This morning, i.e. the day that institutions bury news, the White House released the “Annual Report of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class“, which had some nice things to say about EFCA. Among the pro-labor policies touted in the report on the “Middle Class,” starting on page 23 is a page plus on the importance of EFCA and the values it embodies. The report calling for EFCA does not mean it’s less dead, it’s just that the Administration has a responsibility to stay positive on the party line.

What’s funny is whose cited in the report.  The EFCA section of the White House report cites the Economic Policies Institute, a union-founded and funded group. According to the New York Post, it is a “creature of the national AFL-CIO.” What’s even more ridiculous is that it cites a report from EPI by none other than Jared Berstein and friends, entitled “The State of Working America 2008/2009.”

So who is Jared Bernstein? Why today he’s the Chief Economist and Economist Policy Advisor for Vice President Biden, who just happened to release this enlightening report. He says elsewhere he is the Executive Director of the task force. Yes my friends….Bernstein quotes himself.

Hallmarks of the middle class that raised millions into the middle class over the last 50 years were basically ignored.  “Unions” or “unionization were mentioned 34 times, by my count. By contrast,”small business(es)” were mentioned just 8 times. The word “entrepreneur” is never even mentioned in the report. Heck, even the Great Depression got mentioned twice.

William Forbath, professor of law and history at the University of Texas and author of Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement, used his most recent Politico piece to call for Craig Becker’s appointment by President.  He doesn’t come right out and call the Administration (and the Hill, for that matter) cowards–but he gets pretty close.

His motivation for pushing the Democrats so hard to support labor? To quote the absent minded professor here: “Unions are on the verge of vanishing.” From Politico:

“The Becker nomination offers President Barack Obama a more important opportunity, what he likes to call a teachable moment. […]

But unions are on the verge of vanishing. If the Democrats won’t even go this far to halt the battering unions have been taking, then Democrats and the nation will be the losers. For soon, we won’t have any institutional player to do the heavy lifting, to provide the serious money the Democrats need to campaign for job creation, health care reform and financial regulation. McCain and company have demonized Becker simply because he’s a union lawyer. Obama should stand up to them.”

Did you catch that? Unions are the “institutional player” that do the “heavy lifting” and pays the bills in the house of card check.

Image courtesy of Veebl.

Update: Senator Harkin justifies vote saying NLRB nomineee “cannot” change the rules

As the Director of Organizing at the AFL-CIO, Stewart Acuff draws a smaller crowd than the SEIU’s Andy Stern or his boss at the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka. But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have something laughable to say.

In his poorly timed Huffington Post piece yesterday, Acuff took that opportunity to sing the praises of the Employee Free Forced Choice Act and bemoan it stalling on the Hill.  Acuff decided it would be a great idea to show big labor’s cards on the day before the Craig Becker vote.  He wrote that if the Senate “no longer” has EFCA’s 60 votes, then labor will be able to simply create new regulation through nominees to the NLRB.

Um, that’s exactly what the opposition to Craig Becker is claiming will occur, and they have Acuff to thank for confirming that publicly. From his own post:

“We are very close to the 60 votes we need. It we aren’t able to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, we will work with President Obama and Vice President Biden and their appointees to the National Labor Relations Board to change the rules governing forming a union through administrative action to once again allow workers in America access to one of the most basic freedoms in a democracy–the freedom of speech and assembly and association so that workers can build the collective power to challenge the Financial Elite and Get America Back to Work.”

Acuff may have gotten some much needed attention from his post. But if the Senate doesn’t confirm Becker now, Acuff might get some attention and credit for that too.

Image courtesy of coloradostatesman.com.

Here’s a tip: Be careful what you label “For Internal Use Only- Not For Distribution.” And don’t put it on the internet.

“Language Tips on Employee Free Choice” contains multiple tips, courtesy of the SEIU, on the verbiage of the the EFCA debate (see document below).

I guess since the SEIU figured their employees might have a problem keeping the proverbial “cat in the bag” as the the real motivations behind card check, I mean EFCA, I mean the Employee Free Choice Act, ie., get a lot of people unionized really fast so our pension funds don’t go bankrupt and we don’t become an irrelevant part of the American work force….and so we can replace all the disenchanted workers who leave unions.

One of the more damning interesting points is this:

Instead of calling current law the “secret ballot system” or “private ballot system,” the SEIU instead recommends that employees call it the “Company-dominated system” that “denies workers free choice.”

According to the SEIU, a private election is “company-dominated.” Whereas, an election where workers have no privacy and can easily be coerced into joining a union, i.e. card check, (or “Majority sign-up” according to the SEIU) is real “free choice.”

Why do I get the feeling that the SEIU needs to go back to grammar school?

Image courtesy of….well….the SEIU.

The new golden age of the American labor movement was supposed to heralded into being by the hopeful force that is President Obama. . . and control of both the House and Senate.  But months have passed [almost a year], and labor unions have little to show for the hundreds of millions of dollars they poured into the last election cycle.

For the labor leaders, the lack of attention and progress on labor’s prized legislation (EFCA) and other legislative priorities (like keeping their Cadillac health insurance untaxed) is breaking unions hearts. The Boston Globe reports:

“It’s beyond belief to me,” said Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. While Obama and Congress inherited “a big mess” from Bush, Haynes said, “there aren’t any excuses anymore. If you can’t deliver health care, and you can’t deliver jobs, and if you can’t deliver [card check legislation], and you can’t figure out how to take care of the working people of this great city and country, you don’t deserve to stay in office.”

Why are they so far down on the agenda? The Globe continues:

The poor economy and the attention demanded by such issues as health care, Afghanistan, climate change, and the pending closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison have put labor unions’ concerns far down on the list in Washington, analysts and lawmakers say.

The White House wants to send its assurances of its continued affection.

“We’ve been able to make tremendous progress on issues important to the labor community,’’ said White House spokesman Bill Burton. “We have a good partnership, and we’re going to continue to work hard on issues important to the labor community.’’

These overtures are enough to assuage the wrath of American labor in the short run, but it seems unlikely that they will continue to stomach being ignored (at least legislatively) forever.

Sen. Arlen Specter (PA-D) claimed on Tuesday at the AFL-CIO’s conference in Pittsburgh to have “pounded out an Employees Choice bill which will meet labor’s objectives.”  Apparently, someone forgot to tell the Senate.

Democratic Senators spent an awkward day Wednesday walking back from Specter’s statements. One senator stated that there have been no formal talks since July. Several claimed it was the first they’d heard of it, but they reassured reporters they wanted to “finish what [they've] started.” It was clear that Specter spoke out of turn on a bill for which he himself has been a controversy. And even if a compromise is reached, there are only 59 Democratics in the Senate — not enough to break a filibuster.

Specter may have spoke too soon, and his checkered past on EFCA may come back to haunt him.

Read more in The Hill, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Before a cheer-beleaguered audience on Tuesday, Senator Arlen Specter announced that a revised Employee Free Choice Act will pass this year.   He has long been the supporter, hater, leader lynch pin of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Here’s the basic run down:

• Card check is off the table, but there will be shorter periods of time for employers to consolidate their resources and gather their forces against unionization.
• If employers hold mandatory anti-union meetings on company time, then union organizers get equal time.  Employers who don’t comply will face penalties at three times today’s penalties.
• Instead of contracts both written and imposed by government mediators, mediation will take the form of baseball arbitration.  A mediator will pick between two contracts, which encourages moderate deals to be offered by both parties, in the interest of self preservation.

Read more in the Washington Post.

Image courtesy of Mika Hiironniemi.

Stewart Acuff is the Director of Organizing at the AFL-CIO and blogger-extraordinaire for the Huffington Post.   His Huffington Post biography includes a generous quote from AFL-CIO head President John Sweeney, where Sweeney notes Acuff’s “strong leadership skills and a deep passion for the potential of unions to lift working people’s lives.”

This “deep passion” is evident in his coherent blog today on the Huffington Post.  A summary follows:

After reminding his readers of the sacrifice many union members made on 9-11, he took today’s anniversary as an opportunity to remind us all of the aftermath “of one of America’s greatest tragedies”—the disallowing of the unionization of the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration.

This is unfair, Acuff says, because unions are the ones “who stand up to the greed and arrogance of the corporations who have ripped off our country for 30 years who believe they have a right to live like kings on the backs of America’s workers.”

He moves onto health care. Health care reform is essential, he writes, because then we can “force ABC rats to pay for healthcare and allow good union employers to better compete with rat bastards.”  Rat bastards, he states, includes the Chamber of Commerce.

And right in the middle of phrases like “sweat of your brow,” “best defenders of democracy,” “Are you not your brother’s keeper,” “love one another,” and “It’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Acuff intones that the “Radical Rightwing” [sic] says “greed is good,”—before invoking Nazis, Fascists, Dr. King, Frederick Douglas, Sam Adams, and Jesus as a construction worker.

The piece finally ends with this little gem: “Keep on brothers and sisters. Fight on. Don’t lose faith. Don’t lose hope. History is made by people like us. Healthcare for all. Employee Free Choice Act. Let’s make history.”

Image courtesy of PKMousie.