In keeping with what headline writers are calling our new “post-factual” world, Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-NC, the incoming chair of the House labor committee told Reuters this week that unions are no longer needed because there are so many laws in place to protect workers. Her assertion approximates the level of accuracy in the absurd and discredited claim that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex slave ring out of a D.C. pizza joint.
The way things are going right now, it would not be a surprise if some disgruntled worker marched into the district with an AK-47, demanding that Fox’s committee enforce his right to a dental plan and paid vacation. The truth of the matter is that those rights don’t exist without a union contract. As they used to say in this town during the days of civility, the Distinguished Committee Chair from the Great State of North Carolina is badly mistaken.
The United States has always taken a minimalist approach with respect to protective labor legislation, giving wide berth to market forces (also known as managerial discretion) and collective bargaining in determining an employer’s workplace practices. Since union penetration in the private sector is hovering between six and seven percent, that means the vast majority of the country’s workers are pretty much at their bosses’ mercy when it comes to pay, working conditions and job security.
Yes, there are some minimal guarantees and protections imposed by law, but they are a drop in the bucket compared to what most other industrialized countries have done to protect workers. For example, the last major piece of protective labor legislation in the United States was the Family and Medical Leave Act. Adopted in 1993, it required employers to give their workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year to care for sick family members or themselves. Most other countries mandate more than 12 weeks of fully paid leave for the same purpose.
Throughout Europe, employees are protected by law from unfair discharges. A worker is able to contest a firing before a government tribunal or an appointed neutral third party. Discharged European employees are entitled to severance pay by law. The United States is the only country adhering to the common law principle of “employment at will,” meaning that, absent a union contract or a claim of discrimination, workers can be fired for any reason or for no reason. There is no law mandating severance pay.
The new House labor chair certainly can’t be talking about pay when suggesting that legal protections for workers have eliminated a need for unions. The current federal minimum wage is an utterly unlivable $7.25 an hour. The battle for a $15 an hour minimum has been spearheaded by organized labor and has had success in a limited number of very progressive blue states and municipalities. Ironically, two days after Rep. Foxx talked about the abundance of legal protections for workers, President-elect Donald Trump nominated as his labor secretary a fast food company CEO opposed to increasing the minimum wage.
As the head of the Carl’s Jr hamburger chain, Labor Secretary-to-be Andy Puzder found himself on the receiving end of countless DOL complaints over the firm’s alleged failure to comply with the country’s exceedingly low standards on pay and work hours. This is not a guy who is apt to obliterate the need for unions by forcing companies to treat their workers fairly. He has already indicated he wants nothing to do with the Obama labor department’s move to nearly double the wage threshold for overtime eligibility. A new rule was set to take effect Dec. 1 requiring employers to pay time-and-a-half for more than 40 hours in a week to nearly everyone making under $47,476 a year. That would have meant a raise for more than 4.2 million employees. However, the rule change was held up by a last-minute injunction from a federal judge in Texas. Nobody expects the Trump administration to pursue an appeal.
On the other end of the spectrum from those forced to work more than 40 hours a week is a growing contingency of part-time workers who toil below the safety net of most government regulations. A recent study showed that the number of people involuntarily working part time because they could find no other work has increased by 44.6 percent since the pre-recession level of 2007. In most cases, this means lower pay, no benefits and a constantly shifting work schedule that makes it almost impossible for these employees to hold a second part-time job to make ends meet. With the exception of a few cities like Seattle and San Francisco, no government entity has seriously attempted to protect these folks.
Despite the false campaign-induced hopes of many in the beleaguered working class, it is abundantly clear that the Trump-Puzder-Foxx team is not about to enact new protections for workers. Instead, they will attempt to weaken or eliminate the few that are now in place. That means, with all due respect to Congresswoman Foxx, the only real protections for employees will be those they and their unions manage to negotiate. With this corporate crowd in charge, the need for labor unions and collective bargaining has never been stronger.