After losing three potent allies in its struggle to avert a tilt toward unionization, the restaurant industry faces a dilemma this week of nuclear proportions.
The trade has steadfastly resisted what it and other employer groups have dubbed the card check bill, a measure that would greatly ease the organization of more restaurant and small-business staffs into collective bargaining units. It was joined in that effort by a sizable swath of non-unionized corporate America, a veritable Who’s Who of big retailers and service providers, along with the associations that represent them.
But on Saturday, the opposition splintered. Starbucks, Costco and Whole Foods announced they were forming a separate coalition to find a “third way,” a middle path between the legislation posed by unions and the no-way/no-how stance of business. In short, they offered to compromise, and even listed some concessions they would make. Those bargaining chips include allowing union representatives to make their pitch to employees, and moving more quickly to correct employers’ violations of labor laws.
In exchange, the splinter group—the Committee for a Level Playing Field for Union Elections—asked for several major changes in the legislation, including the omission of the all-important card-check provision. That component is seen as critical to labor, and unacceptable to employers, because of the turbo-charge it’d give to unionization. To become the bargaining representative for employees, a union would merely need the signatures of at least half the staff. The decision to sign or not sign the unionization card would be made in public, a process that would replace secret ballots.
Restaurants and other businesses fear the elimination of the secret ballot would subject employees to pressure from organizers and pro-union peers. People would sign the card out of fear, not out of a desire to join a union, they argue.
Labor counters that the bill merely simplifies the process of choosing. The measure’s official name is the Employee Free Choice Act.
The Committee’s breakaway move was quickly blasted both by proponents of the bill and the various businesses and alliances that had stood in unified opposition. I couldn’t find any public statement from the National Restaurant Association, but a number of its allies, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, were pointed in their criticism.
The industry may want to think long and hard before it responds. The card-check bill is favored by the White House and the Democratic Party, and it passed the House during the last session of Congress. Now both chambers are controlled by the Democrats. The legislation's passage doesn't seem far-fetched at all.
Opposition on principle is a laudable thing. But should the industry keep up a fight that it and its allies are doomed to lose? Or should it consider the more moderate proposal put forth by Starbucks, Costco and Whole Foods? Should it consider joining the Committee?
Yeah, it would mean accepting some potentially dangerous provisions, such as the requirement that union representatives be given face-time with staffs (in a neutral place, with a provision as well for employers to make their appeal against unionization). But if the card-check provision is really the rub, might the trade be better off with a third way?
I don’t profess to have the answer. I just hope the industry explores its options and acts on the basis of practical evaluation, not knee-jerk principle.
Showing posts with label card check. Show all posts
Showing posts with label card check. Show all posts
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Get real, unions
Restaurant employees’ union to Burger King: You’re cheating taxpayers.
Romeo to union: Oh, shut up.
Sorry, but I’m really tired of watching the Service Employees International Union and its fellow the traveler, Restaurant Opportunties Center of New York (and now Maine), try to manipulate public sympathy with their preposterous Grassy Knoll take on reality. They twist the facts to turn restaurant employers into the sort of mustachioed villains who once tied matrons to railroad tracks.
This time around, for instance, SEIU is hoping to convince the public that Burger King Holdings is siphoning off some of the federal bail-out funds that were channeled to banks. Follow closely, because this has more twists and turns than a day in Illinois politics.
One of the big stakeholders in BK, the union notes in a statement issued yesterday, is Goldman Sachs. And the one-time broker, now reclassified as a bank, was a recipient of some $10 billion from the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) kitty.
Up to this point, we’re still reality-based. But now the acid kicks in.
The Obama Administration and Congress want more accountability for how TARP dollars are used, notes SEIU. But an additional $273 million of taxpayers’ money is being siphoned off by BK. The Bernie Maddoff-like scheme: Not providing healthcare benefits and paying “sub-poverty wage levels.”
Let me review: BK doesn’t provide health care, which means employees have to find other ways of affording medical attention. A significant stake in the company is held by Goldman Sachs, which was given $10 billion in TARP funds. Ergo, Goldman and BK are cheating the American public.
Follow?
But it gets worse, SEIU says. BK CEO John Chidsey collected $5.4 million in 2008 compensation, including bonuses. Goldman Sachs paid out $6.5 billion in bonuses, the union says. If just the Goldman Sachs performance-based pay had been given instead to BK’s workers, SEIU says, all 360,000 of them would have collected $18,000.
Never mind that BK is a publicly owned company in which Sachs merely holds a stake, albeit a big one. And that BK’s employees aren’t paid by Sachs. Indeed, there’s no flow of money from Sachs to BK, never mind to Chidsey.
I’m not saying that Sachs should have paid big-buck bonuses when it’s collecting government bailout funds. But I’m not sure what that has to do with BK. Might it be because SEIU would like to enlist its employees as members?
Similarly, whether or not BK should provide some type of health-insurance support is a legitimate topic of discussion. If SEIU wanted to start a reality-based conversation on the responsibility of minimum-wage employers, we’d be in a whole different realm. But, here again, it’s just trying to look like the white-hatted cowboy who unties Snidely Whiplash’s knots and frees the maiden from the oncoming locomotive. It’s trying to curry favor by manipulating the facts to make it look like a bravo fighter for right.
Instead, it’s accusing BK and Sachs of “opposing efforts to stop rebuilding the economy” while “taking billions of dollars through taxpayers.”
Why not just accuse the pair of kicking puppies and trying to outlaw American flags?
Romeo to union: Oh, shut up.
Sorry, but I’m really tired of watching the Service Employees International Union and its fellow the traveler, Restaurant Opportunties Center of New York (and now Maine), try to manipulate public sympathy with their preposterous Grassy Knoll take on reality. They twist the facts to turn restaurant employers into the sort of mustachioed villains who once tied matrons to railroad tracks.
This time around, for instance, SEIU is hoping to convince the public that Burger King Holdings is siphoning off some of the federal bail-out funds that were channeled to banks. Follow closely, because this has more twists and turns than a day in Illinois politics.
One of the big stakeholders in BK, the union notes in a statement issued yesterday, is Goldman Sachs. And the one-time broker, now reclassified as a bank, was a recipient of some $10 billion from the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) kitty.
Up to this point, we’re still reality-based. But now the acid kicks in.
The Obama Administration and Congress want more accountability for how TARP dollars are used, notes SEIU. But an additional $273 million of taxpayers’ money is being siphoned off by BK. The Bernie Maddoff-like scheme: Not providing healthcare benefits and paying “sub-poverty wage levels.”
Let me review: BK doesn’t provide health care, which means employees have to find other ways of affording medical attention. A significant stake in the company is held by Goldman Sachs, which was given $10 billion in TARP funds. Ergo, Goldman and BK are cheating the American public.
Follow?
But it gets worse, SEIU says. BK CEO John Chidsey collected $5.4 million in 2008 compensation, including bonuses. Goldman Sachs paid out $6.5 billion in bonuses, the union says. If just the Goldman Sachs performance-based pay had been given instead to BK’s workers, SEIU says, all 360,000 of them would have collected $18,000.
Never mind that BK is a publicly owned company in which Sachs merely holds a stake, albeit a big one. And that BK’s employees aren’t paid by Sachs. Indeed, there’s no flow of money from Sachs to BK, never mind to Chidsey.
I’m not saying that Sachs should have paid big-buck bonuses when it’s collecting government bailout funds. But I’m not sure what that has to do with BK. Might it be because SEIU would like to enlist its employees as members?
Similarly, whether or not BK should provide some type of health-insurance support is a legitimate topic of discussion. If SEIU wanted to start a reality-based conversation on the responsibility of minimum-wage employers, we’d be in a whole different realm. But, here again, it’s just trying to look like the white-hatted cowboy who unties Snidely Whiplash’s knots and frees the maiden from the oncoming locomotive. It’s trying to curry favor by manipulating the facts to make it look like a bravo fighter for right.
Instead, it’s accusing BK and Sachs of “opposing efforts to stop rebuilding the economy” while “taking billions of dollars through taxpayers.”
Why not just accuse the pair of kicking puppies and trying to outlaw American flags?
Thursday, December 11, 2008
The Blagojevich-foodservice connection
With all the news pouring out of Illinois about Gov. Blagojevich’s eBay approach to filling Barack Obama’s Senate seat, you may have missed the connection to the restaurant industry. Among the names that apparently came up in secretly recorded conversations was Service Employees International Union, the new-age labor organization that’s hell-bent on organizing more foodservice workers.
The New York Times reported that the criminal complaint filed against Blagojevich cites the union as one of the parties the governor approached with a quid pro quo offer. The union works behind the scenes to get Blago a job as head of a union confederacy called Change to Win, and in exchange SEIU gets an ally in the Senate and help in pushing its agenda on Capitol Hill.
The revelations underscore what should be a big worry for the industry: The ally who would have been considered for the empty Senate seat, according to press reports, is Valerie Jarrett, who took herself out of contention because Obama wanted her as White House advisor. That choice has since been made, meaning a strongly pro-labor voice will be at the new President’s right hand.
Among the measures that will undoubtedly come out of Congress next year is the so-called card check law, which will take away secret balloting on whether or not a restaurant’s staff should allow a restaurant to represent it. The wrinkle in the Blago story underscores just how strong a threat the trade may be facing.
The New York Times reported that the criminal complaint filed against Blagojevich cites the union as one of the parties the governor approached with a quid pro quo offer. The union works behind the scenes to get Blago a job as head of a union confederacy called Change to Win, and in exchange SEIU gets an ally in the Senate and help in pushing its agenda on Capitol Hill.
The revelations underscore what should be a big worry for the industry: The ally who would have been considered for the empty Senate seat, according to press reports, is Valerie Jarrett, who took herself out of contention because Obama wanted her as White House advisor. That choice has since been made, meaning a strongly pro-labor voice will be at the new President’s right hand.
Among the measures that will undoubtedly come out of Congress next year is the so-called card check law, which will take away secret balloting on whether or not a restaurant’s staff should allow a restaurant to represent it. The wrinkle in the Blago story underscores just how strong a threat the trade may be facing.
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