Just as Easter is about resurrection, we will resurrect a labor board that fights for workers. That will lead to renewal of workers rights.

That’s Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, quoted in a Wall Street Journal post about a recess appointment of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, “Labor Officials Confident Union Lawyer Will Take NLRB Seat.”

The hyperbole captures Big Labor’s delight over signals from Vice President Biden and Labor Secretary Solis that President Obama will make a recess appointment of Becker during the Passover/Easter recess of Congress in April.

Take note of Wednesday, March 3, 2010. That’s the day the Obama Administration embraced both reconciliation and recess appointments to accomplish its goals, a concession to its political limits.

Earlier posts on Becker.

And good for them.

From The Washington Post, “Union leaders step up fight against excise tax“:

Federal employee union leaders threw the second of a one-two punch at a Senate plan to tax health insurance premiums on Tuesday, saying it would mean significant benefit cuts and higher health costs for workers.

The presidents of the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Postal Workers Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers joined with the Communications Workers of America, which is leading organized labor’s effort to defeat the proposed excise tax on premiums.

Here’s the news release, “Federal Unions Release Two Reports on the Detrimental Impact of the Senate Excise Tax on FEHBP Health Plans“:

WASHINGTON - Two reports released today by federal unions found that the so-called “Cadillac” tax on higher-cost health plans contained in the U.S. Senate health care bill would actually affect average plans like those under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). The reports suggest that the excise tax would result in significant health benefit cuts and shifting of costs to employees, as plans try to avoid the tax.

Many manufacturing companies would also be affected.

And now, a word of praise for the labor unions…and G.E., of course.

From The New York Times, “G.E. to Add Two New U.S. Plants as Unions Agree on Cost Control,reporting on General Electric’s plans to expand domestic manufacturing operations:

G.E. is building a 350-employee plant in Schenectady, N.Y., to make high-density batteries that will turn many locomotives into diesel-electric hybrids. And in Louisville, Ky., it is adding a factory that will employ 420 workers to produce hybrid electric water heaters — heaters now made in China.

The two moves by G.E., often accused of being too quick to close plants and move operations overseas, came only after its unions agreed to keep costs down by swallowing painful concessions, including a two-tier wage structure.

Jeffrey R. Immelt, G.E.’s chief executive, said the two new operations are part of his campaign to get corporate America to strengthen and expand manufacturing in the United States.

Times reporter Steven Greenhouse interviews Immelt, who makes many compelling points, including: “Labor sees the need to be more competitive than in decades past. After everything that happened in Detroit, it points to more alignment between management and labor. My sense is this is a different day.”

Indeed, International Union of Electrical Workers-Communications Workers of America voted to accept a two-year wage freeze and a lower wage tier for new employees, with G.E. agreeing to not to move operations for two years.

More…
Albany Business-Review, “Union vote, incentives bring battery plant to Schenectady”
Albany Times-Union, “Schenectady wins battery battle”
WTEN-10 News, “GE’s new battery plant coming to Schenectady”
WTEN-10 News, “A salt-powered battery — what’s that?”

We took note last week of Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks to the political and legislative conference of the Communications Workers of America, checking to see what he had to say about the Employee Free Choice Act. (Transcript.)

Amid the expected exhortation, one phrase jumped out when the Vice President attacked union opponents generally and the Bush-era National Labor Relations Board specifically for being biased against union organizers.

You know, the National Labor Relations Act says we should “encourage” – paraphrase – “encourage” unions, not mandate them, encourage them. Why? It’s good for the economy. It’s gotten lopsided, folks.

The guys who were supposed to be wearing striped shirts have been wearing black shirts the last eight years. We don’t have referees out there doing it the right way. We’re switching out the shirts, because we’re switching out the people wearing the shirts.

Black shirts? Black shirts? That’s the term used to describe the Italian paramilitary squads and bully boys who helped Mussolini’s rise to power after WWI. (Oswald Mosely’s fascists in England were also known by the term.) If you call someone a “black shirt” you’re calling him a fascist.

We chalked the use of the term up to rhetorical haste, a confusion of black hats — bad guys — and striped shirts — referees. True, you would think someone with vast foreign policy experience would be sensitive to a term like black shirt. Still, a mistake.

But the Vice President has used the term in other speeches to union groups. It’s obviously part of his stump union speech. At some point he or his speech writer said, “Yeah, black shirts. That’s good. Put that in.”

From Vice President Biden’s remarks to the 2009 Legislative Conference Of The American Federation Of State, County And Municipal Employees, May 12, 2009:

There has been a steady drumbeat. The guys wearing striped shirts were wearing black shirts, not striped shirts as referees. They’ve done anything administratively, legislatively and creatively for someone who wants to join a union to join a union.

Black shirts AND drumbeats.

Not seeing any coverage of Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks to the Communications Workers of America on Wednesday, we transcribed his remarks related to the Employee Free Choice Act.

The quotable parts:

You know, the National Labor Relations Act says we should “encourage” – paraphrase – “encourage” unions, not mandate them, encourage them. Why? It’s good for the economy. It’s gotten lopsided, folks.

The guys who were supposed to be wearing striped shirts have been wearing black shirts the last eight years. We don’t have referees out there doing it the right way. We’re switching out the shirts, because we’re switching out the people wearing the shirts.

Black shirts? As in Italian fascists? We assume that’s just a slip, a hasty conflation of black hats and striped shirts, but man…

And:

So if we were just able to get a fora [sic] in which we could debate this honestly and straight-forwardly, without all the baggage, without all the hyperbole, this is something I believe right-thinking, decent Americans, Democrat and Republican, if they hear it out, would be supportive of.

No hyperbole, but the Vice President believes “right-thinking, decent Americans” would support the Employee Free Choice Act. Elsewhere, he suggests that “the good guys in the business community” understand the need for card check, and it’s the “business elites” who oppose it. Isn’t there a possibility employers might oppose the EFCA as a matter of principle? Apparently not.

The Vice President’s premise is that the system is stacked against unions that are trying to organize workplaces. But unions won more than two-thirds of the representation elections in the first half of 2008. How is that stacked against them?

Here are the transcribed remarks from the Vice President’s appearance yesterday at the joint convention/legislative-political conference of the CWA.

Keith Smith below notes Sen. Tom Harkin’s remarks to the Communications Workers of America, it’s annual legislative and political conference in Washington. We were curious as to what Vice President Biden and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis had to say to the union members, as well.

We don’t find a transcript online, but the video of the Vice President’s remarks is posted at the CWA’s website here. In introductions the union president, Larry Cohen, hails Vice President Biden’s “perfect voting record” during his 36 years in the U.S. Senate.

“I can tell you personally, he’s working actively to help us get 60 votes to put the Employee Free Choice Act on the floor of the U.S. Senate,” Cohen avers.

We don’t find Secretary Solis’ remarks anywhere; the DOL speech section includes nothing new since April 28.

As for the Vice President, we wonder who the lucky winner was:

You Can Meet Vice President Biden

June 11, 2009

Vice President Joe Biden will address CWAers at the joint convention/legislative-political conference on June 24, and one lucky CWA member will be chosen to join the escort committee to make him feel right at home. Click here for your chance to meet Joe Biden.

The only requirements are that you are a CWA member and that you are an active contributor to CWA-COPE. If you are not currently contributing to CWA-COPE, you can sign up right here to become eligible.

Pay to play!

So when an employee chooses union representation, is his goal to improve his wages, benefits and conditions? Or is it to achieve radical change, restructuring U.S. society, the economy and foreign policy?

We ask in light of this entry at the AFL-CIO blog, “Public Uprising for Change Offers Opportunity to Turn America Around.” Excerpt:

The union movement can play a key role in bringing about major changes, panelists said. But they cautioned that progressive change is not a slam dunk. Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen told the forum that our nation needs “a clear agenda” from the union movement to build a mass mobilization for change from among the thousands of local grassroots efforts. Three key issues that must be a part of the agenda are the Employee Free Choice Act, universal health care coverage and an end to the Iraq war, Cohen said. In other words:

We have to create our own New Deal.

We don’t recall military withdrawal as being part of the first New Deal, but to many of today’s labor radicals foreign policy counts just as high as a worker’s paycheck.

Maybe that’s why card check is so important. The unions need the intimidation factor in order to dragoon employees into membership, even those workers who support a victory in Iraq or dislike single-payer health care.