Month: October 2006

by hilzoy

Via Ezra Klein at TAPPED, an interesting study (pdf) on union card-checks versus elections. Ezra is more quotable than the study:

“A poll commissioned by American Rights at Work (a pro-union org), Rutgers University, and Jesuit Wheeling University surveyed 430 randomly-selected workers from worksites where employees had sought unions either through the NLRB election process or card-check. The survey included workers who voted both for and against the union, and included campaigns in which the unions both won and lost. The Eagleton Research Center and Rutgers conducted the calls over a couple of weeks in 2005.

The results were telling: 22% of workers surveyed said management “coerced them a great deal.’ 6% said the same for unions. During the NLRB election, 46% of workers complained of management pressure. During card check elections, 14% complained of union pressure. Workers in NLRB elections were twice as likely as workers in card check elections to report that management coerced them to oppose (it’s worth noting that in card-check elections, 23% of workers complained of management coercion — more than complained of union coercion). Workers in NLRB elections were more than 53% as likely to report that management threatened to eliminate their jobs.

Even more interesting, fewer workers in card check campaigns said coworkers pressured them to join the union (17% to 22%). Workers in card check elections were more than twice as likely to report the employer took a neutral stance and let the workers decide. So, in fairness to Megan, neither options is perfect. But these results show that one is decidedly less perfect than the other.”

The argument against card check, as I understand it, just is that workers will be more likely to feel coerced by their co-workers under card check. One counter-argument is that the types of coercion available to co-workers pale in comparison to those available to management. Co-workers can’t threaten to fire people who don’t vote their way, for example. But actual evidence about rates of coercion is the obvious way to settle the argument. And if this study is right, workers not only feel a lot less coercion under card-check, they feel less coercion from co-workers than from management under both systems, and they feel less coercion from their co-workers under card-check than under elections.

This matters a lot. I would imagine that most people would agree, in principle, that whether they like unions or not, it’s much better to have a fair system of rules governing unions than an unfair one. Aside from the fact that employers engage in more coercion under elections than under card check, elections about whether or not to be represented by unions, under current law, are hugely time-consuming, with endless points of dispute that need to be arbitrated. Moreover, the penalties for employer violations of labor law are so small that lots of companies just disregard them.

Whatever one’s views on unions, I would think that letting workers decide whether they want a union or not, enforcing existing laws, and changing them to make collective bargaining more straightforward and less of a feast for labor lawyers would be an unqualified good. If no one wanted to join a union under fair conditions, fine. If a lot of people did, that should also be fine with conservatives: both sides, it seems to me, should be able to agree that it’s the workers’ views, not ours, that should matter here.

However, I think there are lots of reasons to think that effective representation for workers would be a good thing right about now. I’ve put one, also via Ezra, below the fold.

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by hilzoy

So North Korea might have tested a nuclear device. Great. All over the conservative blogs, people are saying things like this:

“Prediction: The Democrats will come out tomorrow morning and place the blame for NoKo’s test squarely at the feet of President Bush in an attempt to capitalize politically on this turn of events.”

And this:

“I haven’t looked for the commentary that attributes fault to the Bush administration or characterize North Korea’s conduct as Karl Rove’s October surprise, but I’m sure it’s out there somewhere.”

And this:

“The Left quickly attempted the shopworn tactic of pinning the blame on the Bush administration’s rhetoric or unwillingness to bribe Kim Jong-il.”

Those ridiculous knee-jerk Democrats. Why on earth would they think that the person who has had complete control over America’s foreign policy for the last six years should be blamed in any way for a foreign policy disaster of enormous proportions? Who could imagine that there could possibly be anything wrong with our policy towards North Korea?

This is one of the things that has always puzzled me about some right-wing bloggers: for them, the discovery that someone has some motive that might have induced them to lie or exaggerate implies that everything that person says can be dismissed in its entirety, without requiring any investigation into whether or not it is, you know, true. If someone has ever contributed money to any Democratic candidate, or written a book, or given a talk before any one of the many organizations that have at one point or another gotten a small grant from George Soros, then that fact suffices to make any consideration of what they say superfluous. In reaction to the Foley scandal, they have taken this to its logical conclusion: the fact that some event or claim helps the Democrats is taken to show that it’s the result of a Democratic dirty trick, in the absence of any actual evidence that Democrats had anything to do with it. The result? It’s impossible that anything could ever happen that they would regard as a reason to criticize Bush.

Since I still cling to quaint, antiquated notions like personal responsibility, I do want to know who is responsible for the fact that North Korea probably has nuclear weapons.Obviously, the person primarily, responsible is Kim Jong Il. Since (I hope) we did not actually give him nuclear weapons, our foreign policy can only help or hinder him in his pursuit of them. That said, however, our policy towards North Korea has been a complete and unmitigated disaster.

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