state budget decreased by $1.5 billion from the previous year and the state general fund portion dropped by $1.21 billion.
That budget also called for a reduction of 1,200 authorized (but probably not filled) job positions in state government. In essence, the governor and the Legislature simply reverted back to 2007-2008 spending levels when they crafted the current budget. But remember, those spending levels were a huge increase in and of themselves due to higher oil and gas prices and hurricane recovery money.
Now the road gets bumpier for the governor and the Legislature. Unless the federal government changes the formula for determining the state match for Medicaid funding (or carves out a temporary exemption for Louisiana), there will be $1 billion less revenue to use to come up with the same spending levels as exists in the current budget.
Several cost savings panels are meeting to come up with recommendations for reducing expenditures and identifying efficiencies in state government operations. Unfortunately, most of the potentially low hanging fruit in the cost savings arena has already been harvested.
To come up with a billion dollars of spending reductions, some sacred cows are going to have to be sacrificed—things like the multiplicity of institutions in post-secondary education and the large amount of state funding provided for local government services and construction projects.
How the governor and Legislature handle the budget next spring will impact the fiscal future of Louisiana for years to come. Let’s hope they do better than Congress.
The budgeting process is going to be anything but fun in 2010. Soaring revenues fueled by incredibly high oil and gas prices and billions of dollars of hurricane recovery money are a thing of the past. Slower revenue growth is likely to meet a huge loss of federal Medicaid money in the budgeting process next year, and the result will not be pleasant.
To better understand the future direction of the state budget, a look at the two most recent budgets helps to put things in perspective.
In 2008 when the governor and the Legislature fashioned the 2008-2009 budget, state government was still rolling in high cotton. Money was pouring into the treasury so fast it was hard to spend it all—but Lord knows we tried. The total state budget increased by $1 billion and the state general fund portion of it (the part funded only by state generated revenue) went up by a whopping $1.24 billion. That budget also contained an increase of 1,000 state job positions. This significant expansion of the state budget came after a similar sizeable increase in the 2007-2008 budget fashioned in the last year of the Blanco administration. But what goes up must come down—and our governor and Legislature began to learn that lesson last spring when they wrote the 2009-2010 budget.
The budget debate last spring and early summer contained a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. The House members wanted to bring spending back in line with existing revenues. A majority of the Senate wanted to increase taxes and lessen the amount of cuts.
Governor Jindal did not support tax increases, so the House version of the budget became the basic blueprint. The result was that the total state budget decreased by $1.5 billion from the previous year and the state general fund portion dropped by $1.21 billion.
That budget also called for a reduction of 1,200 authorized (but probably not filled) job positions in state government. In essence, the governor and the Legislature simply reverted back to 2007-2008 spending levels when they crafted the current budget. But remember, those spending levels were a huge increase in and of themselves due to higher oil and gas prices and hurricane recovery money.
Now the road gets bumpier for the governor and the Legislature. Unless the federal government changes the formula for determining the state match for Medicaid funding (or carves out a temporary exemption for Louisiana), there will be $1 billion less revenue to use to come up with the same spending levels as exists in the current budget.
Several cost savings panels are meeting to come up with recommendations for reducing expenditures and identifying efficiencies in state government operations. Unfortunately, most of the potentially low hanging fruit in the cost savings arena has already been harvested.
To come up with a billion dollars of spending reductions, some sacred cows are going to have to be sacrificed—things like the multiplicity of institutions in post-secondary education and the large amount of state funding provided for local government services and construction projects.
How the governor and Legislature handle the budget next spring will impact the fiscal future of Louisiana for years to come. Let’s hope they do better than Congress.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Keeping Manufacturing Alive
Some of the highest paying jobs in America are created by companies that make things. Manufacturing has been a mainstay in the U.S. economy since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Some say that manufacturing is passé, that technology is the future, and that it doesn’t matter if manufacturing dries up and blows away.
The flaw in those arguments (actually there are numerous flaws) is that one of the biggest users of technology today is manufacturers.
Modern manufacturing operations are the showcase for innovative technology. Gone are the days, for instance, when hundreds of laborers engaged in the back-breaking activity of wrestling with logs in a forest products plant. A typical worker in those facilities today is more of a technician than a log wrestler.
State-of-the-art machinery moves the logs, determines the best possible value that can be extracted from them, and turns them into profitable products. The same is true of many industries, such as steel, durable goods, petroleum refining, and chemical manufacturing. Technology is the driving force that has increased productivity in American manufacturing, which has kept us a global leader in manufacturing output.
As noted above, advancements in technology have led directly to a diminution of manufacturing employment in the U.S. Many Americans believe that most of the manufacturing job losses—and there have been millions in the last few decades—are due to plants closing in the U.S. and moving to less-developed countries.
Certainly there has been some of that phenomenon occurring, particularly with low-technology industries. But, until this point, the majority of manufacturing job losses has been due more to productivity advances through technology than out-sourcing manufacturing jobs to foreign countries.
That may change soon. Government policies can have a major impact on any industry, and manufacturing is no exception.
Several issues pending in Congress could accelerate the departure of manufacturing industries and jobs from the U.S. Enactment of “cap and trade” legislation tops the list.
If energy costs rise exponentially for manufacturers in the U.S., companies will undoubtedly look more favorably at countries that do not artificially raise their cost of doing business by raising their energy costs.
Another federal issue that will impact the future of American manufacturing is the “card check” legislation pending in Congress. Some manufacturers work with a union agreement. Others do not. Manufacturers are not generally concerned about the wages involved with a collective bargaining agreement. They already have some of the highest wage scales in the private sector.
What troubles them are the voluminous work rules that come with a union contract. These contract requirements inhibit the productivity advancements necessary for manufacturing to survive in the modern world.
The current health care debate also has the full attention of U.S. manufacturers. The vast majority of our domestic manufacturers provide quality health insurance coverage for their workers. Proposals in Congress would mandate that coverage and possibly tax manufacturers for providing it.
The manufacturing community is very wary of government-imposed mandates from past experience involving many issues. Limiting their ability to design quality, affordable insurance plans for their workers—and possibly making them pay taxes to provide it—will not make them more likely to keep or expand their operations in the U.S.
If America is to remain a world leader in making things, government officials should step lightly when considering policies that could make more of our best jobs leave our shores.
Improving the quality of education, encouraging more research and development, and maintaining job-friendly tax policies will help keep manufacturing jobs in America. Passing some of the proposals pending in Congress will definitely have the opposite effect.
The flaw in those arguments (actually there are numerous flaws) is that one of the biggest users of technology today is manufacturers.
Modern manufacturing operations are the showcase for innovative technology. Gone are the days, for instance, when hundreds of laborers engaged in the back-breaking activity of wrestling with logs in a forest products plant. A typical worker in those facilities today is more of a technician than a log wrestler.
State-of-the-art machinery moves the logs, determines the best possible value that can be extracted from them, and turns them into profitable products. The same is true of many industries, such as steel, durable goods, petroleum refining, and chemical manufacturing. Technology is the driving force that has increased productivity in American manufacturing, which has kept us a global leader in manufacturing output.
As noted above, advancements in technology have led directly to a diminution of manufacturing employment in the U.S. Many Americans believe that most of the manufacturing job losses—and there have been millions in the last few decades—are due to plants closing in the U.S. and moving to less-developed countries.
Certainly there has been some of that phenomenon occurring, particularly with low-technology industries. But, until this point, the majority of manufacturing job losses has been due more to productivity advances through technology than out-sourcing manufacturing jobs to foreign countries.
That may change soon. Government policies can have a major impact on any industry, and manufacturing is no exception.
Several issues pending in Congress could accelerate the departure of manufacturing industries and jobs from the U.S. Enactment of “cap and trade” legislation tops the list.
If energy costs rise exponentially for manufacturers in the U.S., companies will undoubtedly look more favorably at countries that do not artificially raise their cost of doing business by raising their energy costs.
Another federal issue that will impact the future of American manufacturing is the “card check” legislation pending in Congress. Some manufacturers work with a union agreement. Others do not. Manufacturers are not generally concerned about the wages involved with a collective bargaining agreement. They already have some of the highest wage scales in the private sector.
What troubles them are the voluminous work rules that come with a union contract. These contract requirements inhibit the productivity advancements necessary for manufacturing to survive in the modern world.
The current health care debate also has the full attention of U.S. manufacturers. The vast majority of our domestic manufacturers provide quality health insurance coverage for their workers. Proposals in Congress would mandate that coverage and possibly tax manufacturers for providing it.
The manufacturing community is very wary of government-imposed mandates from past experience involving many issues. Limiting their ability to design quality, affordable insurance plans for their workers—and possibly making them pay taxes to provide it—will not make them more likely to keep or expand their operations in the U.S.
If America is to remain a world leader in making things, government officials should step lightly when considering policies that could make more of our best jobs leave our shores.
Improving the quality of education, encouraging more research and development, and maintaining job-friendly tax policies will help keep manufacturing jobs in America. Passing some of the proposals pending in Congress will definitely have the opposite effect.
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