Channel: In the States
RTW Circus Continues in New Hampshire
AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this cross-post from Blue Hampshire.
Full of tea party zeal after voting to repeal lunch hours for all employees, the House Labor Committee took up a new so-called right to work “RTW” bill today over the loud objections of union members, business owners and faith leaders.
As state House Speaker William O’Brien (R) did last fall, Labor Committee Chairman Gary Daniels invited political candidates to stump on the floor of the House in return for their endorsement of RTW. Gubernatorial candidates Ovid Lamontagne and Kevin Smith did the honors.
Never mind that business owners and labor leaders think it’s time to move on from the contentious battle over RTW that shook the Legislature last year.
As Mark MacKenzie, president of the New Hampshire AFL-CIO, testified:
We have lower poverty levels, higher graduation rates, and higher wages than any right-to-work state. We have negotiated thousands of successful collective bargaining agreements. This law is not broken. There is no need for right-to-work.
Ariz. Update: ‘Focus on Real Priorities,’ Union, Community Leaders Today at Capitol
|
|
Donna Gratehouse, who blogs at DemocraticDiva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.
It’s time for us to say enough! Let’s not let these bills see the light of day. Let’s focus on the real priorities of the state of Arizona—jobs, the economy, health care, education. Those are the priorities of Arizona, not the type of legislation that is pushed by the Goldwater Institute.
Gallardo went on to demand that the Goldwater Institute register as a lobbyist, as every other organization that influences legislation in Arizona has to do. (Watch his speech here.)
Some local reporters covering the press conference were surprised that much more ire was directed at the Goldwater Institute and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) than at Republican state senators. This might serve as a cue to them to go after these powerful groups with more vigilance than they’ve shown up to now.
New Hampshire Lawmakers Try to End Worker Lunch Breaks
 |
Charles Dickens’s tales have nothing on New Hampshire lawmakers. According to American Progress, the Republican-controlled legislature is proposing to do away with a state regulation requiring employers to give workers time to eat lunch. After all, they argued, employers will do so anyway out of the goodness of their hearts.
Like Walmart maybe? Nope. Back in 2005, Walmart was forced to pay $172 million for denying workers their lunch breaks. California’s Embassy Suites? No, again. California ordered Embassy Suites to pay workers tens of thousands of dollars for forcing them to skip breaks.
Starving workers on the job. What a novel 19th century concept.
As the Dickens’s orphan begged the headmaster, his hands outstretched with an empty bowl:
Please sir, may I have more?
Florida Protesters Greet Wisconsin’s Walker
 |
This is a cross-post by Karen Hickey, communications director at the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO.
Working families in southwest Florida are standing in solidarity with Wisconsin workers and protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) visit to Naples. Walker spoke this morning at the Ritz-Carlton resort in Naples, Fla., as part of the James Madison Institute think-tank luncheon.
The protesters in the Sunshine State are shining a light on Walker’s attacks on middle-class families. WZVN, a local news station, is reporting that:
Protesters are lined up to express their disapproval of the embattled governor…at Vanderbilt Beach and Airport Pulling. They say Walker is in town trying to raise money to defeat the recall election he faces in Wisconsin.
The timing is perfect, says Wally Ilczyszyn, president of Florida’s Painters & Allied Trades (IUPAT).
Walker’s at the Ritz-Carlton for a $500-a-plate luncheon because he can’t find enough money in his home state to fight against his recall. So he has to come here. Read the rest of this entry »
A Thousand Letters to Tom Corbett
 |
This is a cross-post from Working America’s Main Street blog.
Working America members, teachers and unemployed Pennsylvanians on both sides of the state delivered more than 1,000 handwritten postcards to Gov. Tom Corbett’s regional offices in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. We wanted Corbett to know the drastic, widespread and ultimately disastrous results of the budget cuts he enacted last year. We wanted him to make good on the rhetoric used in his first year, which called for “shared sacrifice.”
There has been a great deal of sacrifice. But it has not been shared. It has been targeted, acute and painful. And while the brunt has fallen on students, low-income families and public workers, 70 percent of Pennsylvania’s businesses pay nothing in income taxes.
“The budget cuts have added to the pool of unemployed workers by contributing to the elimination of 14,000 jobs in education alone,” says Mary Karscig, an unemployed nurse and Working America member who wrote to Corbett. Some 21,000 Pennsylvanians lost their jobs due to budget cuts alone, many of them due to nearly $900 million slashed from public education. We’ve written about the many school districts in Pennsylvania now facing the fiscal brink, with the bankrupt Chester Upland School District as a sign of things to come. The New York Times reported yesterday that 75 percent of Pennsylvania classrooms now have more kids than they did in 2010.
“I feel worried about the impacts of these cuts on my job search, and I am even more worried about their impacts on my son’s job search,” says Mary.
She adds: “My son will go wherever there is a job, and there is a pretty high chance he’ll have to move out of state.”
Arizona Update: Public and Private Workers in Solidarity
Donna Gratehouse, who blogs at DemocraticDiva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.
As Arizona’s “Wisconsin on Steroids” anti-worker bills get streamlined through committee hearings, Arizona labor leaders are gearing up to push back. This afternoon, I spoke with Roman Ulman, executive director of AFSCME Arizona. Ulman told me union leaders are still meeting with legislators at this point, urging them to support working families over corporate interests. As he said:
Senators on both sides of the aisle are telling me they are uncomfortable with the bills and are pleased that we’re talking and not walking at this point. Some of the Republicans have privately expressed to me that they’re tired of being terrorized by the Goldwater Institute and the Tea Party into voting for bad legislation. They want to focus on the budget and solving Arizona’s problems.
(Click here to sign a petition to tell all Arizona lawmakers to stop the attacks on firefighters, teachers, police officers and other hard-working public service workers.)
Private conversations aside, even the more principled Republican lawmakers in Arizona have a history of caving under under corporate pressure so it is expected that the majority will vote for the bills in the end. Ulman says union members and allies are prepared for that.
If it moves out of the Senate, all bets are off and we will march and take our case to the public.
Labor and community groups plan to hold a press conference on the lawn of the State Capitol in Phoenix on Thursday afternoon and are expecting a good sized crowd to turn out. Read the rest of this entry »
RTW Still Wrong for New Hampshire
Last year, despite some twisted political maneuvering and trickery by New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien (R), he and other anti-worker lawmakers and their out-of-state backers could not override Gov. John Lynch’s (D) veto of a right to work for less bill. With a new legislative session underway, they’re back at it again.
Thursday, the House labor Committee will hold a hearing on a new right to work (RTW) bill. Although the calendar may have changed, the facts haven’t—right to work is still wrong for New Hampshire, a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report finds.
Political economist Gordon Lafer provides new evidence that RTW laws have failed as economic development strategies and would likely harm New Hampshire. Right to Work: A Failed Policy, A New Hampshire Update strengthens the findings of Right-to-Work: Wrong for New Hampshire, an analysis of why RTW was particularly unsuited to New Hampshire that EPI released last April.
Some of the new evidence Lafer examines that confirms the harm that RTW has caused to state economies includes: Read the rest of this entry »
AFL-CIO Joins Re-enactment of 1965 Selma to Montgomery March
The AFL-CIO is joining with civil rights, community and labor partners in the re-enactment of the historic 1965 Selma to Montgomery, Ala., civil rights march that will focus attention on new attacks on voting rights, immigrants, workers’ rights and education.
Speaking, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., this morning, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told reporters:
The onslaught of coordinated attacks on workers’ rights, voting rights, public education and immigration reform is an affront to our democracy. During the difficult economic times that so many of our communities are facing, we would much rather see our state legislators spending their time focusing on job creation…as opposed to deconstructing our fundamental rights.
The five-day march will begin on Sunday March 4 in Selma in remembrance of 1965’s “Bloody Sunday” when more than 600 marchers calling for enactment of the Voting Rights Act were met by hundreds of local and state police with billy clubs and tear gas. Read the rest of this entry »
Report Details ALEC’s Influence in Ohio Lawmaking
Mike Gillis, Ohio AFL-CIO communications director, sends us this.
A new report released today by People For the American Way Foundation, Common Cause, the Center for Media and Democracy and Progress Ohio reveals the deep ties between the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Ohio state lawmakers.
ALEC in Ohio: The Corporate Special Interests that Help Write Ohio’s Laws, demonstrates ALEC’s policymaking influence with an in-depth analysis of the organization’s ties to key Ohio lawmakers, as well as a side-by-side comparison of nine ALEC “model” bills and actual Ohio legislation, including:
- Attacks on workers by severely limiting collective bargaining, eliminating public employment through outsourcing and privatizing government functions;
- Diminishing public education through private school voucher programs and private scholarship tax credits;
- Encouraging the privatization of state prisons to benefit the private prison industry;
- Voter suppression bills designed to disenfranchise thousands of eligible Americans;
- Draconian anti-immigrant measures that criminalize undocumented workers and penalize their employers;
- Creation of barriers for consumers and injured parties in seeking justice from corporations in a court of law;
- Measures to prevent implementation of health care reform. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s on in Arizona
Donna Gratehouse, who blogs at DemocraticDiva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.
Arizona’s teachers and first responders are under full-frontal attack this week, as union-stripping bills that have been called “Wisconsin on steroids” are being shuttled through the legislative process at whirlwind speed. These bills would prohibit public-sector unions from negotiating pay and benefits, ban paycheck deductions for union dues and ban compensation for union activities. They passed through committee hearings last week and are going to be debated in the full Senate this week. It’s expected that they will pass through both chambers easily due to the anti-labor GOP majority in both. It’s unclear if Gov. Jan Brewer will sign them into law. A Phoenix-based right-wing pressure group, the Goldwater Institute, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are behind the measures.
Like their counterparts in Wisconsin last year, working people in Arizona are not taking this lying down. Rebekah Friend, Arizona AFL-CIO executive director, told Phoenix newscaster Brahm Resnik on Sunday morning that the Arizona union movement is planning to use “every option available” to fight these attacks on working families. The Arizona AFL-CIO and member unions are mobilizing people to call and write their state representatives to oppose the bills. Friend assured Resnik that, if necessary, they can fill the state Capitol with people.
