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UNIONIZATION LINKED TO POLICY CHANGES
Displeasure with a new pay system prompted analysts at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which evaluates and investigates federal programs and policies, to pursue some accountability of their own management.A vote to unionize with the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers is anticipated by summer’s end. If the analysts’ bid for representation is successful, they will be the first GAO employees to unionize in the agency’s 86-year history.
'DISCOUNTING' WORKERS' RIGHTS
"Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart’s Violation of U.S. Workers’ Right to Freedom of Association," was released in May by Human Rights Watch (www.hrw.org), one of many groups calling on Congress to remedy worker abuses by enacting the Employee Free Choice Act.
The report connects the dots between weak enforcement and penalties for labor law violations and Wal-Mart’s attacks on employee rights, including forcing workers to work "off the clock," and denying them meals and rest breaks.
"When companies like Wal-Mart can regularly violate U.S. workers’ right to organize, they threaten a fundamental right and one that the government is duty-bound to uphold," says Carol Pier, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest private employer, with more than 1.3 million workers in the United States. For the fiscal year ending January 2007, Wal-Mart registered $11.3 billion in profits.
MILE-HIGH SHAFT
Northwest Airlines’ executive compensation plan has hit turbulence.Unions representing workers for the bankrupt airline have blasted the multi-million-
dollar plan. And for good reason. In an effort to return the airline to solvency, workers have taken double-digit pay cuts and benefit reductions.
Meanwhile, chief executive Doug Steenland’s compensation was valued at $1.8 million in 2006; and under the new plan, he’ll receive nearly $21 million alone in restricted stock and another $5.8 million in stock options.
Executive compensation in business bankruptcy was the subject of a congressional hearing earlier this year.
Citing high-profile bankruptcies that shafted workers, Damon Silvers, associate general counsel of the AFL-CIO, told a House judiciary subcommittee that the business bankruptcy system has become a vehicle for the transfer of staggering amounts of wealth to a small number of executives—at the expense of employees.
