AFL-CIO Sends 'To-Do' Ideas To Obama
Monday, January 26, 2009(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
Gathering ideas from unions, analyses and experts, the AFL-CIO
sent a 16-page "to do list" memo to the new Obama administration. The list
submitted before the Democrat's inauguration, outlined a wide range of
legislative and administrative moves the federation contended would help
workers. Topping the fed's list, after "Day One," when Obama froze recent Bush
federal rules (see BUSH’S
‘MIDNIGHT RULES’ BITE THE DUST) - including anti-worker rules - is
dealing with the Bush crash through passing the $825 billion stimulus bill and
sending its dollars to homeowners facing foreclosure and to aid states, auto
workers and manufacturers. But right after that, the fed says Obama should use
the "bully pulpit" of the presidency to campaign for passage of the Employee
Free Choice Act, designed to help level the playing field between workers and
bosses in organizing and bargaining. The bill is expected to pass the
Democratic-run House, but business is mounting a strenuous multi-million-dollar
ad campaign to force 41 senators to keep a GOP-led filibuster going against it,
talking it to death. See Below for the complete original
story.
- Mark Gruenberg, PAI Staff
Writer
FED SENDS 'TO-DO' IDEAS TO
OBAMA
Gathering ideas from unions, analyses and experts, the
AFL-CIO sent a 16-page "to do list" memo to the new Obama administration.
The list submitted before the Democrat's inauguration, outlined a wide range of
legislative and administrative moves the federation contended would help
workers. But at least one of the recommendations - appointing a U.S. Trade
Representative with "demonstrated commitment to addressing the destabilizing
influences in trade policy and who is committed to ensuring trade policies
provide broadly shared benefits for working people" - may already have been
bounced. That's because Obama nominated former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, who in
that office pushed the benefits of the controversial jobs-losing North American
Free Trade Agreement, as USTR. Kirk was "not our first choice," federation
policy director Thea Lee told the Dallas Morning News. "We have some
concerns." On the other hand, the fed's recommendation that Obama send the
Federal Aviation Administration back to the bargaining table to negotiate a new
union contract with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association tracks one
of Obama's major legislative initiatives as U.S. senator. The new pact,
the fed said, should be based on the pact NATCA and the FAA reached in the
closing days of the Clinton administration, which Bush dumped. After six
years of talks and some progress, Bush's FAA declared an "impasse" and imposed
its last offer on NATCA, slashing the pay of the most-experienced controllers
and freezing the salaries of the rest. Controllers have been retiring
early in droves, NATCA notes. Topping the fed's list, after "Day One," when
Obama froze recent Bush federal rules - including anti-worker rules - is dealing
with the Bush crash through passing the stimulus bill and sending its dollars to
homeowners facing foreclosure and to aid states, auto workers and manufacturers.
But right after that, the fed says Obama should use the "bully pulpit" of the
presidency to campaign for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, designed to
help level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing and
bargaining. The bill is expected to pass the Democratic-run House, but
business is mounting a strenuous multi-million-dollar ad campaign to force 41
senators to keep a GOP-led filibuster going against it, talking it to death.
There are also some shaky Democrats, AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuel
says.
That's where Obama can have impact. "President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt said if he went to work in a factory, the first thing he would do is
join a union," the AFL-CIO said. "40 years later, President Ronald Reagan sent
exactly the opposite message when he fired striking air traffic
controllers." That led, the fed said, to employer anti-union "tactics at a
level not seen in decades."
"The new administration can make a tremendous
difference by publicly sending the message that the administration believes in,
and supports, workers' rights to form and join unions, and the importance of a
thriving labor movement to our nation's economic health and well-being," the fed
stated.
By "speaking positively about unions and workers' rights to
organize," by promising to "stand with and protect" workers' rights and "by
criticizing employers who interfere" with unionization, Obama's administration
"can set a new tone and put our nation's labor-relations system back on the
right track," the AFL-CIO concluded.
The federation also listed a
wide range of administrative measures Obama could take to help workers.
Some top ones include:
* Restoring project labor agreements for
federally funded construction, raising workers' pay while insuring projects got
done on time and with worker protections. One of Bush's first moves in
2001 was to dump PLAs. The fed also wants Obama to order federal agencies
to follow prevailing wage determinations reached under the Davis-Bacon and
Service Contract Acts, preventing low-balling contractors from
winning.
* Reversing Bush orders that harmed workers who toil for the
executive branch or private firms it hires. One is a 2001 order that said
building service firms that take over cleaning contracts did not have to give
current workers right of first refusal of jobs,
Another would restore
and improve federal labor-management partnerships Democratic President Clinton
established and Bush abolished. A third would replace a Bush order that
federal agencies post notices that they have the right not to join unions with
notices that spell out all their rights - including protection from retaliation
for pro-union stands.
* Restoring bargaining rights Bush stripped from
Justice Department workers and from the nation's 14,000 airport screeners on
"national security" grounds. That's a key cause for the AFGE, which wants
to unionize them.
* "Restore air traffic services as an 'inherently
governmental function.'" Bush’s budget office said such services could be
contracted out, again over union protests on safety grounds. More broadly,
the AFL-CIO wants a 3-year moratorium on all federal contracting out and
outsourcing, pending a complete "audit and review" of the idea.
And it
says the Agriculture Department should stop a Bush experiment, by Gov. Mitch
Daniels, R-Ind. - formerly Bush's budget chief - to privatize food
stamps.
* Suspend bargaining on all new trade and investment pacts, and
review all past pacts, as Obama promised during the election campaign.
"Any new agreements must assure balance between the interests of companies and
those of workers," the fed said.
As part of that review, the AFL-CIO
also called for "new administration priorities and benchmarks" for the last
three pacts Bush negotiated, with South Korea, Colombia and Panama and said
Obama should "lay out a new template for future trade agreements." The UAW says
the Korea pact would not let U.S cars be shipped there.
The
federation strongly backs the Trade Act, which would restore congressional
primacy in setting standards U.S. bargainers in trade deals, and which would
order them to write enforceable labor rights into the texts of such pacts.
It also strongly opposes the Colombia pact in particular due to the South
American nation's rampant murder of 2,500+ unionists by right-wing
paramilitaries, sometimes funded by U.S.-based multinational
corporations.
* Have the U.S. take the federation's extensively
documented trade case against China - which has the largest trade surplus with
the U.S. - to the World Trade Organization. The fed's case, which Bush's
USTR rejected without reading it, showed China's rampant "violation of workers'
rights is an unfair trade practice," the AFL-CIO said.
* Identify
and nominate federal judges "who have a demonstrated commitment to equal
rights," including understanding the courts' role in protecting those rights,
including workers' rights. Obama has already said he wants to name judges
who are more attuned to the wider society and to the needs of all
citizens. Bush's nominees were virtually uniformly from the
pro-prosecution side or the Right Wing, or both.
* Appoint
pro-worker members and chair of the NLRB and restore the Labor Department, its
Wage and Hour Administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
and the Mine Safety and Health Administration to their "historic roles" as
"advocating for and protecting the interests of workers." That includes
nominating committed agency administrators, increasing budget and staff, and
"pursuing the full range of statutory penalties" against firms that don't pay
overtime or the minimum wage. That full range - which the fed also wants
Wage and Hour to apply to consistent violators - includes damages, court
injunctions, high fines and jail terms.
* Formalize the Clinton-era ban
- which Bush's agency has violated - of having wage and hour probers share
information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. It
would also require ICE to get a high-level OK before raiding worksites during
union organizing drives - a common tactic anti-union employers have used.
- By Mark Gruenberg, PAI Staff Writer