Labor

As Barack Obama prepares to get a stimulus plan launched this winter, carefully planting seeds of cross-party warmth and nurturing each rare shoot, he may wish to avoid unrelated matters that cause bitter partisan showdowns and lay waste to the whole damn thing. At least, that seems wisest when you're asking for a trillion or so in new spending. So people understood why Rahm Emanuel, during a meeting with the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council last November, dodged an inquiry about a contentious piece of legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act.

Americans instinctively revere the family as an institution that helps facilitate all other aspects of life. The family fosters attachments across generations, provides a nurturing environment in which to raise children, and is a means of transmitting values from one generation to the next. It is the foundation upon which our social contract has been built.

The California labor market has experienced drastic transformation and further change is expected as the workforce ages, immigration continues, and the gap between the earnings of skilled workers and those lacking education widens.

While I was asleep in Switzerland, peace broke out Thursday in Colorado's multi-measure labor vs. business war. As part of a deal negotiated just before the deadline for sponsors to pull their support for an initiative, business groups agreed to fund a campaign against three ballot initiatives targeting labor prerogatives, including Amendment 47, the initiative to make Colorado a right-to-work state. In return, labor agreed to drop four initiatives that it had qualified to challenge business prerogatives.

The essence of self-government is the ability to know what your government is doing, who it hires and how it spends its money. But public employee unions have been -- shamefully -- seeking to prevent the public from learning such information.

In Colorado, there's a multi-initiative war between business and labor interests. Each side is sponsoring multiple measures. But there are talks underway, with some participation by Gov. Bill Ritter, aimed at avoiding a full war in November. The Denver Business Journal has details.

I'm back in Denver today and tomorrow, to do a few reporting errands. (Word to the wise: don't be like your blogger, a Socal boy who is constitutionally incapable of checking reports, and pack a jacket when you visit the Mile High City. It's darn cold here). I'm also touching base with a variety of initiative sponsors here. In a lighter-than-expected year for ballot measures nationwide (with measures failing to make the ballot or being pulled in Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, etc.), Colorado is this year's ballot champion.

In November 2005, hotel employees in the city of Emeryville, California got some good news. Local voters had passed a “living wage” law requiring hotels to pay workers a minimum of nine dollars per hour plus extra for certain duties. In an expensive town--Emeryville occupies a narrow peninsula in the San Francisco Bay, making it attractive to tourists--this was welcome news. As the months went by, however, employees at one hotel, the Woodfin Suites, found that they were still being paid less than the law required. In September 2006 they went before the city council to complain about it.

I remember one particularly bad factory in China. It produced outdoor tables, parasols, and gazebos, and the place was a mess. Work floors were so crowded with production materials that I could barely make my way from one end to the other. In one area, where metals were being chemically treated, workers squatted at the edge of steaming pools as if contemplating a sudden, final swim. The dormitories were filthy: the hallways were strewn with garbage -- orange peels, tea leaves -- and the only way for anyone to bathe was to fill a bucket with cold water.

Union-sponsored online health care polls may not be gold-standard random-sample surveys but they can sure shed some interesting light on how ready Americans are to address the cost and quality challenges in the health care system. The AFL-CIO and Working America sponsored just such a poll and more than 26,000 people took the time to vent.