| Number 159 | June 7, 2002 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, I am off my "single-issue focus" on welfare of the past couple of weeks, and getting back to the usual unpredictable range of issues. I try to avoid focusing too much on one issue, as I think it is important to keep a broad, multi-issue perspective in the Notes. So, you probably won't see a series like that again for a while. Although, as long-time readers are well aware, I never really know from week to week what is coming next. This week, in fact, I really had no idea of what was happening until Tuesday (OK, Wednesday). What ended up happening, as you will see, is that a couple of issues that had previously appeared in the Notes—the use of the word "jihad," and the fate of the largely-immigrant workforce at a local meatpacking plant—seemed to need some following up, based on information that has cropped up in the media over the past few weeks. I've never done that before, but I'm doing it now. They're pretty illuminating, I think. The other piece looks at first like a pile of dead leaves; you'll see what I mean when you get to it. Welcome to the new readers this week. Hope you enjoy the ride. Nygaard |
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In an attempt to help ward off the expected backlash against Muslims in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11th, I published a piece on the real meaning of the word "jihad" as it is understood by the majority of Muslims. The piece, entitled "Harbun Muqaddasatu" (Nygaard Notes #126, Sept 28, 2001), was obviously not read carefully by the students at Harvard University, as news reports this week reveal. As reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, a graduating senior at Harvard, Zayed Yasin, was recently selected to give a brief commencement address which he had entitled, "American Jihad." As readers of Nygaard Notes are well aware, the word "jihad," while difficult to translate exactly, has to do with a striving, or perhaps a struggle, toward a more pure or perfect life. It's often an internal process of attempting to be more in line with the teachings of Allah. No matter. A "furor" immediately erupted at Harvard, with outside interests demanding Yasin's removal from the speaker's list, and alumni threatening to withhold donations from the esteemed university if this heresy were allowed to be spoken. Yasin even received death threats. None of the protesters actually read the speech. They only saw the title, since no one outside of the speakers' selection committee was allowed to see the text. Knowing full well that the propaganda system has convinced most United Statesians that "jihad" means "holy war," Yasin intentionally used the title in an attempt to raise the consciousness of his fellow graduates by reclaiming the original meaning of the word. One might expect such a noble attempt to get a friendly reception at an institution that claims to stand for intellectual integrity. Not the case. Upon hearing nothing but the title, a group of students at Harvard immediately started a petition "opposing the speech." The lead petitioner, Hilary Levey, stated that "I was so shocked by the title I thought I had been kicked in the stomach." She was actually kicked in the stomach by her own ignorance, however, not by the title of the speech. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance can be dangerous. Especially, these days, to Muslims, Arabs, or anyone who "looks like" them. For the record, the Arabic words for "Holy War," the phrase often equated with "jihad," are "Harbun Muqaddasatu." |
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Back in July of the year 2000 I reported on a successful union organizing drive at a meatpacking plant in St. Paul, MN called Dakota Premium Foods. ("News You Never Saw: Labor," Nygaard Notes #80, July 28, 2000) I reported it as a "good news" story at the time, and it was. However, the story continues, with very little good news to be found in the two years since. And therein lies a tale that says a lot about the current state of union organizing in the United States. This is what I reported at the time: "As a result of a ‘breathtakingly quick' organizing drive, the largely Spanish-speaking meatpackers at Dakota Premium Foods in South St. Paul voted overwhelmingly on July 21st to become unionized. At stake was workplace safety and respect for injured workers. In addition, wages at the plant are a miserly $8.50 to $9.00 per hour. After spontaneously shutting down the Dakota plant in protest on June 1st, the workers approached Local 789 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union to represent them. Three weeks later, 60% of the workers voted in favor of the union." Now, here we are almost two years after the workers voted for the union, and no contract has yet been signed. How can this be? Immediately after the workers won their union election back two years ago, the company—one of the largest private companies in the state—appealed the result to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency whose job it is to "guarantee the right of employees to organize and to bargain collectively with their employers." In November of 2000, the NLRB upheld the election, rejecting every one of the company's objections. The company appealed. In the agonizingly-slow way the NLRB operates, the next ruling—again rejecting all of the company's arguments—did not come down until August 27th of 2001, a full nine months after the previous ruling. (This was no surprise; the average time for such rulings by the NLRB is ten months.) This time the NLRB officially designated Local 789 of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) as the exclusive bargaining representative for the workers at Dakota Premium. (That is, they "certified" the union.) Again, the company appealed the decision. And again the NLRB rejected everything the company said. On April 1st of this year, the company was ordered to stop screwing around and start talking contract. I'm paraphrasing, of course. The NLRB unanimously ordered Dakota Premium to "bargain with the Union as the exclusive representative of the employees," and to "Cease and desist from...interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed them" under the law. No bargaining has yet taken place. Needless to say, in the two years since workers at Dakota Premium took their brave stand and celebrated their victory, many have become disillusioned with the ability of a union—or anything else—to stand up for their rights as workers in the dangerous world of meatpacking. Which is, by the way, the most dangerous job in the United States in terms of (non-fatal) injury rates, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Also, more than half of the workers who were there at the time of the election have moved on to other jobs, or just moved on. If this struggle were some sort of bizarre case the likes of which no one had ever seen before, I would not bother to write about it. Unfortunately, labor law in the United States makes this sort of scenario all too common. In their report "Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards," the non-partisan monitoring organization Human Rights Watch put it this way:
This important report, which can be found online at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/uslabor/, was issued just a couple of weeks after the Dakota Premium workers won their union election in July of 2000. William Pearson, president of the UFCW, says it this way: "People talk about the diminishing number of unionized workers. Well, hell, it isn't because the unions aren't here. It's because the system that we operate under allows employers to slap workers around, abuse the entire process, and nothing happens." If you would like more information on this issue, visit the website of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union at http://www.ufcw789.org/. They could use your support. |
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"The movement by big business to revise the civil liability system, considered a political dead letter before September 11, may be enjoying its best legislative year ever." Thus spake The New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") on December 12th, 2001. The "movement to revise the civil liability system" referred to above is also known as "tort reform," undoubtedly one of the most boring-sounding issues on the Nygaard Notes agenda. However, think of it like a pile of dead leaves in your yard. It may look boring from a distance, but dig into it a little bit and there's no telling what fascinating things you might find under there. Let's do some digging right now. "Remedial, Not Punitive" There are many reasons for the fact that corporations routinely ignore the weak labor laws that we have in this country, as Dakota Premium Foods is doing right now. One of the main reasons is that U.S. labor law does not provide for civil or criminal sanctions or penalties in unfair labor practice cases. All the law says, for the most part, is that an employer who commits an unfair labor practice must "cease and desist" from the practice, and post a notice in the workplace promising not to repeat the conduct. In some cases they also have to attempt to restore the so-called "status quo ante," that is, the situation that was in place before the violations happened. (Even those requirements are often watered down.) The short phrase that legal types use to describe all this is to say that U.S. labor law is "remedial, not punitive." What this means in practice is that the laws don't have much in the way of teeth. If the NLRB had the capacity to "punish" corporations, it might have a deterrent effect, making corporations think twice before stripping away their workers' rights to organize. But it doesn't, so corporations are not deterred. The Citizens' Challenge The most effective tool we have in this country (at the moment) for deterring corporations from producing shoddy and unsafe products for use by the public—and doing so in plants that are unsafe for workers and the community in which they are located—is the right to sue a corporation for misconduct in the civil justice system and have that suit decided by a jury. As the Center for Justice and Democracy (more on them next week) puts it, "With money and politics already dominating the executive and legislative branches of government, America's civil justice system is one of the only places left in America where individual citizens can successfully challenge powerful industries and institutions." I know what many of you are thinking as I write this: "Give me a break! The United States is the most lawsuit-happy nation on earth, the nation is crawling with unethical lawyers, and these outrageous billion-dollar lawsuits are ruining our economy. Haven't you heard about that lady who sued McDonald's after she spilled coffee on herself?!" If any of these thoughts enter your mind (Be honest, now!) I recommend you go to the Nygaard Notes website and re-read my essays "What the Heck is ‘Tort Reform?'" and "I Stubbed My Toe - Call a Lawyer!" from issues #62 and 63. A "tort" is a wrongful act that causes someone harm or loss. When you sue someone (including a corporation) to recover your loss or to address the harm, this is called a "tort" lawsuit. So far, citizens filing a tort lawsuit—unlike workers appealing to the NLRB—do have the right to ask for punitive damages from a corporation, if that corporation has knowingly endangered innocent citizens. And, contrary to popular opinion, many lives have been saved and injuries averted due to the filing (and winning) of such lawsuits. For example:
There are many more examples. Without the threat of serious penalties (beyond limited "remedial" measures), it is doubtful that many of these suits would have resulted in such long-term changes in corporate behavior. When George W. Bush was the governor of Texas, one of his crowning achievements was "tort reform" in that state. He declared it an "emergency" and, within six months of taking office in 1995, W. "signed into law seven major bills that put a pro-business face on the state's tort laws, making it hard for aggrieved parties to win damages against big and small businesses, doctors, hospitals, and insurers," according to the Washington Post of February 10, 2000. This led Ralph Wayne, president of a Texas business group that pushed for the new laws, to say that the measures represented "more tort reform in one session than any state in the country in the last 15 to 20 years." George W. Bush is now the President of the United States. Thanks to the toothless labor law system in the United States, the workers at Dakota Premium Foods have been waiting for two years to get a fair contract from their employer, and will likely wait a lot longer for justice, if they ever get it. When the rest of us who may be wronged by large corporations hear or read the words "tort reform," or "civil liability reform," we need to know that those words are code for an attack on "one of the only places left in America where individual citizens can successfully challenge powerful industries and institutions." At the moment, there are still some teeth left in our civil court system. Let's not let George W. pull them out. |