From American Prospect: http://prospect.org/article/why-alt-labor-groups-are-making-employers-mighty-nervous
Lane Windham
January 30, 2014
A growing minimum wage movement indicates that despite low union membership statistics, labor’s future isn’t as dire as some in the business world might hope.
Union membership remained steady last year—steady at its near-hundred-year low. A mere 6.7 percent of private-sector workers are union members, as are 11.3 percent of U.S. workers overall, according to figures released last Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS.)
Those government union membership statistics, however, don’t capture an entire swath of new, exciting and emerging labor activists—“alt-labor” activists—whom alarmed employers would like to see regulated by the same laws that apply to unions. Yet before we regulate them as unions, shouldn’t we first count them as unions?
Consider those striking fast food workers you’ve been reading about, the ones calling for a $15 an hour wage. Their numbers are not counted in the union membership figures. How about those Wal-Mart workers who struck for Black Friday and just won a key court case? Uncounted. What about the day laborers who joined any one of hundreds of workers’ centers nationwide? You got it, not included. Neither are the restaurant workers, home health care workers, taxi drivers or domestic workers, all of whom are organizing for workplace power outside traditional unions.
Why are these labor activists uncounted? The BLS bases its union membership numbers on the Current Population Survey (CPS). Every month, the government asks about 15,000 people whether they are union members or members of an employee association like a union. The people who went on strike at McDonald’s for a day, or who joined a local workers’ center, will almost certainly say “no” to this question, because they don’t pay union dues or aren’t covered by a contract. The government’s questions have no place for these workers who are part of a new breed of “alt-labor” groups leveraging workplace power outside the realm of collective bargaining —such as through worker centers, labor coalitions, or the three million members of the AFL-CIO’s Working America. In addition, the government union numbers exclude people who report they are self-employed. In todays’ economy, that could easily mean day laborers and domestic workers who are part of new labor groups.
Continue reading at: http://prospect.org/article/why-alt-labor-groups-are-making-employers-mighty-nervous
A ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upholds California’s ban on conversion therapy for minors, a discredited practice that claims to “cure” people of being gay, is another sign of the collapse of the conversion therapy industry, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The court reaffirmed its earlier decision upholding the ban Wednesday. The ruling means that the only recourse for the therapists challenging the law is the U.S. Supreme Court.
“We are thrilled that the federal appeals court has, for the second time, confirmed that states can protect kids from the harmful practices used in so-called ‘conversion therapy,’” said David Dinielli, SPLC deputy legal director. “Science proves that it doesn’t work. It harms kids, and it tears families apart.”
In 2012, the SPLC filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit on behalf of four young men who claim they were defrauded by Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH), a New Jersey organization that offers conversion therapy services.
In therapy sessions, the men were instructed, among other things, to stand naked in a circle with other patients and a naked counselor; to cuddle with members of the same sex, including other patients and counselors; to violently beat effigies of their mothers with a tennis racket; to go to gyms and bathhouses in order to be nude with father figures; and to participate in mock locker room and gym class scenarios where they were subjected to ridicule as “faggots” and “homos.”
Conversion therapy has been discredited or highly criticized by all major American medical, psychiatric, psychological and professional counseling organizations. In addition, the American Psychological Association has expressed concern that conversion therapy practices “create an environment in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish.”
“With our lawsuit against JONAH and the collapse of Exodus International and other conversion therapy organizations, it is clear this industry is crumbling,” Dinielli said. “Also, states across the country are taking steps to ban these harmful practices marketed to unsuspecting kids and their families. Soon, conversion therapy and its practitioners will be relegated to the dustbin of history.”
California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the state’s ban on conversion therapy for patients under the age of 18 in 2012. Conversion therapy services have been discredited or highly criticized by all major American medical, psychiatric, psychological and professional counseling organizations.