Noam Chomsky on Social Change and the Labor Movement - Covert Action Part 7 (1993)

December 10, 1993 http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.... Watch the full lecture: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/08/noam-chomsky-on-us-foreign-policy...

Labor unions in the United States are legally recognized as representatives of workers in many industries. The most prominent unions are among public sector employees such as teachers and police. Activity by labor unions in the United States today centers on collective bargaining over wages, benefits, and working conditions for their membership and on representing their members if management attempts to violate contract provisions. Although much smaller compared to their peak membership in the 1950s, unions also remain an important political factor, both through mobilization of their own memberships and through coalitions with like-minded activist organizations.

Today most unions are aligned with one of two larger umbrella organizations: the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Federation, which split from the AFL-CIO in 2005. Both advocate policies and legislation on behalf of workers in the United States and Canada, and take an active role in politics. The AFL-CIO is especially concerned with global trade issues.

American union membership in the private sector has in recent years fallen under 9% — levels not seen since 1932. American unions remain an important political factor, both through mobilization of their own memberships and through coalitions with like-minded activist organizations around issues such as immigrant rights, trade policy, health care, and living wage campaigns. Unions allege that employer-incited opposition has contributed to this decline in membership.

Unions are currently advocating new federal legislation that would allow workers to elect union representation by only signing cards, a process often referred to as card check recognition, and would eliminate a secret ballot vote from the process. This proposed legislation is known as the Employee Free Choice Act. Under this proposed Act, once a majority of employees in a workplace have signed a card, the employer will be obligated to make a good-faith effort to bargain a contract with the union. Significantly, the card signing is to be performed in front of a union representative, who can identify the signer, leading to opponents of the proposal to fear that eliminating the secret ballot could lead to coercion. The current process established by federal law requires at least 30% of employees to sign cards for the union, then wait 45 to 90 days for a federal official to conduct a secret ballot election in which a simple majority of the employees must vote for the union in order to obligate the employer to bargain. Unions report that, under the present system, many employers use the 45 to 90 day period to conduct anti-union campaigns.

During the 2008 elections, the Employee Free Choice Act had widespread support of many legislators in the House and Senate, and of the President. Since then, support for the "card check" provisions of the EFCA subsided substantially.

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[sistitulasi]

"Public funds for poor people are called welfare. Public programs that provide funds for rich people are not called welfare, but in fact that is most of what the public funds are."

Yes, there you have it.