Extra Pay for Hard Work? Novel Concept Gets Help from Congress
Republicans have introduced a worker-rights bill that should put union advocates in Congress in a bit of a PR predicament when it gets through committee and to the floor.
Employees should be able to get merit pay if they work hard, right? The National Labor Relations Board has repeatedly ruled, though, that individual bonuses constitute “direct dealing,” which is illegal under collective bargaining law.
The Rewarding Achievement and Incentivizing Successful Employees (RAISE) Act would change all that by amending the National Labor Relations Act and letting the more than 8 million Americans currently prohibited from getting performance-based raises get their due reward.
“Who doesn’t want to be giving a worker a raise?” Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.), the author of the RAISE Act, told PJM, noting that it’s going to be “fascinating” to watch Democrats under the thumb of unions have to cast a vote for or against the bill.
So far there are no Democrats among the bill’s 32 co-sponsors, but Rokita noted that he hasn’t even tried to work the other side of the aisle yet on the measure introduced just last week.
He got a surefire boost for his effort yesterday, though, when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced a companion bill in the upper chamber with Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and David Vitter (R-La.) as co-sponsors.
“It is a sad day in America when no matter how hard an employee works, he or she is blocked from higher earning potential,” said Rubio. “This bill fixes this arbitrary ceiling placed on these workers and allows the free market to function as it is supposed to. These kind of actions by the NLRB are the very root of the larger issue at hand: a board of unelected government bureaucrats dictating to businesses what employees are worth.”
Rokita said the NLRB’s actions have ranged from “anti-worker” to so “cross-prohibitive” that businesses can’t get the job done.
And the prohibitions on merit pay? “It’s corrosive to the national soul,” Rokita said,
He told PJM of how he comes from a heavily unionized part of Indiana, where his father, who owned and operated a dental practice, would leave for work at 11 a.m. and not come home until the next day because of treating second-shift workers from the steel mill.
“I don’t come at this from outer space,” Rokita said. “I’m not one of the guys who doesn’t understand the social and economic value of a union concept.”
But the political machine that organized labor has evolved into, giving millions in worker dues to PACs, he said, is “not what I think the union fathers back in the day ever had in mind.”
“For people who claim to speak on behalf of those who have no voice — they are raping these workers, politically speaking,” Rokita said.
So far, the response from unions to the bill has been “dead silence,” Rokita said.
These morons don’t want a prosperous middle class. They want brown shirted union members all in lock-step with Dear Leader & company – who wants a life term in that role. There was a time and place for unions – that time has passed.
Heh. If it passes, how soon before it hits Obama’s desk and forces HIM to take a stand?
Well, hopefully this is just a wedgie bill. If it is not, some people are painfully naive about the unionized environment; I’m not. Under current law, you could negotiate a merit pay scheme with the union; they’d never agree to one, but it is theoretically possible to have one as a bargained wage provision.
As an employer, you’d be stupid to have one unless your merit pay was explicitly removed from both the grievance procedure and the unfair labor practice provisions of the law. Even if the union agrees to a merit pay system, every decision to grant or deny a merit increase is subject to the grievance/arbitration provisions of the labor agreement, so some arbitrator and possibly judge is going to second guess every management decision. It will be an evidence based test of every decision to award or deny a merit increase, and labor arbitrators these days are a wierd and not very employer friendly lot. Even if it is exempted from the grievance/arbitration provisions of the labor agreement it is still subject to the unfair labor practice provisions of the federal and most state laws. If you give a merit increase to Employee A who is an agency fee payer but not to Employee B who is a union member, the union asserts that you have discriminated against Employee B for his participation in the protected activity of being a union member. Even if you win on the facts before the NLRB or your state labor board, you’ve just spent one Helluva lot of time and money.
As a practical matter, merit pay systems are best left as a creature of the non-union states. Where they work, which requires a really good management culture, they make employment much more attractive. Where they don’t work, they make unionization much more attractive. Choose well.
Art;
In your first sentence, I read “Wedge”, which gave it the context of dividing the congressional democrats along the fault lines of their political contributors, the elitist liberals who don’t soil their psyches by actual dealings with the smelly union underclass, and the RICO modelled union mob leaders who spend money and send thugs to achieve their aims at the expense of the union membership.
Then I read it again. “wedgie”. Perfect.
I’d like to see Obama sell SEIU members the idea that they do not deserve more money for harder work, especially in an election year. Union members would also want to be rewarded for hard work during these hard economic times. If unions do not go for this bill, they are simply advocating mediocrity, which is why people are fed up with unions. The union “house of cards” really is falling, and it’s going to come crashing down on the Democrat’s heads. It’s about time.
How dare they suggest someone get paid for working harder than someone else. Don’t they know we are supposed to get paid more and more for doing less and less? /sarc
Why do we still have collective bargaining anyway. It is a relic of the 1930′s.
The unions will oppose this. They must. Their very existence depends on group-think. Individualism is fatal to them. It’s their kryptonite.