Corporate Retaliation Against Shareholder Activism

The SF Chronicle has an interesting piece about efforts big companies are taking to limit and stop shareholder activism and reform efforts. For example, consulting firms offer investigative tools for figuring out who shareholders are. "Merrill Lynch is poised to become the first investment bank to dedicate a team to advise companies on the growing threat of activist investors."

French Protests on Labor Law

The news about the protests in France against the new youth labor law is garnering a lot of attention, although little of it explains the central concerns of labor unions and young people about the law.

I can't explain it yet either (check back in later, I will try to figure it out) but I am incredibly impressed that unions, which represent only 8% of the French workforce, have managed to turn out over 1 million people in street protests. I assume that French workers who are not unionized still understand their interests as being represented by unions, rather than by corporations, churches, or politicians.

But maybe I shouldn't be surprised. In Los Angeles, over half a million people, many of whom are undocumented and thus legally vulnerable, marched last Saturday against proposed immigration reform. And all week, thousands of students in So. Cal. have staged walk-outs and protests in response to the proposals.

Change to Win Update

Although things are generally quiet over at the Change to Win website (notice they just updated the, umm, format), there are a couple of things afoot in the CTW camp. First of all, they are having a big organizing conference in Las Vegas next week, which will hopefully spur more joint organizing campaigns of the sort underway in Washington State. The Teamsters and the United Farm Workers are collaborating on an organizing drive in Central Washington for food processing workers. See here.

The AFL-CIO beast, on the other hand, seems to be stirring a bit more these days. I already reported on the Industry Committees, and they are taking on SEIU efforts to organize nurses by creating a Nursing Industry Organizing Committee (see here and here). This is the first direct national organizing confrontation that I've seen since the split.

Great CA Discovery Tool

I am adding a link to the CA Civil Discovery Law website to the tool bar just so that it gets the recognition it deserves. This website is probably useless to any reader who is not an attorney or not practicing in CA, but it was shut down recently and then started back up again because of user sadness and severe withdrawal symptoms. Enjoy, CA litigators!

Another One Bites the Dust

I shouldn't even call it a Pension Watch. It's more like a Death Watch. The NY Times is reporting that General Motors is freezing its pension plan for salaried employees.

Phew.

The National Labor Relations Board has now affirmed its position that AFL-CIO disaffiliation does not affect representation status. (Say what?) Employers have been refusing to bargain with CTW unions on the basis that the disaffiliation of these unions from the AFL raises a question of fact about whether the union was the one designated by the employees to be their representative. Total bullshit but it ties 'em at the Board for another two years. In New York Rehabilitation Care Management, LLC (29-CA-26678, January 31, 2006), the Board refused to reconsider an earlier finding that the employer had unlawfully refused to bargain with SEIU 1199, and affirmed Laurel Baye Healthcare of Lake Lanier LLC, 346 NLRB No 15. In that case, the Board found that the UFCW's disaffiliation, standing alone, did not raise a question about the genuine identity of the employees' chosen labor organization.

AFL-CIO announces "Industry Coordinating Committees"

The Green Bay Press Gazette reports that the AFL-CIO will be forming four Industry Coordinating Committees to handling industry-wide bargaining in the entertainment/media, nursing, telecommunications and public sectors.

If I am not mistaken, the CTW unions rallied for more industrial organizing/bargaining models. The AFL is creating these committees in areas where CTW does not have currently have recognition, so it seems to prevent a collision of interests that many feared the split would create.