Robert Reich on EFCA: "Organized Labor Got Hoodwinked"

[amborin]

An Interview with Robert Reich
Labor Under Democrats


By DAVID MACARAY

Q. Did the EFCA (Employee Free Choice Act), which would have made joining a union much easier, ever have a realistic chance of passing? What was the main reason it failed, and do you see it passing in the future, even in a modified form?

A. It might have passed had it been high on the president’s agenda, and put in play within the first months of his administration. But it wasn’t high on his agenda. Once again, the leaders of organized labor got hoodwinked. It happened in the Clinton administration. It happened under Carter. Labor leaders support a Democratic candidate for president, and then are disappointed and surprised when he doesn’t come through.


snip


http://www.counterpunch.org/macaray06082010.html

[saracat]

1. So Robert Reich gets unrecced now? Is there no end to information supression by some?

[mmonk]

2. I recommended it upon your mention.

Hope it keeps going up.

[villager]

5. To be different from the Freeps we must show unquestioning loyalty to Party & Prez!

...regardless of the facts!

Oh wait...

[Bluebear]

33. No.

[Hannah Bell]

3. kr

[Hannah Bell]

4. dupe

[Catherina]

6. Not just organized labor. Rec'd n/t

[Laelth]

19. +1 Sad, but apparently true. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[gratuitous]

7. And people are doing their darnedest to diss Politico

The anonymous quote about unions flushing their members' political contributions down the toilet in Arkansas certainly gains credibility among people when the totality of the Obama administration's record is examined. Obama worked very hard on health care reform, and is looking to do the same with financial reform. But doing some work on behalf of EFCA? Missing in action. Putting stimulus money into helping beleaguered financial institutions survive their own reckless policies? Yep, the Obama administration has been there for the heavy lifting. Stimulus money for a jobs bill to put the 10% unemployed to work and alleviate some of the misery amongst the hoi polloi? Not so much.

Do union members and working people have cause to be disappointed with the administration it helped put into office? I'd say yes.

[mediaman007]

8. It makes one wonder whether Obama expects to be just a one term president.

He hasn't made any significant labor efforts and his efforts in education are dismal. Does he think that these people will vote for him the next round? Hopefully there will be a progressive alternative, or many votes will be sitting at home. It might happen this November.

[girl gone mad]

15. Why does he care?

He'll be rich, his kids will be rich.. cushy jobs waiting for them all upon his retirement, and all he had to do was completely sell us out.

[Hawkowl]

17. I agree

Unfortunately, it appears that is exactly what Obama is thinking. I only hope he pulls an LBJ and doesn't run for a second term or gets soundly thrashed in a primary.

He probably idolizes Bill Clinton and the tens of millions he makes in simply flapping his yap as a professional speech maker.

Obama really looks like he has no intention of succeeding or getting re-elected.

[nichomachus]

24. He's already said he wouldn't mind being a one-termer

He said that right after getting into office -- which made me really wonder how hard and how often he was going to kick his supporters in the nuts. I'm not wondering any more.

[liberation]

26. He's going to be a two termer, no doubt about it.

He is simply triangulating differently for his re-election: he will most likely go for the center-right vote (which is closer to his heart anyways). I fully expected independents and former moderate republicans to carry him, and under that context his actions to this date make perfect sense.

Maybe it is time for the center-left and left to stop depending on center-right types for anything?

With the current clusterfuck that the GOP has devolved down to, I don't think they will be able to articulate a proper electoral response to Obama by 2011.

In fact, I think nothing would please Obama more than than a re-election resting on independents and center-right, so he no longer has to even pretend to listen to us pain in the ass liberals, since we are "retarded" and we have knack for wasting our money and time.

[Laelth]

20. Well, I understand their dissing Politico.

On the other hand, it appears that Politico's news piece is true, this time, and that those who are bashing Politico only want to shoot the messenger. That's not helpful in this context.

:dem:

-Laelth

[nashville_brook]

9. k n r in solidarity with RR and labor -- a rising tide floats all boats...

i seem to remember that being said once or twice before.

[flyarm]

10. rec #26!!

[Earth Bound Misfit]

11. Is that the same Robert Reich who, in 1993 as Bubba's Sec of Labor

was quoted as saying "The jury is still out on whether the traditional union is necessary for the new workplace"... http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/08/us/union-leaders-fight-for-a-place-in-the-president-s-workplace-of-the-future.html?pagewanted=1

[amborin]

13. 1993 Rob't Reich: "unions...vital to...Admins hopes for econ growth" I will "help them regain power"

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/17/us/secretary-sees-a-vital-role-for-labor-in-us-growth.html?scp=27&sq=robert%20reich%20and%20unions&st=cse

Secretary Sees a Vital Role For Labor in U.S. Growth
By PETER T. KILBORN,
Published: February 17, 1993

BAL HARBOUR, Fla., Feb. 16— Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich told the leaders of organized labor today that unions were vital to the new Administration's hopes for economic growth and that he intended to help them regain the power they have been losing for decades.

In a discussion covering nearly three hours at the annual winter meeting of the executive council of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., Mr. Reich, who has emerged as the Government's most influential Labor Secretary in economic policy in at least a generation, told unions that management has gained an unfair advantage in resolving conflicts with unions.

"Undoubtedly, we need to restore a level playing field in this country," Mr. Reich told reporters after his discussions with the unions. "In the last 10 years, working men and women have been penalized for even trying to create unions." He called the labor movement "the most articulate, indeed the only voice of the front-line worker in America." Liked What They Heard


http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/11/business/at-work-labor-s-return-to-prominence.html?scp=10&sq=robert%20reich%20and%20unions&st=cse

ROBERT REICH arrived at the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s winter meetings in Florida last February with ambiguous word of mouth. His sympathies were not well known, and he had rarely mentioned unions or the labor movement in his crusade -- already under way only a few weeks into the new An occasional roundup of labor news.
Administration -- for global competitiveness, increased productivity and well-paid work. Labor leaders were pleasantly amazed when he promised to appoint a commission to study labor law reform, a cause filibustered to death by Congressional Republicans in 1978 that had been universally regarded as unresurrectable -- until Mr. Reich slouched into Bal Harbour.

Mr. Reich, a man who frequently denies that he is a politician, has followed through on his promise. Late last month, he and Commerce Secretary Ron Brown announced the "formation of a panel to investigate methods to improve the productivity and global competitiveness of the American workplace." Mr. Reich still puts his fingernails to the chalkboard, as far as labor is concerned, by using such phrases as worker-management "cooperation." "Cooperation," in labor's view, is too close to "co-optation." The labor word of choice: "participation."

But if Mr. Reich doesn't always talk the talk, he seems to be walking the walk. Business, especially small business, must be wondering what price it will pay for the banging labor took during the 1980's. The Commission for the Future of Worker-Management Relations, as the reform panel is known at parties and mixers all over Washington, is composed of 10 of the cultural elite, many of them labor's usual suspects: John Dunlop, Ray Marshall and William Usery, former Labor Secretaries; Douglas Fraser, former president of the United Auto Workers; Juanita Kreps, Commerce Secretary in the Carter Administration; Richard Freeman, a Harvard economist; Thomas Kochan, an industrial relations expert from M.I.T.; Walter Gould 4th, a Stanford Law professor, Paula Voos, an economist at the University of Wisconsin. Only Paul Allaire, head of Xerox, comes from the corporate sector, and not from the rough-and-tumble environment of small and medium-sized businesses.
To labor, reform means at least loosening restrictions on organizing and more enforcement of existing laws. Business associations oppose as implacably as ever any changes that would give labor leverage and would like to unleash themselves from various regulatory agencies. The fight over reform may end up being a deja-vu-all-over-again scenario, with Senator Orrin Hatch, who led the filibuster in 1978, back up on the rostrum for another long haul. JOBS, JOBS AND MORE JOBS

[Earth Bound Misfit]

18. Yawn.

Reich told the executive council of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. that unions were vital? I'm overwhelmed.
:eyes:

Now if he'd said those same things to a roomful of Chamber of Commerce officials, or at a WalMart board meeting, now THAT would impress the HELL out of me.

[liberation]

27. And if he had done so, I am sure you'll find further room down the field to move the goalposts

;-)

[Earth Bound Misfit]

34. Yes, I'm quite SURE that's what I'd do.

:eyes:

[Laelth]

21. Perhaps he changed his mind?

:shrug:

:dem:

-Laelth

[Earth Bound Misfit]

12. Song remains the same...

Back to the Future for EFCA?

In 1978, during Carter’s first and only term, unions came closer to strengthening the Wagner Act (NLRA) than at any other time since Congress enacted labor’s “Magna Carta” in 1935. An AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) -backed bill that would have speeded up representation votes, helped fired organizers, and penalized union-busting employers got filibustered to death in the Senate, after tepid White House lobbying on its behalf.

http://www.stateofnature.org/usLaborLawReform.html

Union Leaders Fight for a Place in the President's Workplace of the Future
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
Published: August 8, 1993


As the Clinton Administration seeks to define the high-performance workplace of the future, union leaders are fighting for a place in that definition. More specifically, they say any Clinton campaign to upgrade the workplace will not succeed without unions.

But the Administration, backed strongly by unions in last fall's election, is not ready to go that far. "The jury is still out on whether the traditional union is necessary for the new workplace," Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich said in an interview.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/08/us/union-leaders-fight-for-a-place-in-the-president-s-workplace-of-the-future.html?pagewanted=1

[branders seine]

14. shhh

keep it w-a-y underground

[Wilms]

16. k&r n/t

[Starry Messenger]

22. k & r

[bvar22]

23. That was just like the "promise" to renegotiate NAFTA.

Broken before he made it.

EFCA?...pffft.

THIS is ALL you need to know:

The DLC New Team
Big Business as Usual

(Screen Capped from the DLC Website)



"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for,
at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them."
--- Paul Wellstone

[kiapolo]

25. Not just Unions...

Native Hawaiians, too. Thinking Dems and Obama cared for them and would pass the "Akaka Bill" but when it came to cashing in their political capital, Dems and Obama went for watered down health-care instead of tying up the loose ends he promised during the election.

[ProSense]

28. "It happened in the Clinton administration. It happened under Carter."

It hasn't happened under Obama, who is only 16 months into his administration.

A little premature speculation from Reich.

[Lerkfish]

31. well, no actually EFCA WAS timed to go within the first two months of his presidency

He offered no support for it, to my knowledge, and it failed.

so the 16 month time frame is irrelevant to EFCA, because it had a deadline.

[amborin]

32. not premature,Obama left EFCA to wither, and it's been gutted; and, 3 wrongs don't make a right

[hay rick]

29. K&R

[me b zola]

30. K&R