LaborPains.org

Marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles are gambling that labor unions can keep them in business.

With the Obama administration threatening to shut down pot shops across California, LA proprietors are seeking employee unionization as a way to head the White House off at the pass.

The owners, the Huffington Post reports, “turned to the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union as an ally in seeking to protect the jobs they offer and as an advocate at City Hall to fight the ban.”

Pro-union owners say they hope the UFCW will protest the proposed ban and impose standards on an industry in which many owners still operate without licenses. They also hope it will make their businesses appear more legitimate.

Since their businesses are actually illegal under federal law, an increase in apparent legitimacy is about the most pot proprietors can hope for.

That means unionization puts unions and the White House in an awkward position. At a time when union membership is at historic lows, union leaders don’t want to be seen turning away enthusiastic workers. At the same time, they likely don’t want to pick a fight with the president at a particularly important juncture in his reelection campaign.

For the president’s part, he finds himself struggling yet again to thread the needle on drug enforcement. Having rejected his earlier approach—leaving dispensaries be so long as they operated in accordance with state law—he now must decide between laying off unionized workers or leaving federal law unenforced.

Of course, both the president and unions could simply make plain that workers engaged in business banned by the government won’t get their support. That’s the likeliest outcome in an election year.

Earlier this month, a judge ruled that private businesses are required to display posters showing workers how to unionize. With the ruling going into effect on April 30, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has plans for a big campaign around the change.

Notably, the mandated poster doesn’t explain how to decertify a union—a right which many workers also might like to know. But details like that don’t trouble the NLRB. Apparently, it’s busy concentrating on getting nonunionized workers to think like union members:

The National Labor Relations Board will focus on workers’ rights to engage in ‘protected concerted activity,’ which allow two or more employees to take action for their mutual aid or protection […]. In the next two weeks, the NLRB is set to roll out a Web page explaining ‘concerted activity’ and highlighting cases involving unlawful punishment for it. It also plans pamphlets in English and Spanish that will be distributed through worker-advocacy groups and sister federal agencies, such as the Labor Department. NLRB officials will address the issue in speeches and appearances on radio and television. (The Wall Street Journal, 3/22/12)

These developments come on the heels of the NLRB’s controversial “quickie elections” rule, which the Retail Industry Leaders Association calls a blow not only to “employers’ free speech and due process rights” but also “American business’ ability to grow jobs.”

The NLRB has had no difficulty making these moves despite the Obama administration’s recent order to avoid overly burdensome requirements. While the White House denies that it’s encouraging overregulation, the NLRB is swinging into action—an institution with a very particular idea of what labor relations should be, and unafraid to tip the scales in order to make it reality.

During AT&T’s recent attempt to acquire T-Mobile, its cooperation with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) was considered a model of how businesses and unions could proactively work together. So much for all that: “Two months after the $39 billion deal collapsed,” The Wall Street Journal reports, “some union leaders say the carrier doesn’t seem very grateful.”

Why the discontent? Perhaps it’s because the CWA is in the habit of holding business deals for ransom to get what they want out of contract negotiations. Now, the CWA is squaring off with Verizon, trying to grind its deal with Comcast to a halt. In what The Hill calls part of a “swarm” by unions, the CWA “descended on Capitol Hill Tuesday to urge lawmakers to oppose” the deal.

Meanwhile, union rallies have not-so-coincidentally hit Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York. As WKBW News said of the New York action, the “event was planned in coordination with national actions led by community groups and unionized Verizon workers that are taking place in cities across the country during the week of March 19th.”

It’s certainly not the first time a union has drummed up public protests to pressure legislators into protecting its agenda. But this election season, with the President’s numbers suffering from some decisions unpopular with certain factions of the AFL-CIO, some politicians may be especially prone to making a few big concessions to unions in the hopes of keeping a broader narrative from taking hold.

In the meantime, Americans from coast to coast will find themselves facing rising prices in yet another important area of everyday life. If you’re wondering why your cell phone bill is so high, you might look for the union label.

Late last year, House lawmakers in the Granite State failed to override Gov. John Lynch’s veto of legislation barring unions from imposing “a share of costs” on non-members, also known as “right-to-work.” The House fell 12 votes short of the two-thirds necessary to put the option before New Hampshire’s Senate.

Now, however, similar legislation is back and was passed in the NH House. In addition to the proposal ensuring that non-union members need not pay fees to unions, legislators will consider new measures aimed at reforming collective bargaining among public sector unions.

Another contentious debate is on the way. Critics of the legislation see New Hampshire falling under the sway of a national anti-union political agenda. Supporters counter that the political power of unions, including public-sector unions, is far out of bounds even by the standards of Democratic heroes like Franklin Roosevelt.

“House Bill 1677 is about freedom. Freedom to choose or not to choose to join a union,” said Rep. Will Smith, the Republican who introduced the bill.

What’s revealed by a clear-eyed look at New Hampshire’s legislation and similar bills around the country? Rather than an anti-union animus, the legislation reflects a broad, popular understanding that labor laws need reform—not to destroy unions, but to ensure that they work the way workers expect them to.

The reappearance of labor reform legislation in New Hampshire and its spread throughout the Midwest suggests that increasing numbers of legislators and voters believe that encouraging unions to accurately and faithfully represent the interests of those who choose to be their members should be a priority in today’s economy.

Recently, authors Richard Kahlenberg and Moshe Marvit raised the idea of a “civil right to unionize” in a New York Times op-ed. For Kahlenberg and Marvit, it’s not enough that workers have the opportunity to organize if they think it is in their interests.

AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka agreed. “Everybody should have the right to come together to better their economic lot,” he told a reporter at The Daily Caller. “It is a civil right.”

Critics, however, took a different view. “It’s not that workers are being prevented from unionizing,” wrote Prof. Antony Davies of Duquesne University. “The problem, as unions see it, is that it is too difficult to force workers to unionize.”

Some of the disagreement surrounds uncertainty over why union membership has declined so steeply and consistently over the past decades. While the authors attribute the decline to “weak and anachronistic labor laws, they fail to mention that the pinnacle of union membership in America – over 27 percent of private sector employees in 1954 – was built up under the same rules in existence today.

The current drop off in membership is due to union abuse, using dues money for political purposes without regard to employee wishes, and the hijacking of employee rights in other areas.”

From this standpoint the right that matters most to union members is the “basic democratic right of a secret ballot vote” on whether to recertify current unions and to unionize in the first place. The Employee Rights Act, a piece of legislation sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC), includes that right as part of a broad set of proposed federal labor reforms.

Current law may not extend to the workplace the same level of ballot secrecy that citizens routinely enjoy in modern democracies, but it does already provide workers with strong protections against discrimination.

Kahlenberg and Marvit’s call to add a right to unionize to the Civil Rights Act raises interesting questions—not least of which is whether the Employee Rights Act’s measures afford a more substantive reform that workers are able to enjoy the benefits of unions that serve their interests.

It’s ironic that labor leaders are invoking the Civil Rights Act – a piece of legislation that helped enfranchise millions of Americans – when they don’t provide their members with the same liberty, and often try to force unionization through card check and intimidation.

What’s true in Nevada is all too true around the country – employees often can’t vote by secret ballot on basic issues such as whether to recertify their unions, or to unionize in the first place. They have almost no control over whether their dues money is funneled into political campaigns or the pockets of unions’ political allies. The SEIU, for instance, recently spent $86,000 on radio ads in Nevada and Florida to criticize Mitt Romney.

That’s why the Center for Union Facts (CUF) has launched a new Las Vegas ad campaign promoting the Employee Rights Act in print and on television. CUF’s full-page ad comparing the lack of representation in unions and in North Korea ran in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. And CUF’s “Repair Shop” and “Class Elections” commercials have been on the air.

The Vegas blitz continues CUF’s $10 million campaign in support of the ERA. CUF executive director was invited on “Face to Face with Jon Ralston” last week to discuss the campaign and the merits of the Employee Rights Act.

(Jump to 9:10 for interview)

Union leaders and their Democratic allies may oppose the bill, but momentum and the public mood is on the ERA’s side. The status quo is beginning to crumble even in our nation’s capital.

For too long, the labor reform debate has been bogged down in a big business versus big labor mindset. The ERA isn’t about attacking unions, but rather ensuring that they function the way their dues paying members want them to. More democracy in the workplace is an idea that protects workers, squares with America’s values and promises real economic benefits – in Nevada and across the country.

Where are your union dues going? You might find them in court, where union officers are facing embezzlement charges. Freda Hensley, a former Steelworkers Union president, recently admitted to ripping off members to the tune of $38,000. U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston gave her five years of probation — a slap on the wrist. But others might not be so lucky.

Take Claude Huff. The day before the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1385 held hearings on allegations that he overpaid himself with union funds, Huff resigned as its president. Now, a federal court has indicted him for the alleged theft. He’s on the hook for over $100,000.

Then there’s Laura Dixon, accused of pilfering as much as $170,216 in five years from the Ohio and Vicinity Regional Council of Carpenters. Her defense?

“Ms. Dixon’s attorney, Rick Kerger, said that the employee did not take money for her own use but instead falsified the financial records to help those having difficulty paying their union dues.”

Even if that oddball alibi wins out in court, it’s still a symptom of a larger problem: dues are routinely spent by labor leaders on partisan causes and political candidates, without the approval or support of members. Dropping those expenditures would certainly make sense to union members trying to fit dues into their strained budgets.

The picture these cases paint, meanwhile, is of a union system with corrupt officials who not only spend union money as they wish but siphon off handsome sums for themselves. Federal courts can haul in these abusers on a case by case basis, with long and costly trials, no doubt, to follow.