Labor Blog

Immigration Reform: Sell Green Cards

With almost ten million undocumented immigrants in the US, working without most legal rights and exploited by the day, even as hundreds of thousands more stream across our borders because of desperation back home, there is a human rights crisis serving food at your local restaurant, taking care of children on our playgrounds, and cleaning our offices.

I am a radical on immigration and advocate open borders, but that's not going to happen any time soon. So the question is what reforms could potentially gain political support AND improve the lives of these immigrants. Counterintuitive as it might seem (and I can already hear some liberal friends screaming), I think Gary Becker's proposal to sell additional immigration slots for $50,000 a green card meets these criteria. Fees would not be collected up front, but could be paid back through loans over a number of years. Present undocumented immigrants could buy their way out of the shadows, while new immigrants could skip border dogs and starvation and instead drive freely to their new homes in the US. [Note: To avoid confusion, I am supporting Becker's general proposal with the details I'm presenting, not all his proposed details, many of which I find noxious.]

Why It Would Improve Lives: $50,000 might seem a daunting price, but most immigrants would be financially better off compared to living illegally.

Many undocumented workers are paid less than minimum wage and gaining legal status would allow them to earn far more per hour and demand the legal rights to make sure they were paid fairly.

As an example, loans paid back over twenty years at 7% interest would require payments of $388 per month, but just $3 more earned per hour due to a legal status would translate into an additional $480 per month in full-time wages, more than those loan payments. And legal status would translate into an even larger number of non-financial advantages, including the right to vote.

And for new immigrants, the gains could be even larger, since many are often so desperate that they already pay tens of thousands of dollars to smugglers and are often sold into virtual slavery in the US. So paying a fee for safe passage and a green card would look damn attractive as an alternative.

Why This Would Sell Politically: The loudest argument against immigration is that new immigrants use more public benefits than they pay in taxes. Most evidence disputes this view, but politically it's one of the arguments made most often and a lot of polls show people buy it. And it it often true that the specific communities where immigrants settle face immediate costs, such as building new schools or public health facilities, that the taxes immigrants pay don't cover. (Undocumented immigrants often pay payroll and income taxes under false papers, but that money doesn't necessarily flow back locally).

So letting the undocumented buy their way out from the underground would assure voters that new citizenship was not a free ride. If just half of the ten million undocumented took up the offer, this would bring in an immediate $250 billion and new immigrants each year could bring in an additional $10-20 billion annually. In a time of deficits, that price tag would look awfully tempting to most voters and elected leaders. And this money could be earmarked specifically to help out communities with disproportionate immigration, thereby making encouraging immigration a potentially popular political choice for those local voters as well.

As for the other fear of immigrants, that they drive down wages for local workers, the immigrant fees spent on jobs programs might ease that fear a bit, but the real change will be that undocumented immigrants won't be so easily exploited and bid down wages. The worst thing for native workers is to have ten million people in the economy who lack the legal right to fight on their own behalf for decent conditions. Changing that is one of the best programs to raise wages for all workers.

What About the Alternatives?: I am a strong supporter of the "earned legalization" proposals that would grant citizenship to undocumented workers who have worked for many years in the United States, but political opposition makes passage of those laws unlikely. And in any case, they do little to change the status quo of new immigrants continually replenishing the ranks of exploited work in our economy.

Most of the "guest worker" proposals out there, including Bush's still somewhat undefined one, either are too limited in who is covered to deal with the larger problem or would make things worse by tying workers to employment with specific employers, essentially a system of indentured servitude with no real prospect of eventual citizenship. Letting people buy their way to citenship is less distasteful than creating a system where they only enter the country as de facto rented property of the corporations who sponsor them.

A Hard-Headed Solution: I'm not necessarily happy with the solution of selling green cards, but it in many ways appeals as the least bad of any program likely to have a chance of enactment. There is something distasteful about auctioning off American citizenship, but there is something far more noxious about out half-ass de facto policy of instead auctioning off slots in our sweatshops to those who survive the brutal and sometimes deadly border crossings.

The compromise I would propose would preserve the present system of allocating free slots for immigration based on family unification and a lottery system, so there would be no elimination of a chance for immigration without financial burden. This proposed policy is only an alternative to our present non-policy in regard to the roughly 400,000 undocumented immigrants who arrive each year outside the official system. The goal is to to give those immigrants an opportunity to escape those shadows and use the fees generated to ease the political tensions that threaten to become a flash point for xenophobia and political reaction.

As I said, not a perfect solution, but the status quo is far worse. If we could politically achieve earned legalization, I'd push for it as a fairer, more equitable solution but it seems an unlikely sell right now. Maybe if the initial program of selling green cards on loan repayment plans was adopted, the next step would be for progressives to lobby for loan payment relief for lower-income immigrants. Once those immigrants were citizens, proposing easing that economic burden on our "fellow Americans" would be an easier sell than overcoming the present prejudice against helping "illegals."

This proposal is not the ideal, but it promises to be better than what we have now, which is a festering human rights violation every day. And no proposal is good unless it has a chance of being enacted and this one potentially does. So progressives should take a hard look at it as a possibility as we debate immigration reforms in coming years.

Addendum on How Companies Fight Union Votes

Following up on the post about the vote at the Denver Wal-Mart, this story has a quote by a Wal-Mart worker who hates her treatment by the company but still voted against the union:

Alicia Sylvia, a single mother of 10-year-old twins, was a big union booster at the outset.

"Compared to other stores, we don't even make what cashiers make," said Ms. Sylvia, who earns just under $9 an hour writing up service orders as cars arrive at the garage and says she cannot afford Wal-Mart's health insurance.

She acknowledged that the antiunion videos had helped turn her against unionizing.

"I really wish Wal-Mart would become better," she said. "But even if we get a union, it will be a long battle. Wal-Mart doesn't have to agree to anything. The message we got was, 'You're a small bunch of guys, and you can stand out there and strike, and we're going to replace you.' They'll never agree to a contract, out of pure stubbornness. I'm so confused."

Why Labor Rights Protect National Security

If we die in a terrorist attack, it will be because some political hack covered up his own ineptitude. And the best chance of uncovering that ineptitude before we all die is to let his subordinates blow the whistle of his incompetence.

But the Justice Department believes in protecting the political hacks:

The government has told a federal appeals court that a suit by an F.B.I. translator who was fired after accusing the bureau of ineptitude should not be allowed to proceed because it would cause "significant damage to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."

"The effect of the government's posture in this case will be to discourage national security whistle-blowers," said Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who is helping Ms. Edmonds...The case has become a lightning rod for critics who contend that the bureau retaliated against Ms. Edmonds and other whistle-blowers who have sought to expose management problems related to the antiterrorism campaign.

The advantage of a democracy is that we have hundreds of millions of brains freely operating to protect us. Using the courts to silence any of them is an act of sabotague against our safety by the Bush administration.

What Ezra Should Read

Ezra Klein has made a resolution to put more labor issues into his progressive vision, but wants to know which books might steer him in the right direction. Since he started with Thomas Geoghagen's Which Side Are You On?, one of my all-time favorites (and whose author I coincidentally met just this past week, much to my delight), he's off to a good start. So let me add a few more titles, not an exhaustive list but a few highlights:

Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor- a biography of Sidney Hillman, the organizer of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union (a forerunner of today's UNITE) and co-founder of the CIO in the 1930s, a man who embodied some of the best qualities of labor leadership in the first half of this century.

Reds or Rackets: The Making of Radical and Conservative Unions on the Waterfront - a fascinating sociological analysis of why longshoremen on the East Coast ended up under the thumbs of the mob, while those on the West Coast created one of the most radical and democratic unions in the country.

The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor-- you can't understand the internal wars within labor during and after World War II without understanding Reuther, since the United Auto Workers were the pivot on which the politics of the CIO moved and Reuther ultimately controlled that pivot as he turned against his former Communist allies within the labor movement. And Reuther's and the UAW's role in supporting the civil rights movement should not be forgotten by any progressive.

Working Class New York- a detailed account of labor's role in New York City, a story that doesn't ignore the racism of some unions but also highlights the vital role of most union leaders in fighting for civil rights and the dignity of working people of all races in a wonderful urban history.

The Copper Crucible- the history of the 1983 Phelps Dodge strike in Arizona, the first major use of permanent replacements in the modern era, a strike that set the pattern for union-busting throughout the 1980s and 1990s. (BTW Anne Coulter's Dad was the union-busting lawyer for Phelps Dodge in this battle).

Folks have other suggestions for Ezra?

Why People Like Wal-Mart

Kevin Drum and Max Sawicky got into a small debate on whether Wal-Mart's homogenization of products in favor of cheaper prices is worth the tradeoff. Brad Plumer thinks that Wal-Mart might not be so pernicious in that effect, since it might encourage other stores to INCREASE their variety of products in order to compete against Wal-Mart. Brad hastens to add that this issue isn't as important as whether Wal-Mart is violating labor rights, but I think it is a critical issue.

One reason I support a strong regulatory approach to raise wages and promote unionization at Wal-Mart, rather that just trying to keep them out, is that I think many people do find what Wal-Mart offers attractive-- and would find it attractive even if prices went up marginally to support decent wages.

For busy moms (and dads hopefully), the attraction of being able to visit one store, load up the cart quickly, and have all your week's shopping done is obvious. For many folks who can't afford to shop at all the chi-chi specialty stores, all the products available at Wal-Mart is not a narrowing of choices but a great expansion of variety. When people condemn Barnes & Noble for eliminating the local independent bookstore, my only reaction is to think how happy I would have been to have a B&N in my suburban town, rather than the crappy local independent store we had where I grew up.

We aren't going to convince people to improve Wal-Mart's working conditions by telling them they really don't want what Wal-Mart's selling, since they obviously do. What we can do is point out that many of the things they like about Wal-Mart -- especially the convenience and decent prices -- are compatible with the workers being treated with respect and dignity. The prices might go up a little bit, but most folks will treat that as a reasonable tradeoff. But if you tell them it's a choice between decent wages and having Wal-Mart altogether, I'm afraid we're fighting a losing battle.

Maybe it's because at heart I'm a Wal-Mart shopper and only avoid the place on principle that I have strong sympathy for those who support bringing them into towns across the country. I testified in Chicago in support of our bill to require living wages at large retail stores, and the aldermen from the poor parts of Chicago where Wal-Mart wanted to put their stores were rapturous at the prospect of bringing a few more shopping choices to areas ignored by most retail outfits. They were quite willing to regulate Wal-Mart but they were somewhat angry at the activists who wanted to block it from coming altogether. I'd rather choose a strategy -- fight to regulate and raise standards at Wal-Mart -- that accomodates both the desires by shoppers for what Wal-Mart sells and the desires by those same people as citizens that the workers at Wal-Mart get paid a decent wage.

How Companies Fight Union Votes

Here's the odd thing about union elections. Almost no union applies to the NLRB for an election without a majority of workers signing cards wanting the union brought it. Yet unions, by the time the election happens, often lose the vote. But the key words are "by the time the election happens", since between signing the cards and holding the vote, the company gets to change the electorate. Take the vote being held today in Denver on whether a Tire & Lube Express department at Wal-Mart will unionize. Last November, nine of the department's seventeen workers signed cards asking for a union. Between then and today's vote:

two have left to attend college and a third was fired. As many as six new workers were brought in...Those workers could skew the vote in favor of the retail giant.

Yet that's our American union election system.

Update: BTW there's a lovely piece in Slate slamming the lies by Wal-Mart executives that their "average" wages are $10 per hour-- that is, if you factor in the pay of top executives who make as much as 900 times more than the clearks in the stores.

Update: The official election results show that the Colorado workers rejected unionization, 17-1. So somehow, that workforce went from nine workers signing cards asking for a union to only one voting for it. Given that Wal-Mart has just announced that it will shut down a store in Quebec after it voted to unionize, the result is unsurprising.

Even DOL's Defense of Wal-Mart Deal is Anti-Worker

Bush officials are so anti-worker that even when they defend the Wal-Mart deal under fire, they expose their pro-corporate agenda. In comments, flygal found compelling this oped in the Miami Herald by Victoria Lipnic, who heads the Employment Standards Administration in the Bush DOL. But instead of giving an example of other companies with the same deal -- which she can't since the Wal-Mart details are far sweeter -- the Bush official instead "pivots" and uses the platform for a not-so-subtle attack on labor unions:

Most employers -- and unions -- are given advance notice of an inquiry so that they can assemble the necessary documents and personnel for review.

Even with complaint-driven audits of union finances, for example, it is not unusual for a large union to be given 30 days or more to prepare. This isn't for the benefit of the employer or union but to help our investigators do their work.

While the Dept. of Labor's overall budget is decreased by 4.4 pct. from FY 2005, the U.S. Office of Labor-Mgmt. Standards includes an increase of $7 million to fight fraud and corruption in labor unions. Money would be used to beef up audits, help hire 48 new auditors, and investigate and combat embezzlement of union funds.

Hotel Chains Face Growing Labor Strife

As the union-led boycott of hotels drags on in San Francisco due to contract negotiations, hotels are getting a taste of a new focus by the unions in building a nationwide strategy to take on the chains.

Negotiations are now being complicated by unions' attempts to organize nationally as international hotels grow.

Unionized workers in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., for example, had sought contracts that would all expire in 2006, putting them on the same timetable as other major markets to boost their bargaining power.

Wal-Mart Fails in Bid to Enter NYC

Wal-Mart has become so radioactive that even other capitalists don't want to associate with them:

Facing intense opposition, a large real estate developer has dropped its plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a Queens shopping complex, thwarting Wal-Mart's plan to open its first store in New York City.

Still, I'm ultimately skeptical that these strategies to just block Wal-Mart from major cities is enough. There are thousands of Wal-Marts already built across the country, so we need a strategy, town by town, city by city, to force them to raise labor standards and grant public access to their property to allow labor and community groups to educate the public and employees about problems at Wal-Mart, as well as at similar retail outfits. As previously discussed, the City of Hartford already has enacted a public access law, Montana is proposing to require that large retailers pay a living wage or face additional taxation, and the City of Chicago is debating a bill to require both access and living wages by large retailers.

Wal-Mart is no doubt here to stay as part of the fabric of our economy. But just as the anti-union auto corporations of the 1920s were forced to improve job conditions for their workers in the 1930s and 1940s by a combination of legislation and union organizing, so too must we work to force Wal-Mart to become a responsible employer that is a net contributor to labor standards, and not a drain on our public resources.

Despite NLRB, Graduate Teachers Threaten Strike

The NLRB ruled last year that graduate teaching assistants at private universiites have no legal rights under our national labor law. But unions were organized long before 1935, when the Wagner Act was first enacted, so there is no reason that those grad student workers can't demand their universities recognize their unions upon threat of a strike. And that's what TAs at universities like Yale are still doing. Rights under the NLRA have been so violated by employers and the anti-union burdens so large that grad students may find some advantages from escaping its regulations.

More Murders & Kidnappings of Iraqi Labor Leaders

See here and here.

More at the website of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions.

Changing the Legal Rules to Allow Organizing

Sometimes the hardest part of forming a union is creating an employer with whom to bargain. Here's an example of the more innovative approaches to organizing new workers previously nearly impossible to bring into unions, in this case child care workers

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has signed an executive order to allow 47,000 day care workers to organize themselves into unions and collectively bargain with the state on behalf of those workers. Read the order and it may seem a little odd, since it talks about a "representative designated by a majority of day care...providers" and using the "state action exemption" to protect them from liability under antitrust laws. And despite the fact that the workers will organize under state employee labor laws, they won't be state employees.

So what's this all about?

Many social service workers, such as home health care aides who take care of the elderly or child care workers taking care of children, are hired directly by their clients, even though their funding may ultimately come from the state government. So the providers are not employees but small independent businesses or self-employed independent contractors.

So what this executive order states is that these mini-businesses may band together and designate bargaining agents to negotiate with the state over wages and conditions. Now, normally such businesses banding together would violate federal antitrust law, but states have the legal right to "exempt" certain combinations from antitrust laws if they combine together under the auspices of a system of state regulations.

So voila, 47,000 day care workers move from a legal status barring them from collectively organizing into one where they can.

This model is also being promoted in other states, including Rhode Island as detailed by matthewRI at Rhode Island's Future.

The reality is that nothing good will be coming from changes in federal law for labor in the next four years, but this is a good example of changes we can fight for at the state level to improve workers lives.

Privatization and the New Spoils System

Even as progressives have been lambasting social security privatization, there has been relatively little discussion of the expanded privatization of federal jobs -- replacing government employees with private businesses and employees unprotected by civil service rules against political retaliation if they don't follow the administration's partisan line.

Against most rhetoric, the number of government jobs has been rapidly expanding over the last four decades, they've just been doing so as employees of private contractors. As a Brookings institute study found, the true size of the federal workforce is 17 million people, including 5.6 million jobs created under federal contracts, 2.4 million jobs generated under grants, 4.6 million jobs covered under mandates to state and local governments, on top of the formal civil service workers and uniformed military.

And those privatized jobs are increasingly manipulated to shake down contractors for political donations. Take the recent inaugural; five of the bigggest donors to the inaugural received $286 million or more in federal contracts last year, including United Technologies Corp. (contracts worth $1.2 billion), Exxon-Mobil Corp. (120 contracts totaling at least $649 million), AT&T ($366 million in contracts), Michael Dell of Dell Computer (federal sales of $362 million), Ford Motor (government sales of $286 million). This is just on top of the more obvious partisan deals running through defense contracts-- from Halliburton to security deals handed out to previously small businesses run by GOP partisans-- who have in some cases ripped off the government for millions of dollars.

All of this is bad enough, but it's likely to get worse.

However much abuse an administration might want to engage in, many decisions on such contracts are decided by government employees protected by civil service protections. But now, the Bush administrations wants to allow supervisors to withhold raises from any employee based on subjective evaluation of their performance. This will open up a whole new realm of coercion to direct contracts to political allies of the administration. A New York Times oped this week noted this transformation of federal employees from direct service providers into contractor managers:

The federal government now spends about $100 billion more annually for outside contracts than it does on employee salaries. Many federal departments and offices - NASA and Energy, to name just two - have become de facto contract management agencies, devoting upward of 80 percent of their budgets to contractors....

It must be recognized that involving partners to produce government services places more - not less - responsibility on public officials. It requires them, often with declining resources, to provide more public service than before, but produce less of it themselves.

DOL Inspector General to Investigate Wal-Mart Deal

According to this story and author Stephen Greenhouse says "several career department officials said that Wal-Mart had improper control over what the department could say because the settlement stated that Wal-Mart and the department would 'develop the terms of any joint or separate statement' about the agreement." The seeming creative control by Wal-Mart over the press release is one of the more obvious slimy aspects of the deal, and while the Labor Department denies that Wal-Mart exercised such control, they have yet to explain the mystery of the two press releases. [Note that the DOL due to the public scrutiny has restored the original press release to the DOL web site since my blog post.]

What's It All About, Vicky? Child Labor, Wal-Mart and the Bush Administration

Reprinted from Confined Space.

"Why would we want to change it?"

--Assistant Secretary of Labor Victoria Lipnic, when asked whether the Department of Labor is considering modifying an agreement reached with Wal-Mart in January that requires DOL inspectors to provide 15-day advance notice of any child labor inspections.

Why change it? Take a look at some of the youth fatality investigation reports from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Like this one:

A 16-year-old male produce-market worker (the victim) died from crushing injuries after being caught in the vertical downstroke baling machine that he was operating. The victim, working alone in the basement of a small produce market, was crushing cardboard boxes when at some point in the compacting process he was caught by the machine's hydraulic ram. The victim was discovered by an exterminator spraying the basement, who notified the store manager to call police and emergency medical services (EMS).

October 21, 2001, a 15-year-old male pizzeria worker was killed when he became entangled in a machine used to mix pizza dough. The victim had arrived in the United States from Guatemala one month before the incident and had been working at the family-owned pizza restaurant for two weeks. He was paid to do odd jobs at the restaurant, mostly sweeping and cleaning. On the night of the incident, he was cleaning the pizza dough mixer as the restaurant was closing for the evening. He was working alone in the kitchen as the remaining staff cleaned the adjoining dining room. He apparently lifted the cover of the mixer, uncovering the 32-inch-diameter mixing bowl, and started the machine. As he reached in to the bowl to clean it, he became entangled on a large mixing fork (beater) that rotated inside the mixing bowl. His co-workers heard him scream, but were unable to reach him in time.

On July 2, 2001, a 17-year-old male warehouse laborer (the victim) was fatally injured when the sit-down-type forklift he was operating tipped over and crushed him. The victim apparently lost control of the forklift, which had a load on its forks and the mast fully extended, as he was making a right turn, causing the forklift to tip over 90 degrees onto its left side. The unrestrained victim was crushed under the extended boom/mast of the forklift.

Wal-Mart thinks it's just about them. According to Wal-Mart spokesperson Gus Whitcomb,

What is truly unfortunate is that the attention focused on this agreement has now moved from being about compliance, which is where our attention is focused, to being a new forum for people who simply don't like us.

Other Developments

Meanwhile, in Connecticut, where most of the violations took place, the Governor M. Jodi Rell ordered a state investigation of the Wal-Mart's Connecticut stores and "several state representatives called for increases in state fines for labor-law violations and for a budget increase to support the probe with more inspectors."

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was pleased:

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who said that findings of "errors or improprieties of substantive magnitude would warrant overturning the agreement," including any false statements or improper political intervention. Blumenthal filed his second Freedom of Information Act request Friday, this time for documents on all closed investigations of possible child labor law violations by Wal-Mart across the country. He said his request was a result of discussions with attorneys general in other states who have heard that previous investigations of Wal-Mart's compliance with child labor provisions had been closed before being fully aired.

Meanwhile, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the Child Labor Coalition called on Wal-Mart to stop illegal child labor in its stores by making underage workers wear distinctive badges that could readily identify them as being prohibited from hazardous assignments.

For more information on safe employment for young workers, check out these websites:

NIOSH Young Worker Safety and Health: Lot's of publications, fatality reports, fact sheets and other resources.

Young Worker Health and Safety: The website is a project of California's statewide Resource Network for Young Worker Health and Safety.

The Child Labor Coalition: Information for teen workers as well as advocacy information about U.S. and international child/youth labor.

Interstate Labor Standards Association (ILSA): Includes information on state agencies that administer and enforce child labor laws.

6000 Union Organizers in the Field?

It looks like the proposal to cut contributions to the AFL-CIO in exchange for international unions promising to devote more resources to organizing will become a reality. Major unions representing 40% of the AFL-CIO membership met and pledged to support a Teamster proposal to cut dues to the AFL-CIO in half -- a potential $35 million cut in AFL-CIO resources -- if any union promises to devote 10% of their resources to organizing.

While a lower commitment than the ideal, if implemented across the union movement, it would still amount to a major expansion of organizing, roughly equivalent to having 6000 full-time union organizers knocking on doors across the country.

A Hot Time at the AFL-CIO Exec Meeting?

Andy Stern at the Unite to Win blog is making some tough noises about the need for the AFL-CIO to abandon "lowest common denominator" decision-making, and instead moving to some kind of majority vote approach, where the labor movement can follow "the bold vision of the majority, not the blocking and obstruction of a minority."

The upcoming AFL-CIO exec meeting promises to have fireworks galore, if this is a taste of what's coming.

Inspector General Investigating Wal-Mart Deal

Under pressure from Congressman George Miller, the Inspector General of the Department of Labor has agreed to investigate "the circumstances surrounding" the signing of the sweetheart deal with Wal-Mart. We'll see if we get more than a whitewash, but a small victory nonetheless!

Newsletter Criticizing Bush Plan Censored

A federal government union newsletter denounces Bush's plan to privatize social security.

Under a union contract since 1978, the federal government is obligated to distribute the newsletter to the union's 7500 members.

The Bush administration ignores the contract and refuses to distribute the newsletter criticizing Bush.

So far par for the course censorship and illegal behavior by the administration.

But get this for hypocrisy of the nth order: the Bush administration is referring the matter to the Labor Department's inspector general for possible criminal prosecution for violating federal anti-lobbying laws. Yep, the Bush administration is horrified, yes horrified that public money might in any way be used to influence public policy.

This is of course the same administration that puts newspaper and radio columnists on payroll to push its agenda and announced plans last month to use Social Security Administration employees to convince the public that Social Security is in a crisis and needs private accounts to fix things.

This censorship of union newsletters is nothing new; in December 2002, the Bush folks blocked distribution of a newsletter with a cartoon mocking Bush's tax policies as favoring the wealthy. The union forced the department to distribute the newsletter after the union won a ruling that the government had illegally broken the union contract. So the plea that distributing the newsletter is illegal policy lobbying is the newest ploy to justify its censorship of public employees unions.

Read the whole piece at the link above. Nothing highlights the complete censorship engulfing the federal government than this suppression of even the smallest dissident voice by federal employees.

Steakhouse Loses Money Fighting Minimum Wage

The business lobby always says the minimum wage hurts its bottom-line, and Outback Steakhouse set out to prove this maxim by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against benefits for low-income workers.

And now it's had to admit to Wall Street that 2004 annual earnings were lower than comparable periods a year earlier, at least partly because the corporation spent $870,000 fighting a minimum wage increase in Florida and health care benefits for low-wage workers in California. Lawsuits also cost the company $1 million in legal fees.

Outback is one of the most aggressive companies spending its profits to attack any law to help low income workers. The company and its executives are also big-time donors to rightwing politicians across the country. Maybe we all can add to its profit woes by avoiding any of the restaurants owned by the company, including Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba's Italian Grill, Bonefish Grill, Cheeseburger in Paradise, Paul Lee's Chinese Kitchen, and Lee Roy Selmon's.

Update: I came across this fascinating article about Outback's political operations: "what sets Outback apart from the typical corporate player is its battle-ready militia at the local level" and their focus on mobilizing local managers, who are paid a percentage of profits rather than a straight salary. This is the new frontier of business intervention in politics-- the chain restaurant as ward heeler among its 1100 restaurants spread across the country.

Organizing Blind under NLRB Elections

Imagine an election where one side knows the names, address and phone numbers of all voters, and can talk to them every day about the upcoming vote. The other side, however, gets a list of voters only a month or so before the election, supplied by the opposition, and the opposition is allowed to supply incorrect information on the voter addresses, thereby frustrating campaigning by the other side.

No, this isn't elections in some bizarre dictatorship, but union elections in Bush's America.

In a recent NLRB decision, the court upheld a union election loss, despite the fact that 87 our of 300 names supplied by the company to the union had incorrect addresses. This list of voters is known as the Excelsior list and was traditionally one of the only parts of US union election rules that prevented them from being a complete democratic farce.

But now that employers don't even have to supply accurate information on what workers will be voting in a union election, unions essentially have to organize blind.

Florida to Offer Wal-Mart Deal to All Wage Violators

The Wal-Mart deal with the DOL is not the only example of the GOP wanting to let minimum wage violators escape any punishment -- essentially letting them rob their employees if they give the money back in the few instances when they get caught.

Last fall, Florida voters overwhelmingly (72%) approved a constitutional amendment increasing the minimum wage by a buck and mandating that any employers breaking the law pay double damages plus legal fees when they violate the law.

Now the Florida GOP state House leaders want to let violators of the law escape those double damages if they give the money back within 15 days of being notified by employees of the intent to sue.

The Florida Republican leaders claim this provision fits within the intent of the Amendment. Since I drafted the damn thing, I think I can say with some authority that their bill completely violates the constitutional amendment. Read the amendment for yourself, but the basic problem with this 15-day notice is the same as the Wal-Mart deal: Employers will have every incentive to violate the law recklessly. Even if they are caught underpaying a few employees, they can simply pay back the wages owed with no fine, while pocketing the profit from underpaying the many workers who will inevitably never challenge the employer’s illegal activity.

But then that's the point of these "notice" provisions-- to gut minimum wage laws and discourage enforcement. These rightwing politicians hate working class people and support corporate criminality. They are soft on crime when the criminals wear a nice three-piece suit.

Yes, Wal-Mart's Deal was Unique

Some folks have wondered whether Wal-Mart's deal was par for the course with the Bush administration's pro-corporate policies, or a really special treat for one of its top corporate donors.

According to Hill Democrats who have now analyzed other corporate compliance deals, the answer is that Wal-Mart was given a real sweetheart deal. The DOL tried to argue the Wal-Mart deal was just like compliance agreements signed with Sears and Foot Locker, but that's not what close analysis of the Wal-Mart deal shows:

Wal-Mart is given 15 days advance notice for ANY wage and hour investigation (not just child labor violations). Sears and Foot Locker were given 10 days notice for child labor investigations only.

the advance notice to Wal-Mart applies to ANY store. The advance notice to Sears and Foot Locker was limited to a small number of stores that fit into a particular set of circumstances.

The Sears and Foot Locker agreements required the companies to implement a comprehensive self-auditing system, the results of which must be provided to the DOL upon request. The Wal-Mart agreement does not require such comprehensive self-auditing.

the Wal-Mart agreement gives the company a 10-day abatement period to bring the store into compliance following a DOL finding of a violation. There is no abatement period in the Sears and Foot Locker agreements. Those companies were expected to fix the problem immediately or face penalties.

the Wal-Mart agreement contains a provision restricting how the DOL may communicate with the public or media about the agreement. There is no such provision in the Sears or Foot Locker agreements.

Lou Dobbs Goes Off on Wal-Mart Deal

I'm not sure what's happened to Lou Dobbs, who was once an impeccably pro-business reporter but has converted in recented years into a voice of periodic economic populism (although often with an anti-immigrant Buchanesque feel).

Check out this interview with Congressman George Miller (transcript of the interview below). Dobbs asks the real question:

DOBBS: Well, let me ask you this. Because we are in a situation in this country, in our economy, in our society in which corporate America -- and U.S. multinationals, in particular -- have unprecedented political power, influence in your party, influence in the Republican Party, domination on Capitol Hill and certainly the White House, organized labor is an impotent force by all measures here today. What countervailing influence is there for the middle class, for working men and women in this country period?

MILLER; Well, there's -- you know, there's public officials like myself who are concerned about the middle class, about their standard of living and their ability to have wages and hours and working conditions that allow them to support their familiar and provide health care and education.

There's labor organizations that watch out for these people. But, every time one of these labor organizations approaches a Wal- Mart, they fire the workers who are involved it. They make their life very difficult. We just saw, I believe it is in Canada, where they got a right to organize and Wal-Mart closed the whole store. So what chance do these people have? Now they have the inside track in the Department of Labor, the last independent party between Wal-Mart's employment practices and their employees, and that's now been taken away because the home office gets the first cut at your grievance. These are -- these people have no real protections in these jobs.

What does that tell them about filing a grievance, that people in the home office are going to look for this, they're going to tell your supervisor, your store manager, and they're going to come looking for you.

One less discussed aspect of the secret deal with Wal-Mart is that workers are actually able to collect double damages if they had a chance to take Wal-Mart to court for violating minimum wage and other FLSA violations, but since Wal-Mart gets to "fix" the problem, workers are unlikely to receive the damage payments they're owed. It's a bit like if, when the police catch a bank robber, the full punishment was just giving the money back with no other penalty.

--------------------

Full transcript of Wal-Mart segment

DOBBS: Casey, thank you very much. Casey Wian from Los Angeles.

The Labor Department has fined Wal-Mart for child labor violations, but some are calling the settlement a sweetheart deal for Wal-Mart. Under that agreement, the federal government must give Wal- Mart 15 days' notice before it begins any investigation into whether Wal-Mart has violated child labor laws.

Kitty Pilgrim reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Federal laws don't allow teenagers to operate hazardous loading equipment. The U.S. Labor Department fined Wal-Mart $135,000 for having teenagers doing just that.

Wal-Mart had to promise not to do it again in its 3,000 stores, and post the equipment with warning signs. But they also got what some say is a sweetheart deal. The government will give Wal-Mart 15 days' prior notice of any Labor Department investigation into such matters.

ROBERT REICH, FORMER LABOR SECRETARY: It effectively says to a company, well, if you are big enough and powerful enough, we will give you ample notice to hide any evidence of wrongdoing so that you're not going to get in trouble.

PILGRIM: But Labor Department officials cite similar arrangements made with Sears and Footlocker and defend the practice.

HOWARD RADZELY, SOLICITOR, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR: This is a typical agreement where we do give companies a period in which they can immediately correct the violation to get children out of harm's way. And then we follow that up with a thorough investigation, during which anything we find can be enforced and the company can be fined.

PILGRIM: Wal-Mart strenuously denies they have special treatment, saying, "Wal-Mart's agreement with the Department of Labor is similar to those reached with many other companies. There was nothing secret or special about it."

But political watchdog groups are harshly critical of the arrangement, saying it smacks of influence peddling in Washington.

LARRY NOBLE, CENTER FOR RESPONSIVE POLITICS: In 2004, they gave over $2 million in political contributions, making them the No. 1 giver in the retail industry. They're not going to make political contributions unless they think they're going to get something in return.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PILGRIM: Labor experts say what is critical is that Wal-Mart communicates to its managers how strictly they should enforce the laws. Managers are evaluated by their productivity and their profitability. And if the managers in a large retailer are tacitly allowed to bend the rules on youth employment, smaller retailers will be tempted to follow suit -- Lou.

DOBBS: Thank you very much, Kitty.

Congressman George Miller of California is calling upon the Labor Department's inspector general to investigate whether that settlement is a sweetheart deal for Wal-mart. The congressman joins us in just a moment to talk about why he says the deal puts American workers at risk.

A judge in Tennessee is demanding that foreign-born women learn English. Judge Barry Tatum in Lebanon, Tennessee, made the declaration during a hearing about a Mexican immigrant who failed to immunize her child.

It's not the first time that Judge Tatum has made such as order. His declarations have won the support of many in his community who say immigrants should make a larger, better effort to assimilate into American life.

Still ahead here, one of the country's biggest companies is hiring thousands of new workers and, incredibly, the company is doing so with the help of organizations that support amnesty for illegal aliens.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DOBBS: My guest tonight is calling for an investigation into whether or Wal-Mart's secret settlement with the Labor Department is what he calls a sweetheart deal.

Congressman George Miller, Democrat of California, joins me now from Capitol Hill. We also invited the CEO and other representatives of Wal-Mart to join us here tonight, but the company declined.

Congressman, good to have you with us.

REP. GEORGE MILLER (D), CALIFORNIA: Thank you. DOBBS: You've called for an investigation. What is the likely outcome? How soon, if there is to be one, would you expect it to occur?

MILLER: Well, we would hope that the inspector general would heed our letter for an investigation and do it right away.

Obviously, they have set up a situation where Wal-Mart employees who may file a labor grievance now and in the future are in the situation where that labor grievance will be passed right on to Wal- Mart, bypassing essentially the Department of Labor as an independent arbiter.

So people's rights are being compromised on a daily basis. So we would hope the inspector general would give some real urgency to our request for an inspection of this deal.

DOBBS: You've singled out Wal-Mart, but, as we have reported here tonight, Foot Locker, other companies are also being provided the very same privilege, if you will. Does that also concern you?

MILLER: What concerns me here is the character of the employer, not the size, not the industry, but the character of the employer. You have -- with Wal-Mart, you have a repeat offender, a habitual repeat offender on labor violations, on overtime, on job discrimination, on illegal aliens, on discrimination, on advancement that have impacted tens of thousands of workers, the Wal-Mart employees.

To then now take this labor settlement and draft that into a nationwide agreement where Wal-Mart will get to attend to the labor grievances against it by its employees -- I think there's nothing in Wal-Mart's record to suggest that they have earned that kind of right.

I don't know the labor records of Foot Locker and Sears and others that have been involved in this, but, in this particular case, we have an egregious record against working men and women in this country.

DOBBS: Congressman Miller, let's step back just for a second and say that Wal-Mart has committed a violation. They are given notice by the Department of Labor. They correct it in that two-week period. That's a good thing, is it not?

MILLER: Well, that could be a good thing. We have compliance agreements throughout all different kinds of the agencies in the government, but in this case...

First of all, when were they going to tell the employees of Wal- Mart that this agreement had been arrived at, and when were they going to tell the employees what kind of labor agreements are covered? It appears from the e-mail in the Labor Department and the agreement that it covers all labor violations.

And it also -- the question is -- you send a complaint to the Department of Labor, and you forward them this complaint, and, the next thing you know, they're sending it to the home office. There's a real chilling effect here on these workers. These workers don't have a union, they don't have an organization to protect them, many of them are low-income, and this is...

DOBBS: Or are below legal age, in some cases.

MILLER: In this case, they're below legal age...

DOBBS: Congressman...

MILLER: ... or they're not in this country legally.

DOBBS: Congressman, in that regard, let's take a look at a statement from Wal-Mart today reacting to your call for an investigation and criticism of Wal-Mart.

"Congressman Miller has very strong ties to organized labor, and this is just another example of him trying to discredit us on their behalf, thinking people will see it for what it is."

Your reaction?

MILLER: Well, first of all, there's no organized labor in Wal- Mart. They can -- they don't have any unions in Wal-Mart. Organized labor gets nothing out of this.

This was brought to me by people in the Department of Labor that said there's something very wrong here when you look at the record of this employer, you look at the record of grievances against it.

And now they take this settlement where the -- you know, they don't admit or deny anything, but they settle for $135,000 and they bootstrap that into a nationwide agreement where they get first cut at the complaints of their employees.

DOBBS: Well, let me ask you this. Because we are in a situation in this country, in our economy, in our society in which corporate America -- and U.S. multinationals, in particular -- have unprecedented political power, influence in your party, influence in the Republican Party, domination on Capitol Hill and certainly the White House, organized labor is an impotent force by all measures here today. What countervailing influence is there for the middle class, for working men and women in this country period?

MILLER; Well, there's -- you know, there's public officials like myself who are concerned about the middle class, about their standard of living and their ability to have wages and hours and working conditions that allow them to support their familiar and provide health care and education.

There's labor organizations that watch out for these people. But, every time one of these labor organizations approaches a Wal- Mart, they fire the workers who are involved it. They make their life very difficult. We just saw, I believe it is in Canada, where they got a right to organize and Wal-Mart closed the whole store. So what chance do these people have? Now they have the inside track in the Department of Labor, the last independent party between Wal-Mart's employment practices and their employees, and that's now been taken away because the home office gets the first cut at your grievance. These are -- these people have no real protections in these jobs.

What does that tell them about filing a grievance, that people in the home office are going to look for this, they're going to tell your supervisor, your store manager, and they're going to come looking for you.

DOBBS: Congressman George Miller, we thank you for being here.

MILLER: It's not fair.

DOBBS: We'll follow, of course, the response from the inspector general, the Department of Labor to your call for an investigation. Thank you.

Using Pension Funds to Save the World

Here's a good example of why the rightwing wants to kill social investing by public pension funds

CalPERS targets emissions: Automakers, utilities and others face questions on global-warming actions.

The trustees of California's state pension system have launched a campaign to force companies they invest with to reveal what they are doing to curb the emissions that cause global warming. Conservatives of course think ignorance is bliss, so the less we pay attention to such matters, the safer we are. Kind of like Bush's approach to terrorism before 911.

Defense Department to Abolish Seniority

With plans to destroy civil service protections in the Homeland Security Department, it's hardly surprising that the Defense Department is following suit. The new rules would initially effect 750,000 workers at the Defense Department, but could soon expand to far more workers. Managers would have a free hand to award raises, promote and demote workers based on their subjective evaluations of employees, opening the door to manager favoritism and retaliation against any employee who doesn't tow the administration's partisan line.

And the new rules mean that, with limited funds in each department, co-workers will have ever incentive to sabotague fellow workers. As one Social Security employee interviewed by the Baltimore Sun explained:

"Why would I help out a co-worker when I know that if I don't, he'll be rated lower and that will potentially mean more money for me," Ed Casswell said during a lunch-break telephone conversation.

Forget repealing the New Deal; the Bush administration is seeking to repeal the Progressive Era's reforms of government corruption.

DOL Finally Admits Wal-Mart Deal Exists

But censors the gory details

Here's the press release issued by the Department of Labor. It highlights the fine paid by Wal-Mart and it's agreement to comply with the law, but fails to even mention the deal to prohibit DOL investigations until Wal-Mart corporate headquarters is given a heads up to whitewash their operations.

And this was actually the second press release issued. The first was quickly recalled, because its first paragraph read:

The U.S. Department of Labor has fined Wal-Mart $135,540 in civil money penalties for violating the youth employment provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The department's Wage and Hour Division found that Wal-Mart allowed teenage workers to operate hazardous equipment resulting in one teenager being injured while operating a chain saw.

The U.S. Department of Labor has fined Wal-Mart $135,540 in
civil money penalties for violating the youth employment provisions of the
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for allowing teenage workers to operate
hazardous equipment.

So not only did Wal-Mart get a slap on the wrist and a secret deal to help them avoid prosecution for future violations, Wal-Mart got creative control of the DOL press operations. Unbelievable!

Whole original press release after the jump

THE FIRST DOL PRESS RELEASE (RECALLED):

U.S. Department of Labor For Immediate Release
Office of Public Affairs Date: February 14, 2005
Washington, D.C. Contact: Dolline Hatchett & Pamela Groover
Release Number 05-272-NAT Phone: 202-693-4650 or 202-693-4676
Wal-Mart Agrees to Pay Fine for Violating Child Labor Laws

Company Also Signs Compliance Agreement with Labor Department

WASHINGTON-The U.S. Department of Labor has fined Wal-Mart $135,540 in civil money penalties for violating the youth employment provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The department's Wage and Hour Division found that Wal-Mart allowed teenage workers to operate hazardous equipment resulting in one teenager being injured while operating a chain saw.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer with approximately 3,000 stores, is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. The Wage and Hour Division Southwest Region has jurisdiction over Wal-Mart headquarters and coordinated the resolution of several investigations of stores in Connecticut, Arkansas, and New Hampshire.

The department's investigation revealed that Wal-Mart employed 85 minors aged 16 and 17 who performed prohibited activities, including loading and occasionally operating or unloading scrap paper balers, and operating fork lifts.

The FLSA prohibits the employment of minors under age 18 in any occupation determined hazardous by the Department of Labor. The department has issued 17 specific hazardous occupation orders identifying these prohibited occupations.

While not admitting the violations, Wal-Mart cooperated with the department and guaranteed full compliance with the youth employment provisions of the FLSA in the future.

"A young person's early work experience should be positive and educational and should never jeopardize their health and well-being," said Victoria Lipnic, assistant secretary for the department's Employment Standards Administration. "Wal-Mart has signed an agreement with the department and committed to take specific measures to ensure that all its stores are in compliance with youth employment laws in the future."

As part of the compliance agreement, Wal-Mart will:

* designate a corporate official to supervise compliance with the agreement;
* provide new and current store managers with training on child labor law compliance;
* include child labor compliance reviews in its regular internal audits, and
* post warning signs, supplied by the Labor Department, on all company-owned hazardous equipment indicating the age restriction on their use.

This compliance agreement is significant because Wal-Mart has agreed to implement these practices in all of its Wal-Mart Stores and Supercenters.

For more information on the youth employment provisions of the FLSA, visit the department's YouthRules! Web site at www.youthrules.dol.gov. Additional information can also be obtained by calling the Department of Labor's toll-free help line at 1-866-4USWAGE.

CT Attorney General Opens Fire on Wal-Mart Deal

It emerged yesterday that most of the child labor violations in the Wal-Mart settlement with the DOL happened in Connecticut. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is denouncing the deal and has announced that the state will have to take up the slack:

"In effect it gives the company an unusual, if not unique, amount of time to avoid or even cover up evidence in the future," Blumenthal said. "And it certainly diminishes the usefulness of any future federal investigation, which is why the state has an obligation to undertake a more proactive and aggressive role."

Dem Disunity on Trade Policy

Matthew Yglesias rightly argues that beneath the veneer of Democratic unity are serious divisions over trade policy. But my frustration with "liberal free trading" Democrats like Matt is that they are falling down on the job of the "liberal" part of their advocacy of free trade.

While Matt wants to reduce the debate to that between "free traders" and "protectionists", it's more complicated than that. The Clinton Democrat position is that, yes, trade will dislocate some workers, but it will make our society richer, so we can then afford to train any workers for even better jobs.

Sounds nice in the abstract, but those displaced workers have a sneaking suspicion that their vested ownership of a job is more valuable politically than a government promise to retrain them. And you can see Bush's actions in office sustaining that belief, since while he imposed steel quotas to protect some steel jobs, he's gone out of his way to deny Trade Adjustment Assistance to workers who actually lose their jobs to trade. And now he wants to kill the whole training program under the TAA.

But here's my problem with Matt and other "liberal" free traders. Retraining workers is "their" trade program, yet it's leftwing labor bloggers like myself who have to scream about Bush's assault on the program. The silence from the liberal free trade side of the blogosphere has been deafening.

If liberals won't defend retraining funds, they really can't convince us labor types that they are seriously committed to helping the losers from their pro-trade policies.

The whole "protectionist" label misses the point, since labor folks are often in favor of trade, since it breeds jobs. They just don't trust the policy liberal free traders talk about, since there is such a clear record of them not following through on programs for those who lose out under their policies.

While some labor-types are straight up protectionists, the official labor position is that trade is fine as long as all countries are required to respect basic labor rights, such as the right to free speech in the workplace and the right to bargain collectively. That way, it's the workers in each country deciding the appropriate trade-off between wages and jobs-- not each government imposing it as authoritarian policy. And the advantage of that is if jobs go overseas, it's far more likely to lead to better paying jobs there, which in turn increases the demand for US goods. So us "fair traders" are all in favor of lots of trade-- we just want the benefits to go first, last and foremost to workers both in the US and in the developing world. I know the liberal free traders think that's the goal of their policies, but the evidence just isn't there. As I said, the silence over Bush's plan to kill Trade Adjustment Training funds is deafening.

Update: Dems on Hill Demand Investigation into Wal-Mart Deal

From a press release by the Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce:

After disclosure of a secret agreement between the U.S. Department of Labor and Wal-Mart giving the giant retailer the authority to conduct its own investigations of employee wage and hour complaints, Representative George Miller (D-California) today requested an investigation by the DOL's Inspector General to determine whether the arrangement represents a sweetheart deal between the Bush Administration and one of the nation’s most frequent violators of labor laws...

Miller said that such an arrangement could allow the giant employer to cover up evidence of a violation and would discourage aggrieved employees who might fear retribution from the company. Miller also sent a letter to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao today asking for more information about the arrangement.

"I am very concerned about this secret arrangement between Wal-Mart and the Bush Administration," said Miller, the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee. "This is a company that has been accused of a lengthy list of labor violations. Wal-Mart does not have the credibility to serve as an impartial investigator of accusations of labor violations against itself. I intend to find out how this arrangement was reached and, if appropriate, I will consider asking Congress to rescind the agreement if it cannot be justified."

"Once again, it looks like the Bush Administration is doing a favor for a powerful friend and contributor at the expense of workers who do their jobs and still cannot get fair treatment in the workplace."

MCI Bites the Dust

Verizon to takeover MCI

Okay, this is sweet. In my book on the rise of the Internet, I spend parts of multiple chapters on the evils of MCI: its gaming of regulations, its corporate subsides at the expense of the public, its gobbling up of independent Internet providers in its attempt to strangle them. And MCI-WorldCom was one of the nastiest, union-busting companies out there.

So to watch MCI fall to a unionized Baby Bell is just lovely.

More on Wal-Mart's Sweetheart Deal with the DOL

Following up on Jordan's post, here is a copy of the sweetheart deal negotiated by Wal-Mart with the DOL as sent out in email to district DOL offices (click for more readable version):

Here's why the deal smells like rotting corporate sludge:

1) The deal to let the Wal-Mart corporate office look at all minimum wage and overtime complaints was kept secret until the New York Times confronted DOL about it. There was no public announcement prior to this date, despite the fact that the DOL usually announces such compliance deals with great fanfare.

2) As far as anyone can tell, no Wal-Mart employees were informed of the compliance agreement, even though it had been implemented as early as January 10 (see the email).

3) While the headlines talk about child labor violations, the email is much broader and says any information on any fair labor standards violation investigation should be turned over to Wal-Mart.

4) Were Wal-Mart employees ever informed that their complaints about their employer to the DOL were just being passed off to Wal-Mart corporate headquarters in Arkansas? Giving Wal-Mart this information secretly is a recipe for employees to face retaliation. Notably, there is no instruction in the email to assure the confidentiality of the employees who might make a complaint.

5) If the DOL receives a complaint, do they just ask Wal-Mart to fix the problem for the individual worker? There is nothing in the directive that requires the DOL to investigate to make sure workers in similar jobs aren't suffering the same violations. And since the complaints are never made public, they may never hear they have the right to seek legal relief.

6) Wal-Mart agreed to pay $135,000 for nationwide violations, yet the state of Maine alone fined Wal-Mart $205,650 for child labor violations. The DOL fine was obviously chump change-- a lick, not even a slap on the wrist.

And there are just weird things about the timeline. The NY Times reports the deal was signed on January 6, but the AP reports it was signed on January 11. The email above was sent out on January 10. The DOL claims they were waiting 30 days to let Wal-Mart pay the fine, yet they didn't announce it until forced to by the NY Times investigation more than 30 days later.

This is one of the slimiest insider deals possible by one of the largest corporate donors to the GOP.

Update: Hill Democrats demand investigation into the Bush administation's sweetheart deal with Wal-Mart.

Bush Labor Department Puts Wal-Mart in "Privileged Position"

True to form, the Bush administration is making sure that its corporate friends are not too inconvenienced on those rare occasions when they are found to be breaking federal laws, especially if it only involves child labor issues.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer agreed to pay $135,540 to settle federal charges that it violated child labor laws in Connecticut, Arkansas and New Hampshire. As part of the agreement, revealed yesterday after it was secretly signed in January, the Labor Department agreed "to give Wal-Mart 15 days' notice before the Labor Department investigates any other 'wage and hour' accusations, like failure to pay minimum wage or overtime."

The violations involved workers under age 18 operating dangerous machinery, including cardboard balers and chain saws. Consistent with its new P.R. role models -- the industries that brought us lung cancer, underage drinking and Bhopal -- Wal-Mart reached and agreements to pay the fine, although the company denied any wrongdoing.

The agreement left Congressman George Miller (D-CA) rather angry:

"I don't know if the Department of Labor threw in the towel or whether Wal-Mart put enough political pressure on them that they ended up with a sweetheart deal," Miller said, adding that he will ask the department's inspector general this week to review the agreement.

"I don't know if there's anything in Wal-Mart's background with regards to allegations of violations of labor laws that would make any suggestion Wal-Mart has earned the right for this kind of treatment," Miller said.

"With child labor cases involving the use of hazardous machinery, why give 15 days' notice before we can do an investigation?" asked a district office supervisor who has worked in the wage and hour division for nearly 20 years.

"What's the rationale?"

Labor Department officials claim there's nothing unusal about this arrangement, but officials from previous administrations think it stinks.

Victoria Lipnic, assistant labor secretary for employment standards, called the settlement typical, saying that giving Wal-Mart notice before conducting investigations would encourage the company to correct the problems sooner.

***

Several department officials suggested that the provision for 15 days' notice might give Wal-Mart an opportunity to hide violations.

John R. Fraser, the government's top wage official under the first President Bush and President Bill Clinton, said the advance-notice provision was unusually expansive.

"Giving the company 15 days' notice of any investigation is very unusual," Mr. Fraser said. "The language appears to go beyond child labor allegations and cover all wage and hour allegations. It appears to put Wal-Mart in a privileged position that to my knowledge no other employer has."

Ms. Lipnic countered,"We usually call employers before we go to investigate," and said there was "nothing uncommon or unprecedented about that."

Several federal employees voiced concern about a Jan. 10 e-mail message sent by the director of the Little Rock, Ark., office for the Labor Department's wage and hour division after the settlement was reached, that said, "Wage & Hour will not open an investigation of Wal-Mart without first notifying Wal-Mart's main office and allowing them an opportunity to look at the alleged violations and, if valid, correct the problem."

A Wal-Mart spokesman claimed that "our focus is to be 100 percent compliant with all applicable laws."

Yeah, right:

Wal-Mart has faced previous child labor charges. In March 2000, Maine fined the company $205,650 for violations of child labor laws in every one of the 20 stores in the state. In January 2004, a weeklong internal audit of 128 stores found 1,371 instances in which minors apparently worked too late at night, worked during school hours or worked too many hours in a day. Company officials said the audit was faulty and had incorrectly found that some youths had worked on school days when, in fact, those days were holidays.

Is this an example of those Republican values we hear so much about?

Wal-Mart: Following In The Proud Footsteps of the Tobacco, Beer and Petroleum Industries

Continues?

The chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. yesterday defended the retailer's decision to close a Canadian store after its employees voted to form a union, saying demands from negotiators would have forced an already unprofitable store to hire 30 more people and abide by inefficient work rules.

"You can't take a store that is a struggling store anyway and add a bunch of people and a bunch of work rules that cause you to even be in worse shape," H. Lee Scott Jr. said.

In his first interview since Wal-Mart announced it would close the store in Jonquiere, Quebec, Scott said Wal-Mart saw no upside to the higher labor costs and refused to cede ground to the union for the sake of being "altruistic."

"It doesn't work that way," he said.

Scott announced that Wal-Mart has begun "a campaign to tell community and elected leders about its operations and policies." And where are they looking for examples of how to run the P.R. campaign?

Scott, who has worked at Wal-Mart since 1979 and became chief executive of the 3,000-store chain in 2000, said he has studied how major companies in the tobacco, beer and petroleum industries have weathered intense criticism.

Great.

They're trying to improve their image, so they've chosen the lung cancer, alcoholism and Bhopal industries as their role models?

***

More information here about an AFL-CIO petition campaign.