A Blue View

Approving The Firing Of The RI Teachers: Obama's PATCO Moment?

NY Times:

A Rhode Island school board’s decision to fire the entire faculty of a poorly performing school, and President Obama’s endorsement of the action, has stirred a storm of reaction nationwide, with teachers condemning it as an insult and conservatives hailing it as a watershed moment of school accountability.

The decision by school authorities in Central Falls to fire the 93 teachers and staff members has assumed special significance because hundreds of other school districts across the nation could face similarly hard choices in coming weeks, as a $3.5 billion federal school turnaround program kicks into gear.

While there is fierce disagreement over whether the firings were good or bad, there is widespread agreement that the decision would have lasting ripples on the nation’s education debate — especially because Mr. Obama seized on the move to show his eagerness to take bold action to improve failing schools filled with poor students.

“This is the first example of tough love under the Obama regime, and that’s what makes it significant,” said Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, an educational research and advocacy organization.

“I think it’s going to give some cover to other school boards and school superintendents around the country that want to do something similar,” Mr. Petrilli said. “They can say the president of the United States, Barack Obama, someone the teachers voted for, supports us here to take some radical actions to shake up our schools.”

In Boston on Thursday, another city moving to carry out the administration’s school-turnaround policy, officials announced that staff members at six underperforming schools would have to reapply for their jobs. Carol R. Johnson, the schools superintendent, said staff members were not being fired, but were being asked to “recommit” themselves. This move angered the teachers’ union, which said it was exploring legal action.

Mr. Obama’s endorsement of the Rhode Island board’s tough action infuriated many of the four million members of the two national teachers’ unions, thousands of whom campaigned vigorously for him in 2008.

“I ripped the Obama sticker off of my truck,” said Zeph Capo, a midlevel official at the Houston Federation of Teachers who trains classroom teachers. “We worked hard for this man, we talked to our neighbors and our fellow teachers about why we should support him, and we’re having to dig the knife out of our back.”

Officials at the two unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, were so angry in the hours after Mr. Obama first endorsed the firings that an irreconcilable break with the administration seemed possible, perhaps bruising Democrats’ electoral chances in November. Recognizing how a permanent breach could hurt everyone, however, both sides sought to lower tensions, partly by encouraging a negotiated settlement in Central Falls, administration and union officials said in interviews.

But neither the president nor Education Secretary Arne Duncan backed off his support for tough action, including dismissing teachers en masse, to improve learning conditions in chronically failing schools. At the high school in Central Falls, a poor community with a large immigrant population, only 7 percent of 11th graders passed state math tests last fall. And if the administration’s posture was undermining its support among teachers, it was earning unusual praise from conservatives, as well as from supporters of an overhaul of the nation’s schools.

“The administration is putting down a real marker here,” said Alex Johnston, chief executive of the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, a business-backed education advocacy group.

The decision by the Central Falls school board came under the terms of a new Obama administration policy intended to spur interventions in thousands of failing schools nationwide.

To get a share of the $3.5 billion in what are known as School Improvement Grants, school officials can choose to transform the learning environments in failing schools by extending instructional hours and making other changes, converting them to charter schools, closing them entirely or replacing the principal and at least half the staff.

The Central Falls superintendent, Frances Gallo, initially chose the first option this year, but after a dispute arose with the union over extra pay for adding 25 minutes to the school day, she broke off negotiations. Backed by the local school board, she announced the firings on Feb. 23. Last Monday, Mr. Obama supported the board’s action in a speech to a dropout prevention group.

“If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn’t show signs of improvement, then there’s got to be a sense of accountability,” Mr. Obama said. “And that’s what happened in Rhode Island last week.”

National union officials were shocked.

“Teachers were taken aback — and profoundly disappointed,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “Teachers will watch carefully whether Washington, the states and local districts will be partners that help us do our job or whether they’ll be scapegoating and demonizing.”

In Central Falls, community protests erupted against the firings. Marcia Reback, president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, said members of the state’s Congressional delegation had urged the parties in Central Falls to return to the negotiating table.

On Wednesday, Dr. Gallo agreed to resume contract talks, raising the possibility that at least some of the firings would be rescinded. Nonetheless, at week’s end, the two sides said animosity remained strong and negotiations were unlikely over the next few days.

Dr. Gallo said she had invited the union to participate in a meeting of parents, district officials and other parties on Thursday to help plan the school’s future.

Meanwhile in Washington, the Obama administration was bracing for similar controversies in other communities as more states identify failing schools.

“This is not a political strategy; this is about reforming the lowest-performing schools,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman. “It’s not always painless, it’s not easy. But what’s critical is taking action in these places.”

White House To Use Power Of Federal Purse To Drive Up Wages & Benefits

And  surprise, surpise, the GOP is opposed. NY Times:

The Obama administration is planning to use the government’s enormous buying power to prod private companies to improve wages and benefits for millions of workers, according to White House officials and several interest groups briefed on the plan.

By altering how it awards $500 billion in contracts each year, the government would disqualify more companies with labor, environmental or other violations and give an edge to companies that offer better levels of pay, health coverage, pensions and other benefits, the officials said.

Because nearly one in four workers is employed by companies that have contracts with the federal government, administration officials see the plan as a way to shape social policy and lift more families into the middle class. It would affect contracts like those awarded to make Army uniforms, clean federal buildings and mow lawns at military bases.

Although the details are still being worked out, the outline of the plan is drawing fierce opposition from business groups and Republican lawmakers. They see it as a gift to organized labor and say it would drive up costs for the government in the face of a $1.3 trillion budget deficit.

“I’m suspicious of what the end goals are,” said Ben Brubeck, director of labor and federal procurement for Associated Builders and Contractors, which represents 25,000 construction-related companies. “It’s pretty clear the agenda is to give big labor an advantage in federal contracts.”

Critics also said the policy would put small businesses, many of which do not provide rich benefits, at a disadvantage. Furthermore, government officials would find it difficult to evaluate bidders using the new criteria and to determine whether one company’s compensation package should give it an edge, said Alan L. Chvotkin, executive vice president of the Professional Services Council, a coalition of 340 government contractors.

From his earliest days in office, President Obama has called for an overhaul of government procurement policy, citing the contracting scandals of the previous decade involving cost overruns and no-bid contracts ...

In testimony last year to the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Podesta said that 400,000 workers employed under federal contracts — like cafeteria workers, security guards and landscaping workers at federal buildings — earn less than $22,000 a year, the federal poverty line for a family of four, assuming just one paycheck in a household.

“We have a president who is talking about bringing more people into the middle class,” Mr. Stern said. “The government should expect contractors to obey the law, and at the same time contractors should not be building a poverty economy, but should be trying to build a high-road economy.”...

Even as business groups press the administration for more details, they are denouncing the plan, tentatively named the High Road Procurement Policy ...

Randel K. Johnson, senior vice president for labor at the United States Chamber of Commerce, called the plan a “warmed-over version” of President Bill Clinton’s regulations that sought to bar federal agencies from awarding contracts to companies with a record of breaking labor, environmental or consumer laws. President George W. Bush vacated those regulations soon after taking office ...

On Feb. 2, Senator Susan Collins of Maine and four other Republican senators sent a letter to Peter R. Orszag, director of the White House budget office, saying, “We are concerned that the imposition of these requirements, during a time of significant economic turmoil in the private sector and tight federal budgets, could have serious, negative consequences, especially for our nation’s small businesses.”  ...

An Obama Portrait In Courage: Having The 9/11 Trial In NYC

Given all the risks (i.e., all the things this NY Times story claims can go wrong from the prosecutors point of view) the Obama Justice Department's decision is a profile in courage--the opposite of how Bush & his team approached his self-proclaimed "War on Terror." For 8 desolate years, Bush choose to do the politically easy thing and pander to a fearful populace's base instincts rather than attempt the much harder and riskier thing of appealing to our better virtues and natures.

Not so with Barack Obama. With this decision, he has shown his dedication to justice trumps political calculation and that he's willing to take big risks to restore American's, and the world's, view of the United States as a fair, just nation not afraid of anyone, least of all a bunch of guys hiding in caves.

I can already imagine how nuts this is going to make the Right.

How do you defend one of the most notorious terrorist figures in history? One step, legal analysts say, may be to ask for a change of venue.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s lawyers, whoever they are, will no doubt question whether he can get a fair trial from a jury sitting, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. noted, in a Manhattan courthouse “just blocks away from where the Twin Towers once stood.”

Then will come the inevitable challenges to interrogation methods used on Mr. Mohammed during more than six years in detention. The government has acknowledged waterboarding him 183 times to extract information about the Sept. 11 attacks, which he eventually admitted planning.

Finally, if Mr. Mohammed is convicted, defense lawyers will most likely plead for jurors in New York, historically more cautious about capital punishment than much of the rest of country, to spare the sentence of execution and send him to prison for the rest of his life instead.

The Obama administration’s decision to try Mr. Mohammed and four other terrorism suspects in a civilian court provoked sharp debate among politicians and lawyers about whether American courtrooms are the proper place for so-called enemy combatants, whose suspected crimes were hatched overseas and who viewed themselves as participants in a war against the United States. Both sides agreed that defense lawyers and prosecutors would face unique problems in what is likely to be a hugely complex and emotion-laden case.

Whatever the case, if it actually makes its way before a jury, it promises to be a trial like no other in memory, an extraordinary clash involving the morality of torture, due process rights of foreign terrorist operatives, and the ability of civilian courts to handle national security cases.

Mr. Mohammed and his four co-defendants in military custody have admitted their active involvement in plotting the Sept. 11 attacks and have boasted of their success in killing 3,000 people.

Once the Justice Department brings formal terrorism charges against him, Mr. Mohammed could seek to enter a guilty plea, just as he has tried to do in military custody.

But legal analysts were not convinced that he would go that route and said that he might instead seek to martyr himself in the eyes of Muslim extremists through a grand and lengthy trial.

“There’s reason to believe he will try to take advantage of a public platform — more public than Guantánamo afforded him — to publicize his jihadist views,” said David H. Laufman, a Washington lawyer and former federal terrorism prosecutor.

In fact, one question will be how a judge will prevent a trial from turning into a forum on the American war on terrorism, including the Bush administration’s interrogation policies. Terrorism defendants in lesser-known trials have given rambling speeches condemning the government.

The government may also want to avoid having its own interrogation tactics put on trial. To lessen the impact of the coercive measures used against the men, the F.B.I. has used “clean teams” of investigators to collect information independently and do reviews that it says have not been tainted by rough interrogation techniques. Still, any defense lawyer will try to present evidence, including photographs and the testimony of interrogators, to show Mr. Mohammed and his co-defendants were mistreated.

Prosecutors will counter that Mr. Mohammed’s statements in the last few years should be admissible at trial because they were voluntary and came long after the government stopped waterboarding him in 2003.

But Steven Wax, a federal public defender in Oregon who has represented seven Guantánamo defendants, said that “if I’m the defense attorney, I would say ‘this was the product of torture’ ” and should be thrown out of court.

Obama To AFL-CIO: Are You Fired Up?

From Josh Marshall

Here's the end of Obama's speech today at the Labor picnic where he went off script with his 'Fired Up' story. If you're not fired up, you should watch.

Change Comes To Immigration Enforcement

From the NY Times:

Immigration authorities had bad news this week for American Apparel, the T-shirt maker based in downtown Los Angeles: About 1,800 of its employees appeared to be illegal immigrants not authorized to work in the United States.

But in contrast to the high-profile raids that marked the enforcement approach of the Bush administration, no federal agents with criminal warrants stormed the company’s factories and rounded up employees. Instead, the federal immigration agency sent American Apparel a written notice that it faced civil fines and would have to fire any workers confirmed to be unauthorized.

The treatment of American Apparel, which has more than 5,600 factory employees in Los Angeles alone, is the most prominent demonstration of a new strategy by the Obama administration to curb the employment of illegal immigrants by focusing on employers who hire them — and doing so in a less confrontational manner than in years past.

Unlike the approach of the Bush administration, which brought criminal charges in its final two years against many illegal immigrant workers, the new effort makes broader use of fines and other civil sanctions, federal officials said Thursday.

Federal agents will concentrate on businesses employing large numbers of workers suspected of being illegal immigrants, the officials said, and will reserve tough criminal charges mostly for employers who serially hire illegal immigrants and engage in wage and labor violations.

SEC Staffer Warned of Madoff; Called Off By Boss Who Later Married Into Madoff's Family

From the Wash Post:

An investigator at the Securities and Exchange Commission warned superiors as far back as 2004 about irregularities at Bernard L. Madoff's financial management firm, but she was told to focus on an unrelated matter, according to agency documents and sources familiar with the investigation.

Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent e-mails to a supervisor, saying information provided by Madoff during her review didn't add up and suggesting a set of questions to ask his firm, documents show. Several of these questions directly challenged Madoff activities that much later turned out to be elements of his massive fraud.

But with the agency under pressure to look for wrongdoing in the mutual fund industry, she wasn't able to continue pursuing Madoff, according to documents and two people familiar with the investigation, and her team soon concluded its work on the probe.

Walker-Lightfoot's supervisors on the case were Mark Donohue, then a branch chief in her department, and his boss, Eric Swanson, an assistant director of the department, said two people familiar with the investigation. Swanson later married Madoff's niece, and their relationship is now under review by the agency's inspector general, who is examining the SEC's handling of the Madoff case. <Continue reading.>

Why Workers Aren't Angrier About Health Care

Ezra Klein thinks it's because they don't realize how health care costs negatively impact their wages:

Here's a counterintuitive thought: Health care reform is a pretty big issue in the United States. Arguably the biggest domestic issue there is. But it's a much smaller issue than it should be.

That's not meant as a normative statement. It's meant as an introduction to this graph from the Council of Economic Advisers' health care report. The top line -- the solid one going up and up and up -- is projected total worker compensation. The full amount employers pay for wages, benefits, and so forth. The second line -- the dashed line slumping down -- is compensation minus health care costs. That's pretty much what workers see in their paycheck.

The mechanism here is simple enough. As the report says, "Since health insurance premiums are growing more rapidly than total compensation in percentage terms, an increasing share of total compensation that a worker receives goes to cover health insurance premiums."

But workers don't see it that way. That slumping line isn't normally called wages-minus-health-premiums. It's called wages. And most workers think stagnant wages mean their employer is paying them less. They don't know that the main reason for stagnant wages is that their wage increases are going to pay for their health insurance premiums. If they did -- if they realized that compensation is pretty much a zero-sum endeavor and their employers don't so much buy them health insurance as garnish their wages to pay for their health insurance -- you'd probably see a lot more general anger at rising health care costs.

Agree or Else, Boston Globe Tells Its Unions

Today, the Boston Globe (and NY Times) told it's unions agree or else:

Boston Globe management was continuing to negotiate concessions with its major unions well past a midnight deadline, but said it was prepared to file a plant closing notice with the state today if they failed to reach agreement. That would allow the paper's owner, the New York Times Co., to follow through on its threat to shutter the 137-year-old newspaper ...

Talks had intensified after Globe management, just before 10 p.m., issued an ultimatum to its four major unions: Agree to major financial and contract concessions, including the abolition of lifetime job guarantees for some workers, or the Times Co. would begin the shutdown process ...

If the notice is filed, Powers said, the paper would continue to publish through the 60-day period. In addition, according to state labor officials, such a notice is not irrevocable. At times, financial conditions change during the 60-day period and companies don't go through with the plant closing.

The ultimatum, issued shortly before 10 p.m., came after just over a month of intense negotiations with unions over $20 million in financial givebacks and concessions on contract language, particularly the elimination of the job guarantees that apply to about 450 union workers. It was issued after Globe management summoned union leaders to the offices of the Labor Guild of the Archdiocese of Boston, where negotiations had been underway with the paper's largest union, the Boston Newspaper Guild.

The Guild, in a statement, decried the management move: "This tactic, while expected, is representative of the bullying manner in which the Times Company has conducted itself during these negotiations. Despite the Company's hostile tactics, we continue to negotiate in good faith and work diligently toward an acceptable outcome."

An official of one of the Globe's unions summed up the situation bluntly: "Do or die" ...

The Globe is projected to lose $85 million this year without significant cost reductions, according to the Times Co. Like many newspapers, the Globe has been hit hard by the migration of readers and advertisers to the Internet, and by the nation's deep recession ...

The key issue still dividing management and unions was the elimination of the lifetime job guarantees, a step that management has sought since the start of the bargaining, and which would give management substantially more flexibility in reshaping the newspaper and shrinking its staff in the face of declining advertising revenues. Advertising revenues for the Times Co.'s New England Media Group, dominated by the Globe, declined by more than 30 percent in the first three months of this year from the same period in 2008.

Unions have resisted giving up the guarantees, arguing they paid for the guarantees with major concessions in years past.  

Elections Matter: Labor's Position In Chrysler Bankruptcy "truly extraordinary"

From the NY Times:

For the United Automobile Workers union, Chrysler’s Chapter 11 case, which began in New York on Friday, could turn out to be — if the company survives and thrives — the Cadillac of bankruptcies. The U.A.W., for example, has received upfront protection from the Treasury Department for its pension plan and the fund that will take over responsibility for retiree medical benefits.

Moreover, that fund, called the voluntary employee beneficiary association, or VEBA, will control 55 percent of the equity in the new Chrysler once it emerges from bankruptcy, and hold a seat on the Chrysler board.

Of course, those hard-fought gains, and the big ownership stake, could be worthless if Chrysler does not make it. And the company’s fortunes continued to sag in April, when sales fell 48 percent compared with the same month in 2008. Chrysler will also have to wait roughly two years or more for new cars designed by its partner, the Italian automaker Fiat, to show up in Chrysler dealerships.

But for now, even though Chrysler workers had to agree to lower pay and less generous benefits as part of the deal, the U.A.W. appears to be enjoying relative safety in helping steer the course of the Chrysler bankruptcy.

“I’m very comfortable,” Ron Gettelfinger, the U.A.W.’s president, said Friday on National Public Radio. “It’s not like we’re going into this bankruptcy fighting with Chrysler and Fiat and the U.S. Treasury. We’re going in there in lockstep to put our agreements in place.”

Labor and restructuring lawyers said such a comprehensive deal going into bankruptcy was rare.

“This is extraordinary, truly extraordinary,” said Mary Jo Dowd, a partner in the financial and bankruptcy restructuring practice at Arent Fox in Washington. “I never would have thought a year ago that this would occur. These are truly unusual times.”

Asked if he could recall any other union that fared as well, David L. Gregory, a labor law professor at St. John’s University, replied: “Nobody’s even close” ...

The government, in assessing what was needed to make Chrysler viable, decided it needed to support workers, as well as suppliers, and guarantee the warranties on Chrysler vehicles. Because the union agreed to negotiate, it was made a partner, with the government and Fiat, in developing the plan to restructure the company.

In contrast, other companies often use bankruptcy as a way to gain leverage over labor, so that they can lower their costs. Workers at Bethlehem Steel, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and US Airways lost all or most of their traditional pension benefits when those employers sought bankruptcy protection in this decade, though some of the shortfall was covered by the federal government. Retiree health care coverage was also cut.

None of those cases, filed during the Bush administration, had the kind of federal support offered to the U.A.W.

Auto Execs

  

Double Standard On Autos & Financials?

From The Hill:

The White House also pushed back hard against suggestions from Michigan and the left that it is treating automakers and Wall Street banks with a double standard.

Obama told an ABC affiliate in Detroit that automakers, banks and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have all had to take concessions to win help, and he specifically noted that other CEOs have also been removed.

“I don’t know if people recall that the original CEO of AIG ... is no longer there,” Obama said. “The people who were the heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are no longer there.”

Several Michigan lawmakers disagreed. Sen. Levin and his brother, Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), both said Monday that a double standard continues to exist.

“I think there’s been a double standard for a long time between the financial industry and the way the auto industry is treated,” Carl Levin said in a Monday teleconference. He described it as something auto industry supporters must continue to fight and overcome.

Levin warned that any talk of bankruptcy for GM and Chrysler could reduce consumer confidence in the companies, further hurting sales. In an effort to quell those fears, Obama announced that the federal government will guarantee warranties on parts and repairs.

What do you think? Is there a double standard?

{8:00 UPDATE} The Wash Post reports the ouster of GM's CEO has bank execs worried:

The administration's decision to oust G. Richard Wagoner Jr. sharply ratchets up its control over companies receiving government assistance in the face of criticism about a lack of accountability over billions of taxpayer dollars. The government demanded Wagoner's departure even though it does not own a stake in the automaker. The three companies the government does control -- American International Group, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae -- were required to replace their chief executives. The government has not, however, required any banks in which it took smaller stakes to replace its top executives. It did pressure Citigroup to replace several members of its board of directors.

Now the president's aggressive move against GM has left some banking executives wondering whether they are next in line.

Pension Insurer PBGC Switches Into Stocks Right Before Market Tanks

Thanks to A Blue View reader Tommy for passing this Boston Globe article along:

Just months before the start of last year's stock market collapse, the federal agency that insures the retirement funds of 44 million Americans departed from its conservative investment strategy and decided to put much of its $64 billion insurance fund into stocks.

Switching from a heavy reliance on bonds, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation decided to pour billions of dollars into speculative investments such as stocks in emerging foreign markets, real estate, and private equity funds.

The agency refused to say how much of the new investment strategy has been implemented or how the fund has fared during the downturn. The agency would only say that its fund was down 6.5 percent - and all of its stock-related investments were down 23 percent - as of last Sept. 30, the end of its fiscal year. But that was before most of the recent stock market decline and just before the investment switch was scheduled to begin in earnest.

No statistics on the fund's subsequent performance were released. Nonetheless, analysts expressed concern that large portions of the trust fund might have been lost at a time when many private pension plans are suffering major losses. The guarantee fund would be the only way to cover the plans if their companies go into bankruptcy.

"The truth is, this could be huge," said Zvi Bodie, a Boston University finance professor who in 2002 advised the agency to rely almost entirely on bonds. "This has the potential to be another several hundred billion dollars. If the auto companies go under, they have huge unfunded liabilities" in pension plans that would be passed on to the agency ...

In addition, Peter Orszag, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, has "serious concerns" about the agency, according to an Obama administration spokesman ...

However, Charles E.F. Millard, the former agency director who implemented the strategy until the Bush administration departed on Jan. 20, dismissed such concerns. Millard, a former managing director of Lehman Brothers, said flatly that "the new investment policy is not riskier than the old one."

SEIU Employees Picket Own Union Over Layoffs

A bizarre sign of the times from the San Francisco Chronicle: 

Dozens of employees of the Service Employees International Union picketed their own union Friday over its decision to lay off about 75 workers. The staffers marched outside SEIU headquarters in Washington as they yelled into bullhorns, passed out flyers and chanted, "Justice for all, not just some."

"This union is supposed to be at the forefront of the progressive movement, but it can't seem to follow its own ideology," said Malcolm Harris, president of the Union of Union Representatives, which represents 210 SEIU organizers and field staff around the country.

The UUR has filed unfair labor practice charges and age and race discrimination claims against SEIU. Harris called SEIU leaders "hypocrites" for calling out corporations that shed workers, yet moving to lay off their own employees.

SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette called the complaints meritless and said layoffs are needed because the union is shifting organizing work away from its national office to local unions ... She also said SEIU is trying to help those laid off find other jobs and has identified 80 open positions at local unions that they could apply for.

Costco, Starbucks & Whole Foods Break Ranks To Offer Union Compromise

From the Wall St Journal:

Three major corporations have broken ranks with the business community by taking an alternative stance on a controversial bill to ease union organizing, in an attempt to bridge the stark divide between business and labor and improve the chances for passing labor law reform.

Costco Wholesale Corp., Starbucks Coffee Corp. and Whole Foods Market, Inc. announced the formation of an ad hoc "Committee for a Level Playing Field for Union Elections" on Saturday. The companies, which touted their reputation as being worker friendly, said they wanted "to open a 'third way' approach to reform labor law."

The companies said they would not support the two most hotly contested provisions of the Employee Free Choice Act – making it easier for unions to sign up workers via cards rather than elections and binding arbitration to resolve first contracts after 120 days of failed negotiations.

But the CEOs of the three companies said they were backing a set of principles that would "level the playing field for union organizers." The six principles included setting a fixed time period in which to hold union elections to prevent delays, providing union organizers greater access to workers at neutral locations, and stricter penalties for labor law violations.

"We believe in and trust our employees, which is neither anti-union nor pro-status quo," said James Sinegal of Costco. He said the principles "will ensure a fair opportunity for workers to make an informed choice, with a secret ballot, whether they want a union or whether they wish to retain non-union status."

Yet business groups that have been spending millions of dollars and lobbying for months to defeat the bill, including the National Federation of Independent Business, came out strongly against the proposals ...

The AFL-CIO, however, said it didn't support the three CEOs' proposals, signaling that a compromise on the bill is not close. The proposals "do not restore the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively," said Stewart Acuff, special assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO. "The bill as it's written now is exactly the way we ought to go."

Some Democrats in the Senate, including several who face reelection in 2010, have wavered in their support of the bill lately, raising questions about its chances for passage in its current form ...

The CEOs' proposals buttress labor's main argument that an overhaul of labor law is needed to address the unfair advantage that management has over unions during union organizing.

Unions complain that companies drag out elections and intimidate workers into voting against the union and that penalties are too weak to deter illegal activity by employers. Union organizers are also typically barred from approaching workers on company grounds.

"Labor Union Bill Raises Broader Capitalism Issues"

From the Wash Post (this post's headline is theirs too):

The Employee Free Choice Act seemed destined to be a relatively narrow clash between unions and employers. But amid the economic downturn, it is turning into a debate over fundamental questions of American capitalism.

After years of girding for this fight, labor supporters and business groups are scrambling after the bill's reintroduction last week to adapt their long-established arguments to suit the crisis. For those opposed to the bill, which would make it easier to form unions, the new message was that it would be a disaster for businesses reeling from the recession.

"In a time when we have an economy that's already struggling, we can't put more burdensome regulations on employers," said  Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). "This is a job killer for our economy when we really don't need it."

The bill's supporters are pointing to the downturn as the ultimate proof of their arguments that labor's decline has helped put the economy out of balance and that only by restoring workers' purchasing power can the nation return to broadly shared prosperity.

"In 1935, we passed the Wagner Act that promoted unionization and allowed unions to flourish, and at the time we were at around 20 percent unemployment. So tell me again why we can't do this in a recession?" said  Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), invoking the pro-labor changes of the New Deal. "This is the time to do it. This is exactly the time we should be insisting on a fairer playing field for people to organize themselves."

The bill, first introduced in 2003, gives workers the choice of whether they want to organize by getting a majority of workers to sign pro-union cards, instead of having to hold secret-ballot elections. As it stands, it is up to employers to decide which method is used, and most require elections. The bill increases the penalties for employers who retaliate against employees and mandates binding arbitration when employers do not agree to a contract within three months after a union election.

Unions say the bill is needed because employers intimidate or retaliate against workers before elections, making the votes something less than true democracy; and because employers often merely go through the motions of negotiating, nearly half of new unions fail to get a first contract. Employers say that forming unions without secret ballots violates American notions of democracy and exposes workers to union coercion. Mandatory arbitration, they assert, is an intolerable intervention.

But the environment in which the bill is being debated has further ratcheted up the rhetoric, revealing a divide as wide as that on any other major issue on President Obama's agenda. The two sides put forth starkly different versions of both history and present-day reality, making it hard to imagine how the two sides could compromise.

Labor Unions Continue To Go After Republicans

A new ad from Americans United for Change (I'm sure there's absolutely no connection between these ads and the Check Card debate in Congress):