Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘labor unions’

Thomas Geoghegan runs for Congress

Left-leaning author, lawyer and union advocate Thomas Geoghegan is running for Rahm Emanuel’s House seat in Chicago. I’ve often in the past recommended Geoghegan’s first book on labor unions Which Side Are You On?, because of its force and originality, despite my (pretty much diametric) opposition to most of his ideas policy-wise.

His most recent book See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation (2007, New Press, and out in paperback this month) showed independence of mind and a willingness to rethink received ideas, as usual, but disappointed in other respects. For one thing, Geoghegan seemed more interested in blowing off steam against conservatives and litigation reformers than in trying to understand what they actually think about the issues he raised. The result was that some of his shots fell very wide of the mark, while he missed other points that might have advanced his case. Ted wrote a much more extended critique of the book that is linked here.

Note, however, that commenter “Vail Beach” stopped by the other day to offer a more positive assessment of “Lawsuit Nation” that is worth giving thought to. The House race, at any rate, should be fun to watch. More: Kaus.

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Welcome National Journal readers

The magazine’s “Top Political Bloggers” poll this morning quotes me (twice) on the subject of the horrible and misnamed Employee Free Choice Act, which would end employees’ right to a secret ballot on unionization and impose union contracts on unwilling employers through obligatory arbitration. Most of my blogging on the subject of EFCA and its “card check” provision is actually at my other blog, Point of Law, though.

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New at City Journal: “Windows on the Future?”

I’ve got a new piece just up at City Journal on last week’s occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago, led by a union on the left fringe of the American labor movement. The action ended after six days with the capitulation of Bank of America and Chase under intense political pressure. Earlier coverage here. A few points:

  • You’d have had trouble guessing from a lot of the coverage, but it’s far from clear that the window factory owners owed any severance at all under the terms of the federal WARN (plant-closings) act. And it’s abundantly clear that the actual targets of the protest, the two banks, owed nothing.
  • The whole point of this sort of illegal action is to resolve by force a dispute that would otherwise be consigned to the ordinary processes of law — put differently, to make sure the action’s targets never get their right to a day in court to put forth their (quite possibly meritorious) defense. When Chicago and Illinois officials jumped in to arm-twist the targets into settling, they endorsed this way of resolving disputes. That may come as little surprise given the reputation of Chicago governance. But why should anyone feel secure in locating a politically sensitive business in that city (or state) from now on?
  • Among those who either cheered the illegality or viewed it with complacency are not only high public officials but law professors, commentators and leaders of the legal profession. Indeed, President-elect (and former law professor) Barack Obama vocally backed the union’s cause at a press conference while pointedly saying not a word about its unlawfulness of its actions. Should we ever again take seriously the rumblings of any of these parties about the all-importance of the rule of law?
  • Some in the media, like Boston Globe columnist James Carroll, applauded the illegal action and left-leaning Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson called for more of the same: “Barack Obama means to build a more equitable nation, but it would help him in that task if more workers sat down”. Does Obama agree?

(cross-posted from Point of Law).

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Answer to Mickey Kaus

A. Because protecting the UAW’s contract, and the entrenchment of auto dealers under horrible state laws, and the executives’ perks, and the CAFE-law irrationalities, and the various goodies a half-dozen other constituencies want to hold on to, is the whole point of structuring the bailout the way Congress is structuring it. You’re welcome. (Dec. 11).

P.S. At Forbes, Dan Gerstein wonders why Chrysler’s rich parent Cerberus deserves bailing out.

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Microblog 2008-12-09

  • Everything that makes Chicago politics what it is: Gov. Blagojevich shook down a children’s hospital [Massie] Time to play Name That Goon: guess which statements are by Illinois governor and which by Tony Soprano [Daily Beast] The most closely watched Obama appointment is and should be the U.S. Attorney for Chicago [@patrickruffini]
  • Many writers including me relied on UAW assertion that oft-heard $73/hour figure for GM compensation was misleading because it included vast army of retirees; but per one new paper, the number really does reflect only payments for currently active workers [James Sherk, Heritage] Contra, the New York Times sides with the original critique of the number [David Leonhardt]
  • Green activists contact the authorities to report illegal logging, turns out to be beavers [OK!; Poland]
  • Pride and Prejudice: the Facebook feed [DeeDee Baldwin]
  • Economists invite volunteers to play game simulating investment behavior. Usual result? Bubbles & crashes [Postrel]
  • “Watermelon smell”, “ferret odor”, “gasoline fumes”: Japanese site uses Google maps to track stinky locations [Japan Probe via Tyler Cowen]
  • Subprime-implosion lawsuits haven’t gone well for plaintiffs, who’ve had trouble showing guilty state of mind [CCH Wall Street] But are things beginning to shift in their favor? [Frankel, American Lawyer]
  • Nifty “Atlas of True Country Names” displays place names as their underlying meanings [Telegraph]

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Asphyxiating Detroit, the UAW way

Under a regulation known as the “two-fleet rule”, automakers must meet CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards separately for their domestically produced and for their imported vehicles, rather than just hitting the same overall number through an average of both. The economics of production and transport tend to favor the domestic production of large cars and the importation of small economy cars. “For 30 years, to make and sell the large vehicles that earn their profits, the Detroit Three have been effectively required to build small cars in high-wage, UAW factories, though it means losing money on every car,” writes the WSJ’s Holman Jenkins, Jr. It’s “nonsensical” and “a naked handout to the UAW at the expense of the companies and their customers.” (“Yes, Detroit Can Be Fixed”, Nov. 5).

P.S. Of course the actual legislative responses we’re in for will probably be very different. Mickey Kaus: “So the UAW wants a $25 billion bailout and an end to the secret ballot … Because Wagner Act unionism clearly worked out so well for Detroit.”

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Microblog 2008-10-22

  • McCain hoist on his own campaign regulation petard [WSJ edit] #
  • Conservatives should hold a retreat to talk about why they’re being sent to the wilderness [Friedersdorf/Culture11] #
  • Disability activism and “anti-national sexual positions”: just another day in postmodern academia [Massie] #
  • Unionism on steroids: Employee Free Choice Act would be Thatcherism in reverse [Claire Berlinski, City Journal] #
  • Here’s a twist: a politician walking over his ambition to reach his grandmother #

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Look for the union libel

“A jury ruled Friday that a labor union defamed Sutter Health with a mass mailing of postcards and awarded the Northern California health care organization almost $17.3 million in damages. The Placer County jury found that Unite Here, one of the nation’s largest unions that represents hotel, restaurant and laundry workers, defamed Sutter Health early last year by sending postcards to women of child-bearing age in Northern California claiming the organization’s hospitals used unclean linens. The union was in a labor dispute with the laundry service that cleaned the linens at the time.” (“Jury: Union defamed Sutter Health”, InsideBayArea.com (Hayward Daily Review), Jul. 23; Mehul Srivastava, “Jury award stings union”, Sacramento Bee, Jul. 22).

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United Farm Workers’ libel-suit threats

The United Farm Workers, the agricultural labor union that rose to prominence under the leadership of the late Cesar Chavez with the support of countless Sixties idealists, has recently been the subject of unflattering coverage in the Los Angeles Times, Bakersfield Californian and L.A. Weekly, among other places. Now journalist Marc Cooper, who wrote the L.A. Weekly piece, says the union has sent him a demand that he retract or correct his piece on pain of being sued. Cooper says the L.A. Times and Bakersfield papers have received similar threats. “Even some lonely bloggers who have recently written about the UFW have been contacted by the union or its hired PR agents and directly warned not to continue criticizing it.” (Marc Cooper, “Gag Me With a Grape”, L.A. Weekly, Feb. 8; Cooper blog entry and comments, Feb. 8) (via Romenesko). The UFW’s side of the underlying controversies is here.

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