Nobody disagrees that passing an economic stimulus package is the top priority for the incoming Obama administration and the new Congress. Then what? Tighter emissions standards for cars? Easing the rules on organizing for labor unions? Universal health care? Ending the wars?
The flipside of knitting together a winning coalition of techies, anti-war activists, women, labor unions, young voters and the like is: (a) everybody thinks they were most instrumental in sending Obama and more Democrats to Washington, and (b) they want Obama and the Democrats to make their policy wish lists reality -- first. Or, at least, right after a stimulus bill is passed.
"But since Obama won by such a wide margin, no one group can claim credit for his victory," said Scott Lilly, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.
After a stimulus package is approved, the legislative runway will get really crowded. Health care reform is near the top of many lists, but not all.
The problems facing the country are so severe that Obama is not going to be able to favor one group over another because they were major contributors to his election, Lilly said. "And there is probably an international situation that will take up a lot of the president's time and attention after the stimulus gets done."
Here's a look at some of the proposals, wish lists and demands that await the president-elect and the 111th Congress:
Anti-war activists:
After spending almost eight years toting George W. Bush effigies through the streets, the anti-war movement is confident that Obama will address its issues. But even before Obama has taken the oath of office, he has already disappointed some.
"Obama has been missing in action on the massacre of people in Gaza," said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war organization Code Pink. It makes little difference to her that Obama has avoided making broad policy statements before becoming president for fear of giving mixed signals to foreign governments. "It makes me tremendously worried about what he'll do when other situations like that come up. It took him until (last week) to say he was concerned, and he didn't even call for a cease-fire."
Code Pink has compiled a list of "President Obama's Promises to Keep" from his campaign statements. Among them:
-- End the war in Iraq.
-- Close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.
-- Reject the Military Commissions Act, which critics say violates the civil rights of people held as enemy combatants.
-- Bar the torture of prisoners of war and enemy combatants.
Organized labor:
Labor organizations spent more than $450 million to send Obama and other Democrats to Washington. The AFL-CIO alone has compiled a 64-page list entitled the "AFL-CIO Recommendations for the Obama Administration." Top priority -- besides jobs in the stimulus package -- is the Employee Free Choice Act. It would enable employees to form a union as soon as a majority signed cards saying they wanted one. The Service Employees International Union, the nation's largest labor union, will spend $10 million to support such legislation. Various employer groups are lining up against it.
But would Obama be risking too much political capital early in his term on a politically partisan issue that could galvanize -- and revive -- conservatives?
"The Obama transition team absolutely has not communicated that to us," said Thea Lee, policy director for the AFL-CIO.
Some of labor's other top wishes are health care reform, the reversal of staffing cuts that led to long Social Security claim backlogs, and an extension of unemployment benefits.
Women:
The National Organization for Women has an 11-page "Feminist Action Agenda for 2009 and Beyond" for the incoming administration and Congress. "And that was our short list," NOW President Kim Gandy said. "After eight years of going backward with the Bush administration, we have a lot of issues that need to be addressed."
NOW already has a beef with Obama's stimulus package: It is too heavy on male-dominated infrastructure-rebuilding -- i.e., construction jobs -- Gandy said. She'd like to see more stimulus cash spread to what she described as "human infrastructure-rebuilding jobs" such as home health aides, teachers, teacher's aides and social workers.
NOW's agenda and Gandy also want Obama to address the wage gap between men and women, and stop abstinence-only birth control education funding in favor of programs that stress both abstinence and contraception.
Environmentalists:
Environmental organizations were some of Obama's strongest backers, as many were upset by Bush administration positions on everything from climate change to land conservation to water policy. Shortly after the election, leading environmental organizations, including the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club, created a new group called Saveourenvironment.org and submitted a list of goals to the Obama transition team. Among them: Cut the nation's dependence on oil in half and move electricity generation to 100 percent from clean sources like wind and solar.
E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli(at)sfchronicle.com.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit the San Francisco Chronicle
Employee Free Choice Act
Amending The Employee Free Choice Act. A Compromise Every Union Can Live With.
The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is legislation in the United States which aims to "amend the National Labor Relations Act to establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes.
Under current labor law, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board will certify a union as the exclusive representative of employees if it is elected by either a majority signature drive, the card check process, or by secret ballot NLRB election, which is held if more than 30% of employees in a bargaining unit sign statements asking for representation by a union. If enacted, this bill would require the NLRB to certify a bargaining representative without directing an election if a majority of the bargaining unit employees signed cards, the card check process.
Pursuant to the bill, a union can demand that an employer begin bargaining within ten days of certification of the union as the exclusive bargaining representative for an appropriate unit of employees via the card check. In addition, if the union and employer cannot agree upon the terms of a first collective bargaining contract within ninety days, either party can request federal mediation, which could lead to binding arbitration if an agreement still cannot be reached after thirty days of mediation.
Where government arbitration determines terms of the agreement,employees would lose their current right to ratify the terms of the agreement.
Finally, the Act would provide for liquidated damages of three times back pay if employers were found to have unlawfully terminated pro-union employees.The EFCA also would impose a $20,000 penalty upon employers for each employer violation of the proposed legislation if the NLRB and/or a court deems the violation willful or repetitive.
Why is the Employee Free Choice Act so important in leveling the playing field?
The AFL-CIO argues that, in practice, company-run secret ballots actually make the process less democratic:
People call the current National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election system a secret ballot election—but in fact it's not like any democratic election held anywhere else in our society. It's really a management-controlled election process because corporations have all the power. They control the information workers can receive and routinely poison the process by intimidating, harassing, coercing and even firing people who try to organize unions.
No employee has free choice after being browbeaten by a supervisor to oppose the union or being told they might lose their job and livelihood if workers vote for the union.
Martin Jay Levitt said it best when he said:
"Union busting is a field populated by bullies and built on deceit. A campaign against a union is an assault on individuals and a war on the truth. As such, it is a war without honor. The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always, always attack."
Confessions of a Union Buster
by Martin Jay Levitt
When corporations seek to stay union free, they often do so by hiring labor relations consultants or labor attorneys. Understanding that the union depends upon the support, confidence, and good will[of its members.
One of managements main reasons on why they will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in union-busters trying to prevent their employees from unionizing is the fact they know they will lose total control of their organization to their employees by way of unionization.
In regards to the Employee Free Choice Act one of the opponents' biggest arguments is that by passing the Employee Free Choice Act it would takeaway the process of a secret ballot election.
Representative John Kline, R-Minn., has stated: “I cannot fathom how we were about to sit there today and debate a proposal to take away a worker's democratic right to vote in a secret-ballot election and call it 'Employee Free Choice”.
One of the most misleading arguments made by opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act is that the Employee Free Choice Act would strip American workers of their right to a private-ballot vote. This is not true.
Under the Employee Free Choice Act any union who receives majority support of those workers seeking to be represented by that particular union, will still have the right to file an election with the NLRB to conduct a secret ballot election if it so chooses. However I would agree this would be unlikely if a union does receive a majority support for a number of reasons.
One reason it would delay the process. Number two, why would any union take a chance conducting an election with the possibility of losing such an election based on management conducting an all out assault against its employee by hiring union-busters to defeat these workers. One of the biggest disadvantages against the union is that the union is not allowed access to the work force during their eight hours of work each day, but the union buster can occupy as much of that time as is considered necessary, which now subjects employees to mandatory union-busting meetings, harassment, fear, threats, coercing, twisted disinformation and many other tools union-busting consultants use.
The NLRA Section 7, is the heart of the NLRA.It defines protected activity.
National Labor Relations Act, Section 7: RIGHTS OF EMPLOYEES
Sec. 7. § 157. Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 8(a)(3) section 158(a)(3) of this title.
Having conducted over a thousand elections over the last 30 years I can clearly state that workers only achieve their Section 7 rights to unionize if they can withstand the torture and physiological warfare bestowed upon them during the critical period 42 days leading up to a secret ballot election.
Which now leads up to my next argument. In an effort to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and to level the playing field and at the same time to takeaway the oppositions most misleading argument that the Employee Free Choice Act would strip American workers of their right to a private-ballot vote, we should have congress amend H.R. 800 EFCA to include a provision whereby the signer (the employee) can either request a secret ballot election or request that the union membership card he just signed be used as a showing of interest to bypass an election under a card check provision supporting majority status under the Employee Free Choice Act.
By amending this provision the true intentions of the employee who signed the union membership card would now be clearly stated, giving true meaning to the Employee Free Choice Act, while taking away the oppositions argument that the Employee Free Choice Act would strip American workers of their right to a private secret -ballot vote.
A compromise every union can live with.
For More Information on EFCA please visit our website and blog
http://www.employeefreechoiceactnow.org
http://efcanow.blogspot.com/
obama
obama will ruin our country and is already making decisions that even members of his own party do not approve of. Democrats are now relizing that obama is a corupt and evil man that is will be the down fall of this country.
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