The ads are starting to heat up about the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The ads got me so curious I had to find out more about this act, and what it is really about. In my research I ran across this item on the web site for the House Financial Services Committee from 2006. The article is not about EFCA, but it sets up some background. For example:
Wages for Regular Workers are Stagnant-Earnings for Top Executives Increase
CEOs have seen increases in their earnings at a rate far greater than that of the average worker. In 1965, U.S. CEOs at major companies made 24 times a worker’s pay-by 2004, CEOs earned 431 times the pay of an average worker. From 1995 to 2005, average CEO pay increased five times faster than that of average workers. While CEO pay continues to increase at rates far exceeding inflation, wages for the vast majority of American workers have failed to keep up with rising prices. In fact, real wages for the 90% of Americans who earn under $92,000 a year have actually fallen since 2001.
When comparing CEOs to minimum-wage earners, the contrast is even starker. In 2005, median pay for CEOs of the 100 largest companies rose 25% from the previous year. Minimum-wage earners this year, on the other hand, made the same amount as last year, and every year before that since the 1996-1997 increase-adjusting for inflation they actually made less than then (in inflation-adjusted dollars, $5.15 today is the equivalent of only $3.95 in 1995). CEOs, on average, take home 821 times as much as a person working for minimum wage. With this extraordinary ratio, an average CEO makes more before lunch on his first day of work than a minimum-wage earner will make all year.
The relationship between workers and employers is getting way out of balance. What could a CEO possibly do that would make him or her worth 431 times what an employee is worth??? Come on… this is getting ridiculous. Something needs to bring fairness back between employee and employer.
Now the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group on the side of employers, is saying that the EFCA will “disenfranchise workers.” This is the same stuff I’ve been hearing in some of the ads that are opposing EFCA. They say:
The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would disenfranchise 105 million American workers. For union organizing elections, the legislation would replace the secret ballot with a system of “card checks,” where union organizers pressure workers to publicly sign a card stating they want to join a union. Workers would never have the option of voting against union membership, and millions of workers could be forced into a union without ever getting the chance to vote on the matter. Congress should preserve a worker’s right to vote in privacy on union membership. (emphasis mine)
Wow… do a little research and find out that the above is not quite true. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. What is rather offensive is the pretense at protecting workers rights. There has been a lot of pressure to oppose unions for years now, and a lot has happened to prevent people from joining unions. I recommend going to the AFL-CIO web site next and see what they are saying about the bill, from the workers point of view. There is a lot about EFCA on their web site.
Corporate front groups have mounted a massive campaign to block the Employee Free Choice Act.As former Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott has said, “We like driving the car and we’re not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us.” The core of their campaign is lies and distortions about the Employee Free Choice Act—especially the lie that it takes away “secret ballot” elections. In fact, the act would let workers choose whether to decide on a union through majority sign-up or an election.
There is another place to check on EFCA and that is on the Senate web site. I found a list of “myths and reality,” for example:
MYTH: Secret-ballot elections are the fairest way to select a union representative.
REALITY: Secret-ballot elections in the union context can leave employees vulnerable to virtually un-checked employer intimidation and coercion.
As a real estate agent I am very supportive of seeing fairness and justice return in the relationship between employers and employees. I want to see the middle class strengthened, and workers well employed with at least a “living wage,” the hourly rate that an individual must earn to support their family. For those of us in real estate, we realize that when people are earning good wages and not worried over health care costs, they are more likely to be buying homes. I found this Living Wage Calculator on the Internet. Sort of cool to see what the living wage might be in your area.
As I was thinking about the concept of a “living wage” I remembered who said this: if you cannot pay your employees a living wage, you shouldn’t be in business”. Teddy Roosevelt was the one who started the idea of the minimum wage. (a Republican!) The speech where he talked about the rights of people is amazing. Too bad we don’t hear this speech quoted very often. People tend to forget what he said:
We stand for a living wage. Wages are subnormal if they fail to provide a living for those who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations. The monetary equivalent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living–a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit of reasonable saving for old age.
(and he also said): The present conditions of business cannot be accepted as satisfactory. There are too many who do not prosper enough, and of the few who prosper greatly there are certainly some whose prosperity does not mean well for the country.
From my research thus far I am becoming more supportive of the Employee Free Choice Act. At least now as I listen to those ads, I will have a better ability to filter out the lies. Let me end with another amazing statement from President Teddy Roosevelt that seems so relevant to today:
Unfortunately, those dealing with the subject have tended to divide into two camps, each as unwise as the other. One camp has fixed its eyes only on the need of prosperity, loudly announcing that our attention must be confined to securing it in bulk, and that the division must be left to take care of itself. This is merely the plan, already tested and found wanting, of giving prosperity to the big men on top, and trusting to their mercy to let something leak through to the mass of their countrymen below–which, in effect, means that there shall be no attempt to regulate the ferocious scramble in which greed and cunning reap the largest rewards. The other set has fixed its eyes purely on the injustices of distribution, omitting all consideration of the need of having something to distribute, and advocates action which, it is true, would abolish most of the inequalities of the distribution of prosperity, but only by the unfortunately simple process of abolishing the prosperity itself. This means merely that conditions are to be evened, not up, but down, so that all shall stand on a common level, where nobody has any prosperity at all. The task of the wise radical must be to refuse to be misled by either set of false advisers; he must both favor and promote the agencies that make for prosperity, and at the same time see to it that these agencies are so used as to be primarily of service to the average man.
Tags: EFCA, employee, employer, living wage, teddy roosevelt, unions, wages
