Guam: Hearings on Bill to Repeal 'Right to Work' Legislation

Bill 20, a bill that would repeal Guam's "Right to Work" law passed in 2000, has been introduced by three Democratic senators --Respicio, Cruz and Guthertz. Hearings are scheduled for the beginning of this week.

"Right to Work" legislation is permitted under the provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, which was passed by Congress in 1947 over President Truman's veto. The Taft-Hartley Act reversed many of the gains that organized labour had secured under the depression-era Wagner Act (1935). Where the Wagner Act protected craft and industrial unions from "unfair labour practices" by employers, the Taft-Hartley Act addressed itself mostly to "unfair labour practices" by unions.

Chief among the Taft-Hartley reversals was the prohibition against the "closed shop." Under the prior terms of the Wagner Act, unions could negotiate a "closed shop" contract with employers. New hires would be required to join the union as a condition of their employment. And, all employees in a bargaining unit would be required to contribute to the union through a mandatory "check off" of dues from their pay envelopes. Taft-Hartley, on the other hand, empowered states to pass laws that would mitigate, or even prohibit, contracts that make union membership or the payment of dues a mandatory condition of employment.

Taft-Hartley does give states a fair bit of 'wiggle room' here. Individual states could uphold the provisions of the Wagner Act (1935), or adopt any number of alternative models permitted under the Taft-Hartley Act (1947). While "Right to Work" legislation was perhaps the most anti-union alternative permitted under Taft-Hartley, other alternatives such as the "Union Shop" (required union membership only after a period of probation) and the "Agency Shop" (required dues without required membership) were also allowed.

In addition to the American territory of Guam, twenty-two states have passed "Right to Work" legislation, reflecting a cross-pollination of freedom of association ideals with anti-union biases.

If Bill 20 passes, labour relations on Guam may gradually return to the status quo ante-Taft-Hartley. What is unusual here is that while both the Wagner Act and the Taft-Hartley Act were drafted with craft and industrial unions in mind, most of the unionized workers on the island of Guam actually work in the public sector. According to Pacific News Daily, Bill 20 would affect the following categories of workers:

• public school teachers
• nurses
• school bus drivers
• customs and quarantine officers
• correctional officers'
• Waterworks Authority employees
• Port Authority employees

As a test case for labour law reform in the wake of the mortgage and credit crisis, and in the context of the current 'zeitgeist of stimulus', it will be interesting to see how this plays out in Guam.

At issue for Senator Respicio, is simply this: when employees are part of a bargaining unit, but do not contribute dues to the union, then those employees are getting a "free lunch" on the backs of co-workers who do contribute their share. Such employees, according to this argument, are benefiting from the labour movement without ever contributing to it. [In Hamilton, Ontario, we used to call them Dofasco Kids.] "Right to Work" legislation necessarily places these workers in a 'parasitical' position vis-à-vis their co-workers and the union.

On the other side of the debate rests the argument that the forced payment of union dues, or even the return of the "closed shop", implies an abridgement of fundamental American freedoms. As one commenter puts it (and many echo similar sentiments): "This issue is about freedom, and it’s just not American to force anyone to pay, join a group or union that they don’t want to."

Mark Felt ("Deep Throat") Dead at 95

The No.. 2 G-Man in the early '70s during the Nixon administration, a veteran FBI field agent, who had served since the early 1940s under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, Mark Felt will be remembered by most Americans as "Deep Throat" (a code name attached to him by Bob Woodward at the Washington Post to conceal his identity). Felt apparently was not amused by Woodward's risque choice of sobriquet -- "Deep Throat" was also the title of a quasi-mainstream porn movie that seemed to be on everybody's lips at the time.

The Washington Post has a thorough obit-cum-retrospective. Here's a sampling:

In 1980, he was convicted of approving illegal "black bag" break-ins against of the families and friends of Weather Underground radicals. He was later pardoned by President Ronald Reagan.

In his 1979 book, "The FBI Pyramid From the Inside," co-authored with conservative writer Ralph de Toledano, Felt supported Hoover's bugging of the Rev. Martin Luther King during the Kennedy administration. He opposed Gray's decisions to hire women as FBI agents, to loosen the dress code and to ease the weight restrictions for FBI agents.

He came from the traditional crime-fighting FBI, having started with the agency in 1942. He unmasked a German spy in the United States, chased bank robbers and for years led what was known internally as the "goon squad," which monitored the performance of field agents. Even after he was promoted to deputy associate director in 1971, his reputation was that of a hard-line Hoover loyalist.

No one knows exactly what prompted Felt to leak the information from the Watergate probe to the press. He was passed over for the post of FBI director after Hoover's 1972 death, a crushing career disappointment.

Mark Felt was 95.

63 Years Ago Today: V-J Day

This photograph, taken in Times Square by Alfred Eisenstaedt for Life Magazine is probably the most iconic image associated with V-J Day in American lore.

It would be next to impossible to try to recapture in words the euphoric abandon suggested here. Did anyone harbour lingering doubts about the sincerity of Japan's capitulation? Just nine days earlier, the world was thrust into the atomic age when the Enola Gay dropped its payload (nicknamed Thin Boy) over the skies above Hiroshima. An encore performance over Nagasaki sealed the surrender. Just a few months prior, the war had ended in the European theatre. And abruptly, on August 15, 1945, it was all over in the Pacific theatre too.

All over, that is, but the accounting, the roll call, the debriefing, the demobilization, and the reconstruction. All over, except for dealing with the ghosts of Guam, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. All over, except for the haunting memories of prison camp brutality, and of the infamous Bataan Death March. All over but the Taps.

Six long years for the British and Canadians. Four long years for the Americans -- in a time when such a war as this was not to be prosecuted by half measures, and demanded the full participation and sacrifice of the country as a whole. After all that, who could fault these Times Square paraders and revellers for their moment of euphoric abandon? Today was about the thrill of victory and its accompanying relief. There would be plenty of time afterwards to come to terms with its costs; plenty of time afterwards to heal the wounds, treat the scars, mourn the losses and honour the fallen.

63 years ago today was V-J Day. Two weeks later, on September 2, 1945, the Articles of Surrender were signed. The Second World War was over. In Times Square, a sailor and a nurse sealed it with a kiss.

Photo credit: Alfred Eisenstaedt, Life Magazine.

The First Democracy of the Enlightenment: United States, 1776

Thomas Jefferson, crafting the text for the Declaration of Independence in 1776, wrote the following lines:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

A classical specimen of Enlightenment era political economy, Jefferson's "declaration" on behalf of the Continental Congress stressed freedom, individual autonomy, government by consent not coercion, and (to echo Thomas Payne) the 'rights of man'.

Now, to be absolutely precise, Jefferson (33 years of age at the time) wrote the first draft -- a little more 'in your face' and stridently anti-British than the final version of the text, which would be spread by broadsheet across the colonies, delivered unto King George, and passed down to us for posterity. Jefferson's draft was proofread and revised by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. Then the Continental Congress had a go at it, and struck out the overly acerbic references to the British people and the slave trade.

Still, this document represented a watershed moment for the American colonies -- signalling the changed in course from a campaign to defend the American colonists' enjoyment of the "rights of Englishmen" to a campaign to rid the American colonies of English monarchic rule. -- The flame of a revolutionary spirit ignited by the spark of a noble rhetoric, a new republic was born.