johninnit

Love the Work, Hate The Job: Why America’s best workers are more unhappy than ever – David Kusnet, 2008

It’s taken me a couple of months of procrastination and other things to get around to writing about David Kusnet’s latest book, but I wanted to recommend it to UK unionists as well as those in the US who’ve probably heard about it already.

The book is a series of four case studies, all from employers in different sectors and types of work, but all located in and around the city of Seattle. Disputes between workers and managment at Kaiser Aluminium, Northwest Hospital, Microsoft and Boeing each show different ways in which the employment relationship is changing, and the friction that is being generated when employees’ ideals clash with changing businesses. (more…)

Here’s my post in transatlantic solidarity with Take Back Labor Day’s Labour Day 08 Blogswarm, a US labor bloggers’ attempt to get people thinking about the meaning behind the September 1st holiday.

This is a nice idea, as Labor Day as it stands is a bit of an oddity. Only the US, Canada and New Zealand celebrate it in September. The rest of the world stick with International Workers’ Day on 1 May (May Day), a day more closely identified with the labour movement, which sees big rallies and union events in many European countries.

But the strangest part of this is that the Yanks themselves invented our May Day, and then backed away from partying with us. What the rest of the world is celebrating on May 1 is actually the struggle and great successes of the American labour movement in fighting for the 8-hour working day. (more…)

Scary article on unionbusting in the States on afl-cioNOW.  According to a survey by a union-friendly lobby group, 91% of US firms faced with an organising campaign will make employees attend one to one meetings with their managers about the union, and a whopping 82% engage a “union avoidance consultant” (the dreaded unionbusters). Worse still, 30% fire union activists during a campaign, and 49% threaten to close the plant if the union is recognised (though tellingly only 2% actually carry this out if they lose).

The AFL estimate unionbusting to be a $4bn a year business – a conservative estimate apparently, because it’s often very hard to prove the consultants were engaged for that purpose.

So far this is a far cry from our own situation in the UK, though the unionbusters are popping up over here too now, both home-grown and imported. US firm The Burke Group have been engaged against union campaigns at T-Mobile, Amazon, Virgin Atlantic and Calor Gas.

The TUC have a novel new approach to countering this, and are publishing a leaflet today, which outlines the actual benefits that an employer could be throwing away by not engaging with a union organising campaign. You can download a pdf here.

Yes – that’s right, benefits. Many of them in the tangible form of lovely cost savings. The Government reckons union reps are worth at least £3.5bn to the economy in increased productivity. 3000 workplaces have union funded (including through Government money) learning projects, which provide job related training to over 67,000 workers a year. Safety reps save firms millions through accidents and work related illness, and dealing with problems through a union means less tribunal cases, and hence much less money to lawyers.

…and of course, that’s before the cost savings in not employing a firm of extremely expensive unionbusters!

Well, it looks like a reasonable result over the pond, but thought I’d share something from yesterday which caught my eye. This, via the AFLCIO’s blog, is a very scary account culled from US blogs about last minute Republican dirty tricks.

Some absolute (evil-) genius stuff here – Why not set up one of those automatic phone message machines to cold call with a broadcast from your opponent? Yes, stick with it, it does make a twisted kind of sense… Then auto-call the same broadcast again, again, again and again, till you manage to get everyone in the phonebook heartily pissed off with your opponent, for supposedly intruding into their privacy. Apparently this kind of stuff is actually illegal in some states, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping them.

Also nasty is fake opinion polling. Ring your opponent’s voters, saying you’re conducting an election opinion poll. Then ask them a set of loaded questions, trying to shake their faith in their candidate. “Would the knowledge that Sen X eats babies change your perception of them for the better or worse?”

Worrying in that it’s cheap and very easy (if you have no scruples). So when the GOP spent nearly $42 million on negative campaigning (the Dems were no slouch either with $18m), this is making a mockery of the whole election, especially when the Senate result is still running so close. More if you can stomach it at AFLCIOnow.