U.S. suffers biggest
pay drop on record
Who’s On Our Side?
By Tom Chamberlain
O
ur 2009 efforts to pass com-
prehensive labor law reform
failed by one vote in the U.S. Sen-
ate. Sensible labor law updates and
changes — in the form of the Em-
ployee Free Choice Act — failed
because a U.S. Senate procedural
vote requires 60 votes out of 100 to
close debate, and failure to close de-
bate results in preventing an up or
down vote on legislation or an ex-
ecutive branch or judicial appoint-
ment (filibustering the bill or ap-
pointment).
Over the last half decade, corpo-
rate and Wall Street lobbyists —
helped primarily by Senate Repub-
licans — have used the filibuster not
only to kill the Employee Free
Choice Act and a load of progres-
sive legislation, but they have also
successfully blocked President
Obama’s federal judicial appoint-
ments — judges who would have
countered President Bush’s 240 ju-
dicial appointees and brought the
court system’s rightward trajectory
back into balance.
The success corporatists have
had using the filibuster (specifically
the silent filibuster, where senators
don’t have to talk anymore; they
can simply “object” to a vote and
everything comes to a screeching
halt) has resulted in long-term va-
cancies in key parts of our govern-
ment —from the Federal Election
Commission to the Bureau of Alco-
hol, Tobacco and Firearms. Presi-
dent Obama is not the first president
whose appointments have been held
hostage by the filibuster, but he is
the first to see whole enforcement
bodies held hostage by the fili-
buster.
Until recently, presidents have
O PEN
F ORUM
To The Editor:
You published an article informing
us that organized labor ranks are
shrinking. Do you mean to tell me that
this is news? For 20 years, myself and
others like myself have been wonder-
ing when organized labor would use its
ability to contact large groups of the
public through the media, newspapers,
local publications, public outreach,
etc., to warn against the trend of
unchecked outsourcing and the accept-
ance of unregulated immigrant labor.
Where were you people when
NAFTA was passed?
PAGE 10
had the ability to make temporary
executive appointments during Sen-
ate recess, allowing them to keep
our government working even if the
Senate is holding up permanent ap-
pointees. But recent decisions by
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit and for
the Third Circuit say that presiden-
tial intrasession recess appointments
are unconstitutional. This decision
is under appeal to the United States
Supreme Court, and if upheld it
would bring agencies such as the
National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) to a grinding halt.
Currently, the NLRB needs
members to be reappointed (these
are current members who have al-
ready been confirmed by the Senate
in the past) to even have a quorum
and be able to conduct business.
Without a NLRB quorum, private
sector workers would have no way
to enforce workers’ rights. Such
rights range from enforcement of
rules governing organizing to col-
lective bargaining.
Without a Board to enforce the
National Labor Relations Act, em-
ployers could threaten workers’ jobs
or outright fire union advocates.
Union organizing would slow from
the trickle we are experiencing to-
day to no organizing.
Without enforcement, collective
bargaining would halt, employers
could simply refuse to bargain with-
out recourse, dragging out negotia-
tions and unilaterally cutting wages
and benefits, putting ever-increas-
ing pressure on workers in the
hopes that workers would vote
against their own best interest and
decertify the union.
While employers have imple-
mented anti-worker strategies, they
have always had to function within
the confines of the National Labor
Relations Act. Left to their own de-
vices, employers could run rough-
shod over workers in a way that
hearkens back to the Robber Baron
era of the 1890s.
Fifteen months ago, a Senate
rules reform bill specifically focus-
ing on filibuster reform was watered
down in exchange for promises of
cooperation from Senate Republi-
can Leader Mitch McConnell.
Those promises have proven time
and time again to be hollow.
Thankfully, Oregon’s junior U.S.
Senator Jeff Merkley has spear-
headed a charge to change the Sen-
ate rules to stop the efforts of a mi-
nority of senators who would rather
derail government in their efforts to
advance a political agenda.
Sen. Merkley’s leadership, cou-
pled with increased pressure from
progressive groups led by the
American union movement, has re-
sulted in a renewed outcry for fili-
buster reform. Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has
signaled that the time is right for re-
form.
Our message to Oregon Senators
Merkley and Ron Wyden:
Fight on for reform, fight on for
workers, and fight on for a govern-
ment that works for the 99 percent,
and work to get more of your col-
leagues standing on our side of fili-
buster reform.
Tom Chamberlain is president of
the Oregon AFL-CIO.
Labor needs PR campaign
How ignorant do you think we are?
I have been a union man my whole
life. I have tried to promote union
thinking and pro-American manufac-
turing and products. I have been in the
industrial community for over 35
years. What has happened in the in-
dustry did not take a socio-economic
genius to predict. We now have a soci-
ety where a large part of the workforce
is happy to get any job at all, and a
large part of that workforce doesn’t un-
derstand that organized labor is the rea-
son that they have such things as week-
ends, holidays, benefits, etc. They are
happy to (work as much overtime as
they can) to make up for meager
wages. And what’s worse, organized
labor sat by and watched it happen.
Where were the public ad cam-
paigns informing people what was re-
ally going on and warning people of
the real dangers of free trade with
China and the unchecked admittance
of migrant labor all the time flooding a
depressed economy that could not sup-
port their ranks?
Is it too late to change this trend? I
believe that it probably is. But if I had
my way, my dues would go to public
information about the real state of this
country and the leadership that is driv-
ing it into the ground. But of course we
all know that's not going to happen, is
it?
Fred Feuerstein
IBEW Local 125
Satsop, Washington
As union membership continues to
decline, hourly pay for nonfarm work-
ers in the U.S. fell at a 3.8 percent an-
nualized rate in the first quarter of
2013, the biggest quarterly decline
since the Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS) started keeping track in 1947.
Via Huffington Post: “Some of the
drop was payback for a 9.9 percent
surge in hourly pay in the fourth quarter
of 2012, as employers shoveled money
out the door to avoid tax changes they
expected to take place in 2013.
“But there have been plenty of such
quarterly pay increases in the past.
Many were even bigger. Some went on
for several quarters at a time. And never
has there been such a steep pay drop in
E
E
FR
response as there was in the first quarter
of this year.
“Smoothing out the quarterly ups
and downs doesn’t make the picture
look any better.
“Hourly worker pay rose just 1.9
percent in 2012, a pitiful increase that
barely kept up with the 1.8 percent gain
in the consumer price index. That was
the third-weakest annual increase in
hourly pay since 1947, topping only the
1.4 percent gain in 2009 and a 1.8-per-
cent gain in 1994.
“Hourly pay has grown by just 2
percent per year, on average, for the
past four years, the weakest four-year
stretch on record. At the same time,
corporate profits are at record highs,
and until a recent swoon, the stock mar-
ket was setting records, too.
“Workers haven’t been reaping the
rewards, but their employers have been.”
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