Today, the National Mediation Board (NMB), which oversees labor-management relations under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), issued a ruling making union elections more democratic. Before today, under the RLA, workers who did not vote in a union organizing campaign — including workers on furlough, military leave and extended medical leave — were counted as “no” votes. So in order to form a union, workers had to gain a majority of all workers, instead of a majority of voting members. It was as if people who did not vote in a Presidential campaign were recorded as voting for one party or the other.

The NMB’s rule-change — which it first sought comment on back in November — states that workers who do not vote in an election simply won’t be counted (just like in political campaigns). This would bring the RLA in line with the other major piece of legislation governing unionization, the National Labor Relations Act.

But airlines, which are governed by the RLA, like the higher bar for unionizing that the previous rule set. So they immediately announced that they will launch a lawsuit seeking to overturn the rule, according to the Air Transport Association, an industry trade group:

We continue to believe the National Mediation Board does not have legal authority to implement this rule, one that undoubtedly will lead to more labor discord. It is quite clear to us that the NMB was determined to proceed despite the proposed rule’s substantive and procedural flaws, leaving us no choice but to seek judicial review.

At its core, the airlines — including Delta, Jet Blue, and United — are arguing that workers who don’t vote in union elections should immediately be recorded as voting against the union. It’s an odd concept of democracy, if I’ve ever heard one.

But the reaction of the airlines is part and parcel of the corporate campaign to keep the bar for unionization high, even when the rules are antiquated or create uneven playing fields between companies. For instance, Federal Express (which, interestingly, has joined the airlines’ lawsuit against the NMB’s ruling) has been waging a campaign against a proposed change by Congress that would remove unionizing obstacles for that company’s drivers. The clear goal of this lobbying — and the airlines’ lawsuit — is to keep workers who want to unionize from actually following through and forming a union.

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA said that the NMB’s ruling represents “a new era of democracy.” “For far too long, flight attendants and other aviation and railway employees have faced significant obstacles in their quest for collective bargaining rights,” it said. And the airlines are going to court to fight for keeping those obstacles in place.

In its last two budgets, the Obama administration has proposed ending a series of tax subsidies collected by Big Oil companies. This year, the target is $36 billion in tax breaks, including nixing deductions that oil companies collect to write-off the cost of drilling. In light of the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it makes sense to reevaluate whether we want to be using the tax code to subsidize drilling for oil, particularly after oil companies reaped billions in profits during the first quarter of this year.

Last month, I spoke to Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), who characterized tax subsidies like those received by oil companies as “barnacles on the code” that aren’t fair to working people. Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, however, appeared on CNBC this morning to claim that the tax breaks are necessary for the oil industry to preserve jobs:

We already are probably the most heavily taxed industry in this country, and these tax breaks as they’re characterized — and I think many times they are mischaracterized — are simply provisions in the tax code that are made available to all businesses. I’ll take one in particular, the Section 199 manufacturing tax deduction, was passed by Congress out of a concern that we were losing manufacturing jobs in the country. So now part of the Obama tax proposal is to repeal that Section 199 provision for our industry. It’s not clear to me why a refining job or a petro-chemical job is less valuable than an auto manufacturing job. This is the mischaracterization, in my view, of some of these tax subsidies.

Watch it:

It’s pretty rich to watch the CEO of one of the most profitable companies in American history go on television to insinuate that he will cut jobs if Congress removes his corporate welfare. This year, the company reported first quarter earnings of $6.3 billion, which is up 38 percent from last year. In 2008, it set a U.S. record by making a profit of $45 billion.

Meanwhile, the subsidies that Exxon and other oil companies collect cost the U.S. government billions each year, as Sima Gandhi explained:

It’s hard to believe that oil companies need taxpayer handouts with their prices so high. Yet the government spent nearly $4 billion on oil and gas companies in 2008. Some of these subsidies date as far back as 1919. The specific tax subsidies and how they work have changed over time, but what remains constant is their price tag. Spending taxpayer dollars on already profitable and mature industries doesn’t make sense. Eliminating tax expenditure spending for oil and gas companies would save the government nearly $3 billion next year.

According to estimates from the Treasury Department’s Office of Economic Policy, removing subsidies for the oil industry would affect domestic oil production by less than one-half of 1 percent.

At the same time that it is collecting tax subsidies from the U.S. government, Exxon uses 122 foreign subsidiaries, including 32 in countries that are officially labeled tax havens, to dodge U.S. taxes. It has 18 subsidiaries in the Bahamas, and 3 each in the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, and Singapore. It also spent more than $27 million lobbying Congress last year, and another $3.3 million so far this year.

Today, the Senate will resume consideration of Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) financial regulatory reform bill, with voting on amendments expected to begin tomorrow. In the meantime, the financial services industry and its allies are still fighting reform, particularly in the area of derivatives, the complex financial instruments that played a critical role in the economic crisis.

In the first quarter of this year, the banks spent $6.1 million lobbying. But as I’ve noted before, the banks have enlisted big corporations to act as their proxies in the derivatives fight, particularly through a group known as the Coalition of Derivatives End Users. The group’s goal is to blow holes in derivatives reform legislation, crafting huge loopholes in the attempt to move derivatives trading onto public exchanges (modeled after the stock exchange) and through clearinghouses (which act as middlemen, ensuring both parties have sufficient collateral backing their trade).

As Mother Jones’ Andy Kroll pointed out, oil giant British Petroleum — whose rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded last month, causing an ongoing oil spill — is a member of the Coalition, and despite its other obviously pressing matters, the company “has still found time to fight tougher financial reforms on Capitol Hill”:

The corporation is a member of the Coalition for Derivatives End-Users, a collection of companies actively pushing for a loophole in new regulations governing derivatives…[W]hat’s got BP upset is a proposal to force derivatives to go through a clearinghouse, a central body that would act as a middleman on each trade, collect data, and help protect failed derivatives deals from leading to massive losses that harm the wider economy…BP doesn’t want to front up cash or collateral when it trades in derivatives.

Lawmakers are trying to draw a line between “good” derivatives, used by companies to hedge against risk, and “bad” derivatives, used by financial companies to speculate. But in trying to make these fine distinctions, Congress could very well open loopholes for financial companies to exploit. As Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler has argued, even well-intentioned attempts could backfire, and “bring along exemptions for transactions between dealers and their financial customers.”

Plus, Gensler has argued that full regulation of derivatives, without exemptions for end-users, will bring down costs for everyone, including the very companies trying to exempt themselves:

Now I recognize that many of you disagree with me on this issue and favor exemptions from clearing for businesses hedging their risk. You have concerns that the margin – or collateral – required to clear derivatives could be costly. Derivatives dealers, however, already charge counterparties for credit extensions when they do not clear their transactions. How can you know that these costs charged by the dealers — embedded and opaque — are less than the margin associated with clearinghouses? At least margin requirements imposed by clearinghouses are transparent to all market participants and subject to review by the appropriate regulator.

So BP should really focus on cleaning up the mess it made in the Gulf, as strong derivatives reform, without loopholes and exemptions, is in the interest of it and all the other companies that employ derivatives to hedge against risk.