Today's Stories

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

November 27, 2008

Tariq Ali
The Assault on Mumbai

Steve Hendricks
Thanksgiving We Can Believe In: Justice in Indian Country

Ralph Nader
Open Up Those Corporate Tax Returns

John Walsh
The Root Cause of the Crisis of 2008

Dave Lindorff
The Department of Homeland Lunacy

Christopher Brauchli
Thanks A Lot, Mr. Meese: How Alberto Gonzales Learned to Get You to Pay for His Legal Bills

Matthew Koehler
Giving Thanks for Burned Forests

Website of the Day
John Trudell: "Crazy Horse We Hear What You Say"

November 26, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Obama Letdown

Alan Farago
Bailouts and the New Math

Stanley Heller
Don't Bail Them Out, Take Them Over

Kevin Zeese
The Real Cost of the Bailout

Steve Conn
Now It Can Be Told (Except in North Carolina)

Ray McGovern
Kafka and Uighurs at Guantánamo

Ron Jacobs
King George is Gone: Now It's Time to Organize

Eric Walberg
Obama's Odious Entourage

Martha Rosenberg
Pay No Attention to That Turkey Being Slaughtered (Or How Sarah Palin Created a Whole New Generation of Vegetarians)

Matt Siegfried
Back to the Future With Barack

Website of the Day
"Every Time I've Compromised, I've Lost"

November 25, 2008

James Abourezk
Of Arrogance, Bailouts and the Big Three

Ralph Nader
Don't Suppress Carter

Patrick Irelan
PBS Reports for Big Oil on Venezuela

John Ross
Obama in Bedlam

Fred Gardner
Dr. Goodwin and the Infinite Con

Dan LaBotz
The Auto Crisis: a Big Caravan to Washington?

Tom Barry
Napolitano and Immigration Policy

Norman Solomon
The Ideology of No Ideology

Richard Morse
Memo From Haiti: Where the Culture of Corruption Meets the Corruption of Culture

Chris Strohm
The Missing Rules of Engagement in Cyberwar

Website of the Day
Green vs. Green?

November 24, 2008

Mike Whitney
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Pam Martens
The Rise and Fall of Citigroup

Laray Polk
Bush's Library: the Kurds, Oil and Missing Records

David Ker Thomson
American Friends: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Canadians?

Uri Avnery
Likud Rising

Joe Mowrey
Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

Ramzi Kysia
An Administration in Search of a Progressive: the Team Obama Should Have Picked

Kevin Zeese
The Causes of the Auto Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing the Blob: Idiots and Bailouts

David Macaray
Seven Reasons You Should Join a Union

Howard Lisnoff
Inaugurations Past and Present

Website of the Day
I Hate the Beatles

November 21 / 23, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Honeymoon is Looking a Bit Wan

Michael Hudson
Paulson's Cascade of Lies

Mike Whitney
Time to Move to Plan B ... If There is One

Barbara Rose Johnston /
Holly M. Barker
Cautionary Tales From a Nuclear War Zone

Serge Halimi
The Gloom of Empire: Downhill All the Way

Alan Farago
The Suburbs March On

Ralph Nader
Changing With Retreads: the Third Clinton Administration

Saul Landau
When Old Axioms Don't Apply

Robert Bryce
From LBJ to Obama: the End of Texas Dominance

Shannon May
Ecological Crisis and Eco-Villages in China

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Yugo

Jack Ely
The Fate of the West's Wild Horses

Ramzy Baroud
The Rights of Women in War Zones

Missy Beattie
Why Vote, Anyway?

Larry Portis
Women Soldiers Serving in (and Barely Surviving) the Israeli Army

James McEnteer
Colombia's Laboratory of Failure

Christopher Brauchli
A Tale of Two Whales

David Yearsley
Real Swords, Fire and Don Giovanni

Adam Engel
Power Down

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Saga of the White Album

Lorenzo Wolff
Honky Tonk Heroes: When Country Got Real

Poets' Basement
Raza Ali Hasan

Website of the Weekend
Lips and Fingers

November 20, 2008

P. Sainath
The Jurassic Auto and Idea Park

Brian McKenna
How Dow Chemical Defies Homeland Security and Risks Another 9/11

Paul Craig Roberts
What Uncle Sam Has to Say to His Creditors

Andy Worthington
How Guanántamo Can be Closed

Peter Lee
India Doubles Down in Afghanistan ... Maybe

Dr. Eyad al-Serraj
At the Erez Crossing

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Bush Pardons

Lance Selfa
Who Made the New Deal?

Ray McGovern
Keeping Gates

Benjamin G. Davis
Ending Torture; Prosecuting the Torturers

Tracy McLellan
Obama's Crony Democracy: the Return of Tom Daschle

Website of the Day
Finally, a Victory for Palestinians

November 19, 2008

M. Shahid Alam
Obama and the Politics of Race and Religion in America

Mario A. Murillo
Holder, Chiquita and Colombian Death Squads

Martine Boulard
Escaping the Dollar's Shadow

Robin D. G. Kelley
Will Obama be the First "Freedom" Democrat?

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Obama and the Iron Cage

Jonathan Cook
Who Will Stop the Settlers?

Steve Conn
Spare Change or No Change at All

George Wuerthner
The NYT and the Beetles of Mass Destruction

Michael Winship
This Just in From Middle Earth

Stephen Martin
The Other Side of the Pleasure-Dome

Website of the Day
An Important Holiday Message From Kristen Johnston

November 18, 2008

Chellis Glendinning
Cheering for Morgan Stanley

George C. Wilson
Perils of Pakistan: Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia?

Franklin Lamb
Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon: Hezbollah or the UN?

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Irresponsibility of Appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

Roger Burbach
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia: How Bush Tried to Bring Down Morales

John Ross
Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

Wajahat Ali
Is Obama the Muslim World's Superman?

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
What Really Happened in Washington? The G20 and the Inconsistent Script

Marc Gardner
When Mooning is a Sex Crime

Eric Walberg
Courting the Bear: a New Era for Russian/Western Relations?

Wendy Williams
The Bottled Water Con

Website of the Day
Where's Zappa When We Need Him?

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

Weekend Edition
November 28-30, 2008

The Dangers of "Workplace Democracy"

How to Kill a Union

By DAVID MACARAY

There are two effective ways of destroying a union local.  The first and most obvious is the “traditional” method, where the membership (a minimum of 30% is required) formally petitions the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) and requests that a decertification vote be conducted.  Then, if a majority of the workforce votes to dissolve their ties to the union representing them, they are officially union-free. 

While a decert vote can be the culmination of a specific set of complaints by the membership, more often than not it’s the result of a grudge or perceived slight or general disillusionment with the parent union and is usually accompanied by a mandate to join another union (e.g., flight attendants leaving the Teamsters to join the Association of Flight Attendants, CWA), one which, in the opinion of the members, is better qualified to serve them.

Arguably, in some instances the parent union probably deserves to be jettisoned.  For example, in cases where the local in question has a tiny membership, or the company it’s affiliated with is a nondescript, stand-alone outfit, the International may regard the membership as marginal and insignificant, and, therefore, ignore (or appear to ignore) its needs.  Unfortunately, this is known to occur. 

Neglect of this sort can create dissatisfaction and cause the local executive board to look elsewhere for representation.  To be sure, swapping unions like this doesn’t happen often, not only because it’s a bureaucratic nightmare, but because it’s regarded as “poaching,” and raises jurisdictional hackles (especially if both unions are affiliates of the AFL-CIO).

Rarer still, a workforce will decertify simply because they think they have a better shot at dealing with management on their own (poor babies) rather than having a labor union represent them.  In most of these cases the workforce winds up recertifying, either with their original union or with another International, once they find out how quickly a non-union shop begins to resemble “amateur night.”

The second way to destroy a union is more subtle.  It’s done through what is called “workplace democracy.”  This consists of the company persuading the membership to volunteer for joint management-hourly committees and then having these ad hoc groups co-opt the role of duly elected union officers.  In practical terms, it’s a strategy that makes eminent sense.  If you were management, whom would you rather deal with—a tough, hard-nosed labor union or a group of rosy-cheeked minions? 

Appointed by the company, usually with the grudging approval of the local union who fears accusations of “obstructionism” if they protest too much, these committees are created, ostensibly, to address specific problems and issues.  The issues can be as small, literally, as how to remodel the employee breakroom and what the theme of the Christmas party should be, or as ambitious as how to restructure the crews.

Normally, one would expect the union to play a major role in such undertakings—especially something as important as crew restructure—but the way the company side-steps this is by arguing that if these gatherings were reduced to typical union-management affairs, the union could be depended upon to get all “adversarial” and pissy, which would defeat the purpose.  “We’re here to solve problems,” an operations manager once told a union officer, “not to have you get up on your soap box.”

This is not to say that union leaders don’t attend these committee meetings, because they do; but they are vastly outnumbered by eager and highly motivated “civilians” looking to get involved.  With management leading the way, the tone of these meetings tends to be one of cheerful optimism and phony vitality, reminiscent of those movies where a group of college kids gets together to put on a musical in an empty barn.  

Management’s use of the term “adversarial” is pejorative and calculated.  Portraying the union as fundamentally “negative”—as being more or less opposed to any idea management proposes, no matter how reasonable—can have a profound effect on certain memberships, especially those that are naïve, worn out by a recent, debilitating strike, or predominantly anti-union. 

Yes, anti-union.  Bizarre as it seems, there’s always a segment of the membership who resents its own union.  Despite enjoying superior wages, benefits and working conditions, these disgruntled members disapprove of their union in the same vague, undifferentiated way that citizens disapprove of their political leaders.  They won’t run for union office, attend regular membership meetings, or even vote in a union election, but they’ll engage in a running commentary on the union’s flaws.

In any event, the upshot of these crew empowerment exercises is fairly clear.  Despite all the hype and hoopla, genuine “workplace democracy” doesn’t actually occur, particularly in those cases where the “will of the people” involves suggestions that would result in the expenditure of money.  After all, management didn’t convene these groups to have them raise costs. 

Moreover, if a union officer on one of these committees happens to object to what’s going on and tries to convince the group that they’re being played for chumps, he’s treated as a bully, defeatist or (my favorite) “dinosaur.”  As embarrassing as it is to admit, there have been cases where hourly workers have privately approached management people and asked that a union officer be removed from their committee. 

It also needs to be recognized that the rise of this “workplace democracy” craze coincided with two phenomena:  the stagnation of wages of the average American worker (which haven’t increased in real dollars since 1973), and the staggering decline in union membership across the country.  That was not a coincidence.  As union rolls declined, workers’ paychecks shrank.  

Although it generally takes a while to sink in, these “empowerment committees” eventually realize that they never really had a shot at getting the autonomy they sought.  For one thing, the company is careful to steer the proceedings in the direction it wants.  For another, why would management go to all the trouble of by-passing the union leadership and establishing “workplace democracy” if it resulted in decisions they fundamentally disagreed with?

The tragic part of all this is that people on the floor honestly believe that, by circumventing their union and having a direct dialogue with the company, they can “control” things.  Unfortunately, a group of novices, no matter how optimistic and well-intentioned, can’t deflect a management juggernaut.  Indeed, they’re more likely to get steamrolled by it.  That’s why Washington D.C. lobbyists favor mandatory term limits.  With an endless supply of fresh, inexperienced congressmen arriving every two years, these seasoned lobbyists see it as easy pickings.        

The simple fact is that management will do everything in its power to keep from having to share money with its hourly employees.  This is not an hysterical tirade or camouflaged “socialist” message.  It’s not to say that corporations are evil.  It’s merely pointing out an obvious economic truth:  No matter how much they have, or how much more they stand to gain, businesses want to hang on to their money.

Look at Wall Street.  While financial managers had their snouts buried so deep in the money trough they had to come up snorting and wheezing just to get air, the folks who do the unglamorous jobs—the clerks, runners, administrative assistants—struggled to make a living. 

The only reliable means of resisting this built-in reluctance to share the revenue is to have an equalizer, someone dependable on your side.  Someone whose job it is to fight on your behalf, whose sole aim is to get you your fair share.  Like a union.  What’s so hard to understand about that?

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and writer, was a former labor union rep.  He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net     

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