Rick Bender, President of the Washington State Labor Council, distributes a monthly column on working families issues to weekly community newspapers around the state.  (See the President's Column page for an index.)  Editors of union newsletters and publications are encouraged to publish these columns, which are posted here every month (email us if you would like a higher resolution photo of Mr. Bender).  Here is his latest column:

I have always found it ironic that those who complain that government doesn’t run like a business are often the same individuals who oppose allowing government employees the same rights as their private sector counterparts.

This year in Olympia, several important bills seek to expand collective bargaining. Allowing employees to join a union and bargain for a contract that defines wages, benefits and other economic issues is a fundamental right granted to the private sector. But employees for the state, and our 4-year colleges and universities have no such right. It’s time to change that!

Collective bargaining is the tool used in most industrialized counties to create a way for workers to address their concerns. The most important concern is that employees have a real voice on the job. That participation often leads to higher productivity, lower staff turnover, and higher incomes and benefits. It’s a partnership that often leads to true efficiencies.

When workers have a real voice, they can speak out about job safety, equity or wage and hour issues without fear of retribution. They can meet across the table with their employer to negotiate better wages and working conditions. They can bargain as a group for greater leverage to win decent health care coverage and pensions. Without this right, employees are forced into "begging, not bargaining."

Why should folks who aren’t in a union, and might not even want to be in one, concern themselves about the right of other to bargain collectively? The answer lies in basic standards that have been fought for and won by those who have a union. Those standards benefit all workers, union and non-union.

But many non-union workers seem to forget, or maybe they never realized, that their benefits were gained because unions and their members struggled to set the standard. These basic labor standards remain protections for all of us. Consider how important just a few of them are to our lives:

• Hourly workers have a right to overtime pay after forty hours of work in a week.;
• All employees are covered by industrial insurance, a no-fault system of benefits for all workers who are injured on the job;
• Workers have a right to a safe and healthful workplace, and may file complaints against unsafe conditions;
• Child labor rules protect our kids from dangerous jobs and work hours that hurt their school attendance and performance.;
• Unemployment insurance benefits are available to many workers who are laid off through no fault of their own; and
• Most employees have a right to take family leave to care for a sick child, parent or spouse.

Not one of those rights would be in place today if it hadn’t been for the untold work of unions to pass, enact and defend them. Almost every year, serious proposals to roll back, exempt or otherwise weaken those standards must be answered and defeated in the legislature.

In other words, establishing the standard is only the first step. The harder, longer job is to maintain and defend these standards from erosion or full frontal assault. Unions and their members are the front line defenders of these basic standards both in state law and in their contracts. You can bet that business interests maintain a constant pressure to roll back and reduce them.

Last fall, voters overwhelmingly passed an initiative that granted homecare workers the authority to bargain collectively. Bills in the legislature this year would grant a similar right to state employees, employees and faculty at four-year state colleges, university teaching and research assistants, and chiropractors who must negotiate with health maintenance organizations. This effort is part of the long, hard job of expanding rights to all workers.

It’s easy to forget. We are so busy trying to make ends meet and meet all our obligations that we lose sight of the long-running effort to steadily improve the wages and working conditions for all. For the last 100 years in our state, organized labor has pushed to improve basic labor standards. But unless workers have a fundamental right to organize and bargain collectively, that effort will falter.

As the public sector has developed to provide services such as education to our citizens and their children, more employees are working for the state or our state’s system of education. But collective bargaining rights have not kept up with this growth. The current restriction on state employees, faculty members and graduate students who are employed by the University of Washington has led to an all out effort to expand the right to bargain.

With likely layoffs and budget cuts in store for these employees, it’s more important than ever that they have a seat at the bargaining table to find true solutions to the state’s financial problems. With a real voice on the job, they can help provide better services and accountability for state programs. And they can join in the effort to strengthen and broaden basic labor standards for us all.

The business community is working overtime spreading misinformation about the state's new ergonomics standard, and their scare tactics are generating angry calls from business owners to state legislators and the governor calling for delay or repeal of the rule.

The rule, in the process of being phased in over six years, requires that employers work with their employees to identify and fix workplace hazards.  The goal is to prevent strains, sprains and debilitating injuries from repetitive motion that represent the single biggest occupational health crisis faced by workers. It has been repeatedly proven that simple, inexpensive solutions to addressing these ergonomic worksite hazards prevent injuries and save employers -- and the workers' compensation system -- significant money.

But business groups inspired by anti-regulatory ideology have spent the last two years exaggerating the scope and costs of the ergonomics rule so that angry business owners will contact their legislators and demand repeal of the rule or a delay in its implementation.

These same business groups succeeded in convincing Governor Locke to form a Blue Ribbon Panel on Ergonomics, composed of experts from the private and public sector, to study the state's efforts to educate employers about the rule and determine whether it is ready for implementation.  After a year of public hearings and testimony (similar to those held before the rule's enactment in May 2000) it is about to issue its findings in late February.

Organized labor is committed to abiding by the decision of this Blue Ribbon panel of experts, which includes representatives of Boeing and the business community, because we are confident that the evidence in support of the standard is clear and overwhelming.  We also believe the Department of Labor and Industries has gone to extraordinary lengths to educate and assist employers during the past two years on how to comply with this critical rule.

CALL TO ACTION:  Please take a few minutes to call the Legislative Hotline at 1-800-562-6000 AND to e-mail Governor Gary Locke and House Speaker Frank Chopp (D-43rd) expressing support for the ergonomics standard TODAY!  Tell them not to allow a legislative delay or repeal of this critical workplace safety standard.  Let’s wait and see what the Blue Ribbon Panel’s report says about whether the rule is ready for implementation.

This May 18th will mark the 50th anniversary of Paul Robeson's historic appearance at Peace Arch Park in Blaine for a protest of Sen. Joe McCarthy's anti-communist agenda -- and plans are underway this year for a Paul Robeson Memorial Concert celebrating international solidarity.

During the height of the McCarthy blacklisting era in the early 1950s, Paul Robeson -- a gifted musician, artist, athlete, scholar and activist -- was one of thousands whose career was ruined and legacy tainted by rumor and innuendo. Denied permission to leave the United States and sing at a Mine Mill Conference in Vancouver, B.C., in January 1952, Robeson stood on the back of a flat bed truck on May 18, 1952, and sang songs of defiance and solidarity to some 40,000 people at the U.S.-Canadian border.

Now 50 years later on Saturday, May 18, 2002, that event will be commemorated with another concert on the border that aims to bring together people of conscience from Canada and the U.S. to celebrate the life and achievements of Paul Robeson and to build solidarity among those who are working for change.

Organizers are planning four hours of inspiring music -- featuring both artists of major international stature and great performers from the Pacific Northwest -- will be offered to the general public free of charge.  Other activities will include banner making, a graffiti wall, video displays, giant puppets, information tables, roving artists, and history in the form of memorabilia from the original concert.

A group called the "Here We Stand" Organizing Committee, which includes a number of representatives of Canadian and American unionists and other cultural and social activists, is looking for donations and volunteers to help plan and execute the event.  (Check out the Here We Stand event website.)  According to the committee's literature, "Some of the issues we face today would be familiar to Robeson: solidarity in the face of war, racism and oppression; others have new names such as globalization or neo-liberalism, but the struggle is the same."

For more information on how you can get involved, contact Earle Peach at (604) 874-1256, or in Washington state, you can contact the AFL-CIO's Bob Gorman at (206) 448-4888.

Following is the transcript of an exchange between Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and White House Budget Director Mitch Daniels at today's Senate Budget Committee hearing on President Bush's proposed FY 2003 Budget:

Murray:   Mr. Daniels, in recent days and in your Op-Ed article over the weekend, you've said that our country will need to make sacrifices on the domestic front to pay for needed investments in security.  As you have noted, ours is not the first generation of Americans to face this  challenge.  Our fathers and mothers, our grandparents, and other generations of Americans have all struggled  to protect America's freedoms.

In World War II and the Cold War, we faced a grave threat to our existence.  The people in my home state of Washington were asked to take up the challenge of the Manhattan project.  Throughout the Cold War, the people of the Tri-Cities in Washington state produced the material that went into our strategic arms. We won because of the sacrifice of the people of that community.  One legacy of that sacrifice is the freedom we enjoy today.

But there is another legacy that weighs on all of us in the Pacific Northwest. That other legacy is nuclear waste.  We have one of the most polluted sites in the world, the Hanford Nuclear Facility on the banks of the Columbia River. Now I know my friend and colleague from New Mexico shares my passion for this particular issue. Unfortunately, President Bush's budget -- for the second year in a row -- underfunds the critical cleanup effort required for the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.  I think this example is indicative of a larger problem with this budget. 

President Bush's priorities in this budget don't reflect the priorities of many Americans, whether it's Hanford cleanup funds, or the Social Security and Medicare Trust funds.  And the truth is, we're in this position, in part because of the recession, in part because of September 11th, and in large part because of the President's tax cut, which you told us would get us out of the recession. Mr. Daniels, last year, when we heard rumors that the President's budget would cut Hanford funding, I called you.  You assured me that Hanford would not be cut.  But when the budget came out, Hanford funding was cut, and cut dramatically.

Mr. Daniels, I want to ask you this morning, do you agree that given the sacrifice the people of the Tri-Cities have made to help us win World War II and the Cold War that we have an obligation to clean up the waste at the Hanford Nuclear facility?

Daniels:    Absolutely, Senator.   The good news, I hope, is that the Administration in this budget has launched a substantial reform of what has really been a poorly run program.

Murray:     Are you saying that Hanford Nuclear Reservation has been poorly run?

Daniels:    I'm saying that across the front of these environmental cleanups it's unacceptable that we will still have nuclear waste lying around in 70 years. And that's the situation this Administration found when it came to office. In this budget we propose first of all more spending and second -

Murray:     -- Mr. Daniels, I'm sorry, but the way I read this budget, Hanford will receive a lot less funding.

Daniels:    Well, we'll work with you to find the right amount of money, but the most important thing is how we spend it.  We've been spending billions of dollars - we've had $73 billion in projected cost overruns across the front. This needs to be addressed.  Secretary Abraham has an aggressive plan.  His idea would be to get these sites cleaned up more quickly under new contracts.

Murray:     Mr. Daniels, aren't you aware that there are contracts in place that if we don't fund to begin with they are going to cost us more in the future?  If we undo those contracts  -- take our name away from them-  they are going to be renegotiated and I have never known a contract to be renegotiated for a lesser amount.

Daniels:    Well, I would recommend that you speak with Secretary Abraham about it, he's got a very active plan.  These arrangements, as I say, are frankly unacceptable and I think would be to you.  I don't know the end date for Hanford off the top of my head, but I know that many of the other sites would be sitting there for decades under the existing plans.

Murray:     Well, Mr. Daniels, I would remind you that we have the Tri-Party Agreement in place and we are under a legal obligation to cleanup Hanford Nuclear Reservation.  My home state of Washington has been on the verge of a legal challenge to this for years and none of us want to go down that route. But if we don't fund the cleanup of Hanford, it not only puts the lives of the people of the Tri-Cities at stake -- as well as the entire Pacific Northwest -- it doesn't fund the legal obligation we have and we may well see a challenge from the state of Washington. And it's the wrong message to send today to everyone we are asking to make a challenge for the war today that we're not going to be there when that war is over.

Daniels:    Senator, our objective is to see these sites cleaned up more quickly, and I would think that would be your objective too. This is not about the amount of money we can pour into bad contracts.

Murray:     Oh, that has been my objective and that is my state's objective too.  Are you saying that the contracts we have in place today at Hanford are bad?

Daniels:    That's a question for Secretary Abraham. It's his plan -

Murray:     I will certainly ask him as well, but I would tell you, Director Daniels, that I will not let the people of my home state down on this issue. I will do everything I can to meet the obligation of the people of my state who have sacrificed for our freedom.   If my time's not up, I want to ask you one other question.

Let me turn to another topic. Your budget assumes a major reduction in transportation spending. In Washington state we have the second highest unemployment in the nation right now.  We have the second-worst traffic in the nation. That puts a huge economic burden on our families and our businesses.  It means less productivity and less efficiency.  Businesses are leaving my state right now because of the lack of investment in infrastructure and transportation.

Cutting the budget by $9 million is not going to help.

Does this Administration realize that our transportation infrastructure affects our jobs, affects our productivity and our economic growth? 

Daniels:    Let's start with dealing with some of those pesky facts, Senator. We have no discretion in this matter. Congress passed a bill - it was a good one - I think you voted for it - that matches spending with transportation, tax and fee income. And we simply apply a formula, the Departments of Transportation and Treasury do that, as you know, and last year that led to a gigantic increase in transportation and highway funding.  Under that formula, which Congress prescribed, as applied this year we discovered that we got ahead of ourselves -- $4.5  billion ahead of receipts last year.  And we have simply, faithfully applied the same formula that led to a $4.5 billion - I won't say windfall, I guess, let's say advance-

Murray:     Investment in infrastructure -

Daniels:    - Well let's say advance and now we're catching back up.  The bill that Congress wrote is a good one it has led - will lead - through the end of this fiscal year to $9 billion in additional highway spending over the previous system.  Up until a few years ago  - as you know - gas tax revenues and other transportation revenues were used for other purposes.

Murray:     My time is out, but I would just say that we did have an opportunity in this budget as presented by the Administration to help make up some of that shortfall -- if the priority was there from the Administration -- and understanding that investing in our critical infrastructure - our bridges, our highways, our roads - would not only help jobs today, which is an important part of economic recovery, but also would provide critical infrastructure for economic development in the future.

Daniels:    Well, we agree with the importance of spending.  Over the 2 year period the same amount of money will be spent - much more than previously.  And incidentally, you might be happy to know that because we don't have any new projects to start on an outlay basis - how much is actually spent - how many miles are actually paved, how many people are actually employed is virtually identical to last year, or I should say that '03 will be identical to the current fiscal year.  So, this formula that Congress wrote is a good and fair one. We've simply applied it as the law requires we do, but I think it's a little unseemly for road builders and others who loved it when it led to a giant increase to protest when the same formula corrects itself.

Murray:     I'm not a road builder, but I do care deeply about my home state and its ability to have the infrastructure it needs for the future. Thank you, Director.

Daniels:    Thank you.

The following heads-up comes from Michael Dolan of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch:

It is not often that we promote TV programs, but on Tuesday February 5th at 10:00 PM we should all be watching a Bill Moyers documentary on PBS entitled: "Trading Democracy."

"Trading Democracy" is a one-hour documentary that covers, in understandable terms, the legal and technical aspects of NAFTA's investor rules. These rules allow corporations to sue countries directly to overturn legitimate public interest laws and regulations when they believe their actual or potential corporate profits have been undermined.  Incredibly, these suits are decided in secret by unelected bureaucrats who have been given the power to determine whether laws  ranging from zoning ordinances to environmental protections constitute an interference with corporate profits.

Already Chapter 11 has led to corporate assaults against  health, safety and environmental laws, with one company demanding compensation close to $1 billion. Beyond that, even "Buy America" laws intended to protect our country's steel industry are now under attack by multi-national corporate profiteers.

Amazingly, the Bush Administration is now in negotiations to expand this dangerous NAFTA investor provision to 31 more countries in the hemisphere, through the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).  The first step in paving the way to this expansion of the reach of Chapter 11 will be a soon-to-be held senate vote on the Baucus/Grassley Fast Track bill.

Here's a press release regarding "Trading Democracy:"

Three years after a Mississippi jury found a Canadian-based conglomerate guilty of fraud in attempting to put a family-owned Biloxi funeral home out of business, the Canadian company filed a claim against the United States, demanding $725 million in compensation.

When California banned a gasoline additive that had contaminated drinking water throughout the state, another Canadian firm sued the U.S. government to force citizens to pay nearly 1 billion dollars for its potential lost profits.

In what one attorney called "an end-run around the Constitution," corporations are using a little-known provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to challenge public laws, regulations and jury verdicts not only in the United States, but in Canada and Mexico as well. And, they are arguing those cases not in courts of law, but before secret trade tribunals.

How can this be happening?  And why do so few people know about it?

In the latest in their series of exposés on the secret recesses of American democracy, Bill Moyers and Sherry Jones uncover how multinational corporations have acquired the power to demand compensation if laws aimed at protecting the environment or public health harm them financially.  The one-hour documentary, BILL MOYERS REPORTS: TRADING DEMOCRACY, premieres February 5 at 10:00 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings).

"When the North American Free Trade Agreement became the law of the land almost a decade ago, the debate we heard was about jobs," notes Bill Moyers. "One provision was too obscure to stir up controversy.  It was called Chapter 11, and it was supposedly written to protect investors from having their property seized by foreign governments.  But since NAFTA was ratified, corporations have used Chapter 11 to challenge the powers of government to protect its citizens, to undermine environmental and health laws, even attack our system of justice."

Speaking with legislators, public policy experts, community leaders and citizens about the lawsuits filed under NAFTA's Chapter 11, BILL MOYERS REPORTS: TRADING DEMOCRACY unravels the hidden repercussions of a treaty that was supposed to promote democracy through free trade, but now appears to have given deep-pocketed corporations the means to undermine democracy across international borders.

The program explores the case of Methanex, a Canadian company that is the world's largest producer of the key ingredient in the gasoline additive MTBE, which was found to be a carcinogen.  In 1995 MTBE began turning up in wells throughout California, and by 1999 had contaminated thirty public water systems. The state ordered that the additive be phased out.  Methanex filed suit under NAFTA's Chapter 11, seeking $970 million in compensation for loss of market share and, consequently, future profits.

With regard to the Methanex case, environmental attorney Martin Wagner tells Moyers, "they're saying that California either can't implement this protection or that they get a billion dollars.  People should be outraged by that."

As Moyers reports, many people who have been affected by MTBE contamination are indeed outraged.  But they are helpless to do anything.  The NAFTA tribunal that will decide the Methanex case - like all the tribunals hearing Chapter Eleven-based cases - is closed to the public.  Yet, it is the taxpayers "who will foot the bill if the tribunal decides in favor of the Canadian company," says Moyers.

But the ramifications for the public go well beyond the loss of taxpayer dollars, a journalist William Greider explains.  "If Methanex wins its billion dollar claim over California environmental law, there ain't gonna be many states enacting that law, are there?" he says, adding that the NAFTA provision "hobbles the authority of government to act in the broader public interest.  And, in fact, that was the idea in the first place."

Addressing a Chapter 11 case in which the Ethyl Corporation, an American manufacturer of another gasoline additive called MMT, successfully sued Canada over a ban on the product, Greider tells Moyers:  "Governments are already being intimidated by the mere threat of a claim being filed against some regulatory action.  If you're a civil servant, or even a political leader, you've got to think twice when a corporate lawyer comes to you and says, quite forcefully, we're going to hit you for a half a billion dollars if you do this."

Moyers also takes his investigation south of the border to the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí, where an American company called Metalclad tried to bulldoze over the protests of both state and local governments to reopen a toxic waste dump that many citizens feared was making them sick. When Metalclad was stopped by the local town council the company invoked Chapter 11 and was awarded $16 million in compensation.  The crux of Metalclad's victory was the Chapter 11 phrase "tantamount to expropriation."  As Martin Wagner explains:  "Not only do governments have to compensate when they expropriate or take away property, but they have to do so whenever they do something that is 'tantamount to expropriation'."