I think you may be assuming that a secret ballot union election resembles a regular election when that is not the case.  

In a regular election, imagine if a challenger to an incumbent was limited in the quantity and form with which they could communicate to voters.  Meanwhile, the incumbent had limitless ability to communicate with voters and could somehow actually command them to listen to their message.  The result would be grossly unfair.

The only story I have ever heard of a regular election even beginning to use the type of coercive techniques used in a union election is in a Chicago municipal election.  Supposedly, and I can't verify the truth of this, garbage was not picked up a week before the election.  The message was: vote Daley if you want your garbage collection to effectively function.  Of course, the Daley folks seem to win with a comfortable margin.

So, compare one potential veiled threat about garbage collection versus multiple explicit threats about your livelihood.  There is no comparison; the current union election secret ballot is inherently coercive.

By forming a union, legal relationships are created.  I think it makes sense to establish that relationship in a manner similar to other legal relationships.  In a class-action lawsuit, an individual receives notice of their right to join the suit in the mail.  They can choose to join or choose to waive their rights.  They have no right to join the suit but keep their decision private.

In short, comparisons of union elections to regular elections are not helpful because the coercive power of an employer is far more direct and powerful than any candidate for office could ever be.  

I have no idea how or why EFCA could or should be passed by stripping the card check provision as a "compromise."

There are two major hurdles to forming a Union: 1) initial recognition, 2) obtaining a first contract.  EFCA is designed shift the balance of power back to workers on both issues.

On both initial recognition and first contract negotiations, the Employer's strategy is typically to delay, delay, delay.  Hopefully, through coercion, boredom and by creating a sense of futility, they can convince the employees to vote against or to decertify the Union.  Union activists get fired, threats to employees are made, promises to individual employees are given, captive audience meetings with management are conducted, and company lawyers drag out the process over years to stall momentum.

Even if a Union wins an election, all too often recognition of the Union by the Employer is not enough.  There is no current mechanism for forcing the two parties to come to an agreement.  The only tools available are the economic tools at the disposal of either party: a Union may try to exert economic pressure through a strike but striking workers risk being permanently replaced.  One-third of new Unions are not able to get a contract within a year of winning recognition.

The current mechanism is simply too flawed and too slow.  Card check is needed to rectify this.  If an employee does not want a union they should simply not sign a card that says, "I authorize a union to represent me."

EFCA is designed to promote the creation of a legitimate bargaining relationship by providing a mechanism so that a first contract is reached.  After that, my understanding is that the parties are back on their own.  Some employers will, probably, take the attitude "at the second contract we will be hard-nosed and impose harsh contract terms on the Union."  Others, though, after working with a Union for a period of time will realize that the sky has not fallen and accept a working relationship with the Union.

Lastly, people should join the labor union that bargains their wages, benefits, hours, and provides representation to them when they are disciplined or terminated.  The Union is under a legal obligation to do all of these things, and frankly, the system would not work if they were not so obligated.  The whole idea behind collective bargaining is that a group of workers, united, can obtain better wages and working conditions.  When you divide this between union members and non-members, you very quickly lose the "collective" in collective bargaining.

By choosing to work in a unionized setting, an individual is accepting the wages, benefits, etc. that have been negotiated for them.  It is simply unfair to allow individuals to collect all of the benefits and place all of the costs only on the individuals who voluntarily pay their dues.  In our country, you can't get something for nothing... unless you choose to not join your union in an open shop state.

It cripples the Union's ability to do its job, to represent all bargaining unit members, when paying for its services becomes optional.  If a newspaper was required to deliver the paper to your doorstep every day, and the individual decided whether or not to pay for that service, the newspaper would have a very difficult time producing a high-quality product.  This is the situation for organized labor in open shop states.

One of the major reasons to have a strong labor movement is that it empowers regular people to be effective advocates for themselves.  You would not need the government to limit CEO pay, mandate flex time, etc. if the law established a framework whereby workers could choose their goals and have an opportunity to accomplish them through their own efforts.  I simply believe that empowering people to make the changes they desire in their own lives is preferable to fighting these issues one at a time in Congress.

I have tried to follow this for a while.  I understand the fact that some don't particularly care for the personality of Andy Stern.  I don't understand what specifically they think he is trying to do, or how specifically he is trying to do it, that should cause me to oppose SEIU.  Please do explain.

What I can tell you for sure, from the perspective of someone working for organized labor in an open shop state, is that we don't care about internal squabbles.  We don't care about one-half of one percent of the progressive element of our economy or politics fighting with the other one-half.  

We are up against it ourselves, and have little time to listen to some group that claims that one of the most aggressive, pro-active, and progressive labor unions is somehow subverting the labor movement.

So, I am asking you: explain yourself concisely, or get on board with the rest of labor.  We are working for the survival of organized labor; it better be an awfully good reason for us to distract our attention from that battle to turn our attention to an internal power struggle.  

willemsforhouse@hotmail.com

I'd be happy to answer your question.

Could you post a link, please?

It is a daily.  It is a Gannet newspaper, as is the Des Moines Register.  I believe on Sundays, subscribers receive both the Press-Citizen and the Sunday Des Moines Register.

This is the same paper that endorsed Greg Ganske over Tom Harkin in 2002.

There are some events that Obama missed, but most caucus attendees won't remember or care about it.  On capping farm subsidies, almost everybody in Iowa supports this idea - the idea is if you don't cap at a certain level of acreage, the rich get richer and drive other farmers out of business.

The DMR endorsement didn't help Edwards in '04 to the extent that it is given credit in retrospect.  To the degree that it did help, it gave Edwards a bit more legitimacy and it gave a sense to people who kind of liked him that they had a firmer basis for supporting him.  Nobody questions that Clinton is a legitimate candidate, and I just don't see the DMR endorsement giving her much of a boost.

"Union support" is very hard to define.  There are a lot of people for whom economic issues are the most important, and I think they are far more likely to caucus for Edwards.  But it's not a simple matter of a union telling it's members, "We are for Edwards," or "We are for Clinton," and thousands of people showing up to caucus for that candidate.

Anyway, a lot of the other stuff in the diary seems pretty accurate.

You know, if you are going to trash John Edwards on labor issues and circulate it to labor leaders, you may want to actually have the document labor printed and not this cheap in-house stuff.

This may be the dumbest diary I have read on this site, but I will respond briefly.

There are 645,000 registered Democrats in Iowa.  Roughly 20% will attend a caucus.  In comparison, roughly 23% of Iowa Democrats voted in the highly competitive 2006 Gubernatorial primary where there was no incumbent Governor.  You use the total voting age population, which is an incorrect measuring stick since this is a Democratic Party election, yet you still manage to produce a fictional number - 4% - when the number is actually about 11% (Around 230,000 participants divided by 2,070,000 registered voters).

Next, you ignore entirely the idea that maybe our presidential candidate should actually have to shake hands and give stump speeches to persuade people in person, rather than just relying on paid media.  You can do that in Iowa; you cannot in Florida or Michigan.  

So, you still think Iowa is a problem because there are too many white people.  Well, find me another small state that is more diverse, has a state party that can put together over 1,700 separate meetings in each precinct statewide on the same night, and can get 20% of their registered Democrats to show up for 1 1/2 hours.  

The answer to your question of "why does Iowa get to go first?" is not just "because it's always been that way."  The more important reason is, "because we know how to do it."

Yes, I've also heard Pat Maloney tell me that we only beat them in Pott. Co. b/c they didn't spend a lot of money on Omaha.

How much money is spent on a competitive Oregon House race?

My Region 5, four years ago for Dean, had our main offices in Council Bluffs and Sioux City, with smaller offices in Le Mars, Woodbine (10 miles West of Dunlap on Hwy. 30), Creston, and Glenwood (kind of).  

We paid $300/month for the space in Council Bluffs, $0 for Sioux City, $0 for Woodbine, $0 for Glenwood, and then kind of offered subsidized housing/office for our folks in Le Mars and Creston (including Oregon Senate candidate Steve Novick).

In Council Bluffs, we rented from the Pottawattamie Co. Genealogical Society.  The other tenant in the building was a bingo hall.  On Wednesday and Saturday nights, when they had bingo, it was very difficult to find parking, and the cigarette smoke came through the wall into our office space.

I am sorry, I put up the wrong link.  Disregard the previous post.

If one takes a look at the press release (See excerpt below) put out by Iowa State along with this poll, it becomes apparent that the poll anticipates a Democratic turnout of about 43% on Caucus night.  If 25% of Iowa Democrats do show up to caucus, that would shatter all records.  Quite  honestly, around half of the people it calls "probable attendees" are unlikely to actually caucus.  If you cut down the number of participants to 164, I am guessing that would significantly inflate the margin of error.  

And quite obviously, it is basically impossible to determine which half, or which candidates' supporters, included in this poll are less likely to show up on Caucus night.  

http://www.iastate.edu/~nscentral/releas es/03/dec/caucus.shtml

Iowa State's Department of Political Science, the Institute for Social and Behavioral Research, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences sponsored the study.

Polling was conducted between Nov. 10-25 and respondents were randomly chosen from a list of all registered Democrats obtained from the Iowa Secretary of State's office. The poll includes 328 probable attendees and 433 non-attendees. The margins of error for percentages calculated for these two groups are no more than plus or minus 5.5 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively.