From Diana Furchtgott Roth at the Manhattan Institute, “Why the SEIU Wants Health Reform“:

What’s the connection? The SEIU needs more new dues-paying members to pay for the retirement of current members if it is to rescue its pension plans from subpar performance. It’s a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud. With many of its members employed in health care, the union believes - not illogically - that if more Americans have health insurance, the demand for health care will expand and so will employment in the health sector.

The Senate is unlikely to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would impose mandatory arbitration and take away workers’ right to a secret ballot in union representation elections. This was first on unions’ 2009-10 wish list, and union leaders want to show that they still have political power. So they will settle instead for the health care “reform” bill.

Change to Win, the Big Labor umbrella group that includes the SEIU, has just endorsed the health care legislation. What legislation? Well, whatever it is that the House is going to vote on. The statement from CTW Chairwoman Anna Burger is sloganblatherneering:

It is time for Congress members to decide on which side of history will they stand. They must choose between working families struggling to get by and an insurance industry that puts profits before the people they are supposed to serve.

For generations, this country has known the need for reform. For the past year, we have as a nation debated and fought for real health insurance reform. Now, it’s time for Congress to deliver.

The “or else!” threat is left unsaid.

Today, the House Education and Labor Committee’s Workplace Protections Sub-Committee will hold a hearing to discuss proposed changes to the Protecting America’s Workers Act (H.R. 2067). Unfortunately, this legislation seeks to simply increase penalties on employers for OSHA violations and expand liability instead of promoting cooperative engagement between employers and OSHA. For OSHA to be successful, manufacturers need the agency to be a resource as much as it is an enforcement agency. This bill and subsequent changes that are likely to be considered overturn more than 15 years of cooperative efforts between OSHA and employers.

For several years we’ve seen continued improvement in workplace injury and illness rates. This improvement is largely the result of a new approach to OSHA that first came about during the Clinton administration. Instead of an approach of just levying higher penalties and issuing more citations, the agency began to proactively work with employers to ensure that they had the resources and information necessary to make workplaces safer.

The goal of any OSHA legislation should be to make workplace safer. This legislation will foster a more adversarial relationship between employers and will not assist employers (particularly smaller sized employers) in better understanding the complex framework of existing OSHA requirements.

Roll Call has a story discussing the role of organized labor groups in the Pennsylvania Senate primary race between Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) and Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA.) It discusses the role that the jobs-killing Employee Free Choice Act plays in the race. While Senator Specter came out strongly in opposition to this card check legislation, he has been keen to express his interest in putting forward an alternative version of the bill.

In reference to the bill, the head of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, Bill George, says that labor’s highest priority is “…like water over the damn,” [sic] George added:

That first bill’s gone and consequently, it’s time to move forward. And Arlen Specter was very instrumental with other Senators getting an agreement.

What agreement?

We’ve heard a lot of discussion about a possible alternative-EFCA bill, but any proposal based on the fundamentally flawed EFCA would be devastating to employers and employees alike. If an agreement has been reached, why is nothing is available on it? As we enter the campaign season, we hope that maneuvering over versions of a bill that would cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs doesn’t become part of a political strategy to woo one key interest. Any elected official should soundly reject the Employee Free Choice Act, in any form.

As we noted earlier today, the Senate HELP Committee held a hearing on the Paycheck Fairness Act this morning. The NAM joined with many other employer groups in sending a letter to the HELP Committee members prior to the hearing. Our letter explains that the Paycheck Fairness Act “would jeopardize employee incentive pay and employee privacy, and promote costly litigation against even well-intentioned employers – all while doing little to prevent actual wage discrimination.”

Our letter further explains that if the bill were to become law it would:

threaten employee bonus or incentive pay that, by definition, provides some employees a higher wage than others,

prohibit employees from negotiating higher pay either before being hired or during employment,

allow employees’ wages to be disclosed to peers, friends, family and competitors,

require employers to submit pay data on their employees to the Federal government,

force the Labor Department to reinstate a flawed and duplicative pay grade survey that has proven ineffective at enforcing civil rights laws among federal contractors,

make it easier for trial lawyers to file large class actions against employers, and

establish unlimited punitive and compensatory liability under the Equal Pay Act against employers of every size.

While the Senate has been focusing on numerous bills to create jobs, it seems counterintuitive to move forward on legislation that would make it more difficult for employers to create and retain jobs.

From The Wall Street Journal, an editorial, “Procuring the Union Agenda“:

In a novel variation on pay to play, the Obama Administration is planning to force companies to raise pay and benefits for workers if they want continued access to federal contracts. Waiting to cash in on the impending Executive Order are unions that would end up with a piece of the government’s $500 billion in annual contracts.

The government can’t steer contracts directly to the unions. But it can use its authority over how taxpayer money is spent to favor unions and their agenda. This is good news for Andy Stern and his Service Employees International Union. But not so good for job creation.

The proposed Executive Order is being drawn up by Joe Biden’s Middle Class Task Force. It would oblige government procurement agencies to give contracts to “responsible contractors” who pay workers well and offer higher health, pension, sick leave and other benefits.

The Journal argues that this scheme, enforced by “labor commissars” at each federal agency, would especially disadvantage small businesses unable to offer the full range of benefits larger companies can achieve.

Associated Builders and Contractors, representing companies painfully familiar with Davis-Bacon and project labor agreements, issued a news release last week in response to reports about the “high road contracting policy.” In it, ABC’s Geoff Burr, vice president of federal affairs, said:

The provisions outlined in media reports – as well as in documents from the Center for American Progress, big labor and other special interest groups promoting this policy – fly in the face of free and open competition.

Large and small nonunion construction contractors and their skilled employees – which make up more than 85 percent of the U.S. construction workforce – are the backbone of America’s construction industry. These hardworking men and women have a decades-long track record of meeting and exceeding existing government-determined wage and benefit laws, such as the Davis-Bacon Act, and contracting standards in the best-value evaluation process unique to the federal government’s procurement of construction services.

The proposal is baffling given the Administration’s stated emphasis on jobs creation. As Burr notes, the U.S. construction industry already suffers from an unemployment rate of 24.7 percent. Why would you increase costs on this important sector of the economy?

As noted at Shopfloor yesterday, many labor groups are pressuring President Obama to seat Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) via a recess appointment, despite objections from the Senate. Some have questioned the validity of the Board’s current quorum and have argued that with only two members the Board is crippled. However, if the Senate truly feels that the Board needs an unquestionable quorum to be successful, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), who serves at the Ranking Member on the Senate HELP Committee, lays out an easier option: Confirm the two pending nominees.

From a Feb. 9 floor statement:

I wish to point out that there is another way. There at three current vacancies at the National Labor Relations Board, and the HELP Committee has unanimously approved the President’s other two nominees. If the Senate wanted to confirm two new members to the Board, it could have easily done so today. [February 9, 2010] In fact, it could have done so last year. One of these nominees, Mark Pearce [a Democrat], is a labor-side attorney who has spent his career representing labor unions. The other is a Republican nominee with management-side experience in addition to tenures on the staff of the National Labor Relations Board and in the Senate as my labor policy director, Brian Hayes. Yet these nominees did not inspire objections from HELP members on either side of the aisle.

It is disingenuous to suggest that the only way that the Board can function properly is through the controversial action of a recess appointment. If the Senate wants to ensure the effective operation of the NLRB, Senator should move to confirm the other two nominees now awaiting confirmation.

The Senate HELP Committee this Thursday will hold a hearing on the Paycheck Fairness Act. While this bill’s title gives the casual observer the sense that it will prevent discrimination in pay, in reality it only promotes more litigation. In the process, the legislation creates tremendous uncertainty for employers who are struggling to create and retain jobs in these trying economic conditions.

This legislation will be a boon to the trial bar by allowing unlimited punitive damages and larger class action suits against employers under the Equal Pay Act. Because the Equal Pay Act is a strict-liability statute, plaintiffs’ attorneys don’t even need to demonstrate an employer’s intent to do harm to file a suit. If passed into law the Paycheck Fairness Act would force employers to second-guess every pay decision that they make.

In addition, the bill eliminates key employer affirmative defenses when presented with such claims. Just last year EEOC data shows that fewer than 5 percent of discrimination claims actually had legal grounds behind them. What does this mean? Even though a case may not have grounds, it forces employers to mount expensive defenses themselves against such claims. As The Washington Post when they rightfully pointed out that this legislation “risks tilting the scales too far against employers and would remove, rather than restore, a sense of balance.”

While illegal discrimination has no place in today’s workplaces, this legislation will not address those issues. Discrimination on the basis of gender is already illegal. The legislation does not make discrimination any more against the law, it simply opens up the judicial process to more civil lawsuits based on equal pay claims. Who benefits? Not the worker, the lawyers

John B. Judis, a senior editor with The New Republic, pressures President Obama to make a recess appointment of SEIU and AFL-CIO counsel Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, casting the argument in political terms as “Obama’s Hinge Moment.” First published in the magazine, Judis’ piece was reposted at NPR’s site today.

Judis’ argument is political, as he waves away business’ objections to Becker’s nomination, claiming “Becker dealt satisfactorily with the principal charge against him — that he would use the NLRB to administratively enact the Employee Free Choice Act.” Maybe, if you’re satisfied by “No, I wouldn’t,” as sufficient, his earlier writings to the contrary.

Judis:

At the end of this month, Obama will have a chance to prove these critics wrong. It would certainly be the politically smart thing to do. Labor remains essential to the Democratic coalition, and, given that Obama cannot offer unions what they really want–the Employee Free Choice Act–he can at least mollify them with this. More than a shrewd political move, however, filling the vacancies on the NLRB is the right thing to do. It is a small agency but an important one. And, as long as it remains crippled, one of the core philosophical commitments of the Democratic Party–the idea that workers ought to have some counterweight to the overwhelming power of big business–goes unfulfilled.

Other than politics, there’s nothing stopping Senate confirmation of the other two nominees, Buffalo labor lawyer Mark Pearce and former Senate staffer Brian Hayes. President Obama could also easily nominate another Democrat to fill the swing position on the NLRB.

So the issue here isn’t the effective operation of the National Labor Relations Board, it’s the “mollifying” of organized labor.

Bret Jacobsen in Forbes.com, “Everyday Higher Prices,” a commentary on the “high road” federal contracting standards:

It’s just the latest effort to increase costs on taxpayer projects in the name of pushing more money to labor unions.

Reports this week of the new proposal are raising eyebrows. Though details are sketchy, here’s the general idea: The Obama administration is attempting to alter the scoring system currently used to evaluate government contractors and suppliers.

The new system would provide additional points for so-called “high road” employers who pay wages and benefits above minimum standards. (Note that the new requirement is not about providing quality above minimal standards; employers simply have to pay more.) Thus, competition in bidding becomes a tangled race to see who can charge the most to cover higher labor costs.

The costs of this favor to Big Labor would be borne by the taxpayers, paying the direct costs of more expensive contracts and indirect costs from inefficiency.

The recent report from the White House Task Force on the Middle Class foreshadowed this major change in federal contracting. From page 23, the section entitled “Responsible Federal Contracting.”

The Federal Government spends over half a trillion dollars a year on contracts for goods and services, generating employment for tens of millions of workers. However, there are inadequate controls on the records of firms who get these contracts and on the quality of the jobs these contracts create.Ignoring these factors has negative implications, not only for the workers on these contracts, but for the quality and efficiency of services rendered. For these reasons, the Task Force has participated in a review process to identify ways to reform the procurement process to increase the quality of both the services procured and the jobs created under Federal contracts.

The Task Force recognizes that contracts should not be awarded to irresponsible sources with unsatisfactory records of business ethics, including noncompliance with labor and employment, tax, fraud, and consumer protection laws. We also recognize that substandard wages and benefits can have negative impacts on employees’ productivity and stability, which in turn can reduce the quality of performance on Federal contracts.

We expect to produce shortly some new recommendations to bring these ideas into practice.

• Associated Press, “‘Living wage’ could be factor in govt contracts”
• New York Times, “Plan to Seek Use of US Contracts as a Wage Lever“
• Bloomberg, “Plan to Seek Use of US Contracts as a Wage Lever“

From the EFCA Labor Law and Reform Blog published by Jackson Lewis LLP, reporting on the American Bar Association’s winter meeting last week in Puerto Rico and the AFL-CIO Executive Council’s meeting in Orlando.

Fred Feinstein, former General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, spoke at the Bar Association meeting.  He thinks EFCA in a compromised form is still a possibility.  Card check is gone but mandatory arbitration and increased penalties might remain, along with expedited elections.

Mr. Feinstein attributed the delay for passage of EFCA to more pressing items, such as health care, having to take priority.  Since the health care legislation appears to be coming to a climax, it seems that the “health care” rationale for delaying an EFCA vote will no longer justify inaction. EFCA, at least in some form, will have to be brought up for a vote or buried.

Labor certainly hasn’t given up on its campaign to use federal government to restructure the U.S. economy. Here’s just one more example, a hearing Wednesday by a House Education and Labor Committee subcommittee on H.R. 413, Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act of 2009, designed to force states into collective bargaining with public safety unions.