On Doing Better Than 50%, Part Two, Or, Is “Made in USA” A Jobs Program?

When last we met, it was to discuss a Big Idea that the Obama Administration might apply to get some job creation going, despite a difficult Congress; the Big Idea was to look at the “Buy American” provisions that exist in our laws, regulations, and Executive Orders and see if we could practice a bit of “jobs arbitrage” by not just meeting the “Made in USA” requirements when governments across this country make purchases, but exceeding them.

(As it stands today, pretty much any “good or service” with more than 50% Made in USA content qualifies as a Made in USA purchase, even if 49% of the “good or service” comes from somewhere else).

At the time, I told you that if all went well we could look forward to comments from both Labor and the Administration as to the practicality of the Big Idea, and as it turns out I have comments for you that hit close to that mark – and a bit more besides:

On Saturday I just happened to bump into Congressman Adam Smith (WA-09); in the course of that conversation I told him what we’re doing here, and he wanted to offer a few thoughts of his own…and when you put all that together, I think we’re going to have a lot to talk about.

“Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them; Britain has trembled like an auge at the report of a French fleet of flat bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was preformed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc.

--From “The Crisis”, by Thomas Paine; essay of December 23, 1776

So the two-second recap of the Big Idea is that if government, at all levels, were Buying More American we could create More American Jobs, and as we mentioned above, the way the rules stand today, 51% Made in USA is good enough – and that seems to leave a lot of room to do better.

Of course, nothing is as simple as it seems, and despite what Tom Lehrer might say, it’s not all skittles and beer for this proposal either.

I have a source in the Administration who would not go on the record for this story; nonetheless I was sent a detailed email response “on background”, which I’ll paraphrase for our use today:

We are looking to expand US trade abroad, and we have made deals for access. We agree not to restrict, for the most part, where purchases can be made, and we expect reciprocity from the rest of the world when their governments do their purchasing - or at least from those governments with whom we have a WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) or a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). (Want even more details? Check out either the Trade Agreements Act of 1979 or this Congressional Research Service report).

The Administration would tell you that 95% of the world’s consumers live outside the USA, making trade reciprocity particularly valuable for the US.

They would also tell you that if we decide on our own to “change the deal”, then we should expect retaliation from other governments.

Beyond that, they would suggest that there are US companies that source many of their products or product components globally, and those companies would actually be hurt by stricter Made in USA requirements.

Finally, the Administration points out that there is a dollar cost for more Made in USA, as opposed to using what can often be cheaper foreign sourcing.

In the introduction I suggested that I had a comment from Labor, and that’s somewhat correct. I contacted the Washington Sate Labor Council (WSLC) for a comment, and they sent me material that came from the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), at the same time telling me that the AAM’s position on Buy American is the same as their own.

It is inaccurate to refer to the AAM as a Labor organization, however, as they are a partnership of Unions, manufacturers, and other interested parties. Among those partners are the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers (USW); the USW was one of the founders of the group.

They take issue with a great deal of what the Administration has to say, and I’ll start with a quote from an email sent to me Friday by the AAM’s Steven Capozzola:

The threat of retaliation for buy America is ridiculous. The law [the Buy American Act, 41 USC 10a-d] is specifically written so as to be applied when permissible under our existing trade obligations.

Here’s a quote from AAM material that was referred to me by the WSLC:

…the U.S. is, by far, the world’s largest importer, soaking up a net $819 billion in goods in 2007…The U.S. imports far more than it exports, a balance of sales that our trading partners are anxious to preserve. This is not about restricting imports. It is about using taxpayer dollars, when allowed by our international obligations, to purchase U.S.-produced goods. As the global downturn has progressed, many industrialized countries such as France and China have already taken similar action to support their domestic manufacturing base.

…These trade agreements do however allow for domestic preference under a number of circumstances…These preferences were negotiated for a reason. It would be irresponsible not to utilize them to the fullest extent possible.

…By contrast, other countries have held themselves out of the reform movement and have instead opted to promote their own manufacturing base through closed self-procurement programs. A good example is China, which, in addition to a recent $586 billion stimulus program, continues to subsidize its own producers via deliberate (and illegal) currency undervaluation. Until countries like China make the same commitments, and sign-on to internationally accepted procurement agreements, the U.S. will accomplish nothing by making yet more unilateral concessions.

In addition, as noted above, these contentions rely on the baseless assumption that the U.S. currently has any significant access to foreign procurement markets that would be at risk if other countries “retaliated.” The majority of the foreign stimulus in PPI’s tally is made up of $614 billion being spent by countries that have no procurement obligations towards the United States and that already apply domestic procurement preferences (principally China, but also India and Brazil).

-- Alliance for American Manufacturing, “The Facts on ‘Buy America’ and Domestic Sourcing”, February 2009

The AAM would also want you to know that in addition to China numerous other countries, specifically Canada, certain European nations, Japan, and Brazil all use other forms of “discrimination” to “preference” their goods over ours when it comes to government procurement: impossible-to-meet technical standards, “murky” purchase procedures, and bid rigging are all tools used around the world to make sure local suppliers are just a bit more, shall we say…reciprocal…than a US supplier might be.

Look, I hate to do this to everyone, but we’re once again running longer than we should, and we still have a lot more to talk about, so at this point I’m going to call “cliffhanger!” and set us up for a Part Three.

Here’s the “agenda”:

We’ll be talking about how the devil’s in the details: specifically, we’ll be looking at what “Buy American” is already excluded from these various trade agreements– and there’s a lot more than you might think, even as some of it is targeted in amazingly specific ways (to do that we’ll be paying particular attention to the annexes to the WTO agreement); we’ll also get Congressman Smith’s reaction to all of this…and once again, we’ll see if we can’t get it all done in 1500 words or less.

And on a lovely summer’s day, what could possibly be better beach reading…what with the redolence of the lazy sea breezes and the surf washing gently up on the shore and all…than 1500 more words on the annexes to the WTO agreement and how it all relates to sneaking a jobs program past recalcitrant Republicans?

I can’t think of anything else either, and I can’t wait to see you there.

Do Washington State Democrats Have A Labor Problem? Let’s Ask Jay Inslee

OK: so I’ve been working what is, on one level, a Jay Inslee story (Inslee is the Congressman from Washington’s 1st District, now running for Governor in ’12), and, on another level, a story of why Democrats are having all kinds of problems with what should be “natural” constituencies – and why those problems might not be going away anytime soon.

I thought the two elements of this narrative would come together last Monday, when I attended the “announcement event” that marked the beginning of the Inslee Gubernatorial Campaign, and in fact they did…but it wasn’t in a way I would have expected, and that’s why we have something to talk about today.

I reached out to some helpful outside voices, including Inslee himself; all of that will be brought to the discussion – and as another news organization famously offers to do, I’ll report, and leave you to decide.

Krusty the Klown: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Good evening. Tonight my guest is AFL/CIO chairman George Meany, who will be discussing collective bargaining agreements

George Meaney: It's a pleasure to be here, Krusty

Krusty the Klown: Let me be blunt: is there a Labor crisis in America today?

George Meaney: Well that depends what you mean by crisis...

--From “The Simpsons” episode S06E01, “Bart of Darkness”

So here’s what I know: Jay Inslee brings to the contest for Governor a Congressional voting record that could be great news for Washington State’s Progressive community: he’s generally supportive of LBGT and other civil rights issues, he seems to support the sort of elections I like (clean ones), he’s very much interested in a “next generation” energy and environmental policy, and he voted against the TARP Program (that’s the bank bailout that was passed in the last months of the Bush Administration) and the extension of the Patriot Act.

All good stuff.

But I also know this: if you are a State worker in Washington State, you are under attack, and you have been for some time now – and among the attackers are members of the Democratic Party – and the reason I’m so personally familiar with this fact is because The Girlfriend is one of those workers (she’s a nurse working within the Division of Developmental Disabilities, and she has been for more than 15 years), and I’ve seen it with my own two eyes.

And I know that for these workers, each year the question becomes: “This year’s wage cuts: in cash, by jacking the cost of health care, or through furlough days?”

This sort of problem extends to workers all across the State, as business interests target the State’s Unemployment Insurance (UI) and Industrial Insurance programs for attack, to give just two examples of recent legislative battles.

And the State’s Unions are reacting: I had a back and forth with Kathy Cummings (she’s the Communications Director for WSLC, the Washington State Labor Council), who confirmed what I thought I’d been seeing: that since 2009 there has been an effort by the WSLC to bring the fight to Washington State Democrats, including a successful effort to unseat State Senator Jean Berkey, who was targeted, according to Cummings, because of her votes on UI, public education and health care, pollution laws, and tax policy, which the WSLC viewed as favoring corporate interests.

2009, by the way, was a watershed year for this State’s Labor unions, as that was the year Washington Democratic leaders actually called in the State Patrol to investigate whether internal discussions about whether to withhold future campaign contributions if those Democrats didn’t get more cooperative was some sort of criminal act.

As a result, the WSLC formed the DIME PAC (DIME, of course, is an acronym; Don’t Invest in More Excuses, to be specific); this and other Labor-associated PACs are apparently acting as any PAC can, much to the chagrin of Democrats and business interests alike, including what appears to have been a controversial decision to promote a Republican in Berkey’s primary in order to knock her out of the contest early. (Washington uses a “top-two” primary system to determine who gets to the general election, and Berkey came in number three.)

And sure enough, Democrats do appear to be less than supportive: Unions held two rallies this spring at the State Capitol in Olympia, both of which I attended – and I couldn’t help but notice that Washington State Democrats weren’t up on the dais talking about how much they supported those workers gathered just outside.

In fact, the only elected Democrat I saw on either stage, in March or April, speaking to the crowds was State Senator Spencer Coggs…who is a Wisconsin State Senator. (Kathy Cummings helpfully points out that, despite what I thought, about 20 Democrats were introduced by name and were somewhere around the stage at various times during the April event to show support – and you’ll want to keep that in mind as we go along.)

So here’s what I’m thinking as I’m on my way to attend Jay Inslee’s announcement and presser last Monday: Inslee is presumably aware of this history, and if he were to become Washington State’s top elected Democrat he would presumably want to act in a manner that heals that rift…which would be a pretty good story to report to a Progressive audience.

That is not how it turned out.

ME: "I attended two Labor rallies in Olympia over the past couple of months; the only Democratic elected official who seemed to be able to get out and speak to the crowd was from Wisconsin, Spencer Copps, State Senator [which was an error; I should have said Spencer Coggs]. I wondered what you think about that and what are you going to do to try to change it?"

INSLEE: "Well, I'm not sure what you're referring to..."

ME: "Well, you mentioned honoring unions..."

INSLEE: "I'm sorry..."

ME: "Well, you mentioned honoring unions, these folks were out trying to promote union rights, but Democrats don't seem to want to get out and support union rights in person. Do you see that as a problem; how would you like to change it?"

INSLEE: "I don't see this as a problem, because I believe as I said I fundamentally believe in work, I fundamentally believe in workers, and I fundamentally believe that people have collective bargaining rights as an organized group, and I think what has gone on in Wisconsin is a travesty, and the reason it's a travesty is that, uh, Governor Walker, if he wanted to be angry at someone, he shouldn't have been angry at the first grade teachers, he should have been angry at the Wall Street investment bankers whose greed was responsible for the economic collapse, and yet I saw the Governor turn his sights on the middle class, and I don't believe an assault on the middle class, which is what happened in Wisconsin, is productive for economic growth, of anyone in our State, or our country. Now I've been pretty forthright in that regard, and, uh, I'll maintain that position."

Here’s the video:



Now let me be the first to say that I did not ask the best possible question. What I should have done was be more specific about how much of a rift there is between Labor and Washington State’s Democrats, and then specifically asked what steps Inslee would take, to, as I said earlier, heal the rift.

So normally what you do in a case like that is you go back to the campaign staff and send a follow-up question, and some helpful person who is doing the Candidate’s communications work will get you an official response.

But that’s where it gets weird.

If you try to go to the campaign website to locate the contract information, it is literally nothing, except for three links: give me money, get on the mailing list, or click through to facebook.

I posted a note “on the wall” at facebook, asking who the contact person was for the campaign for media inquiries, and not only did that get no response, the request was removed from the wall within minutes.

I sent follow-up questions to the originating address of the email that invited me to the Inslee event in the first place and to his Congressional office; those also went unacknowledged.

And that, right there, is pretty much the entire story as I know it: there is a significant and growing rift between Labor and Washington State’s Democrats, I tried to bring Inslee out on the issue (albeit clumsily), which he did not seem to want to address – and, oddly enough, there appears to be no desire on the part of the campaign to take the opportunity to follow up and affirm that an Inslee Administration would be a friend of Labor when it comes to things like protecting UI, and not balancing the budget while exempting corporate interests from taxation, and protecting workers from environmental hazards on the job.

Except there is one more thing.

I asked the WSLC’s Cummings this question…

Since the 2010 election cycle, have Democrats become more reliable partners, in the estimation of the WSLC?

…and she gave me a bit of a “tease”: the WSLC will release their 2011 Legislative Report, which will address that very question, just in time for their Annual Convention, which begins on August 4th – and we are told to stay tuned.

On “La Dolce Vita”, Or, The Real Life Of A State Worker

What with all the attacks on Labor in states like Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, and Wisconsin, there has been just so much misunderstanding out there these past couple weeks about what things are actually like for State workers.

Are the conditions decent?
Is there excessive pay?
Is there even a need for State workers?

Well, I can’t answer every question, but I can sure tell you what it’s like in our house…and the reason my words carry the “voice of authority” is because The Girlfriend has been working for the State of Washington for the past 15 years.

Bona fides established, let’s get to telling the story:

Good morrow to the day so fair;
Good morning, Sir, to you:
Good morrow to mine own torn hair
Bedabbled with the dew

--From “The Mad Maid’s Song”, a selection from “The Hesperides & Noble Numbers”, by Robert Herrick

So as to make this story more fully informative, I went to work with The Girlfriend the other night, and what you’ll be reading today is basically my eyewitness report of what conditions are like at her workplace.

To be completely fair, she tells me that conditions at her facility are not as nice as the other comparable locations the State operates, so we'll have to establish right up front that this might not be a complete picture of how things are everywhere.

She is a nurse, The Girlfriend is, and she’s been working for the past 16 years with clients who live in what’s called a Residential Habilitation Center, and, to quote the State, her job is to “is to provide specialized care and support to people with developmental disabilities who have challenging needs”.

At the moment, the State operates five of these facilities, although that number is expected to be lower after this year; this because the number of clients being served has declined over time.

So the first thing we better talk about is the pay.

Ever since the labor unions took over State Government in Washington, wages for State workers have somewhat improved. The Girlfriend is earning in the middle of her pay range, which means she’s making about $870,000 a year, even though other nurses at her location jack in a million two or more.

(Washington State’s AFSCME is proud that they finally got our last State worker above $100,000; this was accomplished by changing Legislative Intern positions to Legislative Intern Level 7 positions and making step-pay increases part of that change.)

Of course, that’s not the whole package.

We woke up last night to the ringing of the call. On the line was the Facility Concierge, Lester, cheerfully waking us up.

We’re dressed, and heading out the door, and of course now the question is whether it’s a good idea to take the Bentley to work, what with the wintry weather and all, or to go with our SUV. You see, thanks to her State salary, we were able to purchase one of the two 2009 Lamborghini lm 800 SUV prototypes that were produced before the idea were abandoned…and even though—well, let’s just say there’s a “deal”.

See, the thing is, the valets at her facility are a bit sketchy, ever since the State outsourced the work (hey, the unions can’t win ‘em all)…and the Bentley can be replaced…and losing the Lamborghini would be a really big “deal”, because one of the other nurses owns one of those crazy Russian SUVs (she bought the Dartz Monaco Red Diamond Edition, even after they decided not to go with the whale penis leather seats), and there’s a lot of “keeping up with the Joneses” at her place…but we went with the Lambo anyway.

Lucky for us, two of our favorite valets (Tendei Furlough and Jenna Talia) were working, and we know the Lambo would be in safe hands with them.

I was starving, and she was, too; luckily for us the omelette and crêpe bar was still open at the cafeteria, which provides meals for State workers at no charge.

The cooks, as usual, had an excellent selection of Washington State food and beverage products available. I had crêpes with Yakima pheasant, Walla Walla sweet onions, and local champignon morel, all bound up in a lovely sauce Béchamel with just that little hint of clove that really makes it work for me.

She went for the Puget Sound King Crab omelette with freshly-gathered oyster mushrooms and Cougar Gold Dill Garlic cheese straight from the Washington State University creamery—which, I must say, was also an excellent choice.

The cooks apologized for the absence of fresh spot prawns, venison, and line-caught salmon tonight, but what with the State having to economize these days…what can you do?

At the table, our sommelier had something very special: some of the last of the 1996 Leonetti Cellar Cabernet Sauvignon out there anywhere—and I have to tell you, many people would not have chosen it with pheasant, but it was so nice that in this case I did not mind breaking convention. For a white, we had the 2008 Cadaretta "SBS" Columbia Valley Sauvignon Blanc-Sémillon; I gave it a taste, and I had to agree that it was indeed a 91-point wine.

Dessert was a lovely apple tart with fresh local cream and a glass of local Port, and then it was off to fitness and uniform services.

To help prevent on-the-job injuries, workers attend a paid two-hour workout session before each workday begins, and our guest fitness instructors this week had been brought in from markanthony’s of London, who are working out a deal with the State to bring “fitness podcast” to all workers at home.

After a shower, it’s back to the cafeteria for a break: scones, blueberry preserves, and mint tea for her (gathered from the on-campus garden), and a lovely slice of Remlinger Farm marionberry pie and an espresso doppio for me from one of the three baristas that are on duty at all times to meet the coffee needs of the 200 or so workers at the facility.

Tonight there’s an important union meeting and updates from State officials on new initiatives to come, so the next two hours is spent at The Conference Center, a building located next to the Japanese Garden and Koi pond and decorated in an Asian motif, with silk-covered chairs and teak and ebony furniture and many ornamental “panel” units scattered about the rooms.

A simple lunch was prepared and served tableside at The Conference Center by the Center’s catering staff: in honor of Hispanic Heritage Week and the former Caesar’s Restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, we had the salad that bears the name, along with freshly made cranberry and walnut rolls and local creamery butter.

After our hour lunch break, which we spent shopping at the artisan mall that operates on the facility grounds (she’s having a hat made, I hit the tailor shop and ordered a dozen black turtleneck shirts, half in black, half in darker black, in case any “adventures” come up), we hit the “five hour on the clock mark”…and in Washington State, all State workers work five hours and get paid for eight.

So we caught the Campus Shuttle (there are electric vehicles available, on call, that carry workers from building to building) back to the valet station, collected the Lambo, and called it a day.

So that’s a great story, ain’t it?

Well, the reality is that Tendei Furlough is a name I invented because State workers are, this year, getting an unpaid ten day furlough, which means you just lost two weeks’ of pay this year.

Nurses? The reality is that most everyone she works with, nurses and nursing assistants alike, have been injured at one time or another because the staff is short and the clients might assault you or you might have to bear their weight unexpectedly.

The money is now better in the private sector, and benefits are catching up fast. (The “defined benefit” retirement system went away long ago, and today’s State workers, including The Girlfriend, with more than 15 years on the job, are in a “defined contribution” plan.)

There really haven’t been any raises, as any money they get on one end goes right back out the other in things like higher co-pays and—oh, yeah, that two weeks of pay they just sort of…lost.

There are fewer workers than before, but the workload is much higher than it was 15 years ago, which means even getting a break is now a “maybe, sometimes” kind of a deal.

Cafeteria? Valet? Please.

There is free parking, which is better than a lot of people have, but as far as amenities go, that’s about it.

Now the conversation is about how much more everyone’s pay can be cut…and I’m gonna tell ya, when you are on the way to becoming the lowest-paying job in town there is a point where things like providing client care and a decent education for your kids and keeping the prisoners inside the walls are going to be seriously impacted.

We just had a corrections worker killed on the job, and recent staff cutbacks might have been part of the reason why—and if you add declining pay to understaffing you end up with something like dollar store jail guards, which, as I mentioned above, is not gonna be good value for the taxpayer dollar.

By the way: does any of this sound like Governors are the stooges of labor leaders?

I hate to say it folks, and there are few politicians who will, but you cannot just cut taxes to zero and expect it to all work out.

Government costs money, people have to do the jobs, and hiring good people, just like in any other business, is a smart idea…and you don’t get good people if you just make the environment worse and worse and worse.

Governments have to decide how to spend money, and they have to spend wisely and well, and we all know that…but continually cutting, no matter what the cost, often leads to decisions that are neither wise nor well.

Often, over the negotiating table, government is forced to make better decisions about things like class sizes and buying bullet-resistant vests for cops, even if the elected leaders would rather do nothing but cut taxes, no matter what the cost, and when you strip away the voice of workers, you pretty much guarantee that the workplace won’t be a better place, either for the workers, or for the customers.

Those customers, of course, are you and me, and if you want the business of government that you’re paying those taxes to run to run well…then it’s time to support your State’s workers—and to get loud about it.

If we do we can make it plenty painful for the elected officials who, right now, are so busy trying to advance their careers by screwing over State workers that they might as well change all their last names to either Phillips, Slotted, or PoziDriv #4…and, as Martha Stewart would say, “that’s a good thing”.

On Online Brainstorming, Or, "Hey, Unions...Wanna Grow?"

Sometimes stories happen because of planning; other times serendipity intervenes, which is how we got to the conversation we’ll be having today.

In an exchange of comments on the Blue Hampshire site, I proposed an idea that could be of real value to unions, workers...and surprisingly, employers.

If things worked out correctly, not only would lots of people feel a real desire to have unions represent them, but employers would potentially be coming to unions looking to forge relationships, and, just to make it better, this plan bypasses virtually all of the tools and techniques employers use to shut out union organizers.

Since I just thought this up myself, I’m really not sure exactly how practical the whole thing is, and the last part of the discussion today will be provided by you, as I ask you to sound off on whether this plan could work, and if so, how it could be made better.

It’s a new week...so let’s all put our heads together and rebuild the labor movement, shall we?

Credit Where Credit Is Due Dept.: We’re having this conversation today because of a back and forth between StratfordDem and myself over at Blue Hampshire, as I mentioned above, and the ideas that you’ll hear here are hardly my own—in fact, they’ve been part and parcel of how unions have worked for as long as there have been unions.

My proposal, however, takes an old idea, adds a twist, and tries to develop it to a whole new market, in a place where unions have been disadvantaged for a long time: among small businesses.

Before we move forward with the actual proposal, let’s do a bit of “stage setting”:

We are forever being told that the vast majority of jobs being created in the US economy are jobs created by small businesses. Unfortunately for unions, those small businesses don’t seem to be fertile grounds for organizing.

There are a variety of “structural” barriers that have been put in place over the years to make union organizing harder (and it’s even worse outside the US); one example would be the “right-to-work” laws that exist in more than twenty US states.

On the other side, there are industries that seem to likely targets for organizing, including those nursing facilities providing the kind of “hands-on” care that is often performed by medical assistants...who, quite frankly, would be awfully hard to “outsource”.

In normal economic times, it’s hard to keep these places staffed, particularly when there are either short shifts to be filled or people calling in sick, and that’s why there are “staffing agencies” who provide workers to fill in the gap.

There’s a catch: “agency” help is very expensive—and that often forces facilities to choose between agency help or “mandatory overtime”, which is also an expensive option. Obviously, abusing mandatory overtime isn’t just a budget problem—it will also damage the relationship between management and crew, which has its own costs.

The other players in this environment we’ll be talking about are the “Bryman Colleges” of the world (or Everest College, depending on where you live); you know them for their nonstop ad campaigns hoping to make you anything from a medical assistant to a construction project manager.

According to the General Accountability Office, the tuition for the medical assistant program at one of those schools might run in range of $12,000, which could be triple what it would cost to get the same training at a community college.

Ultra Geeky Fun Fact Of The Month: Those of you who play with Lie Groups and buildings of spherical types probably already knew this, but Belgian mathematician Jacques Tits (so famous, thanks to his “buildings” theory, that the concept of a group with a BN-pair is described as a "Tits System") celebrated his 80th birthday August 12th.

Ironically, Tits and buildings have nothing to do with TITS (the Total Information Transfer System), created by the City University of Hong Kong to to improve the communications process among construction managers developing large building projects.

So now it’s time to put all this together:

Picture, if you will, a union apprenticeship program for medical assistants that is melded with a “hiring hall” for fill-in positions.

Instead of spending $12,000 to go to Bryman, people would join the sponsoring union and start paying union dues.

The union, in turn, would place these workers, at about 125-150% of “normal” wage, in the fill-in slots that become available, allowing workers to “earn while they learn”; at the same time they’re attending the academic classes that would be required of any apprenticeship program.

The union needs to find nursing homes that are willing to place these workers. The way they do that is with a fairly straightforward sales pitch: “I can place workers in your facility, on short notice and with one phone call, for about the same price as overtime...and a lot less than the cost of agency help.”

The union involved will have to accept that they won’t be representing all of the workers at that facility...but they will be placing their workers at higher wages than non-union workers...and as the one group begins to see what the other has, this should help to make the idea of joining a union a lot more interesting to that portion of the staff the union does not yet represent.

It also removes the problem of the facility “pretextually” firing anyone who might look like they’re trying to organize the rest of the workforce.

Since workers would be finding out about the apprenticeship program through advertising and other means of contact, the ability of employers to intimidate workers out of joining a union is diminished; since employers are looking to bring in these union fill-in workers to fix a hole in their very, very, tight budgets, their desire to intimidate is also reduced.

If they do this well, the union should be able to create quite a bit of worker loyalty, and that should help resolve some of the problems associated with “right-to-work” laws.

So there you go: there may be a place for unions to expand apprenticeship by invading the territory of training schools that seem to be sticking it to workers today, and those same unions have a chance to change the relationship between unions and businesses into something that looks a whole lot less threatening to those businesses.

In the process, unions could create new worker loyalty—and they could also create a situation where the other workers start asking themselves: “hey...why don’t we belong to a union?”

And that brings us to the part where you come in:

What obvious things did I miss?
What legal impediments might exist that I’m unaware of?
How can this idea be made better?

Let’s make this a conversation, and let’s see where it ends up.