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Card check bill dies as "friends of labor" hide
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Traven
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May 08, 2008 12:19 PDT
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Taking a
walkOn the ride to the Statehouse Monday I
heard a story on Public Radio’s “on Point” about working people in the
U.S. and how we have fallen behind. In the last 25 years, the middle 1/5
(those in the 40%-60% average income bracket for the whole US) have seen
their income go up by 21% while the top 1% has seen their income go up
238% (more than triple).
This is all part of the effort started under Reagan and continued under
the Bush’s and Clinton administrations. Workers in the US have fewer
rights than all other industrialized nations. In other countries workers
have federally mandated vacation time (in most instance at least 4 weeks
per year), sick time, and paid maternal leave.
Meanwhile we continue to see workers rights erode. You can hear the story
here.
Of course one of the main reasons workers have lost ground in the US is
because the percentage of the work force in unions has decreased from
approx. 35% in the 70’s to about 7 or 8% today.
In the Vermont legislature the House passed a bill last year known as
“card check.” This bill would allow state workers to form a union with
the signatures of 50% of the employees. It would also allow for the union
to be dissolved with the signatures of 50% of the employees. Current law
requires all kinds of hoops that allow for management to pressure, coerce
and threaten employees prior to voting.
The Vermont Senate (where Democrats have a 23 -7 majority) the bill was
amended to require a 70% signature threshold. This is a direct affront to
majority rule. The bill passed out of the Senate Economic Development
Committee by a vote of 2-1-2 (Sen. Vince Illuzzi and Sen. Condos voted
for the bill and Sen. Racine voted against it). The bill passed the
Senate on a vote of 13-8 with many members taking a “walk,” preferring
not to be on record. There was no roll call asked for because while the
Senate Democrats supported the bill, they did not want to be on the
record voting against workers. Democrats claim to stand for workers but
time and time again the record demonstrates otherwise.
What will come of the bill? That is yet to be seen. It will probably be
sent to a committee of conference where it will likely die. If the Senate
believed in workers, it would have passed the bill with the 50%
threshold. The Governor was likely to veto the bill so conservative
Democrats needn’t have worried it would become law. It will be
interesting to see if Speaker Symington can apply any pressure on the
Senators to get the pro-worker version passed before adjournment.
(P.S. High Road - The defective bill was not strengthened to respect
majority rule, and died in committee)
Responses to “Taking a walk”
This is a sad story, Vermont Democrats are almost as
much of a joke as the National ones. This “take a walk” issue is
something I was not aware of. thank you for the insight. Unions are
incredibly important, and without them the few benefits all workers enjoy
today, would not be. The reality of the citizen legislature, which a
majority of are business owners and self employed leaves little hope in
the workers rights movement.
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