Burgess Owens: “But what I am trying to show is that on the one hand we have labor unions under attack. This Beck decision and its…”

“But what I am trying to show is that on the one hand we have labor unions under attack. This Beck decision and its interpretation is just one of the ways that labor unions and working people and laws that benefit working people are under attack, just one of the ways they are under attack. Another way is the TEAM Act. The TEAM Act allows union employers to select groups of employees that they want to form a TEAM committee with, and those employees are empowered to work with the management in order to do the things that management wants done. Well, you will never be able to organize an independent union if the labor law is pushed aside and you can have employers and management selecting people that they want to bond with among the employees. Unions are supposed to be independent; that is the whole thrust of labor law. And yet the TEAM Act would eliminate that independence by allowing the management to select who they are going to bargain with, who they going to work with and negotiate with in the plan. That is another problem. The other problem that I mentioned before is Davis-Bacon is being attacked. Of course comp time, and you know NLRB is under attack, National Labor Relations Board, being attacked. All of these institutions that were set up under Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal, under attack now.”