Working Professionals’ Issues in the News – June 2007
by Trude DiamondLink to article
Summer’s here, and the time is right for … or are you too overworked or too insecure about job security to take a vacation?
News of layoffs in the first half of 2007 may have contributed to your workplace collywobbles. The International Business Times lists: IBM cutting 1570 jobs; Hawaiian Airlines laying off 98 nonunion employees as part of its tactics to cut $4 million from its annual budget; Nokia Siemens Networks, the telecom equipment maker that began operations in April, laying off up to 9,000 people worldwide (about 15 percent of its work force); medical device maker Boston Scientific Corp. laying off between 500 and 600 workers; and ABN Amro bank cutting 900 U.S. jobs in 2007. Reports elsewhere remind us that Circuit City laid off 3500 long-term employees earning above the market rate, saying it would replace them with lower-paid workers; and reporting professionals themselves have been laid off at the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News and two dailies in Philadelphia.
The Economic Policy Institute provides another view of the potential we have for banding together for power in the workplace in its June 20 posting Strong unions, strong productivity. In brief, clear language and charts, the article reaches this well documented conclusion: “The dramatic drop in unionization in the United States from 1979 to 2005 did not lead to faster productivity growth than in the seven largest European countries with union density greater than 60%. In fact, those countries’ average annual labor productivity growth of 1.7% equaled productivity growth in the United States. … If Congress is concerned about protecting middle-class incomes, it should pass measures to facilitate union organizing and collective bargaining coverage, including the Employee Free Choice Act. There is no reason to fear that higher rates of unionization will impede efficiency or labor productivity.”
In light of those statistics, we should seriously consider encouraging our elected representatives in Washington to support the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800, S. 1041), which would “enable working people to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions by restoring workers’ freedom to choose for themselves whether to join a union.” The Senate began consideration of the bill on June 19.
Professionals need similar protections when we band together to ensure workplace equity. United Professionals is working for you.
Tags: Economic-Policy-Institute, Employee-Free-Choice-Act, layoffs, productivity-growth
June 21st, 2007 at 11:51 am
When I had a real job in oil and gas and was going through yet another cost cutting round euphemistically referred to as “trimming” we oft wondered why cutting so often went “to the bone and beyond!”
YES, we need a voice.
BUT, so often I think we say, “one voice won’t make a difference.”
BUT, it just might.
Ask Rosa Parks.
Lyle