EXCLUSIVE: Volkswagen Isn’t Fighting Unionization—But Leaked Docs Show Right-Wing Groups Are

WEDNESDAY NOV 13, 2013 2:30 PM
Working In These Times
BY MIKE ELK



http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/15876/anti_union_forces_mobilizing_at_chattanoogas_volkswagen_plant/

Anti-union conservatives are worried that if the UAW successfully organizes Volkwagen's Tennessee plant, it will create a domino effect in the South. Here, protesters lift a sign supporting a UAW organizing campaign at a Nissan plant in Canton, Miss. (Photo from United Auto Workers on Facebook) 

After Volkswagen issued a letter in September saying the company would not oppose an attempt by the United Auto Workers (UAW) to unionize its 1,600-worker Chattanooga, Tenn., facility, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) was flabbergasted.

"For management to invite the UAW in is almost beyond belief," Corker, who campaigned heavily for the plant’s construction during his tenure as mayor of Chattanooga, told the Associated Press. "They will become the object of many business school studies—and I'm a little worried could become a laughingstock in many ways—if they inflict this wound."

Corker isn’t the only right-winger out to halt UAW’s campaign. In the absence of any overt anti-union offensive by Volkswagen, conservative political operatives worried about the UAW getting a foothold in the South have stepped into the fray.

Leaked documents obtained by In These Times, as well as interviews with a veteran anti-union consultant, indicate that a conservative group, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, appears to be pumping hundred of thousands of dollars into media and grassroots organizing in an effort to stop the union drive. In addition, the National Right-to-Work Legal Defense Foundation helped four anti-union workers in October file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board claiming that Volkswagen was forcing a union on them.

“Everyone is definitely looking at this fight,” the anti-union consultant, Martin (not his real name), told In These Times. “This is the union fight going on right now and everybody [in the anti-union world] is looking to play their part and get compensated for playing their part.”

The last VW plant where workers don't have a voice

As the only major VW plant in the United States, Chattanooga is also the only plant whose workers have no opportunity to join German-style “works councils”—committees of hourly and salaried employees who discuss management decisions, like which plant will make specific car models, on a local and global scale.

Organizing with the UAW, workers say, would help them to both form new works councils and gain representation at existing ones—which, in turn, would attract more jobs to the area.

“I personally feel like not having a union and not participating in a works council is going to do more damage for future expansion and new product development in Chattanooga than any unionization would do,” says Volkswagen employee Justin King. “The way VW works on the international level, [management] almost expects to work with a union. Now, we aren’t able to say, ‘Hey we would like to build that new SUV, or we would like to hire some new workers.’ We are only hurting ourselves by not going union.”

Workers also say having a union would help the plant be more efficient. “On the assembly line, the process changes each year because [of] new models,” says worker Chris Brown. “A voice in the company would help smooth the process from year to year.”

Beyond this, VW employees feel that organizing could help address their problems with corporate policy, including the fact that nearly one-fifth of workers at peak times in auto production have been temporary employees. Temporary employees’ starting wages are more than two dollars an hour lower than full-time employees’, and their healthcare and retirement benefits are much less robust, says the UAW.

According to Brown, approximately 200-300 “temps” are currently employed in the VW factory—and the UAW says they can remain classified as temporary even if they work at VW for years.

“I am friends with these people, and they want a job. Some of these people have been there for 18 months as a temp and that's just ... wrong,” says Brown. “If this is a job that I do, they should be making the pay that I make. [They] should have the same job security that I have as an employee.”

Fellow employee Lauren Feinauer agrees that a union would improve workers’ communication with management. “We heard a lot in the beginning about how VW works with their employees: close relationships and a lot of communication. I know there is a lot of that going on, but I think some of the VW way got lost in translation,” she says. “This is why we want a union.”

This September, the UAW announced that a majority of VW workers have signed up to join the union. But according to the UAW, it and VW still have yet to agree on a process for recognizing the union. That has left time for outside anti-union forces to try to dissuade workers from joining the UAW—time that many of those groups have capitalized upon.

Anti-union consultants get in the game

In a proposal dated Aug. 23, 2013, which was presented to a prominent anti-union group before being leaked to In These Times, Washington, D.C.-based consultant Matt Patterson outlined a vision of how anti-union forces can work with community groups to persuade VW workers that organizing is not in their long-term economic interest.

In the report, Patterson explained his approach thus far to laying the groundwork for an anti-union campaign, which he calls the “Keep Tennessee Free Project," in Chattanooga. From last May to August, he said, he “leveraged a $4,000 budget into a deep and effective anti-UAW campaign that received national media attention, pressured politicians to issue public statements against unionization, forced the union to expend resources to counter our efforts, developed an extensive intelligence network that stretched from Chattanooga to Germany to Detroit and brought the terrible economic legacy of the UAW to the forefront of the debate."

Patterson claimed that during the summer, he generated 63 stories denouncing the UAW effort in Chattanooga. In three months, he said, he was able to build a media echo chamber that now hammers Chattanooga with anti-union messaging on a regular basis.

And such remarks aren’t idle boasting. The fruits of Patterson’s anti-organizing crusade have appeared in the National Review, Forbes and local Chattanooga TV station WDEF 12, in addition to a host of smaller conservative talk radio shows.

But he didn’t stop there—he also gathered grassroots support. “Within a few weeks," he wrote, "I had organized a coalition consisting of members of the Tea Party, Students for Liberty, former VW employees, politician and businessmen to craft and deliver a consistent message that has shaped public opinion.”

It’s clear that Patterson’s proposal was intended for an audience worried that a victory at Volkswagen could fuel UAW unionization campaigns at the Nissan plant in Canton, Miss., and at Mercedes-Benz in Vance, Ala. "Based on the successes my coalition has already achieved, I am confident that with the request[ed] resources, significant impact can made be over the next year in Tennessee, Alabama, and throughout the South to keep the UAW from organizing the foreign-owned auto facilities that are the source of so many badly-needed jobs," he assured possible funders.

According to veteran anti-union consultant Martin, Patterson originally asked for $160,000 in the proposal, which he sent to a variety of anti-union groups, including Martin’s. This, however, was before Patterson found a backer for his project: Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), the pet project of Republican mastermind Grover Norquist. Martin says that after Patterson decided to work with Americans for Tax Reform, his proposed budget rose "significantly."

After the injection of new funds, Patterson’s voice in Chattanooga’s anti-union debate grew even louder. Local TV station WTVC News Channel 9 included him as an anti-union panelist in a televised October 17 discussion about UAW organizing. Since September, Patterson has also been quoted by the Associated Press, Nashville Public Radio, the Chattanooga Times Free Press and even the Detroit Free Press, the UAW’s home turf newspaper.

Who’s funding the funder?

Martin says he’s uncertain of where the money for Patterson's project is coming from, because Americans for Tax Reform is a 501(c)(4) that doesn’t have to disclose its donors. However, he finds this secrecy to be telling.

"It is definitely corporate money. It is obviously someone who doesn't want it known who is doing this, and they have done a good job of covering it up, because I have absolutely no idea who is doing it,” he says. “It could be the local Chamber [of Commerce] trying to keep their fingerprint off of it. It could be Nissan seeing this is where they go to cut [unionization] off before it makes it way down to Mississippi.”

Or, as he points out, the funding could be coming from Volkswagen itself. Though it stated in September that it would not oppose the union, months later, the company has yet to announce how it will recognize the signatures the UAW has gathered from a majority of workers. Indeed, a top leader at VW recently proposed that workers should have to vote to unionize on a secret ballot in addition to signing what the UAW says are legally binding cards.

Furthermore, when speaking about VW’s statement of neutrality, Corker told the Associated Press, “There was a lot of dissension within the company … I don't think it, I know it. Candidly, one board member got very involved and forced this letter to go out. I know that it's created tremendous amounts of tension within the company.”

In an email to In These Times, Volkswagen spokesperson Carsten Krebs denied that the company was giving money to Patterson, but would not expand further on Volkswagen’s position on the union drive.

Republican dissent

In his frequent comments to the press, Corker has echoed Patterson’s assertion that unionization will limit job opportunities.

"If they see the UAW is building momentum in our state, other companies that are looking are not going to choose Tennessee [to settle in]; they're just not," an outraged Corker said in September.

In a high-profile interview with NPR in October, Corker continued, “I mean, look at Detroit. Look at what's happened.” Referring to Chrysler and General Motors, he said, “Look at all of the businesses that have left there. I mean, it's been phenomenal. It's sad."

However, not all Republicans are as alarmed by the prospect of the UAW entering the region. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), whose district includes many VW workers who make the short commute across the border to Chattanooga, said in an interview at the Atlanta airport, “Honestly we have got a lot of employees that work up at the Volkswagen  plant … You know I think one reason people are attracted to the South is that we are not heavily unionized, but we have got unions ... I really had not thought too heavily about the VW plant, to tell you the truth.”

When asked in a follow-up question if having "one union plant threatens all the rest of the South," Chambliss responded, "We have got a lot of union plants in the South … No, I don't think it's a problem."

Workers under fire

Nevertheless, the amplification of the Patterson-Corker message in the local media is putting a great deal of pressure on VW workers in Chattanooga.

“I have had a lot of friends and neighbors come up and ask about me about the union,” says King. “Some of them come up and say it’s really great, but I have had a lot people come up to me and say, ‘You guys are idiots. You guys are going to bankrupt Volkswagen and shut the plant down.’ It definitely has turned into something that everyone has an opinion on.”

Brown says Corker’s statements have also turned some of his co-workers against the union in a plant where he says the overwhelming majority of the workers are Republicans.

“It does have an effect because this is a hardcore Republican area in the Deep South, and a lot of these people are Republicans, so what the party tells them is what they believe,” he says.

Martin tells In These Times that the campaign could get even more intense as other anti-union groups try to enter the conflict, including his own. In his opinion, Patterson’s campaign hasn’t been that sophisticated, mainly focusing on getting politicians to make statements and getting Patterson himself to appear regularly in the press—leaving plenty of room for other anti-union groups to join in the effort.

"It remains to be seen if [Patterson’s strategy] will be effective,” says Martin. “In the anti-union work that I have done in the past, we are far more surgical and high-tech … [Patterson’s campaign] is surprisingly unsophisticated. There is no web presence now, no Facebook, no Twitter—all the stuff that is usually typical in anti-union campaigns.”

In the meantime, VW workers think it’s unfair that outside forces are pressuring them.

“I find it disturbing that outside parties are trying to interfere with a decision that should rest solely with the company, the workers, and the UAW,” says Brown. “The Republican party is into government keeping its hands off of business, but in this instance they are seeing how deep they can get into it. “

King agrees that anti-union consultants and legislators don’t actually have VW employees’ interests at heart.

“I would invite any of the representative from these special interests or any of those politicians to come work for a few weeks in the factory and see how they feel about issue,” he says. “They should walk a few days in our shoes … A lot of people would feel different about it if they got more of a chance to talk to some of the Volkswagen employees.”

Full disclosure: The author’s mother worked on an auto assembly line at a VW plant in Westmoreland County, Pa., until it closed in 1988, and was a member of the UAW .

The UAW is a website sponsor of In These Times.

ABOUT THIS AUTHOR

Mike Elk is an In These Times Staff Writer and a regular contributor to the labor blog Working In These Times. He can be reached at mike@inthesetimes.com.

Why Millennials Are Pro-Union But Don't Actually Join Them

The kids are alright.  It's our job to give them the opportunity to join at union.

from The Motley Fool
By Aaron Sankin

Buried in a Pew Research survey released earlier this year is an interesting tidbit: Millennials (people born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s) hold a much more favorable view of labor unions than do older Americans. The statistic presents a bit of a paradox because young people are, far and away, the least likely age group to be members of a union.

If Millennials are such staunch supporters of unions, why aren't they actually joining them?

"I think the reason Millennials tend to be positive on union is that they're what's called a 'civic generation,'" explained Michael Hais, co-author of the book Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation Is Remaking America. "They are very group-oriented and look out for the benefit of the group over individuals. They have an ingrained sense of equality and want to find win-win situations that benefit large groups of people."

Hais asserts that civic generations, another example of which is the so-called "Greatest Generation," are strongly influenced by economic and foreign policy stressors during their formative years. For the Greatest Generation, those experiences were the Great Depression and WWII. For their part, Millennials were similarly shaped by the high unemployment rates of the Great Recession and 9/11 attacks. "Growing up in the shadow of these events gave Millennials the conviction that everyone needs to pull together to get through," argued Hais.

The poll, which was conducted in July, found that 61% of respondents aged 18 to 29 held a favorable view of labor unions, while only 45% viewed such organizations negatively. In all other age groups, support for unions never rose above 50%. Positive opinions about unions generally dropped as people got older, bottoming out with only 42% of people 65 and over holding a supportive opinion of organized labor.

Conversely, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only a small fraction of Millennials have actually joined a union. Just 5% of Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 are union members. That number increases to 10.7% for people between the ages of 25 and 35; however, those rates are still the lowest of any other age cohort.

No union choice

Dr. Diane Frey, an assistant professor of labor studies at the National Labor College, says the primary reason for Millennials' low union participation rate isn't that young people are making the active choice to avoid signing up. Instead, she insisted, most simply do not have the option.

As the American economy has become largely post-industrial, fewer private sector jobs are unionized. ‟Some of the really decent professions that have in the past been good entry ways for new generations of workers, such as public sector teaching, are being dismantled with new disposable models where younger workers are basically sweated in programs like Teach-for-America that are not meant to be sustainable as careers," she says.

Rates of union membership are significantly higher in the public sector than in the private firms (35% vs. 6%, respectively).

The average age of public sector employees is also far higher. U.S. Postal Service workers, for example, have a  median age of 52. This greying of the government workforce is largely a result of the economic slowdown having pushed many older workers to delay retirement — thereby decreasing the number of open slots for Millennials.

Additionally, shrinking governmental budgets, combined with the shrinking effects of the sequester, have initiated years of layoffs and hiring freezes at agencies around the country. As such, municipalities have often eliminated the entry-level positions that could set Millennials off on unionized careers in government service.

Tim McManus of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service told Governing Magazine that he's seen a dramatic reduction in the number of paid summer internships offered by governmental agencies. He added that, even though some parts of the government have started to hire staff again, ‟they tend to hire veterans who can hit the ground running," instead of fresh-faced young people just getting their start in the labor force.

Ironically, this locking out of many Millennials from likely unionized public sector careers comes at a time when college students' interest in working for the government is on the rise. The number of enrollees in graduate programs for public administration grew by 5% in 2012, a significantly larger increase than for business programs.

Another reason for the low membership rate is a changing conception of what a ‟normal" career is supposed to look like. During the heyday of the labor movement, there was the assumption that someone could remain employed at the same company for his or her entire working life. For Millennials, who, on average, will hold seven different jobs by the time they hit 26, the idea of staying at single firm in a single industry represented by a single union can seem almost laughably antiquated.

The genius of unions

While union membership among Millennials is low, it is by no means non-existent. Ashley Mahne, an immunologist who recently became a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, never envisioned herself as a union member before being asked if she wanted to join on after starting her new position at the university earlier this month.

‟Given their level of education and expertise, I feel post-docs are generally underpaid and under-appreciated, so if organizing together could give us a little more clout, I think that would be a good thing," explained Mahne, who noted that dues would have been deducted from her paycheck even if she declined membership.

Mahne was personally ambivalent about unions prior to joining one herself. ‟Historically, they've been critical to securing protections and fair wages for laborers," she said, ‟but in the present day, they sometimes appear to be more obstructionist than helpful."

However, it was a quotation at the bottom of the membership form by Albert Einstein, who was a charter member of his union at Princeton, that ultimately swayed Mahne to sign up: ‟I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field."

‟I mean, if Einstein says it's a good idea," said Mahne, ‟who am I to argue?"

Young or old, union or not

ALEC promotes changes in pensions as part of 2014 legislative focus In Region

St. Louis Beacon
By Jo Mannies, Beacon political reporter
6:51 am on Mon, 10.21.13
For the last decade, one of the key groups influencing legislative initiatives in Missouri, and many other states with a strong conservative presence, has been the American Legislative Exchange Council, more commonly known as ALEC.

Founded by conservative state legislators in 1973 and funded by major corporations, the nonprofit think tank focuses primarily on economic issues but also has zeroed in on public education and gun rights as well.

ALEC and its free-market approach have taken on more prominent roles in Missouri after Republicans took control of both chambers of the General Assembly in 2003.

"Our bread and butter is state and local government," said Jonathan Williams, ALEC’s director for tax and fiscal policy.

"We don’t go out and tell people what to do at the state level. But we’re certainly happy to talk about our nonpartisan research and analysis and trends and what’s going on in other states.”

Critics contend that ALEC does more than talk. Sean Nicholson, executive director of Progress Missouri, contends that ALEC uses "scholarships" and outreach to influence legislators — and what ends up before the General Assembly.

ALEC has been given credit, or blame, for various legislative proposals in Missouri to curb teacher tenure, block restrictions on energy emissions, and expand gun rights. The group also contributed to the wording of Proposition C, the 2010 ballot measure in Missouri aimed at blocking Obamacare's mandate for individuals to purchase insurance.

Williams acknowledges, "We have a strong ALEC presence in Missouri.”

He singled out MIssouri House Speaker Tim Jones, R-Eureka; state Sen. Ed Emery, R-Lamar; state Rep. Sue Allen, R-Town and Country; and now-U.S. Rep. Jason Smith, R-Salem.

Nicholson doesn’t dispute that claim. Progress Missouri has been monitoring ALEC's activities in the state for years. "Half of our congressional delegation are former ALEC members," he said. “ALEC and its agenda are firmly integrated here in Missouri."

Progressive groups around the country also have been tracking ALEC's activities, resulting in some corporate donors to ALEC — such as St. Louis-based Express Scripts — dropping their financial support.

State pension changes high on ALEC's 2014 list
Of ALEC’s key issues heading into the coming legislative year, two could be of particular interest in Missouri:

Proposed changes in public pensions, as ALEC encourages more states to consider shifting to “defined contribution plans," such as 401Ks, and away from traditional “defined benefit plans,’’ such as those in Missouri and Illinois.
Continued focus on "right to work," which would do away with Missouri’s current law allowing unions and employers to require all workers to pay dues, if a majority agree to join a union.
Jones and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder are among the most outspoken advocates of "right to work" in Missouri, with Jones emphasizing his plan to press for the legislation next year.

Kinder has predicted that some form of right-to-work proposal will be on Missouri's 2014 ballot.

As for pensions, ALEC’s Williams says the group is focusing on the national problem of state and local governments’ unfunded pension liabilities, which some estimate total in the trillions of dollars.

For many states, such as Illinois, Williams said that shortfalls in money needed to cover their pension commitments is "the No. 1 problem.” Among other things, he said, many of those states are relying on projected interest growth in their pension investments that are unrealistically high.

Williams cited recent moves by Kansas, Rhode Island and Alaska away from defined benefit plans to 401Ks.

Pension situation in Missouri
In Missouri, the head of the Missouri State Employee’s Retirement System (commonly known as MOSERS) said that legislative changes made two years ago have put Missouri’s existing pension system on a solid financial footing.

In 2010, the General Assembly approved a measure that requires state employees hired in 2011 and after to put 4 percent of their pay into the state plan. Those hired earlier put in no money.   State workers must be on the job for 10 years to be vested in the pension system, compared to only five years for pre-2011 hires.

The minimum retirement age to collect a full pension was increased to 67, from the previous 62.

Gary Findlay, MOSERS’ executive director, said that at least 20 percent of all state employees are covered by the new provisions because of the state’s high employee turnover.

MOSERS’ rate of return on investments, needed to fund the pensions, averaged 8.4 percent annually over the past 20 years — rising to 10.4 percent for the current year, Findlay said.

"We’re in good shape," he said. Missouri is in better shape than many other states, Findlay continued, because the state has made a point of annually paying its own financial contribution into the system.

Pension-troubled states like Illinois, he said, have amassed unfunded liabilities mainly because they failed to make the state’s annual contribution into the system — in effect, shortchanging the fund and hoping that good investments would bail them out.

Findlay said that such a problem "is not the common condition" for most states. Missouri’s well-funded state pension system, he added, is among the reasons why the state has received a AAA bond rating.

ALEC initially had proposed a shift to 401K-type pensions in the states about a decade ago, when the stock market was booming and then-President George W. Bush was making a similar proposal to change part of Social Security.

But now, part of ALEC's pitch is that more private-sector workers have 401Ks, and no longer have defined benefit pensions.  The group argues that it's unfair for taxpayers with 401Ks to foot more generous pensions for public employees.

Bill de Blasio to Burger King: ‘This Is an Unsupportable Situation’

New York City is a long way from Mid-MO, both geographically and politically.  Isn't it time that elected officials in Missouri stood up for people who are working hard and just can't make ends meet?

The mayoral hopeful is one of the most high-profile politicians to come out in support of the growing movement for low-wage workers’ rights.

Working In These Times
Lizzy Ratner October 18, 2013  
 
Bill de Blasio, Democratic nominee for New York mayor, leans over to listen to a woman at a rally on Oct. 5, 2013, in New York. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
 
Shortly after 11:30 on Wednesday morning, Bill de Blasio, New York City’s likely next mayor, stood just a few blocks from City Hall and did what none of his recent predecessors would have done without the help of drugs or tickle torture: he pledged his support for the city’s vast fast-food workforce and the scores of low-wage workers laboring beside them. Standing in front of a lower Manhattan Burger King, de Blasio offered praise for the campaign to organize fast-food workers and laments for the industry whose grabby, employer-take-all economics has consigned so many New Yorkers to a subsistence existence. As one initial remedy, he called for New York City to have the authority to set—and presumably raise—its own minimum wage.
 
“The bottom line is, this is an unsupportable situation where every day hard-working people can’t make ends meet, and the companies involved certainly can do more,” de Blasio said as a squad of fast-food workers cheered behind him, and reporters scribbled notes on steno-pads. “And it is right, it is right, for leaders in government to step up on behalf of these workers and help them organize to win their rights.”

This was not the first time de Blasio had volunteered his voice for low-wage worker rights. As public advocate, he has been a reliable supporter of the fast-food workers’ movement, appearing at labor conferences long before the media cared to follow him and pressing worker-friendly legislation like the recently passed paid sick days bill. During the dog days of the Democratic primary, he spent a week trying to live on a minimum-wage worker’s budget.

But de Blasio’s appearance Wednesday outside a downtown Burger King signaled a potentially new moment for both city politics and Fast Food Forward, the coalition behind New Yorkers fast-food worker campaign. As the mayor-apparent of New York City, de Blasio is not just some scrappy local pol offering a thumbs-up to a worthy cause; he is a rising political power with a broad mandate and potentially national platform (indeed, de Blasio is now one of the highest-ranking elected officials to embrace the fast-food workers’ movement). And, as suggested by the scrum of elected officials clamoring for turns at the mic before him, he might actually have a significant base of elected support behind him.

As Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president who is expected to become the city’s comptroller, observed when it was his turn at the podium, “We have a growing coalition.” Among those who put in an appearance on Wednesday were state senators, state assembly members, several city council members and Letitia James, a city council member who is almost certain to get the city’s second-highest post, public advocate.

The particular reason for their presence this Wednesday morning was the release of a startling new report titled “Fast Food, Poverty Wages: The Public Cost of Low-Wage Jobs in the Fast Food Industry.” The report was published by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, and its findings have provided some of the first hard data on the economic costs of the fast-food industry’s appalling pay practices. Needless to say the details are bracing. Between 2007 and 2011, 52 percent of all frontline fast-food workers were forced to rely on some form of public benefits, such as Medicaid, food stamps or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, because they do not earn enough money to survive on their own. The cost to taxpayers was $7 billion a year. And all the while, the fast-food business boomed, with the country’s ten largest companies raking in an eye-goggling $7.44 billion last year.

“It’s very disturbing that companies that collectively make billions upon billions of dollars refuse to pay their workers a living wage,” said Karim Camara, a New York State Assembly member from Brooklyn. Like several other speakers, Camara used his turn at the podium to call for an investigation by the state government into the $708 million New York spends each year to pick up the tab for the public benefits fast-food workers rely on since their employers won’t pay a livable wage. As many as 104,000 frontline fast-food workers rely on these benefits every year in New York State.

Tionnie Cross is one of these workers. At 29, she is at once shy, gregarious and, in her words, “poverty-stricken.” As she told her story, she began working at a Brooklyn McDonald’s six months ago, though she has spent as many as five years in the fast-food trenches over all. She had hoped to find some measure of stability in her job (she had just come out of the shelter system), but with a salary of just $7.35 an hour, or between $120 and $160 a week, she hasn’t been able to make nearly enough money to pay her $1,000 rent, buy food, pay her phone bill and cover the sundry other costs of being alive. So she relies on food stamps and welfare and tries to budget her income, though she has fallen behind on her rent and fears an eviction notice will be arriving.

“It’s not enough,” she said simply, as Burger King signs for “Satisfries” and one-dollar French-fry burgers glowed behind her. “It’s not fair when you’re in poverty, working, trying to get more money, and you not really getting enough money to do what you have to do.”

Will the dawn of a new political era make a difference for her? Will it help other workers so that they can buy MetroCards, pay their rent and still afford to put food in their refrigerators? The question is a critical one, not the least because the number of fast-food workers continues to grow rapidly in New York, jumping nearly 30 percent in the past four years alone. The city is now home to 6,600 fast-food restaurants employing 57,000 workers.

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New York’s rising political leadership has pledged to support these workers as they attempt to organize and unionize, and de Blasio’s call for Albany to give the city the authority to set its own minimum wage could, if achieved, have far-reaching consequences. But the hurdles are high. After all, corporations evade, Albany thwarts and leaders backtrack on promises.

And yet it was hard to ignore the buzz among the workers and politicians, organizers and advocates as they milled outside Burger King, surrounded by a squall of press.

Jonathan Westin, the executive director of New York Communities for Change, which has been leading the Fast Food Forward campaign, acknowledged the mood shift. “I feel like for two decades now we’ve been toiling away in the fields while not having much to show for it because whether it was Bloomberg or Giuliani or whoever, nothing was getting passed for people on the ground.”

But now, he said, the years of toil might finally bear fruit. “It generally feels like we may actually have people in office who have similar progressive values to what we’ve seen all over New York City.”

“I think we’re all excited to see it,” he said.

Lizzy Ratner October 18, 2013 

This Springfield News Leader editorial is well reasoned and acknowledges the constitutional rights of Missouri public employees to true collective bargaining.  When will the City of Columbia realize that the once a year session they hold with their worker's unions does not pass constitutional requirements?

City, unions share interests
Common ground on collective bargaining requires common goals
 Oct. 9, 2013  

Unions and employers often see issues from opposite points of view, but in the case of the city and its employees, we believe there are enough shared interests that negotiations on new collective bargaining rules should be able to provide a positive vision for everyone involved.


http://www.news-leader.com/article/20131009/OPINIONS01/310090038/City-unions-share-interests?odyssey=nav%7Chead