Portrait of a Charming Man
It’s hardly unusual to find a glowing hagiography of a corporate CEO in the pages of a major newspaper. I’m not, per se, opposed to feting J.W. Marriott. If you can get past the creepy fact that he’s a high elder of the Mormon church, he’s just a charming old man who values family, tells hokey jokes and makes a point of being personally courteous to his workers. However, when the Washington Post goes so far as to twist the words of a leader of the hotel employees union to make the CEO of one of the most viciously anti-union companies in the country sound like a good boss, well, that’s when I get mad.
The Marriott corporation runs an anti-union operation as pervasive and sophisticated as Wal-Mart’s. First-line managers are trained to call the corporation’s central union-busting office at the slightest sign of discontent. Corporate’s union busters fly in and do the usual mix of firings, captive audience and one-on-one meetings, and maybe even a slight raise in wages – all in order to keep the status quo of “on-call” employment with no job protection.
The author of the piece, Michael Rosenwald, interviewed the hotel division president of UNITE HERE, John Wilhelm, for the piece. Wilhelm presumably used the opportunity to speak at length about Marriott’s anti-union track record – such as the fact that only ten percent of its operations are unionized compared to better than 30% of Hilton and Starwoods, or the briefly-alluded-to 20 year fight to unionize San Francisco’s flagship Marriott hotel – but the author shallowly focused on the few positive things that Wilhelm could say about J.W. Marriott.
Like, for instance, his common man touch when dealing with employees on a personal basis. Okay, so the man introduces himself and engages in chit chat with the bellmen and doormen when staying at one of his hotels. Well, that’s nice…I guess. But is this only notable because most corporate suits act like total dickheads around the “hired help?” How about the doozy that in the three cities where UNITE HERE has managed to make dealing with the union a cost of doing business that Marriott “live[s] up to the terms of the contracts?” When does living up to the legally enforceable contracts you have made become laudable, or even notable? Only in the context of a company that breaks the law with impunity when resisting its workers’ rights to organize and improve the job.
The Washington Post owes readers a complete picture of Marriott’s union-busting human resources policies, or else it owes us their traditional silence on wrong-doing when praising a charming elder statesman.
Back In the Line
At first blush, Thursday’s story in the Times Metro section that disgraced former Central Labor Labor Council President Brian McLaughlin has returned to work as a rank and file electrician has a certain poetry to it. McLaughlin is charged with stealing from the New York State legislature where he served as an Assemblyman, from his own re-election campaign, from his home local in the Electrician’s union, from the Central Labor Council and, most ignominiously, from a union sponsored little league – over two million dollars in total. The evidence is damnable.
That the dapper chief could brush off years of high living and the shame of his fall from grace, and return to work alongside the union brothers he has let down, at a job that is very physically demanding when most men his age are considering retirement is almost, well, admirable.
Damn his eyes. I can’t help but feel used all over again. Surely he returned to the trades and had the story leaked to Steven Greenhouse of the Times in an attempt to co-author the last chapter of his story before he goes down the river. I’d like to believe that McLaughlin waited his turn in the union’s hiring hall roll call like any other brother, but I ain’t making the mistake of taking his honesty for granted ever again.
Most troubling is McLaughlin’s claim that he is working because he needs the money. Even before the graft, McLaughlin collected sizable multiple incomes from the Assembly, Local 3, the CLC and other assorted bodies. The tendency of labor leaders to collect multiple salaries from their various affiliates is a well-known tactic to obscure exactly how large their salaries can get, and McLaughlin was already a bit of a joke in the movement for how baldly he sought out additional salaries. In fact, his ability to clear over a quarter million dollars a year, “ethically” (if not particularly nobly or selflessly) is partly what led me to conclude that the man was probably honest. After all, who would need more money than what he was pulling down “on the books?” And where did it all go?
I worry that Brian McLaughlin has, as they say, debts no honest man can pay and that his scandal is only just beginning.
Look for My Union Label
I’ve finally rejoined the National Writers Union (UAW Local 1181), the freelancers union. I had been a member when I was the editor of the Five Borough Institute’s newsletter, mainly because we wanted to have a bug on the masthead. I let my membership lapse during my long stint of unemployment, even though I had begun to write regularly for this blarg.
I realize I should be paying lip service to this supposed new media revolution, but truthfully, it’s hard to think of myself as a “Writer” because of a silly blog. I want to be in print. I’ve made sporadic attempts at submitting op-eds to local newspapers. Unfortunately, most of the community weeklies don’t publish opinion pieces. Even the one paper where I was briefly hired and quickly “dooced” doesn’t want actual opinions in their op-eds. I’m hoping that my renewed NWU membership will spur me on to try more seriously to get in print, even if that pesky “full-time union organizer / part-time graduate student” thing gets in the way.
The Champions of “Democracy”
The changed political landscape affords the labor movement opportunities to change laws that make us weaker. These opportunities afford right-wing politicians and management consultants new opportunities to couch their attacks on workers’ collective rights to organize in terms of “democracy.” We have to counter this rhetoric before it becomes standard Newspeak.
First up, Maryland’s House Republican leader Anthony O’Donnell attacking a bill for agency fee for state employee unions: “Forcing people to fund a service that they don’t desire to have is patently undemocratic.” To Mr. O’Donnell, I say, I don’t support the war in Iraq – or indeed any military spending – as a “service.” Am I free, in the name of democracy, to evade my taxes? Employees who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement benefit from the wages, benefits and protections that the union has won, and have available to them a grievance machinery in which the union is required to expend resources to represent all employees. A union is a democratic organization – a government – that all the employees in the bargaining unit belong to, and can take part in. Free riders who don’t pay their dues are benefitting from representation without taxation, a costly drain on union finances that holds us back from further organizing.
Next up, Dick Cheney, announcing the President’s intention to veto the Employee Free Choice Act, declared, “It’s important for everyone in the debate to remember that secret ballots protect workers from intimidation and ensure the integrity of the process.” It’s hard to know where to begin with this one. A comment on the Bush administrations track record on the sanctity of the ballot? How about the administration’s suspension of collective bargaining rights for Homeland Security employees? Or maybe the Bush-appointed NLRB’s decision to suspend union authorization elections for up to eight million workers who have neither the authority not compensation of management as exempt “supervisors.” No, let’s skip the ad hominems and debate the words. Where does intimidation arise in the organizing process? Is it from co-workers appealing to each other’s sense of solidarity to join together, or is it the reign of terror that management typically launches in anticipation of an NLRB election? As our friends at CEPR have pointed out, one in five union activists can expect to be fired during an organizing campaign. The remainder can have their jobs threatened, face “predictions” of plant closure or layoffs and generally have their lives made miserable while waiting for an election. Most of these actions – particularly terminations – are illegal, but the enforcement is so lax and the penalties so slight (a wrongfully terminated employee can expect, on average, $2000 in back pay from the employer) that most employers view the costs as well worth it to keep a union out.
Most unions file for authorization with 60 to 70 percent voting yes by signing union cards. The NLRB conducts a superfluous second election that provides management with a window of opportunity to conduct a reign of terror against its employees. Our oh-so-democratic proponents of the secret ballot while likely claim that this campaign merely provides “the other side” a chance to introduce new facts into the “debate.” The truth is the only new “fact” that management introduces into a union election campaign is the fact that a worker who supports the union is in danger of losing his or her job. It is precisely this kind of intimidation that the Employee Free Choice act will put an end to by allowing employees to vote just once to form a union, in an atmosphere free of intimidation.