Juridics: USA: Proposed anti-democracy union law may die on the docket

Congressional newspaper/webs+t, The Hill, reported yesterday (Michael O'Brien, Sept 14,2k10) that the Obama AFL-CIO consortium in the House of Representatives may not be able to muster the votes to choke democracy in labor representation, as it has planned.

Obama: Chances of passing 'card check' now are 'not real high'

By Michael O'Brien - 09/13/10 02:42 PM ET

Controversial "card-check" legislation doesn't have a good chance of passing through Congress, President Obama acknowledged Monday. 

Obama, during a question-and-answer session about the economy in a backyard in Fairfax, Va., said the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, or "card check") likely doesn't have the 60 votes right now to make it through the Senate.

"The opportunity to get this passed right now is not real high," Obama said.

The president noted his administration is supportive of EFCA, though the window of opportunity to push through the union organizing bill has diminished over time. Labor groups had been hopeful it was one of the first items on which Democrats in the House and Senate would act after winning big majorities in the 2008 elections. 

With this fall's elections likely to give Republicans stronger footing in the House and Senate — if not a majority in one or both houses — the chances of EFCA advancing come next year are seen as fading.

Obama told the AFL-CIO in early August that his administration would "keep on fighting" for the card check bill, which Republican and business interests have rallied against. But the president also pivoted to note that many of the problems in organizing rules that EFCA sought to address might be fixed through administrative action. 

In the opinion of this observer, the card check scheme is a full-fledged totalitarian manoeuver to establish one philosophy of labour representation and to block permanently any really-alternative unions based on latent forces for change in the American workforce's system of unionization.  Read more ...

It's no secret that a nonsectarian Christian re-unionization of workers has long been advocated by refWr+t.  Certainly this horizon of hope is possible across the USA.  Opportunities to campaign publicly were offered by the tangle of events in the auto industry in recent years, where the hegemony of the UAW was not broken and opened to alternative unions (plural streams of representation at General Motors for its workers), altho the taxes of all Americans were deployed to keep the company going and its workers employed at public expense.  My guesstimate is that a Christianly-principled union coud garner upwards of 20% of workers'   votes at that company.  Closed shops must go!

Another situation occured at the un-unionized workplace of West Virginia workers where safety measures were in abeyance and the anti-union company was found to be complacent in protecting mineworkers, deep in WV's Bible Belt.  Surely, a Christian alternative union that excluded no one and forced no one coud have been powerfully and effectively offered to the miners who have long resisted joining the secularist United Mineworkers (I'm not trashing this union, because my grandfather worked under their auspices for year).  They're still good guys in my perceptions (altho I haven't kept up with the 60 years of internal developments in the UMW, since Grandpa Frank died of black-lung disease in the Pennsylvania coal region).  To have been brawt the Good News for WV's workforce still languishing unorganized and un-unionized in many of its mines, coud have made labor history.

Many other instances, especially in locations in America where the Christian demographic is relatively large, coud be listed.   A social-studies researcher coud wr+t a Master's thesis on the correlation between faith-commitment demographics and unionization / nonunionization patterns, locality by locality of h+ Christian presence, employer by employer in each locality.  I think such a study woud tell us something important about opportunities for a wave of pluralization of labor representation.  There is a very small Chrsitian labor union in the USA, the Christian Labor Association USA.

Christian Principles are in our founding and guiding philosophy, the CLA is not a church or a church-based organization. We accept and represent members of all faiths. Members are attracted to the CLA by its labor relations policies, its principles, its common-sense approach to workplace issues, and by the services it offers. We believe in justice in the workplace, whether it's about pay, benefits, work relations, or conflicts that arise, people expect and deserve to be treated fairly.  ... The CLA works to promote harmony between Employer and Employee. This makes us a unique organization. The CLA is a labor union, certified by the National Labor Relations Board and similar state and local agencies. Our right to act as bargaining agents for employees is protected by law. The CLA is not affiliated with a large international union, but democratically governed by its membership. The CLA promotes harmony among all workers. Our method of operation allows for the crossing of trade lines, eliminating craft disputes. The CLA realizes that the livelihood of the employer and employee is derived from the same source.

CLA-USA has been around since 1931, but of course it has had its own internal development (amidst strong and hateful resistance from America's monopolistic unions which don't have room in their values and practices for a pluralization of representation so that cooperating multi-union representation can flourish, affording to each worker membership in a union formed on the basis of different life-principles in the sphere of work relations.  That woud entail inter-union negotiation in many places -- automakers, miners, airline workers, construction s+ts, docks and American-flag ships, industrial farms, you name the trade or profession -- as it occurs in the Netherlands, France, many other European countries, many developing countries.

Rather, in America (Canada, UK, Australia) unions woud rather retreat into arrangements that further curb democracy in workers representation, such as the Obama govt and the AFL-CIO masters have proposed.  May the pining legislation die on the vine!  May the True Vine prevail, also in labor relations in America.

-- Lawt

PoliticsUK: Govt: Cameron's Tories (+ LibDems) prepare for "political war" over reducing the Brit govt bureaucracy ... fewer regulations?

"the Cameron government is prepared to wage a political war

to reduce the size of the public sector in Britain, 

which expanded rapidly under Labour .... "

 Cameron's Tories (+ LibDems) -- hereafter termed "the coalition" -- British govt coalition is preparing itself and the public generally, for "political war" over the issue of reducing the Brit govt bureaucracy ... I stretch from a seemingly distant issue, that of fewer regulations?  Bringing the two lines of policy thawt to an intersection at this moment ... I ask what has "tax and axe" have to do with the question of 'fewer regulations'?

Off hand, it seems to me that with fewer bureaucrats at tempered-down wages (the crewcuts) and salaries (the bigwigs), fewer bureaucrats to do the work, therefore peripheral services have to go.  Less service to the public.

The just mentioned negative -- "less service to the public, except in the case of medical professionals and facilities" and one more exception, I can't quite remember no time to look it up no time notime time-knot  -- when the rubric admits the redefinition of its terms  -- less service for now, but aiming steadily toward optimal service.  In my definitions of norms for govt support of medicine I woud include centrally the goal of optimal service.

But of course medical economics relying on govt support of several kinds, becomes enkaptic in advanced industrial/ woudbe postindustrial countries amidst world globalization, medical economics becomes enkaptic within political economics, and more pinpointedly within politics of the electoral kind.  You duck out from under certain problems, while taking on other's -- to which  of the possibly multiple others do you give the priority?,  and then the penultimate status? -- is the sheer stuff of political strategy in a multi-party (at least triparty) system, such as is Britain at present.

-- Politicarp, reading NYT 

And concerned for UK reformationals in their daily lives, including their incomes, banking, and further financials an austerity govt is an austerity govt, a severity govt ... consistent enforcement is the key ... the question of the over use of policing function? 

Is this an optimal occasion for establishment of a Christian Labour Association of England (CLAE), at least a ginger group working by mutual storytelling and systemic-oriented discussion -- say, once a month -- toward establishing eventually a General Workers Local to think, network, propagandize for, and recruit -- beginning with one's Christian networks and merging them with one another to produce an iniitial contacts list.

But, in philosophical terms focussed  especially for the disciplines of organizational, operational, and leadership studies, CLAE woud have the necessity of making clear to all interested in membership in a CLAE Trade Local  or a Company-Wide Local (say, in the building trades and in specific-trade orgs parallel to those of  CUTT).   In this philosophy of labour-ethics and labour-representation theory, membership does not exclude workers who are not Christians.  Every member is free, as far as CLAE is concerned, to determine in their own consciences how to speak of their religious identity.  


-- P

Economics: Labour: Vision needed for the spread of Christian unions in North America and China

If you are a member of a labor union, most likely you are a member of the overall global labor federation called the"World Trade Union Confederation."  Some of the WTUC members are unions of Christian inspiration and principle, like the national Christian Labor federation in the Netherlands (CNV) and the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) -- but not (yet) the Christian Labor Association in the USA (CLA-USA).

The present WTUC has evolved from previously separate global labor centers of different principles: the secularist and hence atheist labor central embracing the main capitalist and socialist unions and the more Christian-hospitable union then called the World Confederation of Labour.  Both bodies worked assiduously with the UN-affiliated International Labour Organization.  The WCL of which the CNV (Netherlands) and CLAC (Canada) have long been members was the bastion of Catholic-inspired global unionism, with a few Protestant-inspired unions also principially in this day of ecumenism actively affiliated.  One of the causes, the Catholic and formerly Catholic unions championed, a cause which the CLAC atypically concerned itself with, was the independent trade unions of Cuba where the unions were severely restricted and their leaders, including leaders of Christian labor there, were jailed -- with the keys to their cells virtually tossed into the ocean.  Instead, in old Soviet-style the Cuban govt established its affiliated Communist-inspired unions with a monopoly of representation / repression of workers.

Catholic unionism, now within the WTUC, still exists, but because of changes in the interpretations of the Catholic social encyclicals since Vatican II, the nature/grace conceptualization underlying these unions has become seriously attentuated, not least in regard to passing of the old concepts thru Vatican II's new dogma of the "preferential option for the poor" and the broader rubric "solidarity" (made famous by Lech Walesa's leadership of the Solidarity organization in Poland).  The transition from the grace side of the schematic to the nature side is a global phenomenon among formerly forthr+tly Catholic unions, once outfitted with priestly chaplains who kept the affiliates and the locals at large industrial facilities on the strait and narrow. But solidarity-thinking and an option preferential to the poor helped move Catholic industrial organization of workers to a more secular way of existence and functioning.  I think of Hendrik Hart's rubric, "biblical secularity" in my own attempt to fathom the necessity of Christ-principled labour unions distinct from institutional churches (denominations), genuinely free organizations for representing workers in the h+ly differentiated-zone of industrial labor that marks our Western societies, and which is exploding enormously in China in its quick-paced capitalist transformation under a Communist govt (with again soviet-style govt labour organizations to control workers).
Read more ...

EconomyUSA: Investors: Market Watch portrays May's volatility in this apt pix

Do you carry a left-goudzwaardian hate for capitalists, particularly investors?

Then, I give you occasion to rejoice and be exceeding glad as you feast your eyes on this one. But maybe you can glimpse the real pain in the face on this excellent bit of webcomic satire.  You see, the volatility of the markets last month created an enormous amount of anxiety and worse, as investors last month -- the good, the bad and the ugly among them -- tempted to cope with their shortfalls.  Of course, some clever lads made a killing, by luck or purposeful exploitation knowing when and where to reap stunning profits off the misery of others -- and the others not being only investors, small investors particularly, but also the noninvestors in the workforce and out of it, impacted severely by an unstable world and domestic market.

The month of June 2k10 will find rW attempting to monitor the general pattern of the markets (via MarketWatch and other financial newshorses), monitoring as well as the proposed American legislation to reform and better regulate the American domestic financial industry.  We're not laissez-faire, neither are we anticapitalist as some goudzwaardian reformational folk seem to be.  We're rather centre-goudzwaardian ourselves, but know that the stock markets are integral to the advanced differentiated society we live in, and that sphere sovereignty is conceptually and practically (as a life-practice) prior to the capitalist vs socialist debate so prominent in some corners today.  Let's get out of the corners!

A reformational investors club, anyone?

A Christian labor/labour union, anyone?

A round of beers at the local pub, anyone?, to discuss these pressing concerns that plague us and have us looking over our shoulders to see if the sky is falling.  Don't jump at the start of the next crisis or when your bank fails.  Remember the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is there as a safety net (thank God for regulation in that respect at least?).  Yes, we need strong reform and wise regulation of our financial institutions, because everyone, not just investors, are hurt in the purse and wallet when malfeasance spreads in societal spheres mentioned, hurt as well as our bank accounts, when the volatility heats up.  Somebody is making a killing, and somebody is getting killed.

Oh by the way, aside from the semiotics of the cartoon pix, the webcomic satire, the analytics of the situation also appear on MarketWatch today in a synthesis regarding developments by Steve Goldstein, "US stock futures jump on China, Europe, BP jitters" (June1,2k10).

-- EconoMix

Full disclosure:  I own no stocks in any company, my pension is small, and I am to be (ac)counted among the poorer of the sisters and brothers reformational in the h+ly industrialized West.  Not poor from the standpoint of reformationals in Africa and Latin America, for instance.