Friday, March 27, 2009  

Really, I can monetize anytime I want to. You don't believe me? ... 9:21 P.M.

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Let me guess : Both are instantly likeable but unjustly denigrated precisely because of their popularity? ... 9:23 P.M.

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Auto czarito Steven Rattner's $245 million investiment in Maxim , Blender and Stuff isn't looking very good these days. Stuff was closed long ago . Now Blender' s print edition has been shut down. Luckily, Rattner is one step ahead of the posse  now busy restructuring the American automobile industry. ... 9:52 P.M.

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Employee Free Choice On the Move!  Now Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein is waffling on "card check."   Look for Marc Ambinder's note on how this only better positions the anti-secret-ballot legislation for 2012! ... 11:17 P.M.

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I was worried that anti-card-check lobbyists had made the horrible mistake of killing it quickly , before they'd put their kids through college. But no, there is still talk of a compromise that's damaging to their business clients .  Sen. Harkin seems to be trying to use the Starbucks Plan as a push-off point in order to give labor an incremental victory. Faughnan  speculates Harkin's trying to save some of the (hated by business) arbitration provisions. As usual. Jennifer Rubin isn't buying the threat .  ... P.S.: What, exactly, did labor spinners gain by their now-discredited braggadocio  ( "100% confident" )? ... 11:55 P.M.

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The Moral Arbitratiness of the Strike Power: Stuart Taylor clarifies why the arbitration provisions of the "card check" bill are actually a fairly powerful repudiation of Wagner Act unionism :

While the National Labor Relations Act has required employers for more than 60 years to bargain in good faith, it has never authorized officials to impose contract terms or order employers to make concessions -- and for good reason. ...

The premise of U.S. labor law has long been that the government should not take sides in labor disputes or impose terms on recalcitrant employers, but rather should guarantee the right to strike so that unions can use whatever raw economic power they possess to force concessions

Right. The fundamental idea behind the Wagner Act was that wages would be set by the economic contest between employers and, on the other side, workers exercising their power to strike. If an employer stiffed a union, then the union would respond by walking out and--if the strike was successful--forcing the employer to cut a deal. Unions were proud, self-sufficient actors that could look after themselves. The idea behind the arbitration provisions in "card check" is that the strike power is not enough to guarantee economic justice--the government has to step in and set wages . This shift has subversive implications that go way beyond union organizing campaigns--implications defenders of unionism, in particular, may find disturbing: 1 ) If the strike power doesn't correlate with economic justice--e.g., some unions routinely don't have enough power to achieve the wages they deserve--isn't it possible that the strike weapon gives some unions more power than is justified? Transit worker unions and drawbridge operators come to mind, if not teachers and hospital workers.  2) If the government can come in and set fair wages, who needs strikes? Who needs unions? Why not eliminate the middleman and just go straight to arbitration? ... 11:59 P.M.

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