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Sat 16 Jun, 2007 07:51 am
Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America said about Andy Stern: "The future of the American dream may lie in the hands of Andy Stern and his bold vision for reform. Read A Country That Works to understand the forces that split the American labor movement in 2005. Or read it for a glimpse into the heart of a man who has devoted his life to the struggle for a better deal for American working people. Either way, be prepared to throw out all your stereotypes about 'big labor' and embrace a vital agenda for change."
Who is Andy Stern and why did he kick the stulified traditional labor movement in it's butt?
Andy Stern, one of the most visionary leaders in America today, has fought relentlessly to ensure that Americans' hard work is rewarded in today's hypercompetitive, globalized world. As the newsmaking president of the fastest-growing, most dynamic union in America, he has led the charge for modernizing the "house of labor" ?- taking unions out of the past and into the twenty-first century.
He has spearheaded the campaign against the "Wal-Marting" of jobs and has innovated transformative solutions to the daunting problems facing Americans, from job insecurity to runaway health care costs.
In this powerful critique and call-to-arms, he offers a revelatory dissection of the gathering threats to our standard of living ?- threats that our politicians have failed utterly to address ?- and he puts forth a bold, unassailable plan for making vital reforms.
In his eye-opening diagnosis that makes the urgency of the threats vividly clear, Stern shows that Americans are contending with the most disruptive economic upheaval in the world economy since the Industrial Revolution. Yet, in the face of this daunting challenge, the American system simply isn't working well enough for most of us.
Stern powerfully portrays how with the pace of globalization relentlessly quickening, the competitive pressures on our jobs and quality of life are heating up even more, especially as housing, health care, and oil prices skyrocket.
While CEO salaries soar and business and the wealthy are handed plentiful tax shelters, the incomes of both white-collar and blue-collar workers stagnate, leaving most Americans struggling to pay off ever-escalating debt, instead of saving for retirement. The plain fact is that our system is out of whack, serving the interests of the top sliver of the most wealthy while putting the squeeze on the rest of us.
Meanwhile, our politicians irresponsibly sidestep the crucial solutions that we so desperately need in order to make sure Americans can move into the twenty-first century with their futures secure.
As Stern so persuasively shows, it is time for bold thinking and creative solutions to overhaul a health care system in crisis; correct a tax system rigged in favor of business and the wealthy; revamp our inadequate retirement system; and make truly innovative improvements in education. He presents a set of course-correction reforms so compelling, simple, and achievable that readers will find themselves enraged that they haven't yet been enacted.
Americans have a right to expect our government to work for us. Andy Stern shows how we can get things back on track to make sure it does.
Clash Near in Senate on Legislation Helping Unions Orgaanize
June 20, 2007
Clash Nears in the Senate on Legislation Helping Unions Organize
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
New York Times
Senate Democratic leaders moved Tuesday to force a vote on organized labor's top legislative priority, a bill that would make it far easier to organize workers. But Republican leaders vowed to kill the measure, voicing confidence that they could defeat a motion cutting off debate and bringing it to a vote this week.
The bill, already approved by the House but facing the threat of a veto by the Bush administration, would give employees at a workplace the right to unionize as soon as a majority signed cards saying they wanted to do so. Under current law, an employer can insist on a secret-ballot election, even after a majority sign.
Union leaders see enactment of the bill as the single most important step toward reversing labor's long-term loss of membership and might. Virtually all Democrats in Congress are backing the legislation, partly because they recognize that a stronger labor movement, providing campaign contributions and volunteers, could translate into a stronger Democratic Party.
Business groups have mounted a big fight against the bill, with one organization, the Center for Union Facts, spending $500,000 on newspaper and broadcast advertisements this week alone.
Though the bill has cleared the House, passage there was on a vote of only 241 to 185, far from veto-proof. And with Senate Democrats and the chamber's two independents holding just 51 seats, well short of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate, Republicans and their business allies are predicting that that they can prevent even an up-or-down vote on the measure.
The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, filed a petition Tuesday night for a vote later in the week to prevent Republicans from blocking consideration of the bill. But Randel K. Johnson, a vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, said: "The cloture petition will not succeed, and the bill will be pulled. That will be the end of that for two years."
Despite the prospect that the bill will stall in the Senate, A.F.L.-C.I.O. officials say they have pressed Democratic leaders to take it up in order to build momentum for the future, much in the way unions pushed for a minimum-wage increase for a decade until it was finally enacted this year.
John J. Sweeney, the federation's president, expressed confidence that the bill would fare better if a Democrat won the White House next year. "This is really about 2009," Mr. Sweeney said. "But it's important that we show the country that we have majority support."
Republicans have put labor on the defensive by asserting that majority sign-up is less fair than secret-ballot elections.
Don Stewart, a spokesman for the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, derided the bill's name, the Employee Free Choice Act, as "Orwellian," asserting that labor organizers sometimes intimidated workers into signing pro-union cards.
In vowing to squelch the bill, Mr. McConnell said, "We went to the secret ballot in this country almost 200 years ago because everyone believed that the only way to have a ballot that really counted was if somebody was not looking over your shoulder."
The bill's supporters note that federal labor officials have long accepted majority sign-ups as an alternative to elections. Indeed, the supporters argue that majority sign-ups are usually fairer than secret-ballot elections, maintaining that workers often feel intimidated by their employers during unionization drives and so are fearful of losing their jobs.
"All those folks who are talking about democracy," Mr. Sweeney said, "are really folks concerned with keeping the labor movement from growing and becoming stronger."
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