Thursday October 2nd, labor and business leaders came to an agreement to pull four anti-business amendments from the ballot.

With only a few hours left, before a 5pm deadline, labor and business leaders delivered letters to the Colorado Secretary of State withdrawing four amendments that would have negatively affected Colorado’s economy. To get the labor leaders to drop four anti-business amendments, business leaders had to promise to raise $3 million for labor campaigns for use in fighting three anti-union amendments on the ballot. The four anti-business amendments will still appear on the ballots however the votes will not be counted toward passing these new measures.

Wal-Mart appears in the news again, this time in a more positive light in the New York Times.

In the article “FLY ON THE WAL”, Charles Platt goes under cover to find out what Wal-Mart is doing that is keeping their growth increasing and why people continue to want to work for this behemoth. The insight and contrary opinions that Mr. Platt gives concerning Wal-Mart’s continued employment law plight is refreshing.  There are no “big labor” complaints or threats here, only one man’s personal experience working undercover for Wal-Mart.

Mr. Platt does a very good job defending Wal-Mart’s driving forces, but in that he also explains some basic economic principles that our country is founded on. Too many people, mostly our politicians, forget these basic principles, and since Mr. Platt did such a good job explaining them, I quote him here:

“I found myself reaching an inescapable conclusion. Low wages are not a Wal-Mart problem. They are an industry-wide problem, afflicting all unskilled entry-level jobs, and the reason should be obvious.

In our free-enterprise system, employees are valued largely in terms of what they can do. This is why teenagers fresh out of high school often go to vocational training institutes to become auto mechanics or electricians. They understand a basic principle that seems to elude social commentators, politicians and union organizers. If you want better pay, you need to learn skills that are in demand.

The blunt tools of legislation or union power can force a corporation to pay higher wages, but if employees don’t create an equal amount of additional value, there’s no net gain. All other factors remaining equal, the store will have to charge higher prices for its merchandise, and its competitive position will suffer.”

See Also

• CHARLES PLATT GOES UNDERCOVER AT WAL-MART - New York Post
  Some people, usually community activists, loath Wal-Mart. Others, like the family of four struggling to make ends meet, are in love with the chain. I, meanwhile, am in awe of it. With more than 7…

Pro-Union advisors and laws are becoming more prevalent under the new administration.

There has been a lot of activity occurring during the first few months of the Obama administration, including a significant amount of pro-union steps. Listed below are a few of the changes that have occurred as of late:

• Assigning Hilda Solis as the labor secretary for the Department of Labor.  Solis is a four-term member of Congress with a long history of support for unions. She has made it clear that she believes that unions are mandatory and has continuously pushed for more organizing powers for unions.

• Support of the EFCA. President Obama has made several statements stating that he would gladly sign the Employee Free Choice Act (or The Card Check bill) into law once the House and Senate get it on his desk. This bill will take away the secret balloting for unions and enforce a binding arbitration for contracts that can not be agreed upon with in 90 days.

• Signed several pro-labor executive orders, including one signed on February 6^th, which makes large-scale federal construction projects agree to use exclusively union labor. This results in a monetary windfall to unions due to the amount of federal construction projects rising exponentially due to the Stimulus Package. On April 21^st, two more executive orders were signed delaying the effective date of new union financial reporting rules published during the Bush Administration, and the other proposing discontinuing the reporting rule altogether.

• Most recently, Mary Beth Maxwell was brought on as a senior adviser to secretary Hilda Solis.  Maxwell is the founding executive director of American Rights at Work, which is a pro-union advocacy group that is backed by organized labor. (Solis was also a board member of American Rights at Work, prior to her confirmation to Labor Secretary)

Governor Ritter recently vetoed pro-labor bill, HB 09-1170Governor Ritter, on May 19th, 2009, vetoed a bill that would have allowed union workers that are locked out during a labor dispute to collect unemployment benefits.  In Gov. Ritter’s letter explaining his decision, he explains that he did not want to give an advantage to one of the parties currently in a major labor negotiation between the United Food and Commercial Workers and several large grocery store chains here in the Colorado area.  However, Gov. Ritter went on to state that the merits of the bill “are worthy of future discussion and perhaps future legislation”.

See Also

• Press Release - HB 09-1170 Veto Message
  Letter from Gov. Ritter explaining the decision to veto HB 09-1170 bill

Last Thursday on February 24th, I sat through a four hour “Information and Outreach Forum” presented by the Department of Labor. This however was not a forum looking to help educate employers on doing business better and legally, it was “an information and outreach forum for workers, community based organizations, unions and advocacy groups in Denver.” The goal of this forum as stated by Dusti Gurule, regional representative for Secretary Solis in Denver was “that this outreach effort will increase workers’ awareness of the laws and arm employees with the information to file a complaint when their rights have been violated.”  The attendees were made up of about two-thirds union representation and the other third being advocacy groups.  There did not appear to be any individual employees/workers attending nor any other employers.

We were welcomed by a representative of the Interfaith Worker Justice and FRESC, a labor organization. He clearly had a bias that businesses are bad, and went on to excitedly tell us about a rally that they organized last November where they got 100 day laborers together to file claims against their employers. Oh boy, if this is the direction of this forum, I am going to have a great time this next three and a half hours!

The first presenter was from our own Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE). The CDLE presenter was clearly showing her labor support. There were multiple statements about how upset and sad they (I am assuming other workers at the CDLE) were that the state minimum wage actually decreased a couple of years ago, instead of constantly increasing. Continuing on she explained how happy they were that the minimum wage has gone back up and pleased that it is back to being greater than the federal minimum wage. After going on stating how employees deserve overtime she explained that the CDLE deal with over 7,000 complaints and written inquires annually and mediation takes around 35 to 45 days. This appears to be a large number; however the additional statistic that would help put this into perspective, how many complaints are found to be valid, was never given.

The next speaker was a representative from the federal DOL and he presented a basic overview of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). I have seen this representative speak before in a meeting of employers and his presentation did not change much but he did emphasize areas due to his audience.  One particular area that I found intriguing was when he was explaining that paying cash for payroll was ok to do. As he was explaining this fact he was giving an example and stated that some employees do not have a checking account or bank so he said “it could be an undocumented worker, and that is ok”. I thought that it was illegal for an employer to hire and work “undocumented workers”. So it appears that this DOL representative is telling us that it is ok to work an illegal alien. I wonder how that made the union representatives feel?

The last presentation was from two representatives of OSHA.  I actually found this last presentation pretty refreshing as the OSHA reps did not seem overtly biased on either side. There were several times when the union representatives seemed to get pretty excited over the fact that they could turn in other contractors and employers for potential violations that they see. However the OSHA representative continued to explain that OSHA’s main goal is to keep employees safe and that the union reps should first get the exposed employees to safety before worrying about how to file a complaint.  OSHA also explained that they should try and let the contractor/employer know of the unsafe exposure before filing a claim. I really appreciated this explanation because we should all (union, employer, worker, advocate, etc.) work together to keep workers and the workplace safe, and not just look for ways we can penalize or shut down business.

I went into this forum with the purpose in mind to find out what the different divisions of the DOL had to say about employers when speaking to unions and advocacy groups. What I found was that there are still groups and individuals that absolutely believe that employers are innately bad. A couple of presenters clearly had this belief and that very much worries me. There are bad employers out there, however based off of the last 15 years that I have been working with small businesses, that is the extreme exception and not the norm. I sure wish someone could convince these anti-business believers that it is only the bad businesses that should be punished and not every business. I guess I am living in my dream world again.