#card check

John Knefel at MMFA:

Project 2025, a sprawling right-wing plan to provide policy and staffing to a future Republican president, proposes an extreme anti-worker agenda that would severely curtail unions’ ability to collectively bargain on behalf of their members and reverse gains organized labor has made in recent years. It would also weaken overtime regulations, give corporations wider latitude in misclassifying workers as independent contractors, and dismantle safety regulations that prohibit young people from working dangerous jobs.

The initiative’s policy book, Mandate for Leadership, is an attempt to roll back New Deal-era, working class victories by allowing state-level exemptions from the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act, and by creating nonunion “employee involvement organizations” to undermine unions’ negotiating power. It additionally calls for sharp reductions in the budgets of the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor and a freeze on new hires. Project 2025 is organized by The Heritage Foundation and includes more than 100 conservative groups on its advisory board, which have collectively received more than $55 million from groups tied to conservative megadonors Leonard Leo and Charles Koch. Leo has been pushing the Supreme Court to further erode the power of organized labor, and the Koch family has waged a war on unions for more than 60 years.

[...]

Project 2025: Eviscerate overtime and dismantle pro-worker regulations

One central proposal in Mandate that illuminates Project 2025’s extreme anti-work posture is the suggestion that employers should be allowed to eviscerate overtime regulations and potentially withhold pay. The attacks on overtime take several forms, including a proposal to allow workers to accrue vacation instead of time-and-a-half compensation — but at least 40 percent of lower- and middle-income workers already don’t use their allotted paid time off. Under this policy employers could coerce workers into “voluntarily” selecting vacation that they’re either formally or informally prohibited from taking, thereby denying them overtime compensation. Project 2025 further recommends that workers and bosses agree to extend the overtime threshold to a period of two weeks or one month. The policy would empower management to overload busy weeks with extra-long shifts and take advantage of slow periods through under-scheduling — effectively eliminating overtime altogether. 

[...]

A return to company unionism

Project 2025 seeks to roll back New Deal-era labor victories by proposing that Congress “pass legislation allowing waivers from federal labor laws” — like the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act — “under certain conditions.” Allowing state-level exemptions to the NLRA and FLSA would almost certainly trigger a race-to-the-bottom dynamic, where firms relocate to states with the weakest (or nonexistent) labor protections at the expense of workers. That’s what happened in states that passed so-called “right-to-work” laws — which starve unions of resources by preventing them from collecting fees from all employees they represent, thereby creating a free-rider problem — where employers were able to depress wages and union membership.    Unions have made significant gains under the Biden administration’s National Labor Relations Board, which enforces labor law and investigates anti-union practices. That progress is largely thanks to NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who has taken an aggressive, pro-worker enforcement posture. Project 2025 promises to fire her on “Day One.” It also calls for reductions in the budgets of the NLRB and the Department of Labor to the “low end of the historical average,” as well as implementing a “hiring freeze for career officials.” 

[...] Project 2025 would further undermine unions by eliminating “card check” — where a majority of workers who have signed union authorization forms can ask their employer for voluntary recognition — and mandating “the secret ballot exclusively.” Although the idea of a secret ballot has the veneer of democracy, in practice it’s a power grab for management. By forcing organizers to go through the byzantine NLRB election process, an employer can buy itself time to wage an anti-union campaign and bog down the process, often through illegal means. A 2019 study found that employers violated labor laws in 41.5% of NLRB-supervised union elections in 2016 and 2017 and intimidated or coerced workers in nearly a third of all elections. 

Dave Jamieson at HuffPost:

GOP lawmakers in Georgia passed a bill Wednesday to punish employers that make it easier for workers to form unions, sending the legislation to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature. Senate Bill 362 would bar companies from receiving state economic incentives if they voluntarily recognize a union instead of requiring employees to vote in a secret-ballot election. It is aimed at discouraging a process known as “card check,” whereby workers can unionize simply by showing that there’s majority support in the form of signed union cards. The legislation passed the state Senate last month by a vote of 31-23. It cleared the House on Wednesday 96-78. Both votes fell mostly along party lines. Although Kemp has indicated that he backs the legislation, it is likely to face legal challenges on the grounds that it conflicts with federal labor law. Long-standing interpretation of the National Labor Relations Act, the 1935 law governing private sector collective bargaining, allows for employers to recognize a union and immediately start bargaining when employees have made their wishes clear.

Unions much prefer to win voluntary recognition than go through an election process that can be rife with intimidation and abuse. During the campaign period, workers often get corralled into employers’ propagandistic captive-audience meetings, while union leaders end up singled out for retaliation and even firings. The process can also lead to long delays and litigation.

[...] The Georgia bill is part of a broader GOP effort to hold unions back amid an uptick in organizing and work stoppages lately. In a speech to the Georgia Chamber of Commerce in January, Kemp bemoaned the large worker strikes of 2023 and said that “activists” were trying to “attack job creators” and “see the free market brought to a screeching halt.” The Associated Press reported last month that the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council has been pushing Republican-led states to implement laws barring subsidies for employers that voluntarily recognize unions. A bill similar to the Georgia one passed the Tennessee legislature last year and was signed by GOP Gov. Bill Lee.

Pollak: 23 Extreme Left-wing Ideas in the Democrats’ Draft 2020 Platform

Democrats have circulated a draft of their proposed 2020 platform. In its present form, it would be the most left-wing platform in the history of U.S. presidential politics.

Amidst much verbiage, it includes many extremist ideas, including:

1. “Systemic racism.”The platform begins from the premise that the United States suffers from “systemic racism in our economy and our society.” Having…

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The Return of the Union Thugs

Barack Obama is a product of the rough-and-tumble of Chicago politics. He has brought both the practice and practitioners of that style of politics to the federal level.

Many of the actions of this regime have been predicated on the advancement of Chicago-style politics. For example the demonization of Mitt Romney by the Obama campaign was simply standard operating procedure for the Chicago-style…