Power To The People.

Posted by Sherwood Ross at LA Progressive: 

It’s estimated 86,000 workers got fired trying to exercise their legal right to organize a union during the Bush years and signs are Corporate American will fight to keep things that way. 

“We like driving the car,” Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott says, “and we’re not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us.” (Or share-the-ride with their hires.) 

Until now, the surest way to lose your job or get sent to vocational Siberia at outfits like Wal-Mart has been to urge your co-workers to organize. No matter the UN Declaration of Human Rights Article 23 states “Everyone has the right to form and join trade unions…” 

Scott and others are girding for a fight to stop the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) that would allow employees to unionize if a majority sign membership cards. It’s a much simpler method than staging company-wide elections by secret ballot. 

EFCA would also stiffen penalties for intimidating or firing union supporters and impose arbitration when a firm won’t bargain. “Though union membership has slid to 12 percent in recent decades, the desire to unionize has grown” from 30% to 53% of nonunion workers since the mid-1980s, writes author Esther Kaplan in The Nation (Jan. 26). 

"Top down" is fine. For convertibles...