Wal-Mart

This is the third and final installment in a three-part series on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) published on Global Investment Watch.

Corporate Propaganda in the Information Age

One of the great benefits of the Internet is that it is the ultimate equalizer against corporate misinformation. It allows citizen activists and public interest groups to quickly and cost-effectively counteract right-wing propaganda. While companies shell out gobs of money to glitzy public relations firms to produce misleading TV infomercials and radio ads these days, organizers in the progressive community are reaching millions of citizens every day by tapping away on their keyboards and posting low-cost videos on You Tube – in real time, no delay. With these new, more flexible methods of communication comes the potential to dramatically increase the power of the message and saturate the marketplace of ideas and opinion building.

Corporations and their misinformation peddlers have a real problem right now. Traditional forms of media – daily newspapers, weekly magazines, television and radio – no longer reach audiences once their exclusive domain. Today, a myriad of communication channels have opened up for organizers and policy advocates, making it far easier to interact with a much larger audience on a global scale. Internet-based tools for successful communication have radically changed the playing field for progressive groups, enhancing the effectiveness of campaigns in dramatic ways. The fight over the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) – legislation that would enhance the nation’s middle class at the cost of the corporate elite – is a case in point.

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A noontime roundup of business and politics.

Lincoln of Arkansas Supports Hometown Boys

Sen. Blanche Lincoln has indeed been a direct beneficiary of Wal-Mart’s political largess, with donors associated with the company giving Lincoln over $35,800 in her career.OpenSecrets.org In addition, she has received $44,000 from Tyson Foods, the poultry giant with its own checkered record of worker abuses and hostility to union.  OpenSecrets.org

Pentagon Nominee May Make $500,000 on Raytheon Stock

The man nominated to be the Pentagon’s second-in-command could make at least a half-million dollars next month with vested stock he earned as a lobbyist for military contractor Raytheon. Common Dreams

Big Pharma Has a Prescription for Congress

Big Pharma continues to give heavily to Congress with Pfizer leading with contributions of $$1,601,425 in 2008. Wyeth, its soon-to-be-swallowed competitor, gave an impressive $583,371 during that same period.  OpenSecrets.org

BofA Cashes Out Working People

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority.   Huffington Post

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This is the first installment in a three-part series on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The second installment will be published next Wednesday on Global Investment Watch.

Progressives, Be Prepared!

One of the looming political battles facing the 111th Congress and the 44th President will pivot around the Employee Free Choice Act, or EFCA. The proposed bill, as currently crafted, would amend the National Labor Relations Act in three main ways:

1. Strengthen penalties for companies that illegally coerce or intimidate employees in an effort to prevent them from forming a union;
2. Bring in a neutral third party to settle a contract when a company and a newly certified union cannot agree on a contract after three months;
3. Establish majority sign-up, meaning that if a majority of the employees sign union authorization cards, validated by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a company must recognize the union.

Anti-EFCA forces are now hard at work throwing millions of dollars in opposition of the legislation. These groups include: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Save Our Secret Ballot, Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, Americans for Job Security, the National Right to Work Committee, The Business Roundtable, Employee Freedom Action Committee, Freedom Watch, Texas Public Policy Foundation, Workforce Fairness Institute, and Center for Union Facts. Their goal is simple: intimidate moderate red state Democrats and blue state Republicans into voting against EFCA. Tons of money is being spent by unions to make sure this does not happen.

A number of politicians on both sides of the aisle have already lined up for and against the legislation. Many others are still undecided. It will be those “swing” votes in both the House and Senate which will likely determine the fate of EFCA (note: we’ll break down the possible votes next week). Elected officials in both chambers, but especially those newly elected Congressmen and Senators who have yet to cast previous EFCA-votes, will be taking the temperature of their constituency base over the next few weeks, as they should do with any major vote. The only problem with doing this in the case of EFCA is that many Americans have fallen prey to the incredible amount of anti-union rhetoric and misinformation about the proposed legislation.

Progressives need to know where they stand on this issue and be prepared to make the case for a more democratic workplace. So which side are you on?

Here are six points to counter the big business propaganda and intimidation machine:

• The business community is spending hundreds of millions dollars of their shareholder money to perpetuate misleading and false statements about EFCA. This is being done while the financial crisis – in large part created by corporate mismanagement and greed – has eroded trillions of dollars of wealth from pension funds and individual 401k plans.

• One of biggest myths pushed by the Chamber of Commerce and other corporate interests is that it would “do away with secret ballot elections.” The fact is that the EFCA does nothing to take away the right to a secret ballot election. If workers want to hold an election, they would still have that right to do so. EFCA would simply put that decision in the hands of workers and not the employer.

• Corporate interests repeatedly claim that allowing workers to sign cards when choosing to form a union will lead to union intimidation. Yet several academic studies have looked into this and there is simply no evidence to support this claim.

• The real reason Corporate America is fighting this legislation is because the bill toughens penalties against employers who violate their workers’ rights.

• Most CEOs don’t want to give workers the freedom to decide for themselves whether to join together for a voice at work. This is not surprising when you consider that CEOs are now paying themselves over 300 times more than the average worker. It’s plain and simple that corporate CEOs don’t want workers to share in the prosperity they helped create.

• Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott summed up the position of Corporate America best when he remarked on October 28, 2008: “We like driving the car and we’re not going to give the steering wheel to anyone but us.” Corporate CEOs like Lee Scott are driving this “car” (the economy) off a cliff.

Here are six points to persuade people why they should be telling their elected officials to support EFCA:

• Many reporters, lawmakers, and pundits continue to call the legislation “card check”- missing the fundamental democratic principles behind the legislation.

• EFCA provides a non-governmental solution to help create an economy that works for everyone. It simply says that when a majority of workers in a workplace choose to form a union, they are free to do so.

• Under current NLRB law, even after a majority of workers in a workplace sign cards saying they want to form a union, their employer can legally refuse to honor workers’ majority decision, demand an election and then hire high priced law firms and consultants to delay the election process for several months and even years.

• In the current company-dominated system, workers who ask for a union election don’t get a chance to vote in 4 out of 10 cases. If given a free and fair chance, surveys consistently show that many more employees would choose union representation.

• Economic success occurs when rising wages spur consumer spending. New research makes a solid case that passage of EFCA would deliver a “stimulus” package by raising wages that would help get our economy back on track and grow the middle class.

• The Employee Free Choice Act would help employees secure a contract with their employer in a reasonable period of time, providing both sides with access to mediation and arbitration when an agreement cannot be reached.

So that the next time you stare down a skeptical colleague at the water cooler on this issue be ready with the “6 & 6″ above so you can convert one more believer to the ranks of the politically enlightened.

Good luck out there!

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Electronic waste, or e-waste, dumping in developing countries such as Ghana reflects the worst of our “throw-away” society and our willingness to push our problems off on others. To read more about Ghana, please read this August 2008 article from The Ghanaian Times: ‘Stop Electronic Waste Dumping in Ghana!’

What are companies that produce TVs doing to protect people and planet? In 2001 the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, a national coalition of non-profit groups promoting green design and responsible recycling in the electronics industry, was established to study this and other questions. Take Back My TV is a campaign of the Coalition and in November 2008 the group started issuing a TV Takeback Report Card.

Here are the results on a scale of A through F:

A – None of the companies achieved this grade

B – Sony received a B-. “Sony was the first TV company to launch a national takeback program. They need a lot more collection sites to be convenient in many states, but we applaud Sony for its leadership on TV takeback.”

C – Samsung, LG, Wal-mart “LG and Samsung have national takeback programs. Wal-mart has recently partnered with Samsung to take back Wal-mart’s house branded TVs.”

D – Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba, Best Buy “These manufacturers partner together in recycling under their MRM company. MRM has just started expanding beyond states which require recycling. Best Buy’s rating is for taking back its house brand TVs.”

F – Funai, Hitachi, JVC, Mitsubishi, Philips, Thomson, Vizio, Target, Sanyo “These companies have no voluntary takeback programs at all.”

Here is more about this initiative from the Take Back My TV website:

TV Recycling:  A Slow Start With Digital Conversion Fast Approaching

Is the TV Industry Embracing Recycling?

This is our first TV Takeback Report Card. Only a little over a year ago, no TV company had a national takeback and recycling program, and the digital conversion was fast approaching. While most computer companies have been offering takeback for a few years now, the TV companies had no programs, and were busy lobbying against state laws requiring takeback.

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In the December/January issue of Fast Company magazine there is an infographic by Spanish graphic design company Lamosca that puts the world’s top ten corporations by revenue in a different perspective.

Here are some interesting highlights that are included in the infographic:

• Last year, Finland’s government budget was 40.5 billion euros, about 20% less than Nokia’s annual sales.
• Wal-Mart has more than 2.1 million workers, about the same as the populations of Latvia or Namibia.
• Toyota is the only Asian company in the top 10.
• The oldest company in the top 10, ING is descended from an insurance company founded in 1743.
• Thanks to Shell and ING, the Netherlands, the world’s 19th-largest economy, is the only country other than the U.S. to have more than one company in the top 10.

With all of this relative wealth, this raises the question as to why these and other similarly capitalized companies are seemingly incapable of stepping up in a substantive way to address many of the world’s challenges? While it can be said that companies are in the business of making money, isn’t there also an ethical responsibility for these companies to minimize the harm they inflict on the environment, strive to improve the lives of people in the communities in which they operate and prevent to the extent possible the harm on the world that they inflict wither directly or indirectly?

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The poster child of anti-labor business practices has just launched a new mandate for its global suppliers to adhere to stricter ethical standards. The company made the announcement Wednesday in Beijing at its first “sustainability summit.” China is home to some of the world’s most lax labor and environmental regulations and it is for this reason – along with cheap labor costs – why companies like Wal-Mart consider the country the “go-to” source of goods for its stores.

The company plans to launch the new supplier agreement in January which would include contract provisions to allow for outside audits of specific social and environmental criteria, including a ban on child and forced labor and pay below the local minimum wage.

But many are still highly skeptical. For example, on Thursday the AP reported that Wal-Mart closed an auto repair center in Canada where workers had recently voted to organize. The closure comes after an arbitrator in Quebec had imposed a labor contract on the facility in August. The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union called the closure an “attack” on all Wal-Mart workers. This act follows a store closure by the company in Jonquiere, Quebec in 2005 after workers there agreed to unionize. The union has a Canada Supreme Court case pending over whether those workers’ rights were violated.

In the U.S., Wal-Mart has been one of the most aggressive companies in opposing a bill called the Employee Free Choice Act before the U.S. Congress that would allow labor organizations to unionize workplaces without secret ballot elections.

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It has been reported today that Wal-Mart has agreed to contract terms with two “labor unions” in China. This speaks volumes about both the cynical labor relations policies of the largest U.S. based retailer and the status of labor rights in the People’s Republic of China.

It was noted in the Financial Times today “[t]he agreements reached with government-approved unions in Shenyang and Quanzhou come less than two years after the official All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) launched a high-profile campaign to organise workers and mark a new chapter in the development of the China’s labour movement.”

That’s nice, a real struggle for workers rights. So, what did these unions secure for their employees?

Well, the home run here is an 8% increase in wages this year and next. This sounds good at first glance but note two important facts: (1) Wal-Mart employees (non-union employees) in the U.S. see an average 12% increase in their wages; (2) The average wage for workers based in Shenyang, where these Wal-Mart stores are located, average US$102 per month.

I suppose that any improvement in the lives of workers should be applauded and efforts by unions, regardless of their domination by their government, should be encouraged. But, and this is a big “but,” the fact that any union is controlled by its government is abhorrent. As commentators and trade unionists suggest, this is a step in the right direction for unions in China. However, to what extent will the PRC government allow for such continued success by some entity smelling of a “social movement”? Only time will tell.

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