From The Detroit News, “Gettelfinger: Organizing unions a basic right“:

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger gave a preview Sunday of part of his Monday farewell speech at the union’s constitutional convention, telling reporters that he would vigorously defend the right of workers to organize.

Gettelfinger questioned why it is all right for groups like the National Association of Manufacturers to have members, but businesses try to trample the rights of individual employees to form unions and collectively bargain for wages, benefits and working conditions. He made the remarks in response to questions by reporters at a UAW press reception.

Trample the rights of individual employees? Oh, brother. If you want to talk about trampling employee rights, it’s the UAW, not the National Association of Manufacturers, that wants to use card check to deprive employee of secret ballots in union representation elections.

There are plenty of other obvious differences between business associations like the NAM and labor unions. The LaborUnionReport lists prominent ones:

• Businesses can quit their associations whenever they want, union workers cannot. In fact, trying to get a union out of the workplace is extremely difficult for workers.
• Businesses can stop paying money to their associations any time they like and the worst that would happen to them is they get kicked out. If a unionized worker quits paying a union, in 28 states, the union can have him fired.
• Businesses who break an association’s rules can get kicked out, but a union worker who breaks a union’s rules can be placed on trial by the union and fined money.
• Business associations cannot cause their members to go out on strike, unions can.

Etc.

The UAW marks 75 years of solidarity at its convention starting today in Detroit, but it sounds like Gettelfinger is choosing to rage instead of celebrate. A sad tone on which to end a career…

Brian Worth, chairman of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (the NAM is a member), responds to the op-ed by UAW’s Ron Gettelfinger we wrote about below.

From today’s Detroit News, “Publicizing labor votes violates workers’ privacy”

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger crossed the line when he injected race into the debate over whether American workers should have the right to vote in private during union organizing elections (“Worker rights bill deserves debate, vote,” Feb. 6). By comparing opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act to the Southern senators who blocked civil rights legislation in the 1960s, Gettelfinger undermines his own credibility and does a disservice to the labor movement.

Let’s be clear about what the Employee Free Choice Act does. The bill would replace secret ballot elections with a card check scheme where the votes of workers would be made public to their employers, co-workers and union organizers.

Without the protection of the secret ballot, there would be no guarantee that workers could express their true wishes on the personal decision of whether to have a union in their workplace. Labor leaders want Congress to pass card check because the bill will make it easier for labor organizers to recruit workers into joining unions.

But the American people, including rank-and-file union members, understand the importance of the secret ballot and are opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act by overwhelming margins.

In a recent poll conducted for the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, 73 percent of union workers opposed the proposal. This helps explain why President Barack Obama has backed away from card check in recent weeks and why Gettelfinger is desperately playing the race card to defend it.

That’s right. The political support for the Employee Free Choice Act is weaker than advocates hoped for. (See this Hill article, “Contentious labor bill struggles behind the scenes“)

Besides being an odious line of argument, Gettelfinger’s rhetoric is also foolish in the big political picture. The UAW is a supplicant right now, asking members of Congress for help in supporting the domestic auto manufacturers. It’s not smart politics to be arguing, “Hey, you Senators! You unreconstructed Dixiecrat racists — Give us money!”

In the public debate over the Employee Free Choice Act, union leaders have recently favored this line of argument: “Opponents are LYING. They’re LYING. Liars!”

Now, Ron Gettelfinger of the United Auto Workers has added a different argument: “And they’re racists too!”

That’s the inescapable message from Gettelfinger’s Feb. 6 op-ed in the Detroit News, “Worker rights bill deserves debate, vote.”

The effort to stop social progress was led by Dixiecrats — Southern Democrats who stood for the privileged elite against the will of a majority of the American people. Today, their spiritual heirs have changed political parties, but they still reward the fortunate few who hold wealth and power and trample the needs of everyone else.

In December, a group of Republican senators used a filibuster to block legislation authorizing bridge loans for the U.S. auto industry, despite majority support from both houses of Congress. They were unwilling to give a penny to American companies and workers without imposing conditions that would effectively legislate our union out of existence.

A minority made up of many of the same senators is now threatening another filibuster — this time against an effort to expand workplace rights. They have signaled they will attempt to block the Employee Free Choice Act, which is supported by President Barack Obama and majorities in the House and Senate.

Ah, we see. Today’s opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act are the moral equivalent of the Senators who opposed the Civil Rights Act.

We doubt that Gettelfinger wants an open discussion of business versus labor’s historical record on civil rights (Davis Bacon lives on, after all). No, what this appalling op-ed is about is playing the race card, attempting to silence critics by casting them as bigots.

But then, the Employee Free Choice Act is an attempt to silence employees who might oppose the unionization of a business. Intimidation is the consistent tactic in both cases.

Columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin is the harshest, most unremitting journalistic critic of the federal involvement/aid to various sectors of the economy (like so many, indiscriminately calling them all “bailouts”), and the UAW is one of her many targets. For all the many good points she makes about UAW golf courses, spending and corruption today in her syndicated column, “The UAW’s money-squandering corruptocracy,” we’d also like to hightlight this one:

Curious about how the UAW will be spending my money and yours, I sifted through the union’s most recent annual report filed with the U.S. Department of Labor (which you can find at unionreports.gov). Who knew hitting the links was so central to the business of making cars?

Malkin was able to write an informative and damning column because of reports made available through the Department of Labor. She and other journalists, the public, and union members have all benefited from Labor’s concerted efforts to improve union transparency, most carried out through the Office of Labor Management Standards and including such sites as unionreports.gov.  With all major players in the U.S. economy under increased scrutiny and unions hoping to create a more static, less responsive labor market through the Employee Free Choice Act, maintaining oversight and transparency are critical.

Yet there are many indications that the Department of Labor in the next Administration will head in the other direction, the wrong direction. As the Wall Street Journal reported in a recent editorial, “Quantum of Solis“:

From day one of the Obama era, union leaders want the lights dimmed on how they spend their mandatory member dues. The AFL-CIO’s representative on the Obama transition team for Labor is Deborah Greenfield, and we’re told her first inspection stop was the Office of Labor-Management Standards, or OLMS, which monitors union compliance with federal law.

Ms. Greenfield declined to comment, citing Obama transition rules, but her mission is clear enough. The AFL-CIO’s formal “recommendations” to the Obama team call for the realignment of “the allocation of budgetary resources” from OLMS to other Labor agencies. The Secretary should “temporarily stay all financial reporting regulations that have not gone into effect,” and “revise or rescind the onerous and unreasonable new requirements,” such as the LM-2 and T-1 reporting forms. The explicit goal is to “restore the Department of Labor to its mission and role of advocating for, protecting and advancing the interests of workers.” In other words, while transparency is fine for business, unions are demanding a pass for themselves.

Along similar lines, Mark Tapscott of The Examiner asks if the (very vocal) liberal advocates of transparency and open government will speak up on behalf of the OLMS and Labor’s transparency initiatives.

Organized labor’s leaders sure hold idiosyncratic views about secrecy, don’t they? With the Employee Free Choice Act, they would destroy secret-ballot elections so organizers can force unwilling workers into unions. But in attacking Department of Labor union transparency rules, labor bosses would restore and extend secrecy into union operations so they can spend members’ dues however they want.

Both issues — the Employee Free Choice Act and union transparency — are early tests of an Obama Administration and its views on accountability, transparency and the importance of a dynamic market economy. We certainly hope the decisionmaking is carried out in a transparent way.

The Senate Banking Committee holds a hearing today at 3 p.m., “Examining the State of the Domestic Automobile Industry.” Following a statement by Senate Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), the second panel witnesses are:

• Mr. Ron Gettelfinger , President, International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America
• Mr. Alan Mulally , President and Chief Executive Officer, Ford Motor Company
• Mr. Robert Nardelli , Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chrysler LLC
• Mr. G. Richard Wagoner , Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, General Motors
• Dr. Peter Morici , Professor, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland

 And the latest news…

• Auto executives take case for bailout to Congress Reuters
• Automakers head to Capitol Hill to plead case  MarketWatch
• Democrats propose $25 billion in loans for carmakers Los Angeles Times

Meanwhile, the Detroit News leads with this story, “Gettelfinger: No wage or benefits cuts,” based on the union leader’s prepared testimony from the hearing. Gettelfinger:

We do not believe there is any justification for conditioning assistance to the Detroit-based auto companies on further deep cuts in wages and benefits for active and retired workers. We would also note that in the cases where the Treasury Department has acted to rescue financial institutions, it has only imposed restrictions on executive compensation. It has never mandated cuts in wages or benefits for rank-and-file workers and retirees. Thus, there is no basis for singling out the auto industry for different treatment.

Gettelfinger also rebuts arguments for a bankruptcy as the appropriate approach. Again, from his prepared testimony:

Consumers will not purchase vehicles from a company that has filed for bankruptcy. And bankrupt auto companies would not be able to obtain ‘debtor-in-possession’ financing to enable them to continue operations. Thus, the stark reality is that these companies would be forced into a Chapter 7 liquidation, with their operations ceasing entirely and their assets sold for pennies on dollar.