Solis Selection Gives Solace to Wary Workers

Solis Selection Gives Solace to Wary Workers

Is The Day Workers Stopped Standing Still Here?

with John Michael Spinelli

Columbus, Ohio: Seasoned sailors can anticipate coming weather by interpreting clouds. When clear blue skies show the encroachment of streaking strains of stratospheric clouds, mariners know something more formidable this way comes.

Workers have reason to believe their fortunes may be brighter under the administration of President-elect Barack Obama than former presidents. From the era of Ronald Reagan to our current lame duck president, when it comes to worker's rights the current occupant of the White House has acted in the interest of Ebenezer Scrooge than Bob Cratchit, the miser's underpaid and abused employee.

But with the selection of Hilda Solis, a Democrat Congresswoman from California as secretary of labor, who will replace current labor secretary Elaine Cho, wife of ultra-conservative and anti-labor Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, workers have hope again that the war waged against them for decades will either come to an end or at least be joined by a better armed army that can fight back. Solis has walked picket lines and will have the backs of workers, whose chance to form unions, greatly despised by Republicans and even some Democrats, could tilt the balance of power away from captains of industry and their sycophant down-chain managers who took pride in keeping all labor costs but their own down to them.

Solis will champion workers, the heart of any business great or small, rather than stiff-arm them as has been done for decades. The leading edge of the Obama weather system gives workers evidence that they may no longer be forced to act like shooting gallery targets, forced to stand still as business managers and elected public officials forced them to take wage concessions and then stacked the deck against them by making the process of unionizing difficult and unsavory.

Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote of Obama and his selection of Solis as "developments that portend a radically different environment for the nation’s workers."

From Ronald Reagan’s voodoo economics to Henry Paulson’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, he said "we’ve put the mighty resources of the national government overwhelmingly on the side of those who were already rich and powerful."

Herbert's article quotes Andy Stern, president of the huge Service Employees International Union, saying, "We’ve had a 25-year experience with market-worshipping, deregulating, privatizing, trickle-down policies, and it has ended us up with the greatest economy on earth staggering, and with the greatest amount of inequality since the Great Depression.”

Included in his column is the now-famous statement about showers and baths. Leo Gerard, president of the steelworkers union, said of the government’s attitude about workers, "Washington will bail out those who shower before work, but not those who shower afterwards.”

One non-partisan economic think tank in Ohio said the roots of the current "staggering financial catastrophe lie in over-reliance on the market, excessive deregulation, and our economy's failure to deliver for most families." Researchers from Policy Matters Ohio show that wages have been essentially stagnant for the typical worker since the late 1970s, despite rising productivity and tremendous growth in incomes at the very top. To access the basics, PMO argues that many families went deep into "poorly regulated" debt, which was not sustainable for individuals or the economy; price we're all paying the price for now.

Their remedy is better regulation and better wages. One way PMO says is the path to better wages is to make it easier for workers to join a union.

But we know that the bastions of business will go nuclear to defeat enactment of legislation known as Card Check. Card Check, shorthand for the Employee Free Choice Act, is a method of organizing employees into a labor union in which employers enter into an agreement to recognize the unionization of its employees if a majority of employees in a bargaining unit sign authorization forms, or "cards".

Under Card Check, introduced in the United States Congress in 2005 and again in 2007, the NLRB would recognize the union's role as the official bargaining representative if a majority of employees have authorized that representation via card check, without requiring a secret ballot election. It was passed by the House on March 1, 2007, but failed a cloture vote in the Senate. Card Check allows employees to choose a secret ballot process to elect union representation if they do not desire a card check election, but employers are required to accept whichever method employees choose.[Wikipedia]

Big Business, lead by powerhouse groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, say the program would "result in employees being subjected to coercion by unions, employers, or other co-workers." But they have no problem coercing workers to take pay cuts, as is happening in President Bush's proposal to use federal funds to keep Detroit's Big Three car manufacturers alive until spring. Southern senators with foreign car plants in their states have laid the blame of Detroit's car costs on wages and benefits negotiated by the United Auto Workers. These senators want the UAW to reduce their wages aboub $3-per-house to levels for workers at Toyota or Honda.

The coming four years could be the thaw labor and workers need to regain levels of dignity, pride and wages they've been missing. Solis could be the solace wary workers have been waiting for.

John Michael Spinelli is a former Ohio Statehouse government and political reporter and business columnist. To send a tip of comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com