One reason why companies are outsourcing is because it is cheaper, no necessary benefits, lawsuits, etc. It is the only way for business to go and it will continue. Unions steal; and that is why a state or federal or your local community worker retires with more $ and a pension than you do; we cannot afford unions. Someone tell the socialistic democrats who are bankrupting this country.
5
Good luck with this. Not sure if this fits the Trump/Republican agenda. Will giving more rights to workers give more power and money to corporations?
4
There is no coincidence that the decades long decline in the middle and working class parallels the time since Reagan declared war on unions by firing the air traffic controllers. Since then jobs, wages, benefits, and rights of workers have all been sharply reduced or eliminated. Meanwhile, Corporate America and the investor class have been almost drowning in wealth, their biggest challenge being only where to stash it to avoid taxes.
It's also no coincidence that America has fallen from its pedestal as the leader of the civilized world, as we see millions sliding into poverty, retirees having to go back to work, our infrastructure crumbling, and civility become a philosophy for fools and the naive.
And as long as our country is controlled by the oligarchy of the 1% and their party of choice, the Republicans, the slide towards the dustbin of history will only accelerate.
16
The authors are right that the "Just Cause" requirement is the linchpin of workplace rights. As a long-time Union member and advocate, though, I feel that trying to reverse the employment at will doctrine through the actions of American unions using American labor law is a fool's errand. American labor law is a byzantine, almost incomprehensible process, and it takes forever. We need action now, on a national level, and trying to do it one collective bargaining contract at a time is something we have been trying for too long, and it doesn't work anymore.
In Germany, the majority of workers are represented by Works Councils, not labor unions. Their hybrid system works well for their workers, and primarily because in most parts of Europe the employment at will doctrine has been made non-existent by national policy. We could do much the same by finding new ways to use "concerted action" to gain more power, and by informing people that they don't need a union to engage in the "concerted action" enshrined as a right in the National Labor Relations Act and Taft-Hartley. Unions could set up associate member programs that use storefront halls to fight for any American worker who walks in the door. We have to fight for some form of worker representation and control, and use the civil court system to enforce workplace rights much as other civil rights are now. We need to keep it simple, and arrive at a national consensus that employers now have far too much power.
12
Lacking strong workers groups some level of protective regulations for workers makes sense. Given that elites in the US have worked to destroy and vilify unions for decades. True some has issues but on the whole organized labor made significant contributions to the US and the life of workers. On one side of the coin one has progressives who want reasonable protections and return for people on their labor. On the other side you have conservatives who basically parrot lines from Fox, Cato, Rush, Heritage etc without any personal analysis or critical thinking. Above them a set of elites who have crafted trade agreements to offshore jobs and break labors backs and who support a conservative legislative and judicial system to further that end. I stand on the progressive side, ignore the Conservatives as they are not worth anymore than being filed in a mental threat file and note the the actions of elites and strive for enough capital to throw metaphorical monkey wrenches.
3
Who needs better protections from whom?
From today's NYT:
"Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show."
SEE Brian M. Rosenthal, The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth: How excessive staffing, little competition, generous contracts and archaic rules dramatically inflate capital costs for transit in New York (New York Tines, Dec. 28, 2017.
11
The purpose of unions is to obtain the best possible deal for the members they represent. These trade unions did just that, through bargaining and negotiating. There’s always the people on the other side who signed the deal... if you don’t like it, blame them. It has been proven many times that the unions will take less if the principles on the governmental side stand firm. Three cheers for these unions... they represented their members well. Perhaps the politicians didn’t represent their constituencies as well.
5
Unfortunately, abuses exist on both ends of the spectrum.
Anti corruption regulations need to apply to both sides.
8
Language matters. Equating a just cause law to "a legal right to your job" could have the same kind of blowback that work laws do in parts of Europe. In Germany, for example, it's so hard to fire workers that employers are often loathe to hire full time workers.
In the time of demanding $15 minimum wages regardless of worker productivity, work ethic, etc. and the massive rise of robotics and A/I, such initiatives as a "just cause" law need to be stated very clearly in order not to do plenty of harm.
Employers shouldn't be able to fire workers over personal or political points of view. If the workers don't have the skill or work ethic the employer wants for the work needed, or the need for the job goes away (even if it's due to automation), that should NOT mean an employer is stuck with a worker who's job has gone away.
6
Any modern democracy has ensure that laid off workers get more training and education to adapt to new jobs. Older laid off workers should get long term unemployment benefits. This is done in other countries, especially where employee unions are more accepted and have input.
Without society's support, as tech change goes on, we just create new lower classes, leading to politica/social upheaval. The US already has lower economic moblity, and less middle class security than other democracies, per OECD statistics.
Who defines the types of jobs that 'need to go away' and why? Is excessive profit the yardstick? Why was the US economy successful in past decades when jobs stayed here, instead of being offshored? Rising wages created consumer demand and social stability, thus business profits---even with union power.
Worker productivity and work ethic? How about the productivity and ethics of corporations? They exploit and extract but don't give back. What is their ethic for responsibility to the society that affords them such huge profits---and political power over our congress? That's the imbalance that will poison our democracy.
8
We have had such laws before. They work only so long as several conditions are met:
they are not repealed and remain the law
they are enforced
employers who violate those laws are punished.
What we really need is strong unions. Workers need power to protect our rights and to resist the considerable power of employers.
And mostly, workers need an America that serves the people -- the vast majority of whom are workers. An Amerika that serves the "job creators" (aka parasites who exploit the people they pay wages to) cannot serve us well.
And by the way, neither "major" party is promoting strong unions.
6
The very first FTA with a third world nation was unilaterally signed into law by President Clinton all by himself, and then his NAFTA removed those import tariffs on products from Mexico that protected US worker pay scales and job security.
All of the higher paying US STEM manufacturing jobs possible were then "Sucked off to Mexico" just like Ross Perot predicted.
The US service jobs such as flipping hamburgers, cleaning toilets, and selling insurance are still left in the USA only because there is not much of any way to relocate those jobs to third world nations.
Maybe the USA could become re-industrialized and make widgets, then the USA could make and then sell enough widgets to others outside of the USA so that the USA can accumulate enough profit and wealth to enable them to buy other things that the USA needs from other nations that produce those other things (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) that the US citizens consume instead of paying for these necessities and government activities with more money borrowed from industrialized nations.
Then hopefully the USA will then have enough left over to accumulate more taxable wealth for any future emergencies.
The USA can continue to live on credit card charges (printing and selling US Treasury Bonds) to pay for US government activities only until the lenders of real wealth stop increasing the USA credit card limits (stop buying freshly printed paper US Treasury bonds).
4
Germany doesn't seem to have the same problems the US has when it comes to manufacturing. And they have faced the same globalization.
Maybe it is because they have much better education for working class people and they also have been retraining their workers for high-tech manufacturing for years.
BMW has even been training Americans for high-tech manufacturing in Charlotte, SC.
Instead, with 35 years of trickle-down Reaganomics, we got an Opioid crisis.
10
American workers need to wake up and fight back. American workers need to join or create worker unions and get off their complacent butts. I have listened to people all over, in every level of the work force, complain about how unions take their money and don't do anything for them. These workers are blind to the leverage that unions once held, and that the courts and Congress have stolen from them. It is past time to fight back.
6
I support the unions that I've always paid into as a public school teacher in Massachusetts, an option that has been seriously damaged by the Trump Supreme Court (Janus?) decision. Public workers can now refuse to pay their annual union dues, and in return, give up their tenure, free speech, protection from arbitrary firing, the ability to bargain for higher salaries, and health care protections, similar to the "tax break" that will cost us all much more than the pittance thrown down from on high. Since workers are degenerating to slave status in the U.S., perhaps we should begin a "Me-Too" public shaming campaign about the disgusting work practices of many abusive businesses (name the business and the supervisor) so that we can boycott them at least until we get a Democratic administration--it certainly won't be the for-sale Republicans--that protects either union rights or all workers across sectors, providing paid sick leave, vacation, predictable schedule, overtime pay, a decent salary with advancement and higher salary for good work, and a work environment that is not hostile or abusive. If you can't provide those things, please cash out, because you're not a businessperson, just another American carpet-bagger in the race to the bottom.
7
Years ago I worked as a scenic carpenter in NYC. At the time there were two unions NABET and IATSE. They both went on strike for more compensation. Most of the film work went to Canada for a while. NABET disappeared and IATSE became the Union for theatre and film workers. I had been trying unsuccessfully to join IATSE for a couple of years, all the while working in the industry while my employers paid both my wage and a "ghost wage" into the pocket of the Local. They took my application fee more than once and yanked me around for years. I begged. I was willing to pay dues, I was willing to take their tests, I was willing to send a case of scotch to whoever demanded it. Only when they were on strike did they then contact me. It became clear to me then that the union had no interest in protecting or advocating for the workers in the industry. Their interest was primarily in protecting the members who were already in the union --at the time almost exclusively white and male. No training programs, no outreach. They were as crooked as the bosses. It was all about excluding people from the business so they could maintain a more dominant negotiating position. That seemed to be the case with a number of the major unions who have since waned in influence. Greed corrupts labor as easily as it does capital. To hell with both of them.
8
the best protection for workers is a growing economy and job market. the return to low unemployment in the US after the deep recession of 2007 is a good contrast to the continued high unemployment in the EU where many of the workers rights extolled in this article have been implemented. in France various governments have been trying for decades to break the power of the unions and implement employment policies that are more conducive to lower unemployment rates. yet unemployment there continues to average around 10 percent and youth unemployment over 25 percent. what workers in the US need is a reliable safety net that can get them through periods of unemployment with out risk of losing their homes or health. what workers dont need is european style guarantees of life long job protection.
2
Not mentioned was protecting employees from retaliation by co-workers and employers for reporting safety problems and accidents and injuries at work. Too many employers discourage this reporting and reward co-workers to do the same by rewarding "days without accidents" or similar schemes. As a result many workers compensation claims are denied based on a lack of prompt notice of a claim or indefinite causation due to passage of time from the incident.
2
Great article. Now let's have another one about the impact the gig economy has on economic growth (in terms of consumer spending rather than in terms of corporate profits). Since most of the freelancers and independent contractors I know are underpaid, overworked, and desperately wishing for the benefits of a full-time job, this seems to me like an indication that many more people in the U.S. are not earning as much as they had been.
9
Workers will never get adequate compensation for their labors by relying on capitalists to trickle it down to them. The only way for workers to be adequately compensated is for them to use the power of the ballot box to pass laws that recognize their contribution to societies over all wealth.
Workers need to educate themselves in the history of the labor movements, register to vote, and vote in their own interests. Don't be swayed by the lies of the elite. 2016 was a good learner experience for the worker. Let us take that lesson to the ballot box in 2018 and take back political power from the parasitic elite class.
7
Extortion is wrong even when it's dressed up in the leftist garb of unions.
2
This pie in the sky is never gonna be yours if you keep voting for republicans
3
When we have a work force that is stupid enough that they believe unions are bad, nothing will change. It amazes me that people are so easily brainwashed.
6
Once again the level of hypocrisy from the New York Times is staggering. Worried about American workers? What about the jobs lost by Americans to illegal aliens in the US? My brothers, both in the building trades, have seen their business decimated by ilegal aliens who have stolen jobs and undercut legal wages. That is the true threat to American workers.
8
and big business will NEVER do anything about that because they are motivated by capitalism which values profit above all things.
1
While Virginia Dude's grievances about "illegal aliens who have stolen jobs and undercut legal wages" is fully understandable, perhaps comprehensive immigration reform that allowed these same workers to move gradually towards citizenship would allow them to come out of the shadows where they are exploited by their employers with low wages and few if any protections. They could then join other workers who are unionized or even join other workers who are not yet unionized and form a union. Such a reform does not preclude tightening the borders with more surveillance, and it would be a more realistic approach to dealing with the millions of illegal migrants who are here and are not about to leave or be forced out. Likewise, we should work harder at enforcing union provisions in our trade pacts so that workers abroad see their wages go up and feel less need to migrate to the United States. My suggestions are an oversimplification of the problems, but they might still prove useful to workers both here and abroad and ultimately to the employers as well. As Joseph Stiglitz argues in The Price of Inequality, a more equal society is also more productive and stable.
4
The labor relations board as it is now , republican and pro business, holds no hope for the American worker and will be that way for the next three or possibly 7 years until a Democrat gets elected. Big business has won.
4
American workers are wage slaves. Who are you trying to kid ?
2
The chance of any improvement at the national level is zero until at least 2021. I'm surprised we haven't yet seen an attempt by the GOP yet to repeal the federal minimum wage altogether.
1
It's NOT about unions, it's about workers recognizing they need to collectively negotiate contracts with their employers to protect and improve their wages, benefits, working conditions, time off, and yes, a requirement for Just Cause for discipline or termination. The word "union" has been poisoned. I wish instead they were called "Associations for Contract Employment," (ACEs!) because then the focus would be where it belongs.Employees need to do business if they want to succeed at business, and doing business means negotiating.
15
or not negotiating and hiring illegal alien workers to replace you!
or not negotiating and relocating the manufacturing business to some third world nation!
Free Trade Agreements mean that US workers must agree to work for third world nation wages or the factory will relocate to that third world nation!
5
American workers deserve the sharp stick in the eye that they get from our capitalistic construct. Such a significant portion voted to install the present administration that it tipped the scales in favor of what we have. And what we have is not about to pursue added protections for workers or even added law wage jobs. Improvements in the condition of the American working class will never occur until workers themselves develop the ability to be skeptical of the corporate blather their fed eight hours a day, day in and day out, by their own employers. In my judgment, anyone who has critically observed what takes place in the vast majority of work places cannot escape the conclusion that it is designed to convince workers that their contribution to success is pretty paltry. And their paychecks serve to reinforce that message especially when compared to cash and benefits that flow to the stockholders and executives, which serve to send the message that the latter did it all themselves. How bizarre is that kind of a setup!
8
The really scary thing about the country today is not how conservative a lot of voters are--what's really scary is that such a large percentage of people have no adult memories of anything that happened before the 1990s that they DON'T EVEN REALIZE how conservative they are.
Of course the super-wealthy and the very-wealthy know exactly what they're doing, but the rest of the Republican-voting electorate just accepts things like the tax cut and right to work laws as completely reasonable and moderate policies, just as they came to accept that Antonin Scalia's ultra-conservatism as mainstream, and Neil Gorsuch's arguably even more ultra-conservative viewpoints as mainstream.
I hate to say it, but it probably will take some kind of economic, political or possibly environmental DISASTER to shake these people out of this conservative perspective. Because even though some of them are aware that inequality has become a grave problem and have lost ground themselves, they'll never accept that more government regulations to protect workers is the answer unless it becomes crystal clear that there are no other answers.
7
And how often in the last 3 decades have liberals (i.e. Dems) held both Houses of Congress and the Presidency and done little for working people while enabling the corruption of political cronies, Wall Street buds and union leader friends?
5
Touche. They have aided and abetted, or simply not protested strongly enough, the anti-worker policies in many cases.
Perhaps they haven't presented a clear enough alternative to the ultra-conservative policies of Republicans--and perhaps, as you say, they are too tied to big money to risk doing so.
But let's always remember that the ultra conservative courts and resistance to basically ANY regulations on corporations have come from the other side.
4
This is America. You are free to find another job or start your own company.
3
How free is an uneducated man in rural North Carolina with a family to feed and house?
He can't find a job. He can't afford to move to Charlotte or Atlanta. He doesn't have the wherewithall to start a service business. He can't find adequate medical care for himself and his family. The CHIP funding for his children has run out. He's not saving for disabiity or retirement.
That's American-style freedom! If you didn't inherit a fortune, can't acquire functional literacy and computer skills, and haven't won the jackpot, then you're free to suffer poverty.
6
Telling someone to just go get another job or start their own company is the height of arrogance, not to mention cluelessness. European countries have far more worker protections, and their businesses don't suffer from it.
2
If he can't earn enough to take care of a family and a house, why did he get one? Sounds like it is time for the woman and the mortgage lender who gambled on the fortunes of a resourceless functional illiterate to take the loss for their bad judgment. BTW, grass grows fast in North Carolina and their is a lot of demand for unskilled labor keeping it cut, so much demand that a lot of it is functionally illiterate labor that comes in illegally from Central America.
It is so hilarious seeing today's trained socialist robots chiming in with their reading reports. You'd think the U.S. started burning union organizers alive a generation or two ago.
Yet, every immigrant on this planet for two centuries has wanted to go no where as much as here! Why is that? All those Caribbean boat people passed Cuba and didn't think twice about joining Sean Penn's fave country. Why was that?
4
So you are bragging that the US is better than the Caribbean, South American, and African countries?
Doesn't sound like much of a complement.
1
People always make comments about unions being corrupt, and yes, many of them are (but then again, so are many of the businesses in this country), but having worked the same job in both union and non-union shops, I can say this: it was the union job that allowed me to buy a house, put my daughter through college, and now retire. Case closed.
13
Depending on the education required, should every job provide those things? What's the point of success if failure isn't equally prevalent? What's the value of four years of college education to make $60,000 after graduation if a soldier stationed stateside gets pay and benefits worth $50,000 after four years? What's the value of studying a competitive field that entices you with paid sick days and health insurance if DiBlasio and Obama give it away to everyone?
1
Today in America we have government of the people, by the greedy, and for the greedy.
Apparently, this is what a large portion if America thinks is good for the country.
It’s hard to understand, but this sentiment seems strong.
You get the government that you deserve.
2
I will take greed over envy any day. Greed is sometimes constructive while envy is only ever destructive.
1
Nice point that with all the talk about how we need to match foreign employers lower tax rates, this article is one of the few to note, how about matching foreign employers obligations to their employees
Just cause makes sense, but without efficient courts, perhaps labor courts, good rules will be ineffective.
1
American workers need to stop being enthralled by thugs like Traitor Trump and his Republican bully boys.
We're returning to the days of Henry Ford and his enforcer Harry Bennett who thought nothing of wading into union meetings with clubs, baseball bats, and guns.
4
THE PLIGHT OF THE AMERICAN WORKER Has gotten worse beginning with the expansion of globalization. Add to that the poison foisted on US workers by Ronnie Ray Gun, who removed language from corporation charters stating that the reason for a corporate charter to exist is to improve the surrounding community with specified goods and services. Thereby, the sole raison d'etre for the corporations was then shifted to the bottom line--more specifically, the greatest possible quarterly earnings reports to stockholders. No longer did the welbeing, welfare and fairness toward the workers who made the stock earnings possible, have any meaning whatsoever. Globalization effectively eclipsed the rights of workers in any specific nation--and in all nations worldwide--at one fell swoop. The union movement that arose among those in sweatshops is no longer possible, since the sweatshops are all overseas, thus, not subject to US law. For that reason it is possible for Apple, for example, to sell its products with an 87% profit margin. Since work is so cheap in third world countries with no workers' rights whatever. And glowering on the horizon, we see explosion of darkness in the monstrous actions of the infantile, incompetent, unfeeling Trumpenstein Monster, King Twaat, the Pu$$$y Grabber in Chief. Who sitteth upon his solid gold throne.
4
Unions helped export Middle Class jobs overseas. Let's do it again NYT. Brilliant! (eye roll)
2
Read this article from yesterdays NYTimes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction...
Now, let's discuss the wisdom of putting power into the hands of unions...
4
David R has a highly valid point, but we need more controls over the unions and the contractors, not fewer unions.
1
We should be grateful for mere crumbs. Right, GOP??? 2018, the beginning of the end. Grab everything while you can, Boys.
1
The conundrum: what is the balance between the ability of employers to fire "at will" for any or no reason, without any repercussions, or an enforced requirement to show just cause, as the basis of termination, thus shifting the burden of proof on to the employer to show it was not for arbitrary or capricious reasons. Just cause, or "just because." Granting such a right to employees would necessitate a neutral appeal process. Final and binding arbitration would be less costly than the courts. Or, build in a mediation attempt prior to arbitration.
The peak of union membership was about 30% post WW II. It is now less than 11%. Management has won that battle, thanks to law firms that specialize in thwarting representative elections. Then you have Republican governors like Scott Walker gutting the state employee unions collective bargaining rights, with the full support of the Koch Brothers. Other Republican dominated legislatures are trying to replicate the same feat.
The pendulum has clearly swung to the employer side.
I have seen abuses on both sides, including Unions spending a disproportionate amount of member dues on defending employees that fail to report for work, or are truly poor performers. Most members are disgusted with this yet legally, the Union has a duty to represent even the deadbeats.
And yes, you have managers fire and demote employees for vindictive reasons, or promote unqualified females due to "favors" or unqualified buddies. Is there a fair compromise?
1
Perhaps it is time to pay EVERY Adult $30,000 per year, as a basic livable income, including husband and wife.
We would need a price freeze on Everything.
This would do a few things, for one it would allow stay at home parents to not be impoverished if they are not already wealthy or do not have a partner to help pay expenses as well as child care etc. Perhaps a $5k addition for each child up to 3 children.
Another thing is that it would help get people off the streets and into housing, since most housing is so overpriced due to taxation and rent rape.
It would also allow people to have the freedom to change jobs if their employer is not willing to pay them enough to be there or has shoddy work conditions: Bad employers would quickly lose all their workers unless they reformed. Good employers would be able to retain workers and have a much happier labor force.
CEO's and other top Executives will also get the living wage $30K so they would not be able to defend their multimillion salaries as easily. In fact, if the tax rate for businesses was reflected in the difference between total takehome pay of the lowest paid in the company (including hired cleaners etc) and the top Exec being more than 5X the lower would see a 5%tax rate, if it is a difference of 10X then there would be a 10% tax rate, if the pay of the Exec is 400X that of the lower, then the tax rate would reflect that with a 400% tax.
Along with single payer medical we could fix America Right this way!
1
The big question is why firingw/out cause is legal. The reason could be simply that the employer wanted to hire a friend. On the whole we need more transparency. This is especially true re affirmative action. I've seen number of white people, top picks of a search committee, ignored ignored in order to hire a black person back in the pack. Another time I was let go, as the back scholar the shool wanted would not come w/out a job for his wife as well. Both of the previous instances are illegal, but they happen all the time. But this info is very hard to come by. Anyway, it leaves non-tenured faculty, other than minorities, wondering if they''ll no doomed for missing a meeting. Needless to say, workers and prospective workers need tools to fight back. And hiring decisions should be for and center--not hidden in a closet in an administrator's closet. If gays can come out out of the closet, so can hiring and firing issues.
This is just one more consequence of what happens when we voters cede power to Republicans. You give them an inch, and they will take a mile. Republicans and big business have been propagandizing against unions for decades, and as they persuaded the dim-witted or the incurious to give them votes, they began to legislate against employees, gradually eroding rights. Now, after decades of Republican assaults on workers' rights, we are left with almost none.
2
But who does your work when you take the umpteenth sick day to care for someone else?
2
A job that would fire you for taking care of your child isn't worth having, or doing.
2
New jobs for workers could be created in the USA to design, manufacture, build, operate, maintain, and repair the future manufacturing robots for worldwide sale, but these jobs will require US citizens are to be STEM educated and STEM knowledgeable if US citizens are to be employed in the creating of these robots.
Without a Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) human database in the USA, the artificial intelligence and hardware for any of the future robotic and automation machines for manufacturing products will NOT be designed, developed, manufactured or built in the USA by US citizens.
The USA would need a STEM educated Engineers and Scientific technical workforce that has the critical thinking skills and concentrated focus abilities that will be required to design, develop, operate, maintain, and repair these robotic manufacturing systems.
Individuals in the USA need to become STEM educated and then the USA will have the human database with the critical thinking skills and focus required to be able to learn to invent, design, construct, maintain and operate the future manufacturing robots that create new products to create new taxable wealth in the USA when these robots are sold to foreigners.
If these new products are sold to foreigners, this is creates new national wealth VIA foreign trade which increases the value of our currency.
2
The USA needs to become competitive again internationally through areas such as exporting superior technology, but this would be possible only if the USA changed the emphasis of our educational system to produce mostly Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) graduates, instead of graduates that cannot even converse in the STEM language.
The USA did win WWII and create many good jobs in the USA for a few of the decades following WWII when STEM was the primary goal of the US college education systems.
The USA is no longer the World Technology leader that the USA was until maybe the early 1970's.
Asian countries are now are the world technology leaders.
The best and brightest students in the USA have pursued the more financially rewarding non-scientific careers, instead of educations that might have created technically innovative products that people in foreign countries might purchase.
2
The only hope for restoring justice and rights to American workers and consumers who fuel our economy......is to eliminate the political corruption in government caused by institutionalized corporocratic control of congress and lobbyist designed and passed labor and consumer laws !
1
You’re over simplifying a very complex issue.
I’ve worked for companies with offices in European countries where workers “have a right to their job” and the result is predictable; we only hired employees when there was no other choice. In fact, it was typically because closing a new government contract required it.
Unions are even less of a solution. Read your own paper about the New York MTA budgets. Or read the LA Times stories about the California Teachers Association defending a teacher who put his own semen on cookies he fed to pupils. My own first hand union experience involved the union requiring an employer to rehire a janitor who was found multiple times passed out drunk on property.
I’ve experienced problem with employers, but I️ certainly don’t want to work in the environment you prescribe.
3
I find this article laughable in light of the NYT's expose on the costs associated with the subway system.
The contributors to this article could not have written this article had they read: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction...
The contributors must have also missed the NYT's many articles citing teachers' union excesses such as: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/nyregion/absent-teacher-reserve-plan....
3
Then elect more democrats!
1
So the entire economy can operate with the efficacy of the public schools. Do you hate America?
The federal courts could do much to protect workers. My observation is that instead federal judges in New York prefer to do whatever they can to dismiss employees' lawsuits. There may be many reasons for this (e.g., judges' own bias against workers, their self-interest in reducing the docket, and a dislike for worker-related motions and trials)--reasons unrelated to the merits of the worker's case.
In my observation, more often than not the federal judiciary decides to ignore the law, rather that uphold it, in employment law cases. We all suffer the consequences as the rule of law and workers' civil rights are diminished. I would write a book about this, if I thought it would do some good.
4
As long as Republicans are in charge, forget ANY pro-worker improvements. Workers are nothing but slaves to them.
8
You must be obsessed with Game of Thrones. Do tell us where workers are slaves.
1
A lot of comments suggest so many things that should be done to protect workers in this country, but that train left the station 30 years ago. For the last 3 decades, working class wage earners, unions and other worker protections have been deliberately dismantled while right to work laws have already been passed by various states...the right to work for less. Our economic, political and judicial systems are now fully controlled by wealthy corporations and right wing oligarchs. The nation is already a society for the 1% while Pottervilles multiply across the landscape for everybody else. What we need is revolution.
13
Don’t you mean the right to work without your union dues going to support Democrats?
2
Almost all of our “MAINSTREAM REPUBLICAN” and our “MAINSTREAM DEMOCRATIC” elected US officials and Presidents have voted to create all of these Free Trade Agreements!
Working class voters believe that Republican President George W. Bush should say, "Once you were employed and were able to feed your family, so I unilaterally created fourteen additional Free Trade Agreements (with Jordan, Morocco, and other young democracies of Central America) and this economically caused your manufacturing jobs to relocate to these third world nations because you would not agree to work for the same wages that citizens in these third world nations would work for."
Working class voters believe that Democratic President Obama can also say, "Once you were employed and were able to feed your family, so I unilaterally created a whole bunch of multiple new Free Trade Agreements with South Korea, Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, Chile, and Peru plus several other Asian and South American nations and this economically caused your manufacturing jobs to relocate to these third world nations because you would not agree to work for the same wages that citizens in these third world nations would happily work for."
2
American workers need Socialism more than anything else!
9
The world's most famous Socialist manifesto:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of AmErica."
2
Or being scheduled for 5 hours of work...being forced to take an unpaid (and non state mandated) break... then being sent home early...all because customer traffic is slower than expected. To add to this unfair practice, you've paid a babysitter for the scheduled time, which is not refundable, THIS BURNS ME UP!
7
A union is for, by and of the people. Traditionally they've kept the capitalists in check when they over stepped and level set the field for the membership as their profits increased. To that the American worker owes a debt of gratitude. The capitalists learned just how far they can go before the union cards start to flow thorough their organizations. Over the years Democrats and unions became their own worst enemies, wanting the same for the American worker. The Democrats wanted their vote, the unions wanted their monthly membership dues. The masses found it cheaper to be a Democrat than a union member. Federal labor laws expanded to fill in the gaps of worker protectionism that the unions once fought for. Now that Trump has moved towards protectionism, bringing jobs back, stemming offshoring and driving unemployment to below 4% perhaps the unions will see a resurgence.
3
In Australia , Part Time Employees are paid 25% more an hour than full time Employees.
Why?
Because Part Time Employees do not get 4 weeks paid Holidays a year as well as as other benefits that accrue to full Time Employees, so we must be fair to them.
BUT ALSO...it is also to insure that Businesses do not replace all their full time staff with Part Time Staff in order to exploit them and gain advantages of cost and flexibility etc that might tempt the more insidious business profit more at the expense of the part time Employee...like what you see so many U.S Businesses do to gain extra profit at the expense of others.
Given that the median per capita wealth of most Australian is almost 9 TIMES that of the median per capita wealth of most Americans (Credit Swisse World Wealth Report 2012,2013,2014,2015) and Australians ranked 1st 2nd or 3rd richest people in the World (America ranks 27th...last) suggests we know how to look after our people.
American Politicians should visit Europe and Oceania and see how its done right, properly and for the benefit of all (or most) and the top 1-5% .
12
It sounds good but you are making an assumption that is not based on past evidence namely, that once they did visit Oceania and observe a more fair system, they would go home and adopt reforms. This Congress, as currently composed, fights tooth and nail raising the current federal minimum wage of $ 7.75 an hour, which, if multiplied by a man year of 2008 work hours, places you at the govt defined level of poverty. Even at a living wage of $15/hr, a family of four is just barely scrapping by. We are in a new Robber Baron phase, where income inequality is extreme. 80% of the benefit of the tax cuts just passed by our Congress will accrue to the top 1% - the wealthiest. We have a crisis of morality, here in the States. Also, this bill will result in 13 million losing health insurance.
1
The majority of the elected Democrats and Republicans are both probably equally guilty of creating the legislation that economically requires that US jobs relocate to foreign nations and/or STEM educated foreigners will be imported as “indentured servants” to businesses until their “Green Cards” expire when they get US citizenship.
This requires that US STEM educated individuals compete with the salaries and costs of STEM educated “indentured servants” with “Green Cards.”
Thank you President Clinton for increasing the H.1.b. visas by almost ten fold!
3
The visas just take jobs from American workers.
2
I guess the authors revere the greedy, corrupt public unions that rule our national school systems.
I have a neighbor, I will call her "Linda" here -- not her real name -- and she has virtually unlimited sick leave in her job as a schoolteacher. When she takes off, we not only must pay her bloated salary as a teacher ($92K for a part time job, 6 hours a day, 180 days a year) but another several hundred a day for SUBSTITUTE.
Last year, Linda took 4 solid WEEKS out of that 180 day school year for "sick leave". She is not an invalid nor has any serious disease. She wanted paid time off. Sometimes her child had a cold -- nothing worse -- but often Linda just wanted to do stuff like sleep late or do her Xmas shopping. She often took the day before or day after a HOLIDAY WEEKEND (like MLK day) as sick leave, to extend the "vacation".
When she talked about this, she laughed that "nobody could catch her on this." But her principal did, and wrote her up for abusing sick leave privileges. So Linda went to her union rep, and "taught that principal a good lesson!" HE was rebuked, not Linda, whose record was expunged. She said "he'll never DARE to write me up again, so I can take off sick days as much as I like".
That is the system that the authors are telling us to adopt nationwide. OH and BTW: my city's schools are ranked 4th from the bottom in our State and US schools are ranked No. 37th in the WORLD, losing out against powerhouse nations like Latvia.
11
@Concerned Citizen: First of all, you are writing about someone you obviously do not know personally, but have heard a story about -- possibly an apocryphal story, since you provide absolutely no details with which to verify this story. So how do we know this is a true story? You could be an anti-union propagandist who makes up stories and spreads them around the Internet.
Second, if this woman exists, you are judging her by outward appearances. Many people who look healthy are not, and you should never make assumptions about the well-being of people you do not know intimately. Some people work hard to hide illnesses from strangers.
Third, even if this story were true, it is an exception to the rule. Anyone who has ever attended a public school knows many teachers who are prompt, never miss a day of work, spend many hours working overtime grading papers and doing administrative work, and also spend their own money helping their underprivileged students.
But that doesn't fit your anti-union narrative, does it -- so you seize upon the worst possible example and broadcast that to the world.
Let's hear about those many supremely dedicated and hard-working public school teachers!
3
Sounds like the same story about people showing up in Caddilacs and cleaning supermarkets out of prime cuts with food stamps. If true it is anecdotal and Reaganesque. Perhaps when we create a society with no power for workers, we also create a race to the bottom. Evidence of a race to the bottom: falling longevity because inability to access basic services which can cause shorter lives directly, or indirectly through despair (can you say opiates boys and girls, thats right). It can also lead to an all powerful untouchable plutocracy, and an eight year old in the White House.
2
Nice anecdote. One teacher, in one district, in one industry, in one part of the country, a country with many millions of workers and industries and job types. Please don't let yourself get d by your anger for a very small subset of the otherwise exploited American worker--low and stagnant wages, insanely expensive healthcare and insurance, no or very little vacation, little to no share in the fruits of his/her labor, few enforceable protections (and who can afford lawyers' fees?), and little chance to climb out of the hole without taking on substantial debt and risk. Linda may be a taker, but don't assume your everyday, limited experiences map on to the country as a whole, or form a good basis for discussion of workers' rights.
5
The article is spot on. Problem is... Unions demand extorted funds to support outrageous payment for cronies and executives and fund sympathetic, pathetically weak social justice candidates to lobby for their corrupt practices. This leads to corporate malfeasance of greed and to avoid union excess.
The answer is not simple but it is clear and not governmental. It is a tenet of our constitution and stated clearly in the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
We call it freedom and our government's first role is to guarantee it.
Most people summarily fired either are fired are immediately discharged for some flagrant offense or have been on the firing bubble for quite some time with the latest being the last straw.
2
Know who US workers need better job protection from? Robots, I notice nobody has proposed to build a wall to keep them from taking jobs away from Americans -- or even cares. Maybe there's some other reason for taking Mexicans as hob goblins that are dead set on stealing jobs away from us -- I mean other than caring about whether they're actually a threat to our jobs or not. That experiment that Pavlov did with dogs worked on Trump voters with this one didn't it. Ding a ling.
4
It's clear - automation and robots are going to decimate low skill, repetitive jobs.
Also, robots will work in the dark, don't need heated buildings, don't file frivolous grievances, don't have to be paid overtime, and don't file complaints with OSHA.
This is after most companies have already off-shored as many jobs as possible for people that will do the same work for $1 /hr. That was the first "race to the bottom."
2
Your ideas will increase the costs of US labor, and this accelerate the relocation of the few remaining US jobs to third world nations!
US labor costs are not competitive in the world market so the USA cannot re-industrialize to create taxable wealth and wealth creating manufacturing jobs again.
Third world citizens are happy to be paid only a tiny fraction of the pay that US citizens would accept.
As a result, these foreign companies now manufacture almost all of the products that are consumed in the USA.
There are not very many other industries or jobs remaining in the USA for the labor cost reason.
This is typical of how “free trade agreements” have affected all of our US industries that created products that we sold to foreigners.
Most of the higher skilled and higher paying creative product design and development jobs have also relocated to third world nations where STEM manufacturing factories where their manufacturing jobs have been relocated.
Working class voters believe that Democratic President Clinton should now say,
"Once you were employed and were able to feed your family, until I unilaterally created PNTR for Communist China and this economically caused your STEM manufacturing jobs to relocate from the USA to Communist China because you would not agree to work for the same wages that Communist Chinese citizens would work for."
3
Costs associated with bloated CEO and Corporate Board salaries and bonuses are major factors in prices for US vs. Asian or European manufactured goods. Another element is the cost of health care provided by employers in the absence of national health care that all non-US developed nations have. Looking at the big picture without bias helps to get a perspective that respects the American worker.
1
Bravo! Workers must fully enjoy their rights.
2
Goodness - I cannot envision a worse idea.
Employers would simply not hire employees who could potentially cause the employer to violate the "Just Cause" Act.
The market is (nearly always) right. If a worker would like better job protections, he can sell his labor to a different employer. With employment at the lowest in 17 years, it will be quite simple.
5
As someone who studied labor relations at Cornell through my doctorate, I am sometimes asked by young people about their rights in the workplace. They are generally shocked to find out that their private, non-union employer can fire them for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all, as long as they don't violate civil rights law. Long overdue is the "just cause" protection the authors recommend. However, given the political realities in Washington, I won't be holding my breath awaiting its enactment.
13
Great ideas for all American Workers. Never happening unless voters vote out the GOP out of office in all the cities, towns, state and finally the federal government.
6
most public sector jobs have these benefits already.. while private sector employees despite the fact that they are the people paying taxes that fund them dont
2
Good Ole' NYT, giving us the perspective from one side only.
I dare the paper of record to send a reporter to anonymously interview any 12 small business owners in the U.S. -- anonymously. What they would find is near universal agreement that workers in the U.S. are entitled folks who expect to be paid more every year for doing the same job, while spending more and more of their time at work on their devices doing personal business.
Readers of this paper love to talk about evil corporate overloads, but the majority of jobs in our country are still provided by small businesses. "Worker protections" like paid family leave are actually taxes mandated by government on business. They increase the cost of employing workers without providing any corresponding financial benefit. And state and federal government has continued to add new ones every year, without consideration for the financial impact on business.
Everyone wants a job where they get paid well, get lots of vacation, benefits and job security. But in order to have jobs like that you need to have profitable employers. Corporations may have the profits and resources to provide these type of jobs, but Small businesses increasingly do not.
5
American workers rarely if ever get a COLA on an annual basis.
Food is more expensive than it was at this time last year. Our electricity and natural gas rates also cost more, as does our junk internet service. Yet our personal income has stayed exactly the same. American workers have less and less to save or live on, yet we are working longer hours. What is wrong with this picture?
9
You’re right Paul, we need to preserve the right of small business owners (presumably like yourself) to fire all of these “entitled” workers who simply spend all of their workday on Twitter and Facebook and who dare want a raise to keep up with inflation. May I take Christmas Day off next year Mr. Scrooge?
4
I've been a small business owner, too. My experience was, if my business is not generating enough revenue and profit to give me a middle-class standard of living and enable me to pay my employees a living wage with periodic COLA raises, overtime pay, a week's paid vacation, a few days' paid sick leave and modest health benefits, then my business has failed. Most small businesses do.
2
Yeah right, like the workers working on the LIRR tunnel making $400 per hour overtime with some 200 hundred "ghost" workers collecting a paycheck every week. I'm pretty much a pro-union person but some unions have to be busted(decertified) like those working on public transportation projects and of course the PBA.
3
Great idea. Then we can be just like France and Germany. That would mean better cheese and cars. I can't wait.
4
1.4 million Americans work for Walmart. One of the largest employers in the US. Yet if you are a lowly minimum wage worker who even mumbles the word Union within their business, you will immediately terminated, no questions asked. This must change somehow. The Walmartization of our nation is one of the worst things that has ever happened in modern history. The Walton family will be remembered and looked back upon as harshly as French royalty. They'd be wise not to stock pitchforks in their stores.
8
The shelf where we store excellent ideas such as "just cause" is sagging under the weight, awaiting a political party that will embrace them. It surely WON'T be the Republican Party, and it almost as surely WON'T be the Democratic party.
The Dems had a chance in 2009 to bring the Employee Free Choice Act to a vote. Times readers will be forgiven for not knowing anything about the Act - the Times hasn't bothered to report on it since 2009.
It would have given labor a much needed shot in the arm, and had the Dems supported it, there would have been a symmetry between them and the Repubs "right to work" legislation that most likely would have enamored the working class to the Dems sufficiently to prevent Trump.
As things stand, the more liberal of the two parties is, at best, luke warm towards unions - about the only thing the Dems do for unions is take their money each election cycle.
Can the Democratic Party be reformed? Yes, but not as it's currently constituted and not when the liberal media ignore labor (you wouldn't be reading this defense of labor if it weren't for the Repubs currently unleashing the dogs on the working class).
The basic problem is that the Dems and outlets like the Times are "pro-business liberals" - an oxymoron, yes, but sadly, an accurate description.
You can't please two masters: their strategy of neoliberal economic policies wrapped in a veneer of social issue liberalism has been a disaster for the party, and now, a disaster for the country.
2
Yes, the Democrats are exactly like the Republicans. And this is 2009, not 2018.
This is the sort of facile endorsement of the Democratic Party that will decrease the chances of meaningful reform of that once great - and once relevant - political party.
That the groundwork for Trump's success was laid by the Democratic party veering rightward on economic issues can only be denied by fools.
If the two-party pendulum swings back to the Democrats without any meaningful reform, the country will always be susceptible to phony populists - glance back at Wiemar history to see how THAT worked out.
1
Who defines "just cause?
Currently, only employers.
2
Republicans have about as much interest in workers job protections as they do in a fair minimum wage. If you are old, a woman, a member of a minority, disabled, speak up about abuses, don't tether yourself to you cellphone at all hours and times to be available you can be subjected to employer abuse with little in your power to stop it.
5
You must be careful when presented with something that could grow exponentially based on, ''it sounds good.'' Soviet socialism, Obamacare, and perhaps Scientology got started because some ideas that sounded good took hold with people determined to use the gullible.
The handicapped access laws are misused by corrupted lawyers to do truly mean and stupid things, but they keep it down to a low level so Congress doesn't wake up to the stark volume of misuse.
I think the same thing would happen with a ''just cause'' statute because every two-bit lawyer in town would advertise on cable TV that they'd help any teenager caught on the iPhone too many times at work. This could blow up into a real farce.
4
The relationship between “employee” and “employer” needs an extensive rethink for the twenty-first century. Old school thinking by either side is doomed to failure. Potential solutions include completely portable retirement accounts, featuring minimum employer contributions and full loss protection. Permanently shoring up social security via surcharges on business and high-earners is also needed. It must remain as a strong backstop against old age poverty and disability. Taxes on imports should be adjusted to proportionally penalize countries without similar labor and retirement protections. Establish a “labor neutral” trade philosophy as the new international standard. The forty hour workweek also must be firmly re-established across a far broader spectrum of jobs. You cannot universally protect everyone from eventually being fired. What you can do is level the economic playing field between workers and bosses to a far greater degree. These changes would make it easier for good workers to just pick up and leave abusive employers. Government workers should operate under the same economic and labor rules as the private sector, including full benefit portability. This new labor environment would make it more difficult for truly bad bosses to even remain in business. Current labor trends must be reversed if the middle class is to survive and even grow again. Radical rethinking of the fundamental economic relationship between labor and management is the only viable option.
27
The old divide of blue and white collar is no longer relevant. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, programmers, professors are all now subject to rapidly changing workplaces and no one is secure. Software programmers at Google or Apple need to see their fundamental connection with workers across the job spectrum, from factory workers in Shanghai to deliverymen in the USA. This is the only way to put pressure on governments, who are largely controlled by international businesses, to implement laws such as the Mr. Marvit describes.
3
There are a wide range of just cause solutions. Different versions exist around the world. What they have in common is increased labor costs and reductions in corporate flexibility to adjust and expand the working force. Unemployment benefits are a form of just cause protection, where a termination without cause is deemed compensable in most cases. One of the flaws of our system is that many states have such paltry benefits for such a short time they aren't much better than no benefits at all. Consider Florida where the maximum benefit is $275/week, from 12 to 23 weeks depending Florida unemployment rates. If you're a single parent, good luck paying your mortgage, car payment, telephone, wifi, groceries, clothing and school expenses. Raising benefits to a percentage of wage loss like typical private disability coverage is less disruptive to employees, but would still raise employment costs which can't always be passed on to customers, due to fixed contracts and competitive pressure. The loss of income means less cash available for investment in new hiring. That may not matter you're sitting on hordes of cash like some giant corporations, but when you run a small business tests facing layoffs, hitting them with unemployment insurance rate increases is a double whammy. So, we do need better worker protections, but it may very well by size and industry specific, plenty of fine tuning as it goes along, and gradual implementation.
While I agree with the authors, I think what they propose is a meaningless, unattainable goal. To put it quite simply, when economic power is controlled by one percent of the population, and can be used to purchase politicians, and when 94 percent of the working population refuses to stand up and form or join activist labor unions, the outcome is what we’ve got and will remain so.
11
"Just Cause" has its unintended consequences. Making it more difficult to fire means employers will be much more reluctant to hire. This is the experience of Europe with these policies resulting in very high youth unemployment.
- Employers will be far less willing to hire the person who does not have the perfect work history or background. Why take a chance?
- outsourcing workers from other countries becomes a more attractive alternative, reducing employment in the US.
- Automation and customer self service becomes more attractive alternatives whenever possible reducing employment in the economy.
- Shift even more workers to become contract workers with reduced opportunities for career advancement. Not renewing a contract becomes the means of employment termination.
The resulting lower demand for workers means higher un-employment and lower wages for workers.
3
Great Comment, Thanks
If US manufacturing businesses can manufacture their products for a small fraction of the US manufacturing cost if the plant is constructed in some foreign country where the foreign labor and foreign environmental manufacturing costs are less expensive as allowed and economically required to be used by the US government Free Trade Agreement laws, then why would any US company even consider constructing their manufacturing plant in the USA?
If some US company like Apple does invent/develop some new product with their US designers and engineers, that new product will probably not be manufactured in the USA due to the high labor, high electricity, and expensive environmental compliance manufacturing costs.
1
This is the best comment thread I have read all year. People with personal experiences, insight, and perspectives that add to the article and challenge it as well. Thanks to all of the employees, employers, lawyers, union members etc who responded to this with useful thoughts and opinions.
I’ll say this about Europe: their system is not a paradise. The system of just cause and endless appeals of firings sometimes leads to truly Kafkaesque results and forced retention of horror show employees. And the unintended consequence is that people in their 20s and 30s get offered jobs with lower status in order to afford granting them these rights. Europeans are trying to find kludges and work-arounds for their worker protections.
Part of our discussion needs to take that into account.
13
We don't need to become Europe, with its sclerotic labor market and chronically high unemployment. We need a tight labor market, like we had in the late 1990s. Unionization and regulation are poor (and unfair, and inefficient) substitutes for a tight labor market.
6
Great observation! But how do we create a tight labor market? By distributing the GDP fairly to needy people who will spend to create consumer demand, which in turn will create jobs for workers and investment opportunities for capitalists.
The prosperous European countries, like the prosperous American metropolitan areas, have tight labor markets. Unlike America, the Europeans also have fair income distribution, unionization, and regulation.
Unemployment rate of 5% or less is full employment. (At least 5% of the American work force is unemployable.)
2
As a member of the National Treasury Employees Union, I cannot legally go out on strike from my Federal law enforcement job. And even when I take the initiative--frequently--to bring illegalities in hiring and employment practices to our HQ, those in my management find a way to retaliate and sandbag. In Chicago where I work, a Federal court decision, Robinson vs. USA that passed in 1972 mandates the hiring of affirmative action category employees in proportions as exactly similar to the most recent Federal census. This victory for minorities has installed a mafia in the intervening years, one where crimes have been committed by people in those categories and gone without legal redress because of their disproportionate influence. Then we have the plutocracy including the Ricketts family, one of whom was my doctor for many years before ascending to her Cubs-owner throne...let's face it. American anno 2017 is America anno 1875 for all intents and purposes.
8
Sounds fair enough where hiring only in proportions "exactly similar to recent Federal consensus" goes. The alternative would allow for discrimination among a group, the locker room talk and emails has revealed is prone towards it. These kinds of failsafe regulations are unfortunately still necessary. I've no doubt Trump would like to find a way to roll them back, to the good ol days.
1
if you were not working for the government you would have been fired
Everything done now is done to enrich the already rich, and I can’t imagine how that will change anytime soon.
Workers are constantly demonized to justify low wages.
Worker protections would be great fo the country. It would allow for a more stable culture in general.
Unfortunately, the goal if the ruling class is not a stable vibrant country.
21
There are too many job problems and isms related to abuse by corporate.
The one not spoken about is ageism. As soon as someone is not 25 anymore they face an uphill battle, especially women.
20
I can verify the Truth of that from experience. "I'm Spartacus"
1
Many Americans erroneously believe that they are entitled to 'fair treatment' by their employers. They are not. Absent a union contract or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, etc., an employer can do what he wants with an employee.
11
Don't hold your breath.
4
Ain't gonna happen under this administration - or through the judiciary that trump is stacking with right wing, unfit judges who will do the bidding of big business and big money cronies
15
In the 1920s, right-to-work laws were promoted by Fred Koch. The appeal was blatantly racist: "Who wants to call a black man 'brother?'"
The same cause was taken up by Fred's reactionary sons, and model legislation was promulgated throughout the country by the American Legislative Exchange Council.
The fundamental problem is, our government is for sale. When money talks, government jumps. The best thing we can to to restore economic justice is mandatory campaign financing.
When Congress again works for the people and not for the money, we'll all thrive.
23
This is the tip of the iceberg.
Stop routinely populating American jobs with foreigners. This should be an exception reserved for the truely exceptional, not accepted routine business practice.
End H1-B.
15
You mean like "exceptional robots?" Where's that wall?
@Ratza Fratza
> Where’s that wall?
The best in the world: Einsteins, Fermis, von Brauns.
Not armies of run of the mill academics, scientists, and engineers.
Better job protections? THEN DO YOUR JOB. Employers don’t fire people as sport. If you got fired, you probably had at least .00001% to do with it. That’s enough to take at least some of the blame and vow that it never happens again. You will become a better employee, co-worker, and parent to your children. Those are far better results than having government pack your lunch everyday.
7
There is some Truth to that. The decimal places may differ, but overall the real Truth of it is a black box. There are bosses who can best be described as "Sociopaths", and somehow the bonuses only trickle up. It makes for a deafening bell ringing in getting the Limbaugh listener to foam at the mouth with though, as if there were one interpretation for it. Trying to have a civil Civilization has its obstacles and fairness is a concept that often escapes us more often than not, and if you don't want to believe that, there's the door.
1
So the boss employer is always in the right not the employee. What magical ability does the employer possess that makes him free from error or malice that the employee does not have?
3
Reality, it is usually 90% t0 95% the fault of the employee.
Something that the employee was doing rubbed the wrong way with the people who counted.
What an employee IS entitled to hear is the specific reason(s) why he is being fired.
If the employee doesn't like the reason he can sue.
And, if he wins his suit, he is generally awarded a hefty sum in damages.
There are lots of lawyers out there that take this sort of case on speculation or minimal retainer if the chances of success are high.
2
To the excellent points made in the article, I would add that the US should address the serious problem of life-long blackballing of people who have criminal records. Many of these people got their records when they were kids, perhaps as some form of school altercation (which may have been driven in large part by a poor and difficult home environment) or a drug charge. Even many adults may have charges related to drug offenses or misdemeanor infractions.
In the present-day environment in which background checks are routinely and easily performed, any sort of record will pop up. The majority of employers probably immediately eliminate these folks from consideration of jobs for which they may well be qualified.
Essentially, this harsh standard imposes a life sentence on an individual with a criminal record for which, in most cases, the penalty has been paid. Instead, these people struggle for the rest of their lives to find any kind of decent job and are often doomed to poverty forever.
This is a tragic waste of human potential and another example of how harsh, unforgiving, and non-rehabilitative the US justice system really is. It is a waste of lives and a drain on society, one that only creates or sustains life-long problems that we as a country clearly wish were minimized yet do little or nothing to correct. There is probably some racial component to this, but this is also an ancillary issue in the opioid abuse problem that affects many whites of all ages.
9
With "just cause", those with histories in prison, and those who cannot document what they were doing in every year of their life, will have a far more difficult time getting hired.
If it becomes difficult to fire, taking a chance on someone becomes too burdensome if the chance does not work out.
1
Richard: Just cause is in reference to firing someone already hired for just cause. Not hiring someone based on a past record that involves lesser offenses and that does not show a continued pattern dooms people to poverty and creates problems for them and society. It is a waste. Before you write off those folks, think about all the white-collar criminals who are currently in jobs and whose crimes often get overlooked or justified in the name of profits. Think about all the sexual harassment and power abuse examples related to people still in their jobs. Many crimes committed when people are young are not major and there may have been lots of factors that contributed. We are either an understanding and forgiving society that tries to develop human potential or we aren't. I believe the former is a much better approach.
Tenure for teachers, in most of the country, amounts to “just cause.”
5
I agreed whole-heartedly. To me, "Just Cause" is akin to "Due Process".
A person should not be "fired" or "fined" or "jailed" without the opportunity of being heard. But then, do we also need to increase the number of courts and judges to handle the new load? And If so, would this require a new tax to pay for it? The new tax could be very similar to the current tax for unemployment insurance.
4
This is the most major flaw in our overall economy and has been since Reagan's successful jihad against labor unions. By destroying our workers' ability to bargain collectively, we have ushered in an era of an ever-increasing disparity of income and wealth that will continue, if uncorrected, until the system collapses under the weight of all those yachts.
This fiction that workers do not have a personal stake in the jobs that they hold, and therefore no rights under this "at-will," gig economy that the the right-wing has foisted upon us, is truly absurd and wholly contrary to fact.
When self-serving robber barons are in position to order all things according to their personal whims, the result is feudalism, and that's right where we're headed.
19
Indeed. And it's not new. Robber baronism was the lay of the land until labor unions fought vigorously to change that, and which corporations fought against, even engaging in murder, in the 1930s and 40s. A fact lost on so many working and middle class Americans, who have no clue where their 40-hour workweek and other worker protections and benefits came from, when they swallow right-wing propaganda about "evil" labor unions and continually vote against their own economic self-interests. Republicans have tried to kill unions ever since those early days, and they have been successful since the Reagan days. It has opened the door to stagnating wages, longer work hours, pension destruction, and far greater income disparity.
2
And to think that particular Jihad was instituted by the leader of an administration that had over 130 indictments and convictions, had Pinochet and Mobutu to the White House and whose Death Squads escapes memories.
What the US needs are stronger laws about employment. Unemployment insurance must be something that covers everyone and everyone collects unless they quit voluntarily. There are too many ways that companies get away with not paying.
7
Yes, but we have a Democratic Party too fearful of their corporate master's wrath to push any pro-labor legislation. Yes, Ronnie damaged labor, but what have the democrats done to protect labor?
2
Ain't that the Truth. And they've gotten it down to a science.
1
Just as there are good and bad employers, there are good and bad labor unions. Someone else could write an op ed about abusive labor unions who in some cases ignored sexual harassment claims within their union re: the Time article on the Chicago Ford factory. Likewise, stolen union dues, sabotage, etc. One company I worked for was being black mailed by the union until we actually unionized several of our plants. They initiated a nation wide smear campaign against our company. I agree workers need rights, but corrupt labor unions are not the answer. Likewise, I have worked with several good and progressive unions who worked with the employers and employees. Simply unionizing is not the answer, unions in some cases, have helped speed up automation, thus eliminating many jobs.
4
I'm afraid that if the allegations you're leveling here with statements that remain hopelessly ambiguous, your comment is meaningless and possibly just strategic. The part about automation eliminating jobs has some validity to it. I don't hear of anyone proposing to build a wall preventing robots from taking jobs. Could it be there's another reason for the motivation to build that wall?
The authors of this piece are shamelessly running the same old scam that organized labor has successfully run for a century or more. Fool us twice, shame on us.
The scam consists in the fiction that there is a struggle between capital and labor. No, no, no! Wake up and think for yourselves. You have nothing to lose but your (ideological) chains!
There is competition in our system all right. But it is TWO (actually more) competitions: Capital versus capital and labor versus labor. Employers compete with one another for workers. And workers compete against one another for jobs.
So, when the authors argue that American workers need better job protections" what they are really saying (but not telling you) is that they want incumbent workers to have better job protections against workers who don't have jobs or have worse jobs -- the unskilled, the unemployed, the young.
When better-off workers can force employers to raise their wages above the market level, that means businesses have less to invest, and less investment means fewer jobs for other workers.
The authors are tools of a conspiracy of the haves against the have-nots. And you (gentle reader) are letting them get away with it. You are buying their fake story that they are speaking up for the downtrodden!
It gets worse. They are also catspaws of trial lawyers who will be immeasurably enriched if employers can no longer fire bad employees without the threat of endless, expensive litigation.
Don't fall for it.
7
hopefully as in the past, when work conditions/pay become intolerable, the workers will revolt and workers' rights will ensue. That is if there is anyone around to program the robot workers! The 1% super rich corporatists are bringing down America, but there are other places in this world that look better and better everyday. That's the good news.
2
Call it the French model.
You make many valid points. It seems like we are still searching for a just and efficient moderate position between 'right to work' and something that causes the issues below:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction...
We look at studies around happiness & contentment & see that the Scandinavian countries rate highly. An individual spends a great part of his or her life on the job. If one can be terminated by the boss on the basis of a personality conflict, how can a genuine esprit de corps, spreading into a national ethic, be engendered?
Uncertainty, risk & fear may advantage ruthless competition at the top, but that doesn't trickle down & just cause is the best policy for the worker. It's time for the USA to join the civilized world. The days of the black hatted range & town boss , who "ain't partial to competition" in the hinterlands & the top hatted urban plutocratic despots are aspects of the past & should be rightly swept into the dustbin of history.
36
I saw a man a year back while visiting a friend at an apartment complex; he was walking in the cold and coughing horribly. When I asked if he was all right, he said that he had the flu but had to get to work; he was a dishwasher at a trendy Chinese restaurant chain and would be fired if he didn't go in. I made a mental note not to eat at that place, ever, and wondered how many of that restaurant's guests would go home with more than a doggy bag that day. Of course, that's not the only place where hardness of heart and greed combine as a policy, and do harm to workers and communities as a result. It's time to put some limits on the decimation of workers and creation of externalities of damage by greedy employers, their too-successful campaigns against regulation aside. They've earned regulation, and they should have it.
15
Workers go into many service related jobs nearly on their deathbeds sick because they can't afford to lose a day's pay. No paid sickdays. Restaurants are notoriously bad with no benefits or extras. Patrons have no idea how sick people are in the kitchens preparing their meals or washing their dishes. If they did they would not eat out as often. It is REALLY bad. Illegals who don't have any inoculations and who are never screened for diseases are stirring your soup and tossing your salads.
3
The overwhelming sentiment stands with your viewpoint. Odd how government policy is opposite.
1
American workers have been too complacent about defending and demanding their rights which many before had to fight to achieve. For those with higher paying salaries, a great defense is to have enough savings that you can approach your job as a one day contract. For those without a living wage, these legal protections are even more vital.
9
Unfortunately your proscriptions are futile to make happen. We're just hornets in a jar with what we can do about it. Even the overwhelming sentiment with you falls on deaf ears.
It is unbelievable to think that countries like South Africa and Brazil have just cause requirements for dismissal while the USA doesn't.
4
Brazil's unemployment rate: 12.6% - 13.3%
South Africa's unemployment rate: 26.6%
US unemployment rate: 4.1%
Yeah, let's follow Brazil and South Africa and best practices in labor and employment law.
1
Plus, Republicans have cut businesses' tax rate to 21% (a 14% reduction!!) and let them keep all their deductions and loopholes. They never paid the 35% rate anyway and now they'll be contributing almost nothing to the country, only taking -- stealing, really.
6
I don't thin it would be much of an exaggeration to call it money laundering. "A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet."
Unions - and many commenters in the Times - always seem to earnestly believe that the reason that unions now represent so few workers is because of evil Republicans. Yet the reality is somewhat different. Traditionally unions represented blue collar, industrial workers, of which we have far fewer today. Secondly, unions used to represent their workers before management but now often seem to be more focused on filling their coffers in order to serve purely partisan political involvement. Many workers (and I found myself with this sentiment in one job) get annoyed over time when perhaps well intended protections instead allow lazy or incompetent employees to remain on the job, forcing the rest of the work force to pick up for them. Finally, union after union was engaged in deep and rapacious corruption, with the workers as afterthoughts as the leaders enriched themselves or got involved with organized crime and thuggishness.
6
Great comments. This is not a black and white issue as the author portends.
The extremes don't render the idea that workers need leverage to be treated fairly unless you're in favor of them being treated unfairly which makes the possibility of demonizing unions work. As long as being paid fairly is optional and bonuses hoarded by a creative accounting of revenues, the idea of unions will forever be necessary. History has revealed to us how far sociopathic employers are willing to let employee treatment devolve. Never again.
When I worked in Pittsburgh some years ago I heard a story of how engineers tried to unionize. I heard it from a manager. He bragged about how he fired the ring leaders then blacklisted them. He bragged. Nothing was ever done to that company or the manager.
12
Sounds more like rugby than baseball for civility or maybe looting. Look at the mentality that Limbaugh ushered into our midst. It is a cancer and has metastasized.
Right of contract is just a dodge to promote slavery. Pro capitalist protection of at will employment are essentially inhumane. The alternatives: complete union or worker protection for just cause, etc. are not workable if jobs and work is being bid and competed for globally. America does not value labor except as a cost center commodity: never has. Changing this is not in the cards, because American economic growth has been built on a fluid slave market from day one.
5
Yea, when who we're competing with for labor with are dictators who pay their people subsistence wages. The obstacles are overwhelming esp considering the added hurdle that shareholder interests lie with the slaveholders; right here in our midst. That hob goblin of One World Government you hear tossed around by the likes of Alex Jones etc. is most genuinely practiced by Multi National Corporations ... its right there in the name for those who need more proof.
Some of the attitudes put forth in the comments are the same attitudes and comments made about slavery. Work hard and your boss/master will take care of you. Make trouble and you will be fired/sent to the auction block. This why some of us refer to our work status as being wage slaves. If we cannot live AND work with the protection of the Constitution then we are slaves and our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are at will.
7
Agreed, the idea of slavery should be understood as a sliding scale. We're much better off than slavery but there are miles to go before even intentions can be called perfectly civilized. Just have to purge the poison fed to some by the kind of Limbaugh lowly beliefs.
1
I was fired from a job I loved because they 'we need to make some cuts.' I was replaced by someone at a 30% higher salary; who was not able to generate the profits I had done with my division; and who lasted about a year. The real reason for my termination was twofold: I had refused an order to do an illegal act; and, despite running the most profitable and highest quality division in the company, I did not fit the COO's notion of a hard charging aggressive boss. That of course is my side of the story. But absent a recording of the conversation, and knowing that if you want a few bucks to tide you over to the next job which might be months away (COBRA is expensive!) you take the money and sign the NDA. The deck is stacked against you. Obviously this was not sexual harassment but the results are the same.
7
What the writers suggest is too late as the “job economy” gives way to the “gig economy.” Call it a rent a surf economy. We can look forward to workers being employed by the day if not the hour.
The simple fact is that there has been a fascst takeover of all three branches of our government. Democracy has given way to plutocracy and out right fascism and we can look forward to people losing their employment if they support the “wrong” political candidates.
Furthermore we shall see workers competing with prison labor including those in debtors prison to which our A.G. just gave his support. The best job protection is to purge the fascists (who still call themselves Republicans) out of power and replace them with patriots who put their country and its people first, all of them not just the plutocrats.
In much of the nation, where jobs are few and the people are white and native born, Conservatism has replaced Christianity as a new state religion and Trumpism, a klepto-lawless brand of fascism, has replaced democracy; and it will take a super majority to oust them from power. Then we can pass a workers rights package.
6
Better protection = UNION.
4
Like the UPS workers in Queens last week who walked into their supervisor's office and refused to come to work the next day, yet weren't summarily fired on the spot. Instead they'll have paperwork filed against them on Monday to which a union rep replied that the company would likely decline to take disciplinary action once the thugs, I mean union, intervened. To hell with the shipper. To hell with the customer. To hell with providing the very service that puts food on your table. Entitlement reigns.
1
Life is soft for most people in the US. Whether the rights of workers need to be improved or not, the majority of people in the US live a life that is considerably easier than in previous generations. Thus while injustice still exists, the typical citizen is as soft as the life they lead. The soft life leads to a soft body and a soft mind for most people. Americans will choose Trump's fascism, because they are just too soft and lazy to do anything about it. Their minds are weak. How else can you explained the baby-brained president? Workers in the US want to be taken care of rather than develop into full grown adults. The majority remain children in some kind of cult.
Unions are filled with Reagan and Trump voters. These are people who have voted to become slaves.
I'm guessing the authors have never been employers, as this piece lacks all perspective. In my law practice I routinely see terminated employees shake down their employers by threatening to make baseless claims for discrimination (age, sex, sexual orientation, etc. - almost everyone fits in a protected category of one kind or another). The employers usually end up settling at least for nuisance value, just like with patent trolls. Employment at will is already largely a fiction, and eroding it further will only impose additional costs on people that are for the most part just trying to run a successful business.
15
I'm here to tell you that employment at will is alive and well in New York.
2
Sounds like as a small business owner, you have more in common with the employees than the big corporations. You are just as susceptible to all of the chaos around you as they are.
2
If the claim is baseless, then that's for the court's to decide. What alternative is there to protect a worker's rights than a "shake down" as you put it?
3
Not only do employees need protection from unfair work practices, but fear of being fired keeps employees from speaking up to suggest improvements and innovations. Sometimes a fatal flaw in a product does not come to light because of fear. Later, recalls cost way more than an inital fix.
3
You could be fired by any foreman who took a dislike to you in the 1930's before unions organized factories. My grandfather and father both had their lively hoods saved by them during their 35 years working in Detroit factories. Now I know nurses losing their jobs as hospitals get rid of older employees.
40
But balance that with the need for the ability to fire people for cause -- i.e. documental evidence that the employee is not doing satisfactory work, despite being informed of the problem(s).
Just because a worker is older, for example, doesn't mean they're better. It shouldn't be arbitrary, but if employers can't get rid of unacceptable employees after adequate warnings, counseling, etc. -- all you're doing is hastening the move to robots and AI.
3
The way business is conducted in this country, including labor-management relations, more resembles the medieval relationship between lord, vassal and serf than it does the more enlightened equanimity projected by the Constitution. Much of this anachronistic situation flows from a false conflation of democracy or freedom with capitalism. The two are in no way dependent on one another, as is evidenced by the capitalism practiced today in China, for example, where ostensibly American companies willingly conform their practices to government policies that sharply restrict their own as well as the Chinese people's freedom. Until this false dichotomy is convincingly discredited in the eyes of our people and workers, forcing a more democratized workplace, we will continue to see comments like some here by workers arguing that employers need full or almost full license to run their businesses as they see fit, even when doing so smashes into the rights of others operating within our economic system.
7
I spent a career as an elected Union official. I have seen hundreds of violations of contract provisions including the "just cause" provisions for discipline or discharge.
One of the most egregious acts I saw by an employer was the denial of a request by a woman to attend the funeral of her granddaughter simply because it was not clearly defined in the labor agreement.
In 1977, Democrats had a veto proof majority in the Senate and passing labor law reform was a major item on the agenda and was widely expected to pass.
However, it was a Democratic Senator from Arkansas, Dale Bumpers, who cast the deciding vote against the legislation.
In 1992, with the election of the corporate Democrat, Bill Clinton, the party decided they no longer needed labor support and decided taking corporate money would lead to more elected Democrats. That hasn't worked out so well as we saw voters who should be voting for Democrats abandon the party and vote for Trump.
What we really need is a parliamentary government where the various segments have to join forces to form a ruling government. A labor party representing workers could be one of these political parties.
6
allen roberts,
Working class voters believe that Democratic President Bill Clinton (and his Labor Secretary Professor Robert Reisch) should now say, "Once you were employed and were able to feed your family until I signed NAFTA into law and that economically caused your manufacturing job to relocate from the USA to Mexico because you would not agree to work for the same wages that Mexican citizens would work for."
2
What workers really need is more opportunities so that employers who mistreat their employees lose them. We really don't need any more regulations that don't work and reduce opportunity. Mr. Market is more powerful than most regulations.
1
The history of the Guilded Age (late 1800s) shows that a labor shortage is no guarantee that workers will be treated fairly. The steel barons, like Carnegie, were making a fortune, while cutting the steelworkers pay.
Note: The steel barons, like Carnegie, were in conspiracy with the railroad barons, who bought most of the steel, to promote bonds issued by the railroads, knowing full well that the railroads had little chance of making a profit. The bonds were sold to Europeans who lost their investment. It was clearly an act of fraud that was not yet illegal in the United States.
Moreover, the banker barons also issued bonds in the name of the state governments to build railroads. These bonds were also promoted and sold to Europeans. The state governments then went into default on the bonds.
The whole scheme of building railroads was fraught with corruption, but gave rise to the Guilded Age.
1
Those business plans were successfully executed then and are emulated and promoted in business today!
1
"We need a law that protects and empowers workers to speak out to ask for raises, to combat sexual harassment, to complain about unsafe working conditions and, yes, to join unions."
What this country needs to change is the fact that employees lose their rights once they cross the threshold of the workplace. Worse still is that employers feel perfectly free to intrude into our private lives with unwarranted drug testing, telling people to remove stickers from their cars if they don't agree with the employer's politics, asking us for passwords to our Facebook and other social media accounts, and firing us for the smallest reasons.
Unions are not perfect but no employee should have to stand alone when making a complaint to HR about a supervisor, a co-worker, or working conditions. Just as employees are held accountable when things go wrong, so should employers be held accountable when they refuse to provide a safe workplace, ignore complaints about harassment, preferential treatment, and outright sabotage of an employee's work. If employers do not like unions they should remove the reasons there are unions: unfair pay, forced overtime, lousy supervisors, unfair treatment and firings and so on down the line.
And if employers want loyal employees they know how to get them: hire us, train us, pay us, treat us like human beings. Stop treating us like criminals before you even interview us.
8
While the U.S. desperately needs a revitalized labor movement (provided its leadership can keep its hands off pension funds), American workers need a lot more than the authors' "just cause" solution.
First, we need to reform or eliminate the gig economy that treats too many workers as independent contractors who receive no benefits and who have bear the full burden of contributions to Social Security. Since these workers are not employees, they probably would not benefit from "just cause" laws in any case.
Next, we need to close the loophole that allows employers to withhold benefits from part-time employees. This very likely has a disproportionate adverse effect on women and minorities.
Another abuse that must be remedied is the practice of staffing through intermediaries, which allows the true employer to avoid the responsibilities that come with an employer-employee relationship. It would give workers more of a stake in their job if they worked directly for the company to which they were providing services rather than for Acme, Inc. As it is, this practice creates second-class workers who can only rub elbows with the chosen few who actually work for the principal enterprise.
Lastly, executive compensation needs to be reduced. CEOs and others in the C suites are enjoying a rate of increased compensation that far exceeds that of ordinary workers.
16
When John Roberts allowed an employee of a trucking firm to be fired for abandoning a truck in snowstorm that could have taken his life.
That decision tells you all you need to know.
When our President has settled a lawsuit to pay illegal Polish workers 15 years after the fact and made a secret settlement.
We need to throw out the bums in Washington. And one bum in particular.
83
These are great ideas but I just have to say that as an analyst for the State of California, I am in my first union job after a decade of private and nonprofit work and the sexism, racism and harassment at my job are the worst I have ever seen. HR exclusively handles hiring and firing - they won’t touch workplace relations. SEIU literally does not respond to emails or phone calls. I had a manager who wanted to give me a raise. HR said she couldn’t. I called the union, who told me very rudely that I was getting paid the rate agreed upon in my contract and that I was unreasonable to want more (the raise was within the pay grade for my classification). I know a black man who was let go on probation for being “aggressive” and “hostile” (literal example - his boss felt he didn’t apologize sincerely enough). The union declined to represent him for an appeal - they believed the termination on probation was valid. I have no maternity leave beyond CA disability and the Union HAS OPPOSED MATERNITY LEAVE. I am not joking. I used to be a huge fan of unions and was excited to join one. Now I just feel like I give $90 a month to a protection racket.
33
That’s because you probably are. Here’s my family experience.
Both my grandfathers were Teamsters. One didn’t qualify for a pension after 27 years and the other got a whopping $200/month for 37 years of work dues. The union boss lived in a mansion and drove a Cadillac.
My father was in AFM for 30 years. He somehow never qualified for a pension or a death benefit. When he had grievances he was told by the business agent to shut up and go away, in at least one instance because of organized crime controlling the establishment where he worked. The union boss lived in a mansion and drive a Cadillac.
My mom was a SEIU member. When she was laid off and sought placement assistance she was told, “We aren’t here for you people (Anglos). We are here for La Raza.” (She’s still stunned by this response.) I don’t know what car the union boss drove but he lived in a very nice condo.
There’s one upside to my story. My grandmother after working only 17 years qualified for three different pensions and retired at 62 on 102% of her salary. And she had free union healthcare and cheap prescriptions for life. Her employer? The International Brotherhood of Teamsters. And yes, the union boss (a very nice guy who took care of his coworkers) lived in a mansion and drove a Lincoln Continental.
2
Probationary employees usually do not have recourse to unions if decision has been made to terminate. Your other points seem to be hugely exaggerated. HR having nothing to do with personnel relations??? Also, government managers don’t just decide to give someone a raise. Those terms are set during contract negotiations. You really need to visit your Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Good luck.
3
I too have sometimes been disappointed in my union. But then I remember that our union is only as good (or as bad) as we let it be. Stand for election as a union official. Take similarly dissatisfied colleagues to a meeting. It's not a case where there's us and then there's the union. We ARE the union.
3
I worked for a small company for 22 years, including 16 years in NYC before the company moved to North Carolina. I was terminated maliciously by my new boss in NC and part owner of BMIL in his attempt to getaway with stealing over $77,882.84 in earnings during the 6 years I worked in NC.
In New York State I could have pursued a theft of wages suit, but in NC - a right to fire state - I have no recourse at all. Indeed, I need to get permission from the state to sue my employer for easily proved wrongful termination. The Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act (REDA) provides a 6 month window in which to prove discrimination but it took me a year to get independent proof of the theft - so I was out of luck.
I was the most productive and profitable employee - with the numbers to prove it, in spite of a spinal cord injury a year before I was fired. I was instrumental in keeping the business going after 9/11 when we were barely two blocks away from Ground Zero.
After 22 years of being under paid and certainly overworked, the greedy backstabbing owners terminated me. I did not even get a severance and only 15 minutes to vacate the premises - all to get away with theft.
I refuse to work for anyone else's benefit or earn income tax for a state that won't stand up for the victim of theft. I paid an awful lot in taxes that the state is now losing. Fortunately I have good savings from working instead of living for 22 years. Now I can live instead without being a burden to anyone.
7
Yea well the UAW strangled our automobile industry and opened the door to the invasion of Japanese Automobile makers. One of the greatest transfers of wealth this country has ever seen.
1
Had the USA had a socialized system of medicine, the cost of healthcare (est. at round 20%) would not have had to be added to the price of every car, thus we would have been competitively priced. Our "free market" worshiping government allowed the Japanese government to subsidize the cars they exported to the USA-- a move that further benefited them from a cost basis. Finally, it was the USA auto MANAGEMENT teams that did not pivot when people wanted the then-revolutionary designs the Japanese brought-- first compact cars, then minivans. None of these "strangling" issues is on the backs of our union workers.
2
The workers keep electing Republicans so they must like it this way. If you don't like it, join management so you can at least benefit from it.
2
Why do you assume that all workers elect them? Are you not a worker, have you never been one? Were you bad for that? The stereotyping of people we don't like or blame for things they themselves don't do really needs to stop. Leave that to the other side, Norm. It's their bread and butter. Don't judge people on their social class, employment type, gender, or geographical location, but by the content of their characters, eh? It's harder, but it is the only right or decent way. Be better.
4
My my father helped founding local 1199, which was originally a pharmacist union. One night while my father was working the evening shift an armed robber took the stock boy hostage and demanded all the money in the register and narcotics in the safe. My father pleaded with the thief not to hurt the boy. The next day my father was fired by the store owner. “ if it was your store, you wouldn’t have given up the drugs and money so fast.” The following year the store owner was killed in a similar robbery.
Greed can kill.
11
Wait a minute. Don't we have Fair Labor and job protection laws in place to prevent unfair employment practices and discrimination? Since we do have such laws, how and why do employers get away with violating them? Because the deck is stacked against employees? Or because the rich "job creators" make campaign contributions so politicians look the other way? If this is the way capitalism works, we are going backward to the days of Sinclair Lewis' The Jungle. Or maybe we're already there.
9
Or perhaps they are so complex that they really can't be properly implemented.
They can open their own business if they have a problem.
3
On the money.
2
I support workers' rights, but the solution is much more complex than this op-ed piece implies. Even employees fired for demonstrable just cause are likely to sue their former employers. I know of two instances, one involving a village government and the other a county board, when this happened. The first, involving an incompetent and corrupt department manager, the case was settled for a fairly large sum. The taxpayers had to cover the settlement and legal costs. In the second the case an employee charged with creating a hostile work environment lost her case, but the legal costs to the taxpayers were significant. Even getting a nuisance suit dismissed can lead to thousands of dollars in legal fees. This may be irrelevant to big corporations, but it can have a big impact on tax-strapped local governments.
5
I am skeptical that merely passing laws or (worse still) regulating employment practices by administrative action will accomplish much. If 2017 has taught us anything, it is that eight years of progressive legislation and administrative will can be undone in a very short time by a Congress and President who wish to do so. Instead, American society and political philosophy has to become more like European models, in which the major governing parties, be they liberal or conservative, have adopted an underlying consensus that universal healthcare is a right, not a privilege; that the environment is not liberal or conservative; and that management and labor must both have voices at the corporate table. Americans sadly are very far from this consensus, for many reasons, including the outsized presence of money in the political sphere, the American mythology of individualism above social compact, the aversion since the days of Reagan to governmental activism, and a corrosive racism that infects much of our national culture. Whether we can overcome this is not at all clear to me.
4
I never cease to be amazed at the unadulterated hypocrisy of the Republican Party and others who fight unions tooth and nail. Forever espousing the free market economy - but for themselves- they do everything possible to prevent the free market for employees' wishes to be represented by a union. There is no argument that the middle income average working person was never better off the during a period when unions thrived. Now its just a desire to race to the bottom i.e. Chinese level wages. What ever happened to the concept "corporate responsibility"? There are enough decent employers in the US who actually do believe that if one treats the employees decently - surprise - they have greater loyalty and maintain a decent standard of living. Its about time the country had - no not a "conversation" rather - a "debate" about the role of unions as part of the public good. Its also about time the US Constitution guaranteed basic human rights for everyone.
4
Most people are surprised, until they -- or someone they know -- gets threatened or unfairly dismissed, to learn that just cause standards for termination don't already exist in law. Management always will find reasons for depriving employees of fairness on the job, usually claiming that assuring due process creates a competitive disadvantage. Establishing just cause as a universal standard, instead, levels the playing field for all employers and removes coercive unfairness as an ace up the sleeve of incompetent, short-sighted, or just plain venal management.
1
of course the authors of this article are correct but this is America we're talking about and we are being governed by a right-wing administration and congress that thinks nothing of the welfare and well being of ordinary American workers. It is, indeed, disgraceful that you can be fired for almost any reason in this country and in most if not all states.
And that is because we have a Republican Party that defends capitalism and the free market in all its extremes. Even the states that are more inclined to establish greater rights for workers are either prevented from enacting them because of GOP opposition or are cowed by the threat of corporations and businesses to move elsewhere if they should actually have the gall to push for such.
Until we recognize the pernicious, backward-looking influence of today's conservatism and the Republican Party, there will be no progress on this or most other issues.
2
People have the impression that it is very difficult to fire government employees for work failures. In fact, it is not but supervisors/management need to work with HR to work through the process properly and set ambitious time lines so it doesn't get dragged out. Sometimes it is a simply a human condition...an undiagnosed brain tumor caused an employee to act irrationallly at multiple job sites but finally it was diagnosed and we understood how an excellent employee suddenly became a pervert.
protecting the rights of workers stands with protecting the rights of citizens in a democratic society. Granting unlimited power to employers, lack of adequate protection for grieving employees enable despotic enclaves tantamount to slavery in a society that proclaims human rights as its flag. Listen up Dems. Here is a rallying cry for 2018/20. We are all workers, we all deserve protection from irrational, unjust employer discriminations.
2
If you can find these "rights" in the constitution sure we should protect them. We have many laws to protect people, but best they have opportunities to leave bad management.
1
Excellent article/editorial. Thank you.
Look how well this has turned out for France. (Spoiler: horrifically.)
Reminds me of a joke (?) I heard on NPR soon after Obama was elected: "Let's make America the best France ever!"
3
Todays corporate motto, 'Because of us, You are lucky you have a job"
The truth be told, you are lucky to have us for we, the 'worker bee' take your ideas and invention from paper to fruition.
1
This is nuts. “US to Roll back Safety Rules...” in this paper today describes the direction our country is pursuing. Trump is not just threatening job security. Trump is threatening thermo-nuclear war, our fiscal sovereignty, and global chaos. FOCUS
1
Since employers and businesses are catering to Wall Street and bottom lines, workers have been marginalized to an extreme. We are in another gilded age, and it is time to stand for the rights of good people who don't have millions.
Besides the morality of this, in the long run, the current model is not sustainable.
4
So you forget all those small businesses who are not listed on a stock market?
I've always felt sorry for HR managers. Thirty years ago, when unions were still strong, they enforced a moral code that protected all of us. Businesses had some serious explaining to do if they persecuted a non-union worker, like me, an engineer, when a union worker did something similar.
Today, those HR managers are forced to fire and hire based on the whims of business managers. Often, those whims are not in the best interests of the corporation. And, they don't even know it; many corporate boards could care less --- at least, until it hurts their bottom line.
I wonder how Harvey Weinstein's board feels at Miramax?
As a once single parent, and now a retired NYCTA subway conductor, who managed to save almost 300 sick days, which helped me keep my paycheck coming after a shoulder operation, and years later, helped me weather the storm, after being diagnosed with emphysema/COPD, and neuroma on my feet, leading to my eventual retirement, I can attest to the numerous abuses made of the sick time provision, not only in the public sector, but in the private one as well. A LOT of employees treat this benefit as a RIGHT to take a "mini-vacation" at will. Who cares about work? This situation is rampant in the public, unionized sector. To be clear, this is NOT the Union's fault, but of those unionized employees who couldn't care less about how their behavior affects others. This abuse is the main reason why those who REALLY have a need for sick time are looked at with suspicion. The abusers are the ones who have managed to sour the environment for everyone else.
7
There should be a new revolution for workers' rights, rivaling the one this country took to heart in the 1930's, that established rules for safety and other protections. There can be Unions, in 2018, without the old school corruption.
3
Who wants a union today? To extort more pay and benefits than the market will provide? To use it to influence the government to help them?
1
Employers have and will continue to have power over employees. Unfortunately,being honest with an ego - power centric poor manager will get an employee fired quickly. Let's face it, all employees are really "independent contractors". there are times when the union concept has its place. The large difference is in the management training. We, in America to treat employees fairly and justly, must educate our management much better that we do today. Too often in out technical world we advance technicians to the level of management and thus a level of incompetence. There are really two tracks in a corporate/company structure that must be considered equal for higher pay opportunities. Hughes Aircraft Company did this well. Let's think about the root problem and solve that problem. DJM
First, the column is incorrect in many respects. For example, you can't legally be fired for an improper reason (e.g., race, rebuffing sexual advances). Second, consider some of the benefits we've seen from union collective bargaining agreements with these provisions. The WaPo recently ran a detailed series regarding police agencies forced to rehire fired officers after arbitration proceedings. We hear similar things about fired teachers. Third, the notion that many employers recklessly fire good employees is nonsense. The cost of terminating the existing employee and retraining a replacement make that impractical. Companies don't want to churn employees--they want to make money, and churning employees hampers that goal. Finally, consider what often happens in countries like France that have these types of protections. Employers perpetually hire short-term "contractors" so they don't fall under the onerous rules regarding terminating underperforming or unnecessary employees. This goes a long way to explaining France's 9.8% unemployment rate. Perhaps we shouldn't think the government is the best suited to tell us how to manage our affairs, whether in the bedroom or the boardroom. If "just cause" truly produces the best results, then the most qualified employees will flock to such companies and other companies will have to respond accordingly.
2
15 years ago I had emergency surgery on my gall bladder. My wife was there to see my through the operation and recovery the first day. She missed one day in Tax season and the accounting firm fired her for it. We need something to stop these companies from abusing the staff.
1
There already is a law (Family & Medical Leave Act) that protects individuals who care for themselves or family who are seriously ill. It has been in effect since 1993. More laws are not the answer.
2
When you're letting in millions of immigrants, both legal and illegal, who will work more cheaply and in horrible conditions, you're undermining any hope of worker protections.
You can't have both at the same time.
5
Scroll down through these comments and try to imagine that every other one was written by an organized corps of propagandists, whose task is to convince you that unions are destructive and corrupt and bad. And that business owners should be admired for the hard, risky, patriotic jobs THEY do. And that American workers are lazy and selfish people who take advantage of their employers. And that living wages and health care and pensions are just too much for employees to expect, because business can't afford it.
Guess what? Organized, repetitive, brainwashing is exactly what is happening to us, right here today, and has been happening for the last forty years. Sounds paranoid and hard-to-believe, but this gigantic propaganda push is the major part of how our country has been completely cowed and subdued by the 1%.
We now stand like sheep and accept--as fact--lies that fifty years ago our citizens would never have swallowed. We have been duped, and our leaders are OWNED by the 1%. Follow the money.
7
In Norway you can quit your work one month after telling your boss that you want to do that. That gives the employer time to get a new employee in place. It works fine. The employer need a just cause to tell the employee to leave work, 1 month in advance there too. There are some reasons wich are good enough to tell the employee to leave work at once. That works quite good as well.
1
The problem isn’t limited to day care and sick days. College educated, white collar office workers have no protection in events such as management changes, re-structures, downsizing and other events.
The company promotes your boss, then hires a new boss - an external candidate. That candidate wants “her own team,” usually staff from her last job. You get fired, or even better, they ask you to resign with no severance.
The CEO failed to deliver earnings results. You are a vice president have been with the company for ten years. You get laid off. The company immediately replaces you with a former employee that reported to you but earns 2/3 of your salary.
This has happened to me, it has happened to my wife, it has happened to dozens of colleagues.
For decades young people have been told to get a college degree. Once you have that you’re set. You can always find work if you’re educated. The problem is the four year bachelor degree has replaced the high school diploma.
The “smart ones” - those college grads - are the ones with no protections. The janitor can’t be terminated without cause, he’s in a union. The accounts receivable manager, on the other hand, is disposable.
5
I'm sure Trump will get right on this problem.
He's completely sympathetic to American workers, the middle class and unions.
#GonnaHaveToWaitTil2021
Part of the Republican scam on society. Weaken labor laws and unions because union workers vote Democratic while telling workers that it is in their best interest. Freedom, dontcha know. Republicans are the best snake oil salesmen in the world.
2
Regrettably (and comically) for the writers, their editorial about restricting the ability of employers to fire workers appears on the same the day that an NYT article detailing the preposterous $3.5 billion per mile subway tunnel being built "The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth" and it's colossal costs being driven by trade union demands for $100 per hour jobs, hiring excessive and unneeded workers, paying for no-show employees and the like. And you guys want more of the same? You have got to be joking.
If you a
3
Pipe dream. None of this will happen as long as there's a Republican Congress and a Republican Senate happy to pack the Federal Courts with corporate elitists who see workers and even voters as nothing much more than chattel.
Unions organized in the 19th century against ferocious odds, far worse than today. They were routinely beaten, framed, and murdered with no recourse. One famous union organizer was framed for a murder he couldn't have committed and executed to try to shut unions down. His name was Joe Hill and his last words (apocryphally) "Don't mourn for me, Organize!"
The "great" Hoover Dam cost many men their lives and when they tried to organize, they were fired and replaced with scabs...many of whom died as well. In fact, over 100 people died building that dam, 96 officially in industrial accidents. Why? No union to protect them!
Unions allowed the creation of the modern middle class, and the Republicans' war on them, and the vast shrinkage of unions has led to...the diminuation of that middle class, to be accelerated by this month's tax steal.
Initially, anti-trust laws were used mainly against unions because corporate leaders don't like to PAY fair wages or ensure safe working conditions. From the Triangle Fire (1911) to the Hamlet, NC Chicken Fire (1991) bosses routinely LOCKED workers in, killing them, and may still to this day.
No, unions MUST organize regardless of laws and consequences because laws will never be written for them until they have power.
1
Giving people "A right to a job" would cripple our economy. Just look at what similar laws have done to places like France. Maybe that is what liberals really want.
Every Republican who reads it will say “communist”. And every Democrat who reads it will want to agree but feel bad doing so. They were all brainwashed years to worship the god of capitalism.
1
The authors clearly have not read today's NY TImes about the ridiculously high costs the MTA has been paying unions for construction of subway tracks, stations and tunnels.
The claims in this article about the need to "protect" workers sounds noble, but when it comes right down to it, unions will fleece businesses (and taxpayers) to the highest extent they can get away with.
15
You must have been reading the NY Post. Prevailing wage rates ensure skilled tradespeople maintain a middle class income. The Supplemental Rates (SR) cover payments for health and pension benefits, but can also cover vacation pay, insurance and apprenticeship training. The SR rates show why we need to uncouple health insurance tied to employment and create a publicly funded health insurance system that spreads the risk and lowers premiums for almost everyone, especially if public insurance includes the medical portion of worker's comp. https://comptroller.nyc.gov/wp-content/uploads/documents/220-schedule201...
3
Maybe some, but you can't generalize from that experience to all unions in all sectors of employment!
Also, providing some documentation for these high costs and how the money is actually spent would be useful here. Just saying.
2
It wasn't so long ago that unions and government operated as a unified check on unfettered capitalism to protect workers' rights.
But with the rise of the donor class, labor got crushed under right-to-work laws -- promulgated by the Koch family -- and at-will employment. And with that came decades of flat wages and lost employee benefit plans.
Today, government supports a kind of totalitarian capitalism that rewards greed and oppresses labor. Nothing demonstrates that more starkly than the recent tax law, passed over the objections of the working public.
7
My employer was just cause for a long time.
They eventually switched to at-will for one simple reason. Every time they let go an employee, the employee would call the attorney next door and threaten, or actually sue, not because the employer was wrong, but because it would be so expensive to fight, that the employer would have to pay to terminate virtually every bad employee.
Just because an employer is at-will doesn’t mean they don’t or can’t treat their employees well.
10
Except that employers who run at-will shops do so because they can't survive with a fair system.
Sadly a vicious cycle forms where a worker, knowing that he/she is completely disposable , is afraid to exercise even the most basic constitutional rights because they might get fired under some ridiculous pretense. So you have workers who vote against unions even as they wish they were represented by one, workers afraid to point out practices that might get someone killed, or workers who refuse to report dangers. In other words, they opt to reduce their rights even further
1
The thing about Capitalism is that it strongly favors the perpetuation of business to the detriment of solving individual problems. The benefit is in the strength of an economy that provides employment for the greatest number of citizens. The downside is that capitalism is basically a self-organizing , self-policing system which requires decisions to be made at the "life of the business" level.
We understand the urge to meet every human need by loading it on top of business entities whose goal is to survive. In any event, trying to treat individual problems ( like health, well-being, financial difficulty) at the business level is at best uneven and at worst it is discriminatory based on the size and health of each business or to the unemployed.
2
Actually, capitalists do FAR more for their employees than Those Who Mean So Well. There are many small business operators - the prime driver of employment gains - who have taken little or nothing home during a thin spell just to keep good employees paid so they don't leave, but the party never told you this in your ''social justice warrior'' classes at the U.
Don't start by assuming the worst of these business people. No one except a slaveholder ever went into business intending to hurt people, and the laws being promoted here could easily dis-employ rooms full of workers.
2
“the urge to meet every human need” ? I don’t think that’s what the article’s author is talking about.
I think you need to qualify your comment as addressing American Capitalism.
The world is rife with more equitable, equally successful, and, yes, happier and healthier capitalist systems that do not shy away from imposing the robust regulatory schemes deemed a necessity by every significant theorist of capitalism.
America rolled over and presented itself long ago to the ravening beast that is unregulated capitalism.
In the process, it gave the lie to chestnuts like 'the free market', 'survival of the fittest', 'encouraging free enterprise'. It also made the insidious substitution of 'capitalism' for 'democracy'.
Capitalism is nothing but a tool, one approach among many to conducting business. In a country like ours, where money stands in for morality, for the quality of a person's being, for success, and for inherent worth, it's little wonder there are people who believe any attempt to regulate business is an attack on America.
Our courts have much bigger problems than the sham philosophy of "originalism", long since shown to be an excuse for "I want what I want, and I want it now" dominance by the illegitimate kings of politics. It is invoked as a convenience and a cudgel, ignored more often than not if it gets in their way.
The same is true of the lie perpetrated by Republicans that their concern is for 'the will of the American people', tossed under any passing bus whenever the people want something at odds with their political masters.
Employees always suffer.
1
I taught in private and parochial schools for the first ten years of my career. One year I had 142 students, seven classes, and cafeteria duty. I was lucky if I remembered the kids' names. Then I switched to a public high school with a great union. I was limited by contract to 100 students and four classes. So not only did I have a good salary and benefits and retirement, I was also a better teacher. I had time to meet my students individually, to assign and grade lots of writing, and to prepare interesting classes. I read somewhere that states with strong teachers' unions had the highest achievement scores, and I believe it. We used to say, "Our teaching conditions are the students' learning conditions." Everyone benefited from the strong union.
32
The attacks on workers' rights to organize and to free speech is of a piece with the American right's shift towards an oligarchical form of fascism. The concept of unions, remember, does not come out of a vacuum, and neither does the effort to break them. The biggest threat to capitalism is worker solidarity, across industries and fields: Marxism 101. The best strategy to consolidate power among a small group of elite collaborators is to make workers think that solidarity is for suckers and that they're better off with "money in your pocket"--whether it be taxes or dues--while quickly dismantling every single pathway to advancement the average Joe used to apply to his situation to make his life better.
We are in so much trouble unless people start organizing at work again.
70
Great point! I would only add that this mentality of "money in your pocket" has also infected the general feeling about taxes. Of course no one wants to pay taxes, but they are a necessity if you want to have a well running and organized society. Corruption and graft are awful and need to be dealt with. But we didn't get to be the USA, with the infrastructure, education, and innovation that lead the becoming the de facto leader developed world for pretty the entire 20th century, without taxes. Now we lag behind in many areas and the gap is growing.
And similarly it's the people who get the largest slice of the benefit from the system they exploit the most, who are always trying to convince everyone else to support positions that only benefit those who already have the advantage in the long run. An extra few bucks in my pay now won't help me if I have no decent job or health insurance 5 or 10 years from now when I really need both. A few hundred less in taxes a year does me no favors when healthcare is eating up 6K a year in premiums with a high deductible, the roads are shot, the transportation system is increasingly unusable, and the education system is underfunded. Priorities people.
5
Or, good companies could just treat its people right, balancing productivity with rewards, so that employees want to EARN a bigger paycheck, and don't want or need a union.
The IBM I worked for was such a company from 1981 to 1994. About that time, they completely changed their behavior and reward system, and things went steadily downhill from there. About a decade after that I started hearing quite a few calls for unions.
What's so unfortunate is how few companies seem to have figured that out in the current decade.
2
Unions did themselves in by emulating the bloated, wasteful corporations they were trying to organize. Have you seen what a union president is paid? How about his/her pension versus that average union worker? Your typical worker in the private sector saw this and stopped supporting unions around the same time corporations went after the them. If unions had kept themselves relevant, changed their goals AND their tactics with the changing times, we'd be like Germany. But they didn't. And we aren't.
3
The law of supply and demand has not yet been repealed. Whenever you make it more difficult and expensive to employ a worker, the fewer workers will be employed.
The best protection for workers is a vibrant and growing economy that increases the demand for labor. With more job opportunities workers can leave abusive employers and demand higher pay. All the job protections in the world won't help an unemployed worker.
8
Laissez faire labor economics would work well if there were a scarcity of labor, but policies are designed to ensure a surplus -- even of skilled labor -- so the power imbalance strongly favors capital.
1
The idealized models of microeconomics in no way represent the laws of physics or real-world economics. (Much solid work has been recently generated describing the extent to which they are undermined by generated by artificial market 'capture' or lobbying). The validity of assertions such as those above are challenged by the significant amount of cash corporations are sitting on which have not translated into into further hiring. Additionally, many of the jobs being 'created' are very low-wage or shift much of the risk onto the employee for benefits with questionable stability-- eg Uber. Furthermore significant data suggests better quality of life and standard of living for those employees in unions in many industries.
They used thugs and the local cops and even troops to hold down workers a hundred years ago. Then the owners found they could convince workers to vote against themselves over and over. Workers voted against Unions and worker's rights in state after state. The bosses don't need to use force as they have trained a majority of workers that any change to absolute rule by employers is evil and workers will fight other workers to stay under their owner's thumbs.
57
I work for a company of 80k employees that is the only one among all its competitors that is not unionized. Management, of course, wants to keep it that way. Fortunately, their favored method of union busting is to match or beat the pay and benefits of our unionized competitors. We've beaten our profit records every year for the past 6-7 years, so it's not like a business can't prosper if it pays its employees a decent wage. The problem is that many industries have essentially eliminated unions among all competitors, and any companies that try to hold out and pay their employees a decent wage get trampled in the race to the bottom.
Frequently, it's one or two companies in an industry that adopt a low-cost model, gain a competitive advantage, and then grow big enough that they can dictate terms to suppliers, contractors, and even state and local governments. In the past it's been companies like Wal Mart and Soutwest Airlines, and now it's Amazon, Uber, Google, Facebook, etc. All because Americans are addicted to cheap stuff, and politicians are incapable of doing comprehensive cost/benefit analyses. They only look at the number of jobs it might bring, or the prestige of having a corporate HQ, or getting cheap flights. They don't look at the quality of the jobs, or what they won't be able to fund because the business gets a sweetheart deal on taxes, or how the other businesses are going to have to downgrade from regular employees to contractors to stay competitive.
9
This is one of the stumbling blocks in the latest NAFTA negotiations. Canada is insisting that American workers be treated as they are in Canada,i.e subject to protections. Currently worker protections in the USA are akin to third world countries and that often includes safety protection. If I was an american I would be embarrassed.
15
There was a time in the United States--a short time after World War II, for a few decades--when the power of oligarchic employers was (almost) balanced by the power of unions representing rank and file workers.
That was, not coincidentally, the time of greatest prosperity for the average American (though high marginal tax rates didn't hurt, either).
Apparently, the very rich powers-that-be decided such a situation was untenable--they weren't rich and powerful enough--and the clock needed to be reset to the Gilded Age, when no one had any difficulty recognizing the Calvinist Elect. So we got Reaganism, Gingrichism, and a whole lot of other -isms dedicated to stripping away any power that workers may have had. Besides, the rabble having power/workplace protection just de-incentivized them from working longer and harder. (And, the rabble was getting increasingly non-white and female, which the Brahmins found disconcerting.)
With the help of the best in modern propaganda technique, the oligarchs even got the rabble to participate voluntarily in its own disempowering.
It's about to be 2018. With the exception of the very rich, how has this all been working out for us?
The contract between worker and employer is just that, a contract. And both parties need to live up to it, and have legal mechanisms for redress when it's violated. What we've had for the last forty-plus years is decidedly one-sided. And it needs to be re-balanced.
11
Wow, I just had a flashback to college. Workers of the world unite!
Get back to me when there are protections in place for employees to prevent their being fired while undergoing cancer treatments. The country has a very long way to go to protect workers, but the sacrosanct "free market' doesn't allow for that.
11
So what protections or extra pay do you advocate for the people that have to do the work that the "cancer patient" is unable to do?
Or do you not care about the people that have to pick up the slack?
1
A good employer shows compassion for good employees in need but what about the deadbeat?
3
What if the deadbeat is the boss?
What if your boss was like Trump? What if your Trumpian boss decided to blame you for his bad business decision that cratered the company? What if he refused to give you a good reference?
Would this also include a section whereby employees need just cause for leaving a job?
1
Sure. “Higher pay”. “Better working conditions”. “Better Insurance”. “Shorter commute”. Problem solved.
James - So, for the employer, "Bad Attitude" "Does not fit into the culture" "I can hire someone for less" are just cause as well?
I think this is the right idea but I also think a lot of people would not fall under its protections. For example, adjunct professors who are often hired on the per class or per semester basis--a lot of them don't have access to benefits like sick days, vacation time, retirement, etc. Because they're contract workers, they can be laid off anytime. I'm wondering if other countries have a way to better deal with contractual workers as well.
4
Contractual workers in Norway has the same rights to sick leave as others, that is if they have a note from a doctor. Employees in Norway has a system of 3 days leave without doctor's notice, maximum 4 times a year, but you have to be employed at least 8 weeks before using that option. The system actually works, but of course, if many people start misusing the 3 days option, it will be withdrawn.
Do universities force people to accept jobs as adjunct professors?
Don't accept the job if you believe the wages, benefits, etc. do not meet your needs.
And if you accept the job, stop whining about your voluntary decision.
2
The UK has had a law against "unfair dismissal" - a so-called statutory tort - since the 1960s, which now kicks in after 24 months of continuous employment (whether it should apply immediately, after 12 months or after 24 is a political football). Once an employee (not a mere 'worker') has a qualifying period of employment, they can only be fairly dismissed (i) for a potentially fair reason - (mis)conduct, (lack of) capability, redundancy, change in law rendering continued employment unlawful, and the catch-all "some other substantial reason of a kind entitling an employer to dismiss an employee" (ii) if dismissal for that fair reason was fair in all the circumstances, which turns on the range of reasonable responses test (a dismissal will be unfair if, and only if, the employer cannot show that dismissal was outside the range of reasonable responses open to a reasonable employer in the circumstances). While the qualifying period is a matter of controversy, even most on the right on the British political spectrum are not pushing for this law's repeal. Its practical effect is to prevent arbitrary/capricious dismissals, and ensure that when an employee is dismissed, it is for a potentially fair reason and not because, eg, an employee's face "no longer fits". An employee's right to bring a claim of unfair dismissal stands alongside their right to bring complaints alleging unlawful discrimination (sex, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, etc.).
5
I will bet neither of you has ever started a business or created a job. As an entrepreneur I personally guarantee the debt of my company and bear 100% responsibility for its performance, good or bad. If it fails my family and I will face a fate far worse than just losing my job. What we make, how we price, where we invest and whom we hire are all decisions I make because I bear the consequences. The idea that an employee should have a legislated right to keep his job when it is not in the best interest of the business is frightening to me and would have the effect of reducing my willingness to bring on new employees. As an alternative I would push work to automation and low-paid day labor in order to avoid the risk that I get stuck with a bad employee I cannot terminate. Job performance is subtle and cannot be translated to an objective standard that can be adjudicated by a governmental agency.
14
Ridiculous! It is very easy ( compared to a personal bankruptcy) to bankrupt your LLC company and walk away from business debts.
This ability is a key part of the American small-business structure. While it can be a useful tool for company owners whose industry changes so quickly that they cannot adapt their long-standing, small businesses, predators like Trump use it as a weapon to ruin small vendors and triumph over more ethical competitors.
“You can easily walk away from your LLC debt.” If only. Was this written by someone who has probably never had to sign a full recourse guarantee for a bank loan, which is a virtual certainty for a startup business?
1
Don't you get it? Progressives are experts on all subjects and you are just a reactionary for not feeling that their ideas are awesome. Don't think, just feel.
The underlying problem, or root cause, is that our system is tilted far too much towards capital, at the expense of everyone else. All the countervaling forces have been systematically reduced or eliminated over the past few decades, until the management class has all the power and most of the money.
Until that power balance is corrected, trying to get a decent deal for workers will be a game of whack-a-mole, or (to use the Greek mythology metaphor) like chopping heads off the Hydra. As soon as we write a law to correct it in one place, abuses will crop up in another. That's why we have so many laws to begin with; we can never seem to fix the root cause so we write laws to deal with the symptoms.
1
I'm sympathetic to unions after reading this op ed, but in another NYT article today I read about unions negotiating outrageous salaries in MTA subway contracts that include $400/hr overtime and requirements for additional workers who the NYT says add no value at the work sites. It's these types of stories that feed into justifying roll back of union power.
11
The writers of this editorial would have you believe that everyone is entitled to a job. Wouldn't that be nice. Someone will pay me and I can do whatever I want and still get paid. I would not have to worry about someone smarter or better, or more talented than me because I am entitle to that job until I do not want it anymore. I wonder if we would have gone to the moon with that type of workplace or made the progress we have in fighting many forms of cancer. I think not.
8
Republicans have given the power of the people to big business. In this last year of trump, we have seen legislation written to take rights away from the American workforce . . . Laws written simply to give business any and all advantages when it comes to making a profit. And now, they are flush with the trillion or so dollars that republicans borrowed from our children and grandchildren. That was a direct hit against the population of this nation.
When I think of republicans, I wonder what else they can strip from us . . .we have seen our unions decimated, no pensions nor any retirement benefits, and even disclosure clauses to insure we keep our mouths shut. And the wages, no wonder inequality is at a tipping point, people cannot afford to live on the wages business pays.
And now we wait for the time that Congressional republicans find that last vote they need to make it as hard as possible to afford healthcare. And we’ve been warned what’s next, SS and Medicare, with an extra dose of cruelty by dropping the regulations on nursing homes.
Republicans are United against Citizens . . .and that’s the truth.
4
I am confused. How did "republicans" strip from you things you don't have? Are you entitled to the profits of a company you do not own?
This is a poorly thought out article. The essence of the benefits the authors think would flow from such protection are entirely false. The article states:
"A just-cause rule would give workers greater freedom to say no to requests that have nothing to do with their jobs, like “Can you pick up my dry cleaning?” or “Come up to my hotel room.” It would provide workers more power to resist unfair schedule changes, like an attempt to cancel a preapproved vacation. It would allow workers to resist mandatory overtime presented as voluntary."
This would be text book insubordination, which is regularly found to be just cause for dismissal in arbitration. So really, none of these would be a benefit of a just cause law. There are already a whole swath of legal protections for workers otherwise categorized as "at-will." The main benefit of a cause law would be more money for attorneys and more employers stuck with poor performing employees for longer.
3
Another good example of liberal economic policy that sounds good but will only make things worse - kind of what you would expect from people who know nothing about running a business. Is this what businesses need to be successful - more government bureaucrats making policy and issuing fines when the business does what it needs to do to be successful. Especially funny given the article elsewhere in the NYT today (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/subway-station-booth-agents....®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0) about the wastefulness of having thousands of thousands of subway station agents still deployed (due to local laws and union rules) when they could be put to better use. Sure, people shouldn't be fired for taking a day to take care of a sick child but once liberals and bureaucrats get involved every change a company wants to make in a job will be subject to external review, court cases, fines, etc.
5
The more we see the devaluing of human labor the worse the situation will become. However, let’s not romanticize unionization and the corrupt Big Bosses such as Jimmy Hoffa, who took advantage of their union members, becoming worse than the employers in many ways.
Maybe now that we’ve experienced both extremes, somehow we can strive to work for something fair to both?
Nah! Certainly not now.
3
Argentinian workers do we have a lot of rights from 1946 including just-cause law for firing. Fight for them
2
Great ideas but good luck getting any of this done in the current climate.
In Germany 1/3 of all members of the board of any corporation are company workers. For example, at VW 1/3 of board members come from the assembly line. And it works. Even pencil makers in Germany make a living wage and get to take the summers off and have excellent healthcare. I think Germany has the best workers protection laws of any industrialized democracy today. It is not utopia. It can be done.
5
Clearly the world needs more companies run like VW. Maybe people there justified their massive environmental fraud with some delusion that they were doing it for their coworkers.
1
You'll have to wait a year or more. This is the absolute wrong admin to ask for better job protection. The guy in the WH is only concerned about protecting his own job, not yours.
1
If corporations didn't see their workers as disposable serfs and mere lines in the liabilities column, things would be much better in this country, and probably we would not have such a creature as Trump squatting in the White House.
1
Conversely a lot of employees have zero loyalty to or interest in their employers. The idea of staying with a firm for years is now viewed as passe if only one finds a better offer, gets bored, "wants to try something new", etc. Employers often do treat employees poorly, which is neither fair nor a good business practice in the long run, but truth be told a lot of employees couldn't care less about their employer either so it's hard to demand a lot of care about them in return.
1
I probably agree with this on balance, but I'm disappointed there's no mention of the trade-off. If workers are harder to fire, employers will be less willing to hire in the first place. It's why even in good times, natural unemployment in Europe -- especially among young people who haven't yet gotten into a job with cushy protections -- is so much higher than it is in the United States.
4
Macron is trying to change things in France to make the economy more flexible and competetive but is facing fierce resistance. A midpoint between the French and US economies would probably work well for both.
1
American corporations will reap the benefits of the new tax bill. American workers will not. No matter what the political spiel is, the falling dollar, higher interest, and more expensive foreign goods are going to hurt the person on the bottom. I agree that the hiring of "temporary workers" will also undermine what gains were made in the past. Go ahead America....vote against your interests.
Protections for American workers basically ended when Ronald Reagan replaced unionized air traffic controllers who were striking. Corporate America took it, accurately, as open season on any worker or union they wanted to eliminate, with or without cause. Worst of all were the massive layoffs of people in their 50s, recommended by accountants who wanted to reduce pension liability. Almost no one recovered financially. It's the source of widespread anger and distrust in U.S. politics. Even the Clintons were more interested goosing the stock market with NAFTA than in preserving decent American jobs.
2
I am currently employed and I have seen employee rights just about disappear in the last twenty years. I was told by HR, that HR exists only to protect the company. Anything that you may tell HR in "confidence" winds its way to your manager and you then, suffer the consequences. I am a professional, college educated person and I am treated like an hourly wage worker. Not to mention, health benefits keep rising, no pension, no matching 401K, limited vacation. While we watch the same five people, who run the organization, go on great vacations, get new luxury vehicles and give themselves bonuses and pat themselves on the back, for a job well done. We are all journeymen, looking for our next paycheck.
5
And yet, you continue to work for this company.
Why is that? If you feel you're so poorly treated why not seek a better job?
2
Mr. Marvit, my suggestion is that you take a year to walk in the shoes of a restaurant owner or maybe a landscaping company owner. During that year you should be sure to attend some unemployment hearings where you have to take a day away from your business to explain why an employee was terminated for cause to a hostile adjudicator. On Fridays take note of how every one of your employees gets paid before you do. Feel our excitement as at the end of the month we see whether there is any left for the bank. Learn firsthand how rare great employees are and what an impact they make on your business. Learn how damaging bad employees are. Then after your year Mr. Marvitt tells us all again what you think.
7
Having experienced the worst labor legislation ever designed, which is the Brazilian one, I suggest you avoid this just cause clause. Otherwise US will be in situation like Brazil where government has 2,500 labor tribunal judges working to solve more than 180,000 labor disputes on courts. Best way for educating the mentioned "bad behavior" bosses is allow more transparency on management team under overseen of good Board of directors.
3
Too many issues on the table with this article.
Workers rights in the U.S., the decline of unions in key industries,
the flight of industries like clothing manufacturers to
Mexico, India, etc., age discrimination by corporation, the list
goes on. Corporate America is in control of the workers, 2017.
Job protections for the common worker will continue to erode so long as the managers and owners are allowed to take a disparate slice of the profits through lower taxation and promotion to them through said tax code.
If the laws continue to make it harder and harder to organize workers ( unions ) then obviously union participation is going to go down. If that happens, then pay, benefits and securities are going to go down as well.
If the laws then reward companies\owners to hire cheaper workers and then pay less tax overall, then indeed the system is rigged.
Businesses then find out that they no longer have customers and fold to the conglomerates that skirt the system and use said tax code to their advantage. With the extra profits, they then buy off politicians to make the system even more in their favor and voila, here we are.
Slaves...
1
We’re slowly but surely moving towards a high tech feudalism era. Eventually, everyone and everything will be owned by one of two corporations.
My optimism about the future of America continues to dwindle one headline at a time.
2
There is no "legal right to your job" because there is no "your" job. The job belongs to the employer who pays you. Your only right is to leave the job. If more American workers left jobs that were unsafe, unhealthy, abusive, discriminatory, anti-family, exploitative and unethical, there would be little need for any laws or government regulations "protecting" them. More workers could leave bad jobs and bad employers if they saved more of their paychecks and avoided going into debt, but that would mean not living "the American Dream" based on high consumption and debt. So we basically choose to give employers their power to fire for any or no cause and dictate what "rights" we have while we work for them.
4
The root cause of the lack of workplace protections for American workers lies in a political system based on legalize bribery — campaign contributions.
Under this system the wealthy can purchase politicians (often white-collar criminals who specialize in the art of the lie) who pass laws and stack the Courts to protect and grow the wealth of their patrons and themselves. Criminal law based on proving intent offers a good example of how purchased politicians protect themselves and their patrons from being held accountable for their actions.
Do not expect Senators, Graham, Collins, Burr, or all other so called patriots to fulfill their oath of office to protect our Nation. Their votes on the tax bill clearly demonstrates a lack of commitment to that oath. Actions, not flag lapel pins, identify the true patriots in Congress.
If the American people fail to replace the amoral/immoral politicians who control Congress with people who truly believe in American values the great experiment in democracy, the United States, will have reached a point where course correction may not be possible.
1
I thought under the Democrats that employee rights had been greatly expanded, i.e., the Lily Ledbetter law enabled her to win a case against her employer after she was unjustly treated. This new idea will never get through to the Republicans who have always denied worker's rights. See the course of labor relations in the 1930's and 40's when "right to work laws" were pushed. More information please.
Wow, I am not sure to understand every aspect. But as a Swiss lawyer have to say that the state of US-labour law seems to be years behind the modern state of basic labour law - how is this possible? I would expect such laws in Russia or in Thailand, but in the USA?
Why does the majority in the USA accept this? Who is the US-Parliament representing? Would the law still be the same if all Americans could vote on these kind of topics?
Good luck!
5
I guess the authors have never heard of unintended consequences. In the case of “just cause” laws, that would be dramatically lower employment as evidenced by the results such laws have in Europe.
3
All of the evils of employment herein bewailed are the result of the driving out of the US our manufacturing base by "progressivism", "globalism", or any other "ism" you care to state to disguise its Socialism, and the resulting dis-employment and thus destruction of much of what was once our middle class.
With what were once wage-earners and family bread winners now line up to take any job offered at whatever pitiful remuneration with whatever unfair work rules; those are better than the nothing they now have. Their only other choice is to join the opiod epidemic finishing our middle class destruction.
When our T-shirts, steel, computers, and the other goods we need are once again made in the USA by Americans, employers will once again have to compete for workers. That and not yet another layer of government, whose actions caused this problem in the first place, will give labor the standing it needs to bargain successfully with management on wages, work rules, and everything else that is now so grossly one-sided.
1
As a member of the Teamsters Union for over 40 years I realize not all Labor Unions are perfect but I enjoyed working for living wages and receiving overtime pay after 8 hours and all the on job worker protections and receiving employer paid health care for my family and being able to retire on excellent defined benefit pension plan. Many employees working today are experiencing full time anxiety symptoms from low wages, longer work hours, no benefits, less off days, loss of job security, unpleasant work conditions, and are unaware of the benefits of Union representation. The Democrat passed National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (Wagner Act), a long overdue victory for the working class. Meanwhile the attack on Labor started with the Republican passed Taft–Hartley Act, (H.R. 3020) which significantly weakened the Wagner Act and has continued thru the years .
A lifetime of watching manufacturing plants close that I used to deliver to as a truck driver and watching living wage jobs disappear while neither party did anything to stop it, only to encourage it. I know the Republicans only work for the 1% but the Democrats were sent a message this election by many who did not vote out of disgust for what the party has become or switched sides or voted third-party.
Democrats need to start working for their traditional constituents again and don’t standby and not do anything while millions of living wage jobs leave the country.
6
Strongly agree about stronger job protections. Many states follow an "at will" guideline, that means employers can terminate you at any time for any reason. "Just cause" would also go a long way towards reducing sexual harassment. I think that the basic standard should be that any termination must be impactfully "job related," as in having some negative effect on a person's job performance and also provide for judicial review and civil penalties for egregious violations.
2
It is ironical that this article follows two articles about NYC subway system which clearly depict how the unions are pretty much responsible for the deplorable state of the subway system.
Because of the unions a mile of NYC subway track costs several time as much as in other comparable cities in Europe (London/Paris). Billions were poured into the MTA and waisted for jobs unacceptable for. $400/hr for working during the weekend??? Yes, i do do agree to some level of employee protection but this is ridiculous.
The unions are fighting for their members’ benefits (work less hours, get paid more) not to improve the outcome of their work. That’s the reason why US auto industry went bankrupt in 2008 (before being saved by government), that’s the reason why the education system is failing in New York State (and US).
But unions are powerful voting machines and our politicians won’t do anything about fixing the subway or the education systems because that would anger the unions and would cost them votes. And i am saddened to say but it’s mostly the Democrats who support the unions. This is one of the few views that i don’t share with them.
4
I always found "right to work" an interesting phrase given its use. I wonder who coined that? It's as if the ruling class made it sound like "I'm giving you a job so lucky you, you have the right to work." Aren't I generous?
3
Congratulation to the American worker and American investor for a great financial year. We all made money, those who pulled their money and investments out of the market late last year due to the advice or hatred of Donald Trump are 25% poorer due to political hatred and political pundit financial advice. Never take financial advice from political pundits or politicians, they don't have your best interest in mind. Congratulations to all of those who didn't bite on that bad advice.
2
Exactly wrong.
American workers need less governmental regulation of their employers.
Didn't you read the NYTimes article on 5,000 regulations to grow apples?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/business/picking-apples-on-a-farm-wit...
Don't tread on me.
3
But you're willing to let corporations tread on everyone else.
1
You don't find it odd that there are plenty of countries without regulations -- libertarian paradises, to hear it from Americans who enjoy the protections of U.S. society -- but no American capitalist would ever want to live there? And none do?
Note, for example, that Peter Thiel didn't locate his survival compound in Nigeria or Guatemala. He chose a well-ordered and regulated society, with police protection, public schools, free universities, universal health care and clean water and air.
No regulation for you, but plenty for me?
Unfortunately we have become a selfish country. Money has become paramount to human capital and greed has replaced a spirit of giving that will eventually not be profitable because no man can take their financial portfolios with them to the grave. As the leadership of this country, so are some of its people. If we continue on this path, we will eventually self destruct and no level of automation or technology will replace the intellect and compassion of some humans. As we continue to negate Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as it pertains to our workers, we are witnessing the slow destruction of America.
1
The steady eroding of workers protections, ability and legal protections to organize and anti union legislation, they will end up like the proverbial frog in a pot of water that gets progressively hotter. By the time workers and the frog realize they are in grave danger, it will be too late.
1
The case of Janus vs. AFSCME will be heard on Feb. 26. In all likelihood, with Gorsuch now on the Supreme Court, the Court will overturn the 1977 decision (a unanimous one) in Abood and declare the agency (union) shop unconstitutional, which will essentially cut off the revenue stream of unions by eliminating the requirement that all employees pay dues. Previously, the vote was tied, 4-4, after the death of Scalia. This will make the entire country a "right-to-work zone." The argument of Janus is that paying dues to a union violates his first amendment rights, for he may disagree with the union's political position but still has to pay dues. In 1977, the Court addressed that issue and said that although the worker did not have to join the union, since he or she was benefitting front he collective bargaining process (which Janus claims is political in and of itself), he or she could not become a "free rider." For public employees, at whom this case is directed, political donations are made through COPE funds, which are separate and apart from dues. This is a case brought so that a final dagger can be be placed into the hearts of the public employee unions. and Gorsuch is the prefect agent for this overturn of precedent. This is the most activist Court in history (Bush vs. Gore, Citizens United) and it will have no problem eliminating the last vestige of worker rights.This all began in 1981 with Reagan firing the air traffic controllers. The onslaught has continued unabated.
1
How very telling that a right the rest of the industrialized world takes for granted is regarded, even by these authors, as a pipe dream for the U.S.. And rather than urge worker action, these authors are apparently waiting for politicians. Remember all the great stuff Obama promised unions? And didn't do?
With such timid advocacy, it it any wonder the fate of American workers was a forgone conclusion?
The problem of fairness in the workplace is real and it is exacerbated by globalism, Davosity, and the existence of a vast, international workforce willing to work for less money and fewer protections. And to counter this you offer the same bromide, "join a union". So in answer to all these problems, you want a company to hire a unionized workforce empowered to mill about the workplace looking for a "just cause" the investigation of which will gum up the works and keep people like your honorable selves in full employment. Come up with something new, incentives for workers AND management to work together. Embed it in the tax code and compensation systems, anything but the same old union tactics that have made Liberal European countries, ex Germany, economic basket cases, and have put a TV in every Vietnamese home.
What about not-so-sick public employees who take sick days to protest for the sake of public unions? These people shortchange the taxpayers. A paid substitute is usually required. Often they are protesting for additional public funding.
3
one of many cases of so called American exceptionalism that are negative. if only americans had a clue about the rest of the planet, they'd be a little more realistic/informed just how far behind the country is in things other western democracies take for granted.
1
This would certainly be an employment bonanza – for lawyers.
At present, one terminates a member of an officially designated, Politically Correct Victim Group at one’s peril. While actual discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sex, etc., is spectacularly rare, suits claiming such are common. And the law effectively places the burden on employers to show that they’re not bigots. Bring such a claim in a discrimination-plaintiff-friendly jurisdiction, and a "social-justice" jury can clobber a completely innocent employer. (That's why the plaintiff's bar staunchly opposes arbitration clauses; juries are much easier to sway than judges.) It’s a rigged lottery and encourages bogus claims.
The last thing we need is to turn every employment termination case into civil rights litigation.
This represents yet another in anti-freedom proposals offered by leftists, attempting to solve a problem which does not exist, the only beneficiaries of which will be trial lawyers.
2
Employment discrimination cases are actually rather rare and are extremely difficult to win. There are also low ceilings on compensatory and punitive damages. Many attorneys won't take those cases.
1
This is a true story about a good Christian boss. I once asked him how he interpreted the Jesus parable about the workers in the vineyard who were all paid the same regardless of how long they worked. His response (seriously): "That's the Bible telling me that I can pay whatever I want to whoever I want."
So, if we want economic justice, don't expect to find it in the church pews.
1
Right on. We are in an era of corporate hegemony.
The #metoo has brought workplace rights to the forefront, both to protect women who make allegations from retaliation AND due process for men who are accused.
The problem? The same US senate that we need to thoughtfully consider any such legislation just threw away the rule of law (that workplace rights depend on) by stampeding one of their own out of his seat with a complete disregard for due process.
Where do employees turn? Democrats are ignorant and Republicans don't care.
More job protection leads to less jobs. Europe shows. You want the economy and the high taxes over there ? Just extend your thoughts.
1
The fight to create unions spilled much blood. Unions brought you work safety called OSHA. Unions brought you the forty hour work week and overtime, holiday and family time rules. Unions brought you the fair process of the Grievance procedure. Unions brought you a collective voice to be heard as a group, to be represented not as an individual but as a group to collectively bargain for all. What are your chances as one voice demanding fair treatment or one voice begging for that deserved raise? What are your chances up against an inept supervisor who happens to have gotten the position through nepotism or any other not so worthy of the position reasons? What did we do to the unions? We allowed the big employers, the legislators who are bought and owned by the big employers, to vilify what unions stand for. We have allowed the public opinion to have been so colored that they declared all unions to be bad for you. Almost as if they were a disease you must refrain any interest in. We allowed the states to enact the right to work laws to make unionization illegal. We allowed the wrongful teachings of hate towards unions. WE are at fault for everything that goes wrong in our lives because WE have decided it to be easier to just listen to those who do not have our best interests at heart, we find it easier to just do as told even when it bites us in the face. Much blood shed was borne by your fathers, mothers, grandparents for workers rights and WE just threw it all away!
This is no revelation to those of us in the "at will" workplace. Now, please write an article about the maneuvers used to get workers to reject collective action - aka unions - as some kind of socialist phenomenon. The very workers who need a union are the ones most likely to reject one. Sad.
1
protect workers not jobs.
Sure. Anything to empower the unions. Then unions can take in "dues."
5
We live in a time in America where greed is king and people who actually work are demonized as lowly, worthless, and lazy.
Our economic structure needs to support a vibrant, stable society and culture, which is the opposite of our current system.
At the present time our leaders are mostly corrupt and self serving. A proper system would prosecute and punish such actions.
Such corruption is always a danger, one that we would like to think that America would be able to rise above.
Unfortunately, our prospects aren’t looking great right now.
1
It will only get worse. Charles Dickens did not write the story we are about to witness as American workers.
The decline of the protection and wages of the American work force is directly related to the decline of the Unions.
It is the Unions who have earned job security and protection for their members and indirectly the Non-Union middle management has also benefited due to their efforts.
Management and Labor should be responsible equal partners rather than being confrontational for a successful business enterprise which is sadly missing in our free enterprise system.
Our Government and the legislative body has permitted outsourcing of jobs, H1-B visa abuses, skirting work place safety regulations, permitting the "right to work states" only to weaken the bargaining power of the workers all in the interest of enriching the .1% of the owning class.
No wonder we have the worst income equality and upward mobility in this country compared to the rest of the industrial world.
6
The anti-union propaganda has been so successful that unions are bitterly opposed and despised by many of the people who need them the most. Unionization, for example, is blamed for the offshoring of manufacturing, rather than blaming the greedy, heedless businessmen who take everything our country has to offer and then slaps us in the face by stealing our jobs. It's a topsy-turvey world.
2
Finally--the genie is out of the bottle. At least, in an op-ed piece.
Corporate culture in the United States has been very successful in promoting support for business in the United States through minimizing workers. Their argument is based on the assumption that the health of capitalism depends on the freedom of corporations and other actors in the business sector to do as they see fit, in the process treating workers like tokens on a Monopoly board.
Unions and some administrations (mostly Democratic) have acted to counterbalance big business, although the traditional union paradigm grows out of factory-based manufacturing. Some unions have adapted to workers in services. However, we now face another milestone in the organization of work. More and more of us work in knowledge and data, in short-term arrangements, with little or no protections.
Do we advocate for better protections written in federal and state laws? Do we explore options for organized labor? Does someone try to convince big business that fair compensation and treatment for workers (blue, pink and white collars) are key to their future? Probably all of these and more.
Labor is as important to capitalism as capital!
8
Yikes, no way. It sounds nice for some, but it does a lot of harm. This would force companies to produce documentation to get rid of bad employees instead of just showing them the door. For example, we've heard for years about how the New York City school district pays dozens of teachers to sit around and do nothing, because the requirements to actually fire them are so difficult. You want to force that to happen everywhere?
21
That's basically a myth. The just cause requirement would prevent people from losing their jobs for malicious, ridiculous, juvenile or frivolous reasons. As an attorney who handles employment cases I have seen many people fired for the most ridiculous reasons imaginable. When I tell them that there's nothing we can do for them they are usually incredulous that the employer can legally get away with it. All I can say is , "Welcome to the flexible workforce."
3
There needs to be a balance, but now, in the workplace, the corporations own the employees. They can coerce, refuse sick days, even if you have a doctor's note, call you to do phone work 4 times a day when you take a vacation day. I call that no vacation. They can threaten you if you take your vacation. This is way unjust, and all of these things have happened to my family members, who are good employees. Workers need some rights.
2
No but what about bad managers shouldn't workers be allowed to bring bad bosses and managers before a fair and just labor court?
1
I agree with this 1000%. It's surprising that someone like Bernie Sanders has never made such a proposal.
19
There are many federal, state and local statutes prohibiting employment discrimination (including the FMLA, which bars covered employers from terminating employees because they took FMLA-protected leave). However, these statutes don't address employers' unbridled ability to engage in mass layoffs or to outsource jobs either overseas, or to third-party vendors, or to independent contractors who have no employee benefits. Layoffs are often done as a premature reaction to disappointing short-term profits, or in anticipation of an acquisition. As a lawyer representing employees, I see every day how these economic decisions can devastate a family, particularly if the employee is older. Many large companies view their employees only as a "cost center," and are bent on reducing those costs regardless of the impact on employee morale. Much of the current corporate bragging about diversity is a great PR cover for how those companies are set on having as few employees as possible, regardless of the consequences.
39
Ironically it is the employees who have benefitted from Unions through safer mines, OSHA, overtime pay, and benefits that resist joining a union the most. Those who forget labor history will see their wages, hours, and benefits diminish. "At will employment" does not benefit a worker. It didn't in the past and it will not in the future. Until employees see past the corporate double speak and start to organize for themselves it does not bode well for the future of American workers.
54
There are always challenges to the laws governing supply and demand. Just Cause is one of them. Just Cause presumes that an employee provides a service or product that is immune to competition and buyer choice. Let's see how long this theory will hang around.
9
Gene, not "immune" but "defended from arbitrary decisions".
I suspect that many women - who were doing their jobs just fine - have slept with their boss in order to avoid job termination . Do you endorse this practice of "sleep with me or look for another job"?
Job security is important. And the ability to fire employees who are not doing their work properly is also important.
The trick is to balance the two goals.
It does nothing of the sort. The UK has a 'just cause' law, but it is lawful to dismiss an employee if they are redundant. Competition and buyer choice may make certain employees - or indeed a company's entire workforce - redundant.
Corporatist I see. Human as a desposable part when required. How American.
1
What the NYT ought to be writing about is the "gig" economy in which large corporations now hire "permanent" temporary workers who work by the hour, are paid by an outside firm, have no paid time off ever, no benefits, no 401K plans, no nothing. This is the "new normal." I know many many people who work like this as this is all they can find. How can you plan a life, own a home, pay off student loans when you really don't know one month to the next whether you have a job or not? You don't. Take a vacation? Never. Gotta love America. Home of the free, land of the brave. Owned by Corporations.
276
Anita- how true. Everyone always comments about how the millennials are so spoiled. But the boomer generation never was so unvalued as workers. Companies would find busy work in down times rather than risk a skilled laborer from quitting his job. My husband worked in HVAC for 30 years. They stocked trucks, washed trucks, raked leaves, whatever necessary to get their 40 hours. They were too valuable to lose in the busy season from September to June. No one was sent home. No one was laid off. Now even the trade industries are no longer immune to this insatiable greed. My son worked as an HVAC technician in 2010. If there were 4 hours available that's all he worked. If there was nothing scheduled he was told to not come in for the day. Of course there was no pay check for that missed day. A friend's son had similar experiences. And before anyone comments about the "takers", once a company is too large for the owner to meet demand these "takers" are necessary to the viability of the company. A business cannot meet the demand without a capable work force. It is a symbiotic relationship, something that seems to be forgotten in the ruthless pursuit for ever more wealth. My son now works in solar. He makes decent wages but has no benefits. The company owner didn't even pay them for Christmas because he "isn't obligated by law" to do so. The gilded age robber barons are truly back. And only unions will stop them. History is destined to repeat itself when one refuses to learn from it.
10
What you describe is not just the new "gig" economy, but rather the life of consultants and contractors. My husband has been a contractor for most of his 30 year career. He has contracted through other companies and now through our own incorporated consulting business. I am a freelance writer.
We own a home, I pay my student loans, we pay all our bills, and we even to go on vacations. It's not an easy life. My husband travels a lot and during a project is usually only home on weekend.
There is no such thing as employment security in America. Once you realize that you can start making adjustments because it's a trend that has only strengthened over time.
I had awful, expensive benefits and low pay when I was an employee. Now I have a higher income, flexibility, freedom, and a boss I only communicate with via email for almost 5 years. I may have to return to being an employee one day and I find the thought dreadful, not comforting.
3
I've worked in the gig economy for almost 11 years. Generally though, I do better during boom times than I did as a direct employee. Why? Because of per diem. I could cover up to 50% of my pay rate because I was more than 50 miles away from home. This cut my taxes. I was able to save twice as much money in the gig economy compared to salary as a direct. Plus, I've seen my hourly rate increase by 20% over this time.
Unfortunately, governments have squeezed the per diem rate down lately. I won't be saving as much next year.
4
American workers need t o be protected by rampant age discrimination. The current anti-discrimination laws are not strong enough.
In addition, employers must be forced to hire American citizens; first. They must prove that there was not an American to fill a needed job, and must prove there were no able body Americans who could not be trained to do a certain job. Rules similar to what exists in the European Union.
The more the GOP, wealthy donors controlling the politicians, Trump, and the government continue to deregulate, they are turning employment into nothing more than paid slavery. The current tax reform will push more into this world of wage slavery. That is, our way or the highway. Also, you lose your job, you lose your health care. And, unless you liquidate your assets, you have to hope the exchanges offer good coverage, else you become destitute to go on Medicaid.
Our current political climate wants to continue down a road that turns back the clock to over 100 years ago. That si when no employee had any rights, any benefits, worked six days a week and twelve hours a day. And when they could no longer work, they end up dead in a shack some place. Or, get hurt on the job, no disability. You retire, you scrimp to live by any means possible, until death.
One has to wonder when the pendulum will sling back to the 99%, Because, if the current trends continue, the 99% will eventually take to the streets. The new tax law, being the last straw.
44
I say why wait? Let's take to the streets right NOW! who's with me?
1
Pity the employee but never the boss. That’s right, the employee gets a paycheck every week. The boss, perhaps not. The employee risks very little. They can always move on to another job IF THEY ARE SKILLFUL AT THEIR TRADE. The boss can lose everything; business, home, even family. The employee can sit at home this holiday week. The boss has to work or risk losing customers.
Welcome to Capitalism. No risk, no reward. If you’re unhappy with your work situation, move on. Finding GOOD and SKILLFUL employees is hard. Bosses want to find and retain those. If you’re one of the “good ones” you should have no trouble getting what you want from your current employer - or move on. That’s right, it’s risky but no risk, no reward.
28
SG1 You are confusing entrepreneurs with corporate CEOs. They have very little in common. Thinking that they do is an inexcusable mistake.
3
I have been the boss. Now, I am a lower-wage, blue-collar employee. I can say that it is more fun to be the boss.
2
Raw capitalism in the 20th century
gave us Chain-gang laborers that could
(and were) worked to death grading our highways and railroad beds ;
it gave us crippled child workers whose limbs had been chewed off by textile machines and saw-mill blades.
Raw capitalism gave us predator straw-bosses and assistant managers who demand sexual favors from desperate mothers in exchange for more work hours on the weekly schedule.
Raw capitalism gave us an underclass of fellow Americans staffing our fast food kitchens, retail stores, and elderly care homes who themselves have no homes, no healthcare, no cars, and no place to sleep and no hope.
" The birds of the air have their nests, the foxes have their dens, but the son of man hath nowhere to lay his head."
These words, written during the Roman Empire---when Palestinian streets were filled with desperate day laborers, homeless children and imperial patrols armed to the teeth--- also describe our time, the time of the United States of Vulture Capitalism.
2
The sad truth is that Clinton-era Democrats chose to compete when it came to campaign finance rather than seek reform of the advantage business-oriented Republicans lopsidedly enjoyed. We got Rubin in Treasury and then Summers. We got both again in Obama's team to respond to the Great Recession. While we bicker as partisans, we fail to see that partisanship holds us in place in a corrupt system while we believe OUR corrupted officials are virtuous and the opposition's are full of vice. We need to step back and see that the loss of our democracy and labor rights are bi-partisan because of the dance for plutocratic financing of political "victory" for essentially the 1%. Fox viewers by the millions agree that libertarian free-dumb is preferable to any government, even one we grab back from plutocrats who pay for their agenda. "Any way you look at it you lose" Mrs. Robinson. Must we continue to settle for crumbs?
I am afraid the policies the authors wish to see will only occur when a democratic third party rises up to force reforms based on popular disgust much like the Progressive Party once did. Such a party, if it controls the balance of power, is the only way reform will come from politicians who currently equate electoral victory with accepting money from the 1%. That is the only was to return our democracy to us and power back to labor.
65
Yes, by refusing to fight for workers, the Democratic Party has made itself largely irrelevant.
1
Over the past 40 decades, American workers have repeatedly voted against protections for labor and for benefits to capital, having bought into the manipulation of "trickle-down" economics. American workers deserve to be exploited because they consistently vote for exploitation.
80
True about the first part, but that doesn't mean that the time isn't ripe to restart the union - or call it collective action - movement once again. Your conclusion is pessimistic.
11
Forty decades is a mighty long time, mathematically speaking...
3
40 decades?
3
For every action there is a reaction. "just cause" is unduly burdensome and, if implemented, would result in lower employment and new workarounds (more temporary and contract jobs/out sourcing, less ongoing benefitted positions). Employers do not fire employees on a whim. No employer wants to lose a valuable, productive employee. If you want more job security, focus on being that employee. Flexible work arrangements that benefit both employer and employee are beneficial and lead to greater productivity and happier staff. In the end though, you have to accept that the job is priority to the employer. If you belive otherwise and come to work with a chip on your shoulder don't expect to last long or advance.
15
Having practiced employment law for many many years, and seen many many cases of termination, and having also represented scores of companies, big and small, I respectfully disagree: they often do ("fire employees on a whim"). Or if not on a whim perhaps for all kinds of unjust reasons: race, gender, age, etc. Just like workers may have infirmities so do employers.
I do agree we are in a time of reaction (to use your term), when worker's rights are being systematically reduced from 50 years ago (dramatic reduction of unions, outsourcing, packing of courts, etc.) with concurrent greater inequality.
2
That'd be different from now how?
"That employee" is the one who works long hours for no added compensation (fake salaried positions), accepts sexual advances, spouts the party line and is basically a drone. Employers DO fire employees on a whim. Where have you been working?
Haven't you heard? Employees are merely cells on a spreadsheet, interchangeable and replaceable.
Need a little bump in your stock price for the next quarter? Simply announce a 10 percent reduction in your workforce and watch the ticker. Take the wage and salary savings and fund another round of bonuses for the executives.
This model works well until you gut the working class and it can no longer afford the goods and services it produces. The minimum wage is a joke because (1) it won't cover anything close to basic living expenses, and (2) it drags down other wages by providing an artificially low basis for comparison.
This erosion started slowly but lately has been accelerating under pressure from the high cost of housing in many markets and the exorbitant cost of health care everywhere.
If we don't impose a reasonable course correction, gravity will prevail and the crash will be ugly.
152
And where was the Democratic Party when all of this was happening? The unions have traditionally been the bulwark of protection for workers, and the party stood by them in protecting the interests of working people against the predations of the rich and powerful. But in the past few decades, it has abandoned them in favor of professional, high tech, and media elites whose comfortable status enables them to indulge themselves in identity politics. The party stood by while the union movement was dismantled.
It should not be surprising that workers finally turned to a demagogue who at least professes to be concerned about them, rather than their former party which has nothing for them now but insults.
The recent initiatives from congressional Democrats are a step in the right direction, but it is going to take more than a few gestures to restore their faith and regain their support.
12
When southern states lured industry from the industrial states with the promise of no unions, they opened the door to their own victimization of off-shoring and globalization.
There is no assurance that cheaper wages in developing countries would have prevented the loss of industrial jobs in the United States but had there been union representation at the table while companies were considering relocating, the workers might have been able to slow the process down and extract better separation packages. Without unions, the workers had absolutely no voice and no time to prepare for the loss of their jobs; sometimes they had only a day’s official notice.
Those workers who believe that Trump has their backs need to form a union just to keep him beholding to their continued support.
18
If trump has their backs my advice is don`t drop your soap.
Your characterization of all businesses and all employment concerns in the context of power and labor rights is naive to say the least. For one you presume a business exists simply to provide permanent jobs at excellent wages for all. You presume that there is no competitive environment in which a business must fight to afford these excellent wages, invest in new plant and equipment and yes provide a return for ownership. You forget that labor rights must be tied to labor responsibility. You presume that a union will be devoid of self interest and will necessarily be a high minded protector of fairness within its own ranks. Most workers understand that real rewards should be tied to real contribution not seniority which is the union standard. You also presume that union leaders whose salaries will be paid for by membership dues will not seek to enhance their own individual interests.
There certainly may be cases where extremely harsh and unenlightened management practices might warrant a union, but a union in and of itself is no guarantee of fairness nor of sustainably strong company performance.
20
It used to be and it remains so in Europe.
Wow... Nicely put. Govts think businesses exist to pay taxes and organized labor plus leftists think business exist to pay lots of money to workers and nothing to owners. It is crazy
The ability to easily move away from the US but still sell back into the US was and is THE major disrupter of labor rights. Yay "freedom!"
12
Not a single word about one of the most pervasive and, by now, “acceptable” practices, age discrimination?
28
The issue is small businesses with five or so employees. They can not afford to go court when an employee sues them. I know of a small business being bankrupted in NY by an employee who filed a wrongful termination lawsuit. I was intimately familiar with the circumstances. The employee took advantage of the employer.
The employer restarted the business with no employees, just family.
14
That's not the norm. Small businesses should have different laws.
Some people aren't very good at being employers.
Citing the European model for ‘job protection’ policy is certainly a tone deaf argument in modern labor markets. In Italy for example, unemployment rates among young people remain stubbornly around 35%, due in large part to antiquated labor rules - it’s near impossible to fire anybody. Who wants to hire into that if the goal is to grow your business with dedicated people. Not all of us are dedicated forever, for our own good reasons. Time for a change? Could be the best thing for the employee to make the right career choice.
For more illuminating research your two writers should study NYC public school union data, and determine how many teachers there, of the tens of thousands employed, have (ever) been fired for poor teaching performance. They know the answer - a tiny fraction of one percent. A head-slapper, but so tragic for the children at so many public schools. They deserve better, don’t they? We’re certainly spending highest-$-per-student-in-US.
The storybook world where we’re all ‘above average’ and need these lifetime protections ignores the human experience. We can get in the wrong jobs, for wrong reasons, and often don’t know it until performance is judged and there are consequences. And we get better the next time!
15
Our bloated, overpaid Federal workforce is "just cause" which is the reason it costs so much. People can be "demoted" but never dismissed. From the VA to the FBI the product suffers.
The employer-employee relationship has been around for hundreds of years, and it is a give and take relationship. Nobody complains about the employer that goes beyond the norm to keep their workers happy.
The last thing we need in this economy is more regs.
11
As a member of the federal workforce, I find your generalization, based on an old urban myth offensive. In my office, we believe in what we do for the American people, and work hard every day. And if we're overpaid, why do I see all the Maserati's, Mercedes and Jaguars in the parking garages of the private sector while we drive Honda's, Kia's and Toyotas?
3
I'd be happy to introduce you to a dozen or more friends who are also members of the federal workforce who would tell you that if you laid off 15% of the employees in their office, productivity would actually improve. The problem, of course, is getting the right 15%.
Some years ago an acquaintance of mine, also a federal employee, suffered the ignominy of having literally nothing to do for six months. S/he then was shuttled back and forth from the Midwest to DC weekly -- not because s/he was needed there but to burn down the office budget. When I suggested s/he report this to the Inspector General's office, s/he replied, "I work in the IG's office." Hopefully problems like this are isolated and disappearing, but I have my doubts.
The only experience I've had with working for a union was the UAW in 1978. At my first week on the job I was approach and was told I was working to hard and I needed to ease up. Initially I believed it was a compliment. I continued my job in the way my work ethic was instilled. A short time later 3 unions guys approached me and said I really must slow down, my pace was not the standard. It was strange to me. As time went on I became aware that the workers were drinking in the back of the warehouse and during their lunch break additionally workers were deliberately damaging parts that then would be discarded. The amount of damage parts filled a rail car a month. Even though I was making good money close to 9 bucks an hour I decided I never wanted to be part of any union. Too many of the union members were unethical and had rotten attitudes. It made total sense when GM had to declare bankruptcy years later, with a work force like the UAW it was inevitable.
11
The earliest and most heavily unionised industries over the last 100 years, Coal, Steel, Railroads, Airlines, Automobiles, all went bankrupt, primarily because of the types of problems that you note and management that found it easier to give in to demands than to suffer a strike. Only major unionized industry that hasn't been through bankruptcy is government, and many states and school systems are on the verge and the federal government has trillions in debt, but can print more.
1
Funny, most union members look back fondly to a time multi billion dollar businesses who made money had to share with employees.
1
The fawning lefties here never want to talk about that -- how corrupt unions can become.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
In other words, tenure for everyone. Because teachers having it has done wonders for our educational system?
They write "If the bill had passed 30 years ago, it might have prevented our current age of vast inequality." Or it might have made employers even more reluctant to hire workers and made labor participation even worse.
Maybe I'm jaded by the people who tell me how they abuse their sick time or from lawyers and HR people who tell me how hard it is to fire people who abuse their rights. Who doesn't feel bad for people who are sick and in need of help? We have systems for that too and I'm glad. But, this labor lawyer's/organizer's dream of automatic tenure for everyone would more likely be very detrimental and as often is the case with these sorts of things, probably in many cases most to those they seek to protect.
Yes, employees need some rights and have many. We do have safety nets and insurance. But, we don't need to add this burden to business.
11
Please don't confuse some cases with most cases. Most of us are woefully unprotected.
1
Union busting and strike breaking have been a part of Corporate America for a very long time. (e.g. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States )
The Corporate controlled Congress, and the corporate controlled Courts simply enforce union busting and strike breaking by passing laws for their patrons.
There was a relatively short time when unions had some power. No longer.
7
Economic growth has been so weak for Europe?! You have got to be kidding?! Americans who visit are struck by the pristine subways in Paris, the high speed trains, the excellent roads in Germany, France and Switzerland, the green and safe public parks, and the world-class healthcare system that costs a fraction of the price in the US. Even if people cannot afford to travel overseas they can learn about it on the worldwide web.
8
Back in 1971, I was starting work as a Public Welfare caseworker and one of the first things I did was sign a Union card. The guy who approached me about joining our SEIU Local, 668, and I remained active rank and file members, served as Shop Stewards, filed grievances for members, went to meetings, went on strikes and were elected to various Chapter positions, all unpaid offices from President to Secretary to Treasurer.
Being active and informed had its own benefits, mostly in the area of initiative, taking the issue to management before someone was disciplined or fired. It wasn't a matter of if you would be criticized butr when. Taking the fight up really kept the antagonist at bay. Being nice was almost a sure guarantee that nothing would be done to correct the problem.
Those were the days. Now, shops to a great degree are closely bureaucratized so that a hierarchy of elected and intelligent union officials monitor and enforce and represent when a transgression is threatening. Problem is that members and in some places, the nonmember fee-payers, the ones who don't sign a Union card, become disaffected, in most cases detached from the dynamics of the workplace. You might say they are blissful when things are okay. And there's not a lot wrong with that.
The writers of this article did a fine job of explaining quite a few events in labor/management interactions and they clearly know what its like to work in a union shop.
It's encouraging that organizing has led to this.
6
"Just cause — a legal right to your job"
The tipping point of workers losing their legal rights began on Aug 5, 1981, and have been going downhill ever since. President Regan fired 11,000 air traffic controllers for going on strike.
Then there was the banking deregulation under Regan followed by big money taking over Corporate America and demanding higher stock prices to further enrich the wealthy. And with that stagnant wages for decades for workers.
Oh and let us not forget those "right to work" laws that erode the ability to unionize.
And the list goes on and on.
12
The air traffic controllers were in direct, clear and unambiguous violation of their own contract and Federal law.
And that did not affect OTHER workers in private industry, who negotiate privately with employers for pay and benefits.
Public unions are different than private unions.
1
Unions may not be easy to fix--and any attempts will not be favored by most of those inhabiting corporate offices--but their decline has tracked the stagnation of the working class and rising economic inequality: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-conservative-ca... ("The Conservative Case for Unions") AND http://www.epi.org/blog/union-decline-rising-inequality-charts/ ("Union Decline and Rising Inequality in Two Charts").
There are ways to restructure unions, in spite of predictable fear mongering in partisan quarters. It is hard--if not impossible--to see these institutions being resurrected by the existing political class, not without far more severe, widespread and potentially violent shocks to the nation. This is a shame. We need much better policies to mitigate the awful and growing economic inequality in our country (worst among developed nations). Giving more money to corporate heads will make the problems worse.
1
Before we do the “Repeal and Replace” thing with the whole of the social safety net how about Congress—Mitch McConnel and his sidekick Paul Ryan—put a legal structure in place that helps build and protect a retirement system that is predictable for the American worker. Despite propaganda to the contrary the Social Security System is sound. Consideration has to be given to protecting it from “borrowing” by the House and the Senate.
Alternative funding structures corporately based could also be considered. If we do not do something we will have a lot of Senior Citizens holding signs that say “Need Help.” The country deserves better than that. It particularly deserves that effort from the Republican side of the aisle.
2
Take off caps, do means testing and let wealthy folks understand they will be paying for something they may never use.
The time when an employee had a recognizable employer and expectations of some stable relationship with that employer are fading away into the ‘used to be world.’ Today more and more employees even in IT industries, Legal firms and Medicine are signed on with Agencies that alien workers with employers on a temporary arrangement and the employee does what his assigned Boss wishes but its human contact is the agency. To wish for fair arrangements in that world is illusionary; the employer may not now your name and has little reason to ask.
Workers are Precariats as for example an Uber driver who accepts the contract but has little to say when it changes unless an organization of drivers is provoked.
Unions need, as they may be doing, to redesign organization efforts for that loose workforce. Then a just-cause rule may someday reappear, wouldn’t that be nice.
1
"Just Cause" sounds nice, but the implementation will be the problem. In the US lawyers get involved in everything. We will see rules that make it nearly impossible to fire a worker for just cause. We have already done that with schools, and how is that working out?
5
Now that US corporations, large and small, got their "European" tax cut don't forget to demand they lower their product prices. Pass along those savings!
1
There needs to be a revival of the unionism in the US. Wealthy business owners have engaged in union busting which has led to greater inequality in the US. Unions protect workers from employer abuses, provide pensions, health and dental care etc. There is nothing evil about unions and American workers should not be made to feel that there is.
2
As a former IT worker, I know a lot about this. If you’re an IT worker, beware. Many small companies can’t really afford to keep you on staff as a permanent employee, but they need your skill set for a project. They may offer you a very attractive salary to quit your current job to join their company. But, once the project is finished, they will look for a petty reason to fire you. They will say you weren’t a team player, or something like that. The truth is, they just can’t afford you and mom-and-pop companies don’t do layoffs. So, just be careful before you quit your current job with a big corporation to join a small company if they aren’t an IT company.
5
I read this piece with amazement. In fact, it is so difficult to let unproductive employees go. Companies will end up covering their unemployment benefits for six months. They can go to labor department making unfounded accusations. Employers will be dragged into legal battles just because employees have nothing to lose (The complaints are free to them). Of course companies want to outsource or rely on automation and AI. It is so difficult to find good employees. Forget about overtimes. I am talking about performance issues within the eight work hours. In reality, 50% return (four of the eight hours) will be great! Most of the time, they just creat tasks for themselves to serve their own interests. They can be super "busy" but companies don't benefit from their works.
4
Thirty years of working very high oncall hours saved my employers a lot of money, but left me completely stressed in relation to concerts and engagements that could be cancelled at a moment's notice. I once had a manager put me oncall for Christmas when I had booked flights home six months before I was forcefully transferred into his department. Arbitrary, capricious, and mean-spirited.
For every two people doing 20 hours of unpaid overtime apiece companies save the cost of a full-time employee, and that would be a light week in most IT departments. Then companies figured out they could hire twice as many people in India but pay them even less than a single US person....
5
Also: move aggressively against tacit and explicit anti-poaching agreements among collusive employers, and radically curtail non-commercial clauses slipped into new employees first-day paperwork. Run sting ops to catch age discrimination in resume callbacks and put a legal burden of proof on employers who accept resumes listing year of graduation etc when it is irrelevant to the job. Outlaw unpaid "on-call" time and require pay when sending workers home early in a shift. Do all this and watch wage stagnation melt away.
3
Those “originalists” of which you speak are actually referring to the document that sets the rules of our governing system. Yes, I am referring to the Constitution. That Constitution has a mechanism for amending it. If the states want to change it, they can. Otherwise, employers are simply acting out their rights to deploy their private property as they see fit. If they break a law by discriminating against someone, or ignore legitimate harassment laws, they can be held accountable. The state of Massachusetts has passed a sick time law and considered laws to outlaw last minute schedule changes. Remember the 10th amendment and let the states make laws that are not addressed in the Constitution. And please don’t tell me your suggestions fall under interstate commerce.
2
There is a reason why German/Asian automakers locate their US factories in the south. If you are not in the high tech/creative fields of Hollywood or Silicon Valley, jobs are attracted to areas with low regulation. When the manufacturing jobs left Michigan and Wisconsin, the residents turned toward Right to Work status to stay competitive. Good luck having upstate NY with its high state regulations/taxes compete with Texas for new jobs.
6
Some states have not waited for the vaunted US Congress, famous for doing little-to-nothing in any given year, to provide such protections. In the State of Washington employers with eight or more employees must provide various types of protected leave, assuring employees will not be fired for taking these types of leave. On January 1, 2018, all hourly employees in the state will be provided with accrued paid sick leave, again another protected leave.
If the citizens of this country want protected leave laws I recommend they demand such leave in their individual states. A GOP Congress with a GOP President will never pass and sign such legislation. It violates their ideology to its very core.
1
Unions are (or rather, were) essential to a prosperous society - as opposed to an oligarchy. In principle I support the idea and intent of unions. However, most unions in NY, Boston, Chicago etc are run by crime syndicates - with the result that labor cost are inflated beyond sanity, with an overpaid insider workforce and an underpaid non-union workforce. This as much the cause for the push back against unions as the greed of investors and shareholders.
4
We have a human rights issue, a power imbalance—reflected in both exploitive economic policy and in sex abuse in the workplace. Our politics favors the privilege of corporations, as elections are turned over to them for funding.
Our elected lawmakers haven’t blocked the offshoring of millions of our jobs. They let pensions be ended, and haven’t protected unions.
In past decades a much larger % of Americans belonged to unions, and they helped raise pay even for workers in non union jobs. Business kept jobs here in the US, and wages/benefits rose, along with consumer demand and business profits. We need another op ed explaining this contrast with now.
Today a larger % of workers in other nations are unionized, and large corporations accept union input. Health care for all isn't dependent on jobs.
Worker protections and security require laws and regulations, but that’s labeled as big govt in our distorted politics today. Thus our national wealth and power is transferred up to the top few.
US corporations pay less taxes, but get more political representation. Average earning citizens have to assume more of the tax burden but get less political representation.
1
The laws that the authors demand already exist. For example, employees have the right to form unions and it is illegal to terminate an employee for engaging in such protected activity. The unspoken coda to the article is that union membership has fallen. However, employees increasingly reject unions. While the percentage of workers belonging to a union was 20.1 percent in 1983, it has fallen by 2013 to 11.1 percent. Unions have failed to convince employees that their benefits are worth their cost, that they are relevant. The best example of this failure was Volkswagen's Tennessee plant. There the employee even supported union representation but the employees rejected the UAW's organizing efforts. And unions, not employers, bear the responsibility for that failure
2
Clearly, elites in this country have used their wealth to roll back the New Deal gains and the prosperity that was widely shared after WWII that created the great American middle class. What the article missed was the excuse globalization created in terms of the new push for a globalised economy. The same holds true for automation.
It appears that just as states were made to compete for outrageous tax breaks, countries were used with heartbreaking results to lower labor costs. Communities were gutted and suddenly devastated in every meaning of the word. Businesses did everything they could to kick labor away from the table of decision-making and make them a non-factor in policy making.
The bottom line is that these same plutocratic forces that have stolen our democracy have forced workers to become beggars and embrace their loss of basic labor and human rights by promoting acceptance of these conditions.
3
The "New Deal gains and the prosperity that was widely shared after WWII that created the great American middle class" have definitely NOT been rolled back! Just look around you - planes, resorts, amusement parks full. Likewise for hotels and cruise ships, with more being built every day. Seventeen million new cars sold and subdivisions and new restaurants sprouting like weeds. Drive along the coast from Maine to Washington State and any inland lake and there are hundreds of thousands of boats docked and new condos going up. We hear constant complaints about the record numbers of tourists crowding New York, National Parks and highways. Two or more cars, bathrooms, and flat-screen TV's in most homes (including a new one for 16th birthday gifts). These displays of wealth are not by the 1% ("the elite" don't frequent Branson, Missouri, Destin, Florida, Disney World, or crowd Carnival Cruise Lines or buy $60,000 bass fishing boats). The middle class is thriving as never before.
The middle class lifestyle of the post-war "golden age" consisted of a 950 square foot home with one bathroom, no air conditioning, one Chevrolet or Ford, dining out once a month, and, if lucky, a one-week driving vacation to a cheap beach motel. Compared to the luxury enjoyed by today's middle class, we are doing quite well, thank you. And to the retort that two wage earners are required to maintain that lifestyle, that would not be true if we were content to live the life of that supposed golden era.
Now in my sixties, I grew up in NYC where workers rights were (what I thought was) the “norm.” Times have slowly changes and workers have continually lost rights and pay keeping pace with inflation. Fast forward to now, forget democracy, we are regressing to feudalism.
2
When there is an almost-daily article about automation and A.I. eliminating a huge share of jobs in the next decade, why would we want new laws and/or unionization that would discourage hiring and incentivize job elimination? This sounds likely to result in a modest benefit for some and a large detriment to many.
4
I guess everyone has rights however I believe the push back going on now against unions is because of past and present abuse by them. In todays paper there is a piece, The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth, which puts this topic into perspective, Workers need protection in some cases but what about a fair days pay for a fair days work? Does anyone here believe a laborer is worth 400$ an hour? ALL parties need to step up, respect each other and put themselves in the others shoes.
5
A repeat poster here, "sharon of worcester MA" has said over and over, that her husband has a "great union job" allowing them a very high standard of living -- he is a utility worker for the public utility company, and makes $100K for a blue collar, non-degreed job -- roughly twice what it pays in private industry and he can't be fired or laid off, and has luxe benefits for life.
So a handful of public union members profit mightily because WE STUPID TAXPAYERS pay out the nose for THEM to have lavish benefits and pay that we can NEVER DREAM OF OURSELVES.
They do not profit because they are paid fairly for good work,but because they have a stranglehold on society, and can extort top wages & luxe benefits, while we suffer.
This article omits an important gap in protection for workers in NY (and the rest of the US).
It is currently legal to harass a coworker as long as the harassment isn't "discriminatory," i.e. Based on gender, race, etc. Nondiscriminatory harassment is often called " workplace bullying," and it is perfectly legal.
Even if a workplace has a non-bullying policy on the books, the concept of at-will employment allows an employer to ignore its own policies whenever it wants to. It can decide to allow Employee A to harass Employee B, but unfairly retaliatie and discipline or fire Employee B for lodging a complaint against Employee A.
All of this is perfectly legal. I know this, because it was done to me by SUNY.
If NY passes the Healthy Workplace Bill, it would prevent this unfair and harmful practice. It would provide employers with legal mechanisms to prevent and address nondiscriminatory harassment/bullying; and it would provide a harassed worker legal mechanisms to hold the harasser and the employer accountable if harassment and/or retaliation occur. It expands existing human rights law, without undermining the concept of at-will employment.
Contact your state Senator/Assemblymember, and encourage them to support the Healthy Workplace Bill. Contact New York Healthy Workplace Advocates for more info. All workers deserve to be protected from workplace harassment of all types, not just sexual harassment.
4
The idea that the Democratic Party supports workers is a farce and a dangerous lie. The Democratic Party has done a better job at destroying workers' living standards in the U.S. than the Republicans. The Obama administration directly oversaw the introduction of a two tier wage structure in the automobile industry that has new workers paid at levels worse than they were paid at the beginning of the 20th century. It was the Clinton administration that "ended welfare as know it" -- with the elimination of Aid for Families with Dependent Children.
The fiction that the Democratic Party somehow represents the interests of workers is leading to broad political disaffection, or, worse, toward the alt-right. As the alt-right seeks to tap into the anger and profound disappointment of the Democratic Party as the party of social justice.
3
Note the wording of "capitalism". It didn't get named "laborism", and so we know who calls the game.
Until there is equality between capital and labor, the latter will be treated as interchangeable units of relative low worth.
2
Job protections for the common worker will continue to erode so long as the managers and owners are allowed to take a disparate slice of the profits through lower taxation and promotion to them through said tax code.
If the laws continue to make it harder and harder to organize workers ( unions ) then obviously union participation is going to go down. If that happens, then pay, benefits and securities are going to go down as well.
If the laws then reward companies\owners to hire cheaper workers and then pay less tax overall, then indeed the system is rigged.
Businesses then find out that they no longer have customers and fold to the conglomerates that skirt the system and use said tax code to their advantage. With the extra profits, they then buy off politicians to make the system even more in their favor and voila, here we are.
Slaves...
3
How about also making non-compete agreements illegal nationwide? These completely one-sided, anti-competitive contracts handcuff workers to lousy jobs--if a worker violates the agreement simply to take a better job, they are faced with potential costly litigation. As covered in the NYT in recent months, use of noncompete agreements has exploded in the past decade. The republicans claim to be all about encouraging competitition--unless it extends to the lowly salaried employee.
3
American workers will need protections, but these will need to wait until Dems control congress and the White House. There will be no rescue from a Republican congress or a Trump administration fashioned to the liking of Mike Pence and the Koch brothers. Yet another reason for Dems to throw the bums out in 2018 and 2020.
1
Where I am employed at. We have individuals that abuse the sick day pay policy. Individuals would abuse this also.
I agree with the concept. I just fear the abuse of using them.
1
Brillant idea! Let's join the ranks of Italy, Greece and other high unemployment, low-growth economics of the world, left behind by more dynamic economies. But I will tell you one thing we won't have is a Super Power to protect us from the likes of China and Russian when we become a third-rate economy and all we can afford is a third-rate military.
Just brilliant
1
There are two parts to this argument: workers do need protection ("just cause" is sorely needed), but companies and corporations also need incentives (regulations, or laws) which will prevent them from outsourcing protected jobs to "cheap foreign nations". Corporations are not in the job to protect labor. Government is, and government is completely absent from the table, smothered by the Republican, anti-labor mindset. But Dems have been absent, too. Why? Where is the Clergy? "We have all been there, lips closed shut as we endure a horrible boss knowing our job is on the line. Have our non-existent labor laws contributed to the Opioid epidemic as well? It is heart breaking to hear workers talk of how they started on drugs after their jobs were shipped overseas in the 1980's and 1990's. Are their lives worth more than the profits made by big Republican Corporations? If the United States needs more high tech workers, would a state or federal legislator support lowering college tuition, so that in a mere few years, we could have the best trained work force in the world? I recall the New York Times whining when Cuomo proposed free tuition just months ago. Why? Do we long to become a second rate nation, as the Trumpsters spout "Make America Great" while sipping cocktails at their Caribbean homes bought with offshore profits derived from workers misery? Where are those "Make America Great" hats made, after all?
1
Actually they're hoping for the time to come back where they forced us to pay them. Company store, here we come.
Maybe every company should be required to establish "rubber rooms" like those offered to union, NY City teachers. Rather than firing the incompetent, companies would be required to retain their non-productive employees at full pay and benefits for some period of years.
Why not extend the same anchor around the neck of NY City taxpayers to the rest of the country.
2
" “originalists” like the new Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch, who are inclined to side with employers and to believe that workers have no right to break a rule even if their lives depend on it."
Worse, these judicial frauds justify their pathology by claiming
they can't find the framers intent/word in the constitution, then say "SORRY."
But they always manage to find the "words" when they want to help their 1% masters.
2
We are the much-maligned Invisible Hand. I am, and you are. When I need a new electric circuit installed in my home, do I hire a union electrician to do the work at a very high level of expertise and value? No, much to my shame, I do not. I hire the cheapest non-union electrician I can find who can get the work signed off by the city. Why do I do this? Partly, it's because I'd rather pay $300 for the work than $500, and partly it's because I don't think that an "ignorant mechanic with a screwdriver" (who might have voted for Trump) should make more than someone with a postgraduate degree.
I do this, you do this, almost every American does this. It happens one million times a day across the nation, and is, by itself, the reason we are in the situation we are in. It is a convenience to us to underestimate the impact of our own decisions, as it pardons us from responsibility for the outcome of our daily decisions.
You do that only the first few times, my friend. Then you have a problem. Next time, pay the union guy.
2
After 30 years of practicing employment law, I left for the fertile field of the oil and gas business. Environmentally reprehensible, but I knew where I was going and why. I practiced on both sides, management and labor, public and private sector. I got to watch the past 40 years. Leaving was easy: the forces of evil and darkness, especially now that corporations are people, too, won flat out. Corporations got what they paid for: a compliant judiciary. See, DJT appointments to the Federal bench; entire body of employment at will law at state level.
My smart lawyer kid advises there is hope for people in the proper context.
a) large corporation, b) non-union workforce, c) smart, patient, deep-pocketed counsel who practice NLRB law. I am advised that when (not if) the employees complaint is some sort of 'concerted action' the hoary concept will prevail. [Statement invoking concerted action (in the right hands): "My boss is a jerk." (Counsel used another term referring to a body part.)
Good luck with this approach if you don't meet all three criteria. Otherwise, my parting advice still stands: go find a job with a decent employer. And good luck with that. And if you're looking for fairness, just stop. And help? The HR department? Who pays their salaries? Get a clue.
2
Where are the actual data showing this is a problem beyond the author's sentiments? And where is the analysis regarding the potential adverse effects of such a rule ? Employers will certainly be more reluctant to hire (see "France" for further information ) and the only clear beneficiary here will be the plaintiff's bar.
1
At-will employment is basically universal now. There are a few specific industries that remain union but basically every white collared office job is at-will. This includes the public sector. The anti-labor activists now want to go a step farther too. If at-will weren't bad enough, the new tax code pushes professionals to self-incorporate. The work environment may not change right away. However, I once witnessed a legal dispute in one of these arrangements first hand. Let me tell you: Things do not go well for labor.
Beyond at-will forces the employee to assume all the risk of their employment while the employer assumes the majority of profit and legal protection. While self-incorporation only impacts high wage professionals, we're seeing the same tactic emerging in lower wage jobs as well. The gig economy basically pushes the risk of employment back onto to labor. Uber is not going compensate a driver for losses in an accident involving Uber services. Even without fault, the liability for driving belongs entirely to the driver.
If Democrats have a plan to reverse these trends, great. However, I'm a little skeptical that our current Democratic leadership has the steel to enact sweeping policy reform. Unfortunately, neoliberalism hasn't fully faded from the Democratic psyche. There's still an unspoken assumption that pro-business globalism is somehow synergistic with strong labor protections. They're trying to have it both ways. Democrats have a hard lesson to learn.
5
As an employer, I cannot imagine firing someone for missing a day of work unexpectedly due to an illness in the family as the costs associated from hiring and training greatly outweigh any inconvenience. The right to discharge a worker who does not reliably show up should not go away. I discharged someone who tended to call in on either end of the weekend at least twice a month because it did affect my ability to run my business and it became clear that this would not change. Under state law, she got unemployment compensation. How much more did she deserve from me as an employer? Her absences were not illnesses, but should I, as an employer with 5 FT and 1 PT employees, be expected to accommodate someone who does have a child with a chronic illness that cannot reliably commit to a set schedule? I certainly cannot ask anything beyond “can you work this schedule” at a job interview.
6
I feel your pain. I've been on your end before. While things like this might be abused, how many employees have you had like that? Although I can see where it might bankrupt you under the right circumstances. So, you're a small (but hopefully mighty!) business, and laws should have provisions for that. You don't get the same breaks as a big guy, I'm sure that could be put into any new law so you don't bear the same brunt of the burden.
1
As a society that values due process, it makes sense to have basic protections in place. It also makes economic sense. Transient workers, displaced by bad bosses or unfair workplaces depress wages and resulting consumer buying power.
4
It's not only that "society values" due process: it's part of US Constitutional Law. lest we forget. We have legal protections in place. But if no one regards them, enforces them, these protections are meaningless. Can't have legal protections for only certain citizens or else there's no due process.
1
The article and many of the comments reflect a fundamental problem, that all labor related legislation and structures are rooted in physical, factory type work. This is why, as the importance of industrial labor waned, a lot of the concepts and solutions that served well until the 1980's have been discarded.
The bulk of "workers" today are in offices, and perform activities that were considered "elite" 30-50 years ago - writing code, designing devices, technical support, college level teaching, business management functions. They - we - are subject to all the inequities and loss of stability discussed here, loss of basic benefits, forced overtime, de facto lack of vacation or sick time, the possibility of being fired for any reason.
The problem is that the traditional union / labor structures are emphatically not for this type of work. Both the business class ("job creators", from store owners to CEOs) and the traditional working class ("that ain't workin' " as long as it doesn't involve lifting heavy objects or showing up at 6 AM) despise professional tech and office workers.
We ourselves like to imagine we are "management" or "creative" and don't want to admit that we are now the "proletariat", the people without whom the machine doesn't work but who have no recourse as long as we accept to be treated as a commodity. So we do need unions and a labor movement, but one that has been fundamentally redefined, some kind of tech / professional code of solidarity.
12
"And the judiciary, which is responsible for determining employers’ intent in discrimination cases, is increasingly filled with “originalists” like the new Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch, who are inclined to side with employers and to believe that workers have no right to break a rule even if their lives depend on it."
During the Gorsuch hearings, I was appalled at the inhumanity of this judge in ruling against the truck driver who refused to stay with his truck with frozen brakes because he himself was suffering hypothermia.
I'm a firm believer in contextualism over absolutism as a guiding principle of the law. Without that, our society grows crueler, reminding me of Les Miserables.
Our employment laws do favor managers over workers and it's bound to get worse under this administration. The Sessions justice department is systematically rolling back regulations that protect the weak in just about every arena of public life.
The rotten concept of corporations as "people," has brought us to this point, with money ruling the day and influencing public officials to side with employers over workers.
This editorial is long overdue--we're heading in the direction of feudal law becoming more the law than the exceptions, where the landowners (corporations) rule the serfs.
I worked for a state company Italy for 10 years in the 70s, and witnessed some excesses in worker protections. But there's a fine line between over protection and no protection.
Balance is key.
32
Completely agree - as long as not every termination of employment results in a costly lawsuit! (smile). It is important not only to notice that there is a problem but also to be aware that the solution must not make things worse.
Bipartisanship is the right way to come up with laws which are fair to both employers and employees.
5
Agreed, being a working person in the US today for most is growing into a form of indentured servitude if not slavery. However, the form of unions modeled on the late 19th and 20th Centuries will not help workers of today and the future.
Unions need to protect workers here in a way that protects all workers including those abroad because nothing is made, nothing is performed by a discrete, as in completely definable, closed set of workers, nor does anyone want to return to that kind of supply chain.
If we are to have unions, they need to dramatically change to cover current job arrangements and look forward to the future. They need to protect workers not just in their daily efforts but make them profit from the capital they produce, enable them to work better not harder, and allow higher goals like continuing education to advance or change fields, or embellish society in ways ranging from taking care of the young and elderly to creating art that reflects the height of wealth and development of our culture.
It is a testament to the current state of our culture that we not only don't fund the arts but fight about what art does get funded. A perfect mirror depicting the decrepit state of our culture and society, much because of the lowly state of compensation for effort otherwise known as work.
11
My son worked at a small company for 22 years. He was expected to give at least two weeks notice. On the other hand, his employer, still in business, had his co-worker tell my son two days into his vacation not to return. He received no more money, not even for his paid vacation, nor for days worked the previous week. He subsequently got another job two months later. Better job that appreciates this hard worker, except the pay is 35% less. But work is work. But like so many, even after disconnecting cable, tightening your belt, no car payment, he can no longer pay off his debts. Debts he incurred honorably backed by a 22year old work history. Debts, much of which was medical, trying to pay premiums and copays because his former employer paid nothing, not even overtime. He has no option but to declare bankruptcy and still has no money except bare minimum expenses, food, heat, cheap rent. Trump's tax bill will not help him. Fairness is a two way street. If a business expects sufficient notice, then they too should not spring sudden changes on employees.
49
Please name the business so we can boycott them.
2
I am sorry for your son -- that's awful -- it has happened to me and my husband, much older than your son. My husband was laid off of a 22 year job at a Fortune 100 corporation, just a few years short of a pension -- for little more reason than turning 50! They admitted he was an exemplary worker, but they didn't "need him anymore".
I was fired on -- or just before or after -- New Year's Day on three separate occasions in my life, so I got to start the new year with NO JOB (and never any severance pay, and sometimes cheated out of unemployment insurance as well).
At least your son found a new job; I know people over 50 who lost career jobs in the recession and have never worked again. They went from solidly middle class with houses and cars, to bankrupt and couch surfing.
Not completely explained in this article is that while companies can fire you anytime, for any reason -- you can also QUIT at any time for any reason. It goes both ways. Of course, most of us are tied to jobs by reasons of paychecks and health insurance. So the pain is not equivalent.
Also if companies know they can't fire employees, they restrict hiring very dramatically. In France, it is nearly impossible to get fired -- no matter what -- but there is also double our unemployment, and youth unemployment in double digits. Most workers are hired on "contract" -- like our "temps".
What can we do about this? Let's start with closing the borders, and deporting all illegal aliens. And no more H1Bs!
I agree with this overall but there is a price to pay. Employees in some European companies need to give 6 months notice to change jobs. This makes hiring experienced professionals much tougher.
4
This isn't Europe. It's sort of 1896 America in this context. But, as Christine McM observed above, "balance is key".
1
:-)
Yes exactly, and my employer also has to give me 6 month notice.. (there is of course the possibility of termination with immediate effect in some situations).
What is the problem with that? A new employer will wait a few month if you are worth it..
Six month is admittedly longer than average, but for better qualified employees or senior staff members it is not uncommon in Switzerland. In my case, the statutory minimum notice period would be 3 month.
2
There would be a price for doing this. If workers are given any real, meaningful rights, then we have a contest in order to fire them. Think Civil Service, think unions.
I think it a price worth paying in a civil society. We accept other limits to "efficient commerce," such as working conditions and child labor laws.
However, we must be honest with ourselves about what we are doing. And don't kid ourselves -- yes, it would be abused. Every legal contest process is abused. That is what lawyers do.
Perhaps the best, cleanest way to get this is to have unions, with contracts, and union reps to help enforce them. We already had that, and it worked.
37
Unfortunately, we no longer have unions with any clout and that’s why we have increasing worker abuse. It’s back to the good old days where you had the “right to work” but this came with no recognition of your humanity. Priceless.
4
The wealthy have their own union looking out for their economic interests -- it's called Congress.
Why shouldn't the rest of us have similar representation? I support union workers.
170
Why? Because the GOP has no interest in helping workers.
And states like Montana like to elect the GOP.
(yes, I know Sen Tester is a Dem).
1
This is one of those well-meaning pieces that paints an overly simplistic portrait of how unions will save American jobs. But they probably won't. Here's two examples:
Tech Industry. If all software engineers and computer techies were, en masse, to attempt to form a union, virtually all their jobs would disappear in the blink of an eye and be shipped off to India. Not only are many of those jobs already there, but through the illegal use of the H-1B visa by US companies claiming there aren't Americans to fill the jobs here in this country, many US techies have already been training their far less experienced cheaper foreign replacements. Once there is stricter enforcement in place preventing US companies from doing this, those jobs are gone. No union is going to prevent this. It would only hasten the overseas shipment of those jobs.
Clerical Outsourcing. Many companies are "outsourcing" their clerical, word processing, and bookkeeping functions to third-party contractors. This management decision is typically made with existing employees of the firm or company being "transferred" over to the management of the third-party vendor. Salary, benefits, vacation, 401k, -- these may not be as generous with the new employer. But it is doubtful a union could prevent this type of management decision where the employee is basically being terminated and re-hired by a new entity.
Rather than unions, we need legislation that protects employees and solo contractors in this new economy.
23
Seems like we’d need both supportive legislation AND unions. Sadly though, unless we see more overt individual action, this ship has sailed. This powerlessness of workers is one of the many underpinnings of the systems ensuring this atrocious disparity in wealth in the U.S. and will not be relinquished easily by the wealthy.
38
Why not both? If we had protections for independent contractors that for all purposes are really employees in every thing but name--and protections and benefits, AND unions protecting workers of both stripes, workers would be protected seamlessly and discourage abuse of either. As for unions, they do need to be reworked for the 21st Century. Take the Indian coders mentioned, unions can fight for measures causing employers to pay for sending work overseas, for instance, make them pay full union dues for foreign workers that workers here pay out of their own pockets. Not only would it fund better unions, it would force employers to use greater discretion when choosing between us and foreign workers. Actually, making this a federal law, making corporations pay into a pool that funds retraining and relocation for every job they turn into an independent contractor position or hire a worker overseas isn't a bad policy idea with the same pressure to use better discretion.
23
What we need is to understand that capitalism is, like nature itself, cruel, harsh and often brutal. Those who can advance in such a system represent survival of the fittest, a method of last man or woman standing. Those of us, myself included, who cannot or will not participate in this competitive endeavor cannot complain and attempt, by whatever means, to handicap those who do possess such a warrior spirit. Steve Jobs said that exceptional people and companies shouldn't be regulated because it interferes in progress and achievement. He was right. Unions and labor laws only impede the natural order of any hierarchy with unintended consequences.
3
I helped to organize adjunct faculty at UMass Lowell. Before we unionized, we had not had a raise in 10 years. People with PhD's, doing the essential work of the university, were working half-time and making $12,000 a year, with no benefits, and could be "not reassigned" for no reason at all. Even with our union ,although our pay and protections have improved, we still work in a precarious situation for low wages and no benefits.
We've been in negotiation for 2 1/2 years, and the university, which is financially healthy, refuses to provide benefits.
This is the case for most adjunct professors, who make up about 65% of the teaching faculty at universities across the nation. We tell our children to get an education so that they can get a better job, but the people providing that education are horribly exploited. Time for Americans to wake up and stand up and demand better working conditions for all workers.
157
Education is not a guarantee of a good job, just a means to improve the odds since not having a college degree effectively bars you from anything above minimum wage. That is as it should be.
1
Leave Capitalism Alone: Why is that? The world needs house painters and janitors and meat packers just as much as it needs professors. Not everyone needs a college degree. Your suggestion that those hard workers don't deserve anything above minimum wage, even assuming that our minimum wage is remotely adequate (which it isn't), is insulting to say the least. People deserve basic human dignity and nobody working a full-time job should go hungry.
4
Hear, hear!
1
Somewhere there is an ideal balance between the rights of workers and the rights of ownership and management but that balance has been lost in our country for decades.
As wealth has concentrated in fewer hands so has political power everywhere on the globe, but to a unique level in America because of the nearly unlimited influence of money in our political system.
The problem is that even as enlightened voters are becoming increasingly aware of this, their power to change the system has been shrinking as a Supreme Court with a majority of appointments made at the behest of the investment class favors corporations over people and true democracy.
If the Democratic party doesn't make campaign finance reform a central issue going forward, it will be a clear and tragic sign that the power of big money has complete control of our "democracy".
65
The system that reflects labor rights is socialism which is unsustainable and the system that gives labor equal standing to capital is communism which has repeatedly failed.
Leave, that is the thinking of a predatory capitalist without a great deal of historical knowledge. Guilds were prevalent in Renaissance Italy and in England throughout its years of empire. When unions were established here the middle class got its footing and the economy soared. The decline of unions coincides with the decline of the middle class. What happens when the consumer engine of the world can no longer afford to consume?
3
In an American society that is litigious, while a 'just cause' law is ideal it simultaneously is impractical as it will mess up work atmosphere, resulting in work environments that are psychologically unhealthy.
While less ideal, requiring employers pay full six months of all emoluments - half of leave entitlements inclusive, provide whatever health insurance coverage an employee had access to for six months, pay all vested benefits such as employee gratuity, and a company determined severance payout forces companies to balance benefits and costs of firing employees. This benefits and costs optimization has a better chance of protecting workers than a just cause law or unionization.
3
Union contracts have "just cause" provisions that have worked for years. They require contracts and unions to work, however. Unfortunately years of union bashing by those who benefit most by employee exploitation are the same people funding the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC has been writing anti-worker and anti-union laws that lazy republican state legislatures pass without even looking at them.
I think a year or more depending on the age of the worker being let go without cause. I also think that if the company is going bankrupt, workers need to paid first. Otherwise, everyone is just assuming the cost for a worker who may never work again, while a company can go on to outsource or benefit by hiring another at a much lower salary. I don't frankly see companies paying out six months or a year of salary and benefits, so law suits it is!
My husband worked the first 31 years of our marriage in non union jobs. One company paid him $75 dollars to work 27 hours through Christmas day while covering emergency service heating calls. At time and a half he would have earned $200. They docked his pay when he stayed home to get a couple hours of sleep. He was a service manager at the 2nd company he worked at but pushed back into the field when the owner of the company hired his wife's childhood friend. The 3rd company was a great company but all his service paperwork, hours worth, was filled out off the clock. A union shop would never tolerate this. He has been employed in a union utility since 2008 and the difference is night and day. He has complete job security with a union negotiated "no lay-off" clause, his job can't be given to a boss's SIL, friend or any other nepotism. He earns a great pay with great benefits including a pension, which he has never had since starting work at the age of 16. He has negotiated raises, generous sick time, 4 weeks vacation and 10 paid holidays plus a floating one. For the first time in our 40 years of marriage we don't fear a job loss. We recently sided our 30 year old home and put in a paved driveway. We would never have taken on such an expensive home improvement job without this guaranteed job security. The benefits far outweigh the few issues that union shops have. The peace of mind is worth every penny spent on union dues which are less than $20 a week for his $100K salary.
307
Other than socialism, how do you justify paying anyone without a graduate degree that kind of money and those benefits? The very greatness you describe is why unions are destined to fail.
Your story is a true testament to the need for Unions. Without the job security they create, there would be no middle class.
6
The skills that keeps the machinery running on which modern life depends are worth more than most graduate degree requiring jobs. Here plenty of non union industrial and trade workers earn that kind of money, and properly so.
4
Yes to this general argument, but in fairness business owners will also point out that we need to be certain that preserving equal opportunity and rights does not also guarantee equal results for those of limited resources or ambition or those who simply do not try but want the benefits accorded the conscientious. The parallel is those who endanger free speech by abusing it.
10
How can you abuse or endanger free speech? I am not trying to argue, I just want to understand the parallel. Are protesters abusing free speech? A union does not guarantee you a job if you are not meeting your performance requirements. They just make the employer show the just cause for termination.
Having limited resources should still not be an excuse to abuse workers. If you want to be a one-person operation and abuse yourself, feel free. But as soon as you hire another, there is an expectation that you at least be honest about how limited you are, and pay the person who helps you profit for say, overtime. If they know how insecure your job offer is, they can at least keep looking for a real job.
1
“Workers deserve a similar push to receive the job protections that their European counterparts enjoy.”
European workers tend to be better protected and better paid with closer proximation to pay scales with their bosses than their American counterparts.
Unions have been all but destroyed by the Republican Party over the last several decades and upending regulations aimed at protecting workers and the public ought to be campaign issues in the elections coming in less than a year.
117
Democrats helped this by all but ignoring workers' rights and unions (except some lip service during primary elections).
2
Not only better protected: our unions have always negotiated for better conditions, there are union representatives at each and every factory or other place of employment. For the most part, unions and employers respect each other. If there are conflicts, they are either worked out with or without a strike, or both parties call in a trusted mediator.
People have six weeks of paid sick leave and cannot be fired, those with children can also take up to four days off - again paid - to care for a sick child. Non-work requests, like "Can you pick up my dry-cleaning" are not allowed, not even for apprentices. Workers' safety is periodically re-evaluated and modified accordingly in case of new hazards. And, guess what? Our economy is booming.
Years ago, I was in hospital for four weeks because of a serious infection and, half-delirious, worried constantly about losing my job. Someone must have contacted my boss , because he called to tell me to concentrate on getting well, and as to my job, "We are not in America. When you come back, you can get started where you left off. Now quit worrying."
4
The Democrats helped destroy unions. Go back and look at how the Democratic Party harmed more than helped the Scott Walker recall in Wisconsin, for example.
Democrats sold out the union decades ago.
1
Almost all the rights mentioned here are defensive, designed to assure that workers are not mistreated. That leaves a conspicuous omission, the right to collectively bargain for wages and benefits. This is the most fundamental purpose of unionizIon, and it’s omission calls into question whether the writer is truly a champion of workers’ rights.
54
Virtually all unions seek to negotiate decent wages for the employees they represent, and by and large they succeed by obtaining wages that substantially excceed those paid to non-organized employees, and Michjas wrongly assumes that the authors do not support this fundamental aspect of cossective bargaining.
The authors seek to emphasize a benefit most unions are able to obtain for the workers they represent that is almost totally absent from the non-union employment relationship: the right to contest unfair disciplinary action and unfair work rules. In my experience as a decades-long union lawyer, the right to grieve, and have submitted to arbitration before a neutral arbiter, creates a dignity on the job that often outweighs even the higher pay rates ggenerally enjoyed by union-represented employees.
Hailing from Arizona, where employee self-organization is rare because of viciously anti-union politics, Michjas appears not to understand this important aspect of union representation. I for one laud the authors for their presentation.
1
Collective bargaining is only a positive in the minds of the far left. We are not all rail in talent, skill, knowledge, ability, motivation or aptitude. Unions only dumb this fact down to the lowest common denominator. They extort things like a fixed rate of pay, ignoring that some of their membership many be worth considerably less while a few may be worth astronomically more. Yet all get the same (mostly) inflated wage. A few years ago I had just such a situation. Three people had to be paid $8/hr each due to minimum wage laws. One was stellar and I would have gladly paid him $20/hr if I could have balanced my $24 costs by paying her two co-workers $2 each. But intrusive do gooder bureaucrats prevented me from exercising managerial prerogative and supervising the business I was responsible for. In the end I lost the performer and was left with the slugs.
1
The time when an employee had a recognizable employer and expectations of some stable relationship with that employer are fading away into the ‘used to be world.’ Today more and more employees even in IT industries, Legal firms and Medicine are signed on with Agencies that align workers with employers on a temporary arrangement and the employee does what his assigned Boss wishes but its human contact is the agency. To wish for fair arrangements in that world is illusionary; the employer may not know your name and has little reason to ask.
Workers are Precariats as for example an Uber driver who accepts the contract but has little to say when it changes unless an organization of drivers is provoked.
Unions need, as they may be doing, to redesign organization efforts for that loose workforce. Then a just-cause rule may someday reappear, wouldn’t that be nice.
21
My husband worked for several years for such an agency. It was out of state and he literally never met any one at the agency face to face; they hired him over the phone sent him to an out-of-state client to work. He made good pay, but the agency probably bills roughly 3 times his rate, so they made far more.
They did pay for health insurance, but no other benefit -- not even paid vacation. If he wanted ANY time off, he could take it but then he was not paid for that day.
After three years, he got a call saying "your services will not longer be required" and that was that. He packed his bags, got in the car and drove 1000 miles back home. No severance pay, nothing. It was like he had never existed. They told him they could find him new jobs anywhere in the country, but they never called him for any -- despite exemplary performance reviews for that 3 year period of time.
I've never gone out of town for a temp job, but I've worked plenty in my own town. The last one, I worked for a year for a major employer....only to be sent home one day just prior to the lunch break. They told me "and don't bother coming back in the morning". There was no explanation whatsoever of why the job ended, or what they didn't like, or if it was just an economic decision. Just "go home and don't come back".
1
We in Italy had an employee protection law based on the just cause (the famous article 18 of the "Workers' Statute"), but it was repealed by the central-left Renzi government with last year's Job Act. Reason? according to the employers, the just cause limited the layoffs and discouraged the hiring and Italy had to copy the American model if it wanted to reduce unemployment. The result has been that the job protection was reduced but unemployment remained above 10%.
16
I don't think you understand the American model. You can be fired in the US for any reason (or no reason), without any compensation. Don't smile at your boss? You can be fired. You said or did something outside your job, with no relationship to your job, but which makes your employer uneasy? You can be fired.
Italy did not copy the American copy. In 2015 Italy made dismissal easier for economic reasons or for employee conduct on the job. Prior to 2015 a fired worker could be expected to be reinstated; now he or she will only receive compensation, capped (but still generous compared to the US or the UK).
The 2015 changes will take time to work through the Italian employment system, because it effects only new hires. This means that old hires now have even more of a reason to cling to their job, creating even less employment churn and reducing new hires.
20
But the lobbyists who wrote the changes did alright for sure.
Economic reasons and employee misconduct on the work place were already “just cause” for firing an employee before the new law Job Act, which now permits firing WITHOUT a just cause but with a “adequate” (for the employer) money compensation.
1
If you want to be a society with the rule of law, you must have due process in one of the most important social spheres - the work place.
111
Sounds like something we need but the reality is that american voters have consistently voted AGAINST any attempt to provide workers with just such protections. In the 2017 election, blue collar workers voted overwhelmingly for Trump and Corporate America.You can't force worker protections on workers who don't want them.
72
The vote for Trump was in no way a vote for corporate America. The vote for Trump was about something else. He claimed that he would try to make the lives of the little guy better. When faced with the poorest election choices that I have ever seen, people voted to stick their thumb in the eye of the status quo. Much like what the election of Obama was supposed to be. We voted to again rock the boat. Remember the plot for countless teen movies where they vote the least popular kid for homecoming king or student body president? That was exactly what the vote for Trump was about. There were people that voted Republican, there were people that voted anti-woman, anti-democrat, anti-government. We elected a reality TV star the president. That should speak SO LOUD to the government, the media, the people. But no. People decided to just pick up the conflict right where they left off. Republican vs Democrat, liberal vs conservative. People have all tried to co opt the election to suit their own values and arguments. After the 2008 election I was driving through the worst, poorest, most underprivileged neighborhood in the area. I saw a man wearing the T shirt that depicted Obama in red and blue saying, WE WON! I just thought to myself, did we? Did we win? I guess it all depends on who "we" are. I have yet to feel lucky about the President in office. Year after year, regardless of the party, color, or creed. It has always been exactly the same.
@Sipa 111
Maybe they were not reading the NYTimes and did not see Trump as the capitalist tool his is; this is not a land where one finds balanced media. But also they may have known of Hillary’s take from Goldman Sachs and thought her a poor choice as many did and went for the unknown; the options were not that grand.
Just-cause rule was just not an issue.
After working for the government and having to put up with the flakes, sloths, and disruptive manipulative trolls as coworkers that civil service rules protect, I am happy to be in the gig economy where the only security that I and my coworkers have is our ability to perform and work effectively. I vote against the protections because I don't want to have to work with people who are hard to fire.
How do you provide inexpensive and timely access to the courts or whatever process there is without a thumb on the scale somewhere? How do you keep an administrative process honest? What about, for example, the problems with arbitration, for example, the problems with how police and prosecutors handle accusations of domestic violence, etc.? How do you prevent labor union representatives, Department of Labor officials, etc. from quietly refusing to enforce labor rights on behalf of some people under the very cover of enforcing them for most people, even if changes like this go through? I agree with most of this article, but a great deal of sunlight needs to shine on aspects of this issue that no one wants to admit exist in order for truly worthwhile change to happen.
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How about an op ed on The Sunlight Foundation? It uncovers "the role of money in politics. The organization seeks to increase campaign finance regulations and disclosure requirements."
A 1st step. But were are the op eds on this 1st necessary step, before other reforms can be possible?
And another essential 1st step is to pass laws preventing business from blocking labor unions from organizing in the 1st place. The organization, power and influence are all on the corporate side, obviously.
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@Meredith
The Taft-Hartley Act passed in 1947, what some might see an a more progressive period, and its intent was to hamper unionization after the Wagner Act encouraged it. In this land Unionization was not the farmer’s along with the businessman’s idea of utopia and class awareness a strange concept when we all are middle class; aren’t we? Or were when there was one.
2
For openers, you file what's called a Duty of Fair Representation charge, if you believe that your union isn't backing you up.
It's the law.
Worker's protections are what they are today thanks to heroic efforts of Unions in the past. The firing without cause at present may be due to the disembowelment of Unions, a sad reality whose 'replacement' is yet to be defined, and put in action, so to avoid ongoing abuses of power.
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“… it has become increasingly clear that employers violate those rights by exploiting the power disparity in the workplace.“ So now it’s a mainstream contention that workers should have as much power in the workplace as employers. And some wonder why Democrats are so firmly caught in the political wilderness. Legitimate and recognized (by law) worker rights need to be protected, but equal power to the janitor or the union local official as employer management or ownership? Get real. As a premise to the reasoning in this op-ed, it’s not only bootless, it’s absurd.
Workers don’t have “rights” to jobs that employers must respect in China or Cuba – if we were to create them, we’d be unique.
Rather than any likelihood of repealing “right to work” laws, they’re becoming more popular around the country. Those laws don’t merely allow workers in union shops to refuse to pay union dues (in the relatively rare instance that this happens). They also protect workers from needing to join unions in the first place as a condition of employment at companies that have contracts with unions. Despising unions should not become a bar to earning a living. If the unions want this to become so trivial a recourse that it has little or no impact, then their pitch to workers should be more organically compelling and based on benefits, not on a gun to the head.
Don’t expect Congress to weaken them and don’t expect federal judges to find them unconstitutional or violative of statutes.
8
We HAVE laws that protect and empower “workers to speak out to ask for raises, to combat sexual harassment, to complain about unsafe working conditions and, yes, to join unions.” And workers avail themselves of those laws every day. That doesn’t mean that employers must grant raises merely because they’re requested, but they’d better respond to complaints about sexual harassment and working conditions, because people sue them (expensively) every day when they don’t, and OSHA can shut them down.
8
'We HAVE laws that protect and empower “workers to speak out to ask for raises, to combat sexual harassment, to complain about unsafe working conditions and, yes, to join unions.”'
Yes, indeed. And they are honored about as much as the Soviet Union honored its own constitution.
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macuroc:
So ... let's make some NEW laws that will be honored as carefully as the Soviet Union honored its own constitution.
The problem doesn't appear to be the laws, does it?
3
I used to work at a small hospital where the nursing staff attempted to unionize (our main complaint was the requirement to work rapidly-rotating shifts: a 12-hour day shift, a day off, then three 12-hour night shifts, another day off, then back to 12-hour days...obviously, this sort of schedule was very difficult and increases the risk of error due to fatigue from an irregular sleep schedule).
The hospital management was very clear that they opposed unionization, but it also became clear that the vote would be for unionization by a narrow margin. At the last moment, hospital administration insisted on allowing *all* direct-care employees to vote, despite the fact that non-nursing employees would not be represented by the union. The vote went against unionization, and that very year, all non-nursing direct patient care employees got a bonus.
The issue is still in litigation before the NLRB.
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Haha, actually sounds a lot like military pilot hours. It's pretty easy to maximize safety though -- you just have to prioritize time in the following order: sleep, work, family. Again, not without sacrifice, but you learn how to make it work. No one wants you to fly in formation at night with you if you haven't slept. Same requirement to sleep first should be standard for potentially life-threatening civilian jobs on little sleep. I can't imagine most surgeons would feel comfortable operating if they were very tired -- only difference is they get paid much more than both jobs to endure the prioritization listed above.
2
In NYC we had a similar problem with medical interns until a patient who was the daughter of a writer died under such “care.” Her father’s lawsuit changed the laws surrounding how long an intern must work without a break. Unfortunately, this sometimes also compromises patient care because there may be a lack of continuity when there are shifts from one worker’s care to another. Generally however, you can compensate for the latter but not for the former (care errors made because of exhaustion.)
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Yes, nurses are looked upon as the largest expenditure on the Beancounter's spreadsheet and treated like it's just a matter of calling down to central supply for another bag of them. All abetted by nurse administrators.
A retired RN
5
American workers need better job protections, and better jobs. The attack on the rights of American workers and the unions that give them a voice is decades old.
In fact, it began shortly after World War II but picked up real steam during the Reagan Addministration. Republicans led the way, but neoliberal Democrats--forgetting they are supposed to be the party of regular working people--often acquiesced or even collaborated. For instance, Democrats helped enact trade deals with inadequate labor protections. "Democrats for Education Reform"--backed by Wall Street--relentlessly attacks teacher unions, despite studies that show students taught by unionized teachers do as well or better than students whose teachers are not unionized. And even President Obama was tepid in his support for workers in Wisconsin as Republicans dismantled labor unions there.
The decline in unionization closely tracks the decline of the middle class and the rise in income inequality.
There is little hope that the GOP will ever really fight tor working people, despite the fake populism of the Trump campaign. But the success of that campaign, as well as the broad the appeal of Bernie Sanders, shows that American workers and their families are hungry for leaders who will truly fight for them.
Democrats take note. Remember that you are the party of FDR. Be bold, loud, and unrelenting in your support for worker rights. That is the path back to power and to making a better life for all Americans.
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The ability of employers to hire and fire workers as they see fit is one of the last advantages the US has over foreign rivals. Just imagine if the buggy makers weren't allowed to fire anyone. Liberal policies are uneducated
1
The GOP has always been pro-business and ant-labor going back to Lincoln's time.
McKinley, like his predecessors, was a tool of robber barons. JP Morgan and John D. Rockefeller bankrolled his campaign and told him directly what to do in office. This sounds awful, but that goodness a disgruntled engineer shot McKinley so TR could lead us on a better path.
Later, Andrew Mellon sold Calvin Coolidge on the first trickle-down scheme in the 1920s which led directly to the Great Depression. Coolidge set the record for the least number of voters electing him.
The Great Depression exposed the GOP's failures: capitalism can't always have it's way. The GOP struggled for existence until Ike agreed to run for president. Then, the GOP, with a fresh coat of paint covering their real agenda, emerged from their hiding places. Perhaps they will return there after Trump, Ryan, and McConnell? Perhaps it won't matter when they've already wrecked the country?
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.
Reagan was totally up front about what he wanted to accomplish when he broke the PATCO union (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Org).
PATCO members were professional (well trained) workers in a technical and massively safety-oriented industry. Should they be limited in their working hours in order to reduce the instance of mental errors?
You might call this the "top of the line" union of professional, trained & dedicated workers. Did this prominence and importance protect them when they decided to force improved working conditions?
No!
Reagan was completely dismissive of the union's grievances when they went on (an illegal) strike and then fired some 80% of them who chose not to return to work.
All lesser unions were now on notice: The government is not your friend.
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I have ex employer on tape formally reprimanding me for a federally protected act. My discharge can therefore be challenged even under at-will rules. But I won't because I am afraid of the guy so it's not worth it. Just an example how laissez faire fails even in the legal system. We need government not the invisible hand.
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I caught my employers authorizing a contractor to dump toxic waste. He forged an authorization letter from me to the contractor: I was the environmental engineer on site. He threatened to fire me.
He was too slick a guy. I would have gone to jail. So, I told him: "If I get in trouble, I'll kill you." He knew I meant it. He knows to this day. Forget about lawyers: they only work for the likes of Donald Trump.
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"My discharge can therefore be challenged even under at-will rules. But I won't because I am afraid of the guy so it's not worth it."
So exactly what law would fix this?
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"If the bill had passed 40 years ago, it might have prevented our current age of vast inequality. "
The inequalities that have arisen are not due to employees refusing to pick up a bosses dry cleaning. They are due to automation, imports and the choices consumers make and the impact they had on the manufacturing sector.
"The prevalence of outsourcing, subcontracting and other union-avoidance business strategies make it pretty clear that employers would continue to evade and sabotage any system of labor rights that is tied to an individual employer, rather than one that applies to all employers."
Hold on a second, outsourcing and off-shoring (not mentioned) are cornerstones of globalism that will lead to raising the standard of living for labor worldwide. You ought to read Krugman's articles sometimes and also listen to some of Hillary's campaign speeches.
At one time bumper stickers saying "Buy American!" and "Out of a job yet? Keep buying foreign." were plentiful. Now those attitudes are deemed regressive, racist, xenophobic and of course deplorable.
What a world, what a world!
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If you think that globalism can be reversed, you are dreaming. The question is only whether to manage it so that it does not destroy the American worker, "creatively" or otherwise, (think TPP) or let the corporations swallow all of us whole on the way to ever greater profits.
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jp- I owned several American make cars. All bought new and non lasted a month beyond the last payment. My husband said enough!! Our first foreign car, a Hyundai had over 200,000 miles on it when it was finally put to rest. Our next purchase was a Toyota and we will never purchase the garbage that Detroit puts out. And, no, it is not the unionized workers fault that the domestic companies produce such junk. It is pure greed by the owners and stock investors. The investors have to be pleased at all costs. I bought an US made washing machine. It lasted less than five years and was problematic the whole time, constantly leaking water all over my basement floor. My Samsung has been flawless. Nike sneakers are not US made but sell for exorbitant prices due to company owner and stock holder greed. I can buy American union made jeans for the same price as foreign made Levis but the parent company of Levi and their stock holders are greedy. They can never have enough money. And trump and his disgusting family are no different. All his products and his daughter's as well are Asian sweat shop made. Where's the outrage towards him and his deplorable family?
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@sharon: Sounds like you are thinking along the same lines as Trump and his family.
"And, no, it is not the unionized workers fault that the domestic companies produce such junk."
So you're penalizing the poor union laborer for the mistakes of his/her employer? Not a lot of solidarity there.
It's funny that the NY Times has this editorial on the same day that the lead story is about wasteful union\public work.
"The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth .. How excessive staffing, little competition, generous contracts and archaic rules dramatically inflate capital costs for transit in New York."
Can't we learn from the economic mistakes of the Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela...........
Why do you think economic growth in Europe has been so weak for the past 40 years ???
Answer..Big Government.
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"Why do you think economic growth in Europe has been so weak for the past 40 years ???"
Sez who??? And for whom???
37
Australia has the highest minimum wage on the planet and heaps of worker protections and benefits...4 weeks paid leave, paid sick leave and paid maternity leave, overtime, long service leave and much , much more...
With 66% of all Australians in the middle class or higher (highest rate in the World) we struggle along and get by...
By the way, our economy has grown every quarter since 1992 when we last had a recession...so we must be doing something right by ALL Australians!
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The four failed countries are not in Europe. Nor do they represent the successful labor strategies of Northern European nations. The failures of Spain, Greece, Italy are due to the same as the failures in the US - a me first laziness that undermines the very intent of worker protection.
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I read this article and had to double check and make sure it wasn’t a reprint from 1917, Old, tired and way out of step with demands and vitality of the global economy. Seriously, who wants to be just like Europe?
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' Seriously, who wants to be just like Europe? '
Probably anyone who needs medical treatment. Or loses their job. Or is retired. Or doesnt want to work 3 jobs to feed a family.
Probably most Americans at the moment.
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I moved to Europe. It’s great living here.
4
Me! Me! Me! I do!
Universal health care. No bankruptcies from medical bills. Bullet trains that don't kill people going 70 mph on decrepit track. Paid maternity leave. Job Protection. Freedom to cross borders and study. Support of the sciences and arts.
PLEASE, please, let's be just like Europe!!
2
Right now, all the pressure is in one direction, pushing the rights of employers at the expense of workers.
As a practical matter, it may be asking too much to roll back the so-called right-to-work laws.
I would suggest that unions push for a charter that would balance the right not to join a union with the right to join, with no ifs, buts and maybes, and free of employers' actions that impede union membership for anyone who wants to join. Unions would be free to negotiate contracts with employers which would not be honored for employees who choose not to pay union dues.
The Dems should include such a policy in their platform, and couch the argument as being all about freedom. That would steal one of the GOP's favorite talking points, appeal to people's sense of fairness, and reestablish the party's credentials with working people.
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mancuroc- while your suggestion of not having union representation unless paying the dues is only fair and right the problem with that option is impending strikes for worker violations and other grievances. What makes union shops powerful is the power of numbers. If only a handful of employees threaten to strike the company can bring in non-union management to displace the striking workers. They will hire scabs and actually employ scabs since the non-union members are just that. My husband works for a union utility. Management is not unionized and highly abused by the company. The engineers have tried to unionize with no success. They see how much better and more secure their union represented co-workers' jobs are compared to their own. Most employers could not care less about their employees and only do the minimum required by law. There are exceptions of course. My daughter works for one such company. The owners are caring, generous and kind. A rarity theses days. The workers are treated with respect. They would never dream of organizing. But this company is definitely a stand-out. Most workers aren't so lucky. Unions allow the workers to fight the abuses and inequities. There is strength in numbers. And the only way this works is if all the workers have equal skin in the game. Union dues at my husband's company are not even $20 a week. He makes over $100K a year. A very small price to pay for all the benefits and protections his union provides.
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Sharon, I agree with you almost 100%. But I'm talking about political feasibility. surely it would be better to have unconditional, unimpeded freedom to organize and join a union in a so-called "right-to-work" state than not to have it. I think that would be a relatively easy sell to the public. If it were clear that only union members benefit from union contracts, I think you would find strength in numbers with most of the holdout workers getting on board.
Incidentally, much what I propose is the supposed position of the "right-to-work" movement, except that it's a fraud. When it comes to legislation they are all about the right to not join a union and conveniently forget about the right to unionize. Make them put their money where their mouth is
2
If you take off time to care for your sick child, the FMLA already protects you. (Family & Medical Leave Act).
But you employer has to have at least 50 employees in order for the FMLA to apply. But Congress could easily amend the statute to reduce the threshold from 50 to 25 employees (or any other number).
Assuming, of course, that more than 50% of Congress consisted of decent, caring people.
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In addition, under the FMLA the employee must have worked for the employer for at least 12 months and have at least 1250 hours of service in the 12 months before taking leave. As such, the FMLA leaves many employees without the right to any leave. Our country and workers would be far better off, healthier and less stressed if every worker were guaranteed a certain number of days or hours annually that could be taken for pressing personal and health matters - care of sick children or elders, school conferences, etc. It simply isn't right for employees to have to choose between getting a sick child or elderly parent to the doctor, or meeting with teachers about a child's serious educational problems, for example, and losing a much needed job.
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You should go start a company (ie. risk your own life savings and own family’s security) and report back how easy it is to extend endless benefits to employees who are not working. Where did this idea come from that all business owners are rich and deserve a government lead fleecing!?!
1
Good luck with that!
Our Congressmen and Senators live in bubble. They are protected from our wrath by a praetorian guard. They visit us only during election years, protected by the praetorian guard. Can't have the rabble expressing themselves can we?
2
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. One of the main things that differentiates vibrant America from somnolent Europe is the ability of labor to quickly and freely move to where it is needed. Companies do not exist to create jobs. They exist to provide goods and services that people want. This results in job creation but it not the reason the companies exist. Creative destruction is also creative construction. “Just cause” really means just being stuck with employees when consumers no longer want your products. Bad news all the way around.
16
Robert Brandfass, you are the one in the "wrong, wrong, wrong." First of all, Europe isn't somnolent. And it isn't a unified entity. Labor conditions in Germany are vastly different from those in Greece, France, Poland, etc. And the economies of some of those countries are thriving. Second, labor in the U.S. doesn't quickly and freely move to where it is needed. Moving costs a lot of money and companies won't pay you to move unless you are a very valuable high-tech or management type. Moving uproots families and destroys community ties. When a company relocates it frequently does so in order to cut labor costs--sure, jobs are created, but often at much lower wages than had prevailed in the previous site. Third, "just cause" does include downsizing or closing a place of employment. It definitely does not mean being stuck paying employees when you're not selling your products.
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'Companies do not exist to create jobs. They exist to provide goods and services that people want.'
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Companies exist to provide a return on investment to their owners/shareholders. No private company was ever created to provide anything other than profit.
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To Robert B (wrong) & Jean (right):
An interesting sidelight to your differing views on why companies exist is the history of corporations in America. For the first century or so of the Republic, corporations owed their existence to the state, and corporate charters had several stringent requirements. They were granted for specific purposes, for a limited time, and could be revoked for violating laws or causing public harm. In a nutshell, corporations had obligations to the wider public beyond their shareholders or customers.
Corporations are still chartered by the state, but in any practical sense the charters are now unconditional. Their sole legal obligation is to act in the interests of their shareholders.
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporation...
31
The last thing we need is more government bureaucracy tracking every job movement and placement. I am sure there are some wrongful terminations, but requiring employers to write more reports to the government isn't the solution. When I was terminated from a job - I was offered money if I promised not to contest my termination - most large corporations already offer such packages to avoid suits. Another law requiring more HR documentation and reports will just make the US less competitive. (Yes, I took the money and moved on. There are better things to do in life than spend time it in court). The reason for corporate tax change isn't because we want to be nice or "fair" - it is because we don't want to lose (I had stock in a company that inverted to Canada, of individual stocks I now own 10 out of 22 are foreign companies - did we want to see that become 22 out of 22).
7
Who said anything about more paperwork? If every employer terminated only for cause then there would be no additional paperwork.
And yes cause includes changing business environment where employees are no longer needed.
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Way too much rabbit hole to debate what is a just cause? What if I found multiple local someones who are 2x more productive but only want 1.5x the pay? Is that just cause to fire you because I can't afford both and I need the boost to help my family make ends meet? The question really is -- if the market rate for productivity is now faster than your current pay rate, can you be fired? Can your pay be reduced? Is it 'just' to fire not because you have done anything wrong, but you are no longer worth the rate you demand. I'd imagine pro sports like this -- when new draftees are better than you, you don't keep the old draftees forever. Should sports teams keep players until they sustain a career-ending injury because that would be 'just' or can they just require all players to make the cut every year like almost any varsity team in high school?
I would argue that publicly misrepresenting your company like giving the finger to the presidential motorcade is worth firing over as just, as would most employers. Freedom of speech, yes, but if you misrepresent the company while executing it, it's pretty fair game. It's like you are free to disparage your company all over online forums and social media, but don't expect yourself to be free from consequences for your free speech. In the same way people don't have to be friends or date people they don't like anymore
1
American worker job protections? Are you kidding me? We are heading completely in the the opposite direction. Corporate American and the .1% are working diligently to reintroducing a new form of slavery. We see this being enacted right in front of us. Look no further than the plethora of foreigner worker visas. The most notorious being the H1B. These visas are used, not to bring in top talent as they claim, but to replace American workers by the millions, right after they are forced to train their replacement. How could such a thing happen? "Citizens United", or the permission by the the US Judicial System to allow the .1% to buy dominion over our government, and subsequently...us. It was once unfathomable to me that such pervasive corruption could exist in this country, but with Trump and the rest of the clown factory on Capital Hill nothing surprises me anymore.
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"The most notorious being the H1B."
Amen to that. Our POTUS is on the case.
15
In this country we can't even get overtime, vacation days, or maternity or sick leave unless our jobs deign to give them to us as "benefits". This is unheard of in other civilized countries. This country has no worker rights or protections to speak of, or at least I'm usually of that opinion until somehow Republicans find a way to shred whatever paper thin protections we somehow managed to cling to.
I'm an older millennial and I'm fairly sure no one in my generation will be able to retire; when we're all laid off at 50 with no pensions, utterly inadequate 401Ks, no housing equity because we were priced out, and likely no more social security if the current Congress gets their way, what will happen to us?
10
Can you elaborate on what in your experience causes you to say that the H1B visa program is being used to replace American workers? I am genuinely just curious.
1
In the end, the worker in an ongoing dispute with the management - whatever is the reason - is highly unlikely to be productive or motivated at work, and frequently destroys the spirits of the whole team. Besides, many, many fewer people are fired than pushed out as a result of layoffs and restructurings - and any mention of that is conspicuously missing from the essay.
I work for a large European company, daily collaborating with my counterparts "across the pond". With all the turmoil in the industry in the last 15-20 years, there had been countless layoffs here and there - but while very few of my over-55 co-workers in the U.S. survived them, I don't know a single employee with more than 15 years with the company at its Euro-sites who would be let go rather than reassigned to another part of the business. Both societal taboos and legal restrictions (as well as mandated lengthy severance) allow people to stay on, and in turn develop much higher loyalty to the company than what we see here.
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The example you site is evidence why "legalistic" approach will fail. It is already illegal to terminate employees based on age (e.g. over 55) - yet you seem to imply that it still happens- even though it is in violation of federal law. Another reason why more government intrusion isn't the solution.
1
drm I talked to the outsourcing firm at my last job, and they had also noticed the "unusually high" number of people over 50, and often over 60, who lost their jobs in a large outsourcing effort. The only people offered other positions were younger, and it felt like the rest of us were blackballed when we applied internally to other departments. Then about six months later our old job started showing up on the company jobsite, tweaked just enough that we were not eligible to apply.
Age discrimination is most certainly alive and well...
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Funny you should call legal protections for the workers " a government intrusion."
16
Until our government limits immigration, and stops the 1% from being the only beneficiary of globalization, this is hopeless.
36
"and stops the 1% from being the only beneficiary of globalization"
You need to tell that to Krugman and Hillary.
9
Instead of blaming immigrants, blame the guy that fired you and gave your job to an immigrant.
3