Wednesday marked the six-month anniversary of America Crystal Sugar Co.’s lockout of 1,300 workers and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) told the U.S. House: “It’s time for the company to negotiate.”

In a speech on the House floor, Ellison said the workers, members of Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 167G at plant sin Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa, have been

denied the basic and most fundamental right to work and support their families. These workers have gone to bat for the company. These workers stood shoulder to should with the company to fight for a better sugar program in the farm bill just because that’s how dedicated they. What have they got in return? They’ve gotten locked out. They are not on strike. They are locked out because they refuse to accept an unfair take it or leave contract. They have been locked even though they have agreed to a no-strike guarantee.  It’s wrong, these 1,300 folks deserve better from this company.

Locked out worker Jay Holter told Steve Share, editor of Minneapolis Labor Review,

We’ve given the best we’ve got to this company and this is how we are treated. It’s probably only a year and a half ago the company gave us shirts that said, “You’re the best at what you do.”

Click here for Share’s full update on the lockout.

They fervently deny that the legislation designed to strip workers of their rights, voters of their franchise, bust unions and boost corporate profits and power are handouts from the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC’s) corporate power toolkit.

Click here to take a look at a bill introduced last fall by Florida state Rep. Rachel Burgin (R) to reduce corporate taxes. Notice the second paragraph, “Whereas is the mission of the American Legislative Exchange Council….” That’s right ALEC’s mission statement is smack dab near the top of Burgin’s measure.

The next day Burgin apparently realized she had left the smoking gun at the scene and withdrew the bill only to reintroduce it later with ALEC’s mission statement removed. H/t to Common Cause for uncovering the deception.

In response to protests by foreign students exploited in a factory subcontracted by the Hershey Company and advocacy by the AFL-CIO and our allies, this week the U.S. State Department announced that it will make major revisions to a guest-worker and cultural exchange visa program and barred participation by a major player in the program, the Council for Educational Travel, USA (CETUSA).

Harika Duygu Ozer, one of the students involved in the protest, told the New York Times:

I hope this sends a clear message to other recruiters like CETUSA, that we will not be your captive workers.

As we reported last summer, students recruited for a cultural exchange program found themselves instead all but indentured to a factory in Palmyra, Penn., where they were made to perform dangerous work loading Hershey products with no safety protection for less than the minimum wage. In addition, the students stayed in housing provided by the Hershey contractor, for which it overcharged. Rents were deducted from the students’ pay.

In August, the students staged a sit-in at the factory to protest their working conditions and pay abuses by the Hershey subcontractor, Excel Logistics. Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Rick Bloomingdale was arrested for taking part in the sit-in.

Working with Jobs with Justice and the National Guestworker Alliance, the student protesters’ actions led to a State Department investigation that found widespread abuses of a program that was designed to be a cultural exchange for students from abroad. Students who take part in the Summer Work Travel (SWT) program are admitted on a J-1 visa.

In a statement issued by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) on Thursday, EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey and Immigration Policy Analyst Daniel Costa wrote:

Our research has shown that corporations and labor recruiters like CETUSA are using the J-1 visa Exchange Visitor Program—and especially the SWT program, which admitted 132,000 workers last year—to avoid hiring unemployed U.S. workers and paying state and federal payroll taxes. In Pennsylvania, a state with a 7.6 percent unemployment rate, scarce jobs in rural areas (such as Palmyra, the site of the Hershey plant) should first be offered to local unemployed workers. In addition, the use of subcontractors as a way to keep employees from unionizing should be banned. The Hershey Company has successfully used the J-1 program as a way to diminish the bargaining power of its workers.

As urged by the AFL-CIO in its public comments on the SWT, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Rick Ruth announced that the list of jobs prohibited for exchange students traveling on a J-1 visa would be expanded to include construction, roofing and most industrial work.

But scrutiny of the Summer Work Travel program won’t end there. An investigation by the Associated Press also found SWT students pressed into service in the sex industry.

Read more about the student sit-in at Hershey’s Excel plant here and here.

They’re calling it the “uprising of the invisible.”

Cleaning workers in the Netherlands have been on strike for 30 days and have now asked for international solidarity. They’ve created an online campaign on LabourStart which needs your help.

It will take you just one minute to tell their employers—and their employers’ clients—that it’s time to show these workers some respect, and to reach agreement to end the strike.

Please send off your message here today and spread the word.

And one more thing….

We’ve just announced the dates for the third annual LabourStart Global Solidarity Conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, from Nov. 26-29 2012. To learn more and show your interest in attending, please visit the Event page on Facebook.

The nation’s unemployment rate in January fell to 8.3 percent, down from December’s 8.5 percent, and the economy added 243,000 jobs, according to the latest figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The nation’s unemployment rate continues it steady decline, dropping by 0.8 percentage points since August and to the lowest point since February 2009. The number of jobless workers dropped to 12.8 million, down from December’s 13.1 million. But the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 5.5 million, about 42.9 percent of the unemployed.

The unemployment insurance program for the nation’s jobless workers expires Feb. 29.  A conference is now under way between the Senate and House over two very different one-year extensions of the UI program passed late last year, and the Republican bill would slash federal benefits, impose harsh new restrictions and move to dismantle the essential lifeline of unemployment insurance. Click here for details.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says, “The seeds of sustainable job growth are clearly present—if Republicans in Congress do not succeed in weakening the recovery.”

Republican leaders, who are admittedly unconcerned with the poor and still pressing for ill-timed austerity in Washington and state capitals, run a very real risk of putting this incipient recovery at risk. President Obama, by contrast, has laid out a comprehensive agenda for job creation and broadly shared prosperity, rather than wealth for a few.

Private-sector jobs grew by 257,000, and government employment was essentially unchanged, but over the past 12 months 276,000 public employee jobs have been lost.

In January, professional and business services add about 70,000 jobs. The leisure and hospitality industry added 44,000 jobs and health care jobs grew by 31,000.

Manufacturing saw an increase of 50,000 jobs, mostly in durable goods, and the construction industry added 21,000 jobs.  There were 10,000 new jobs in the mining industry in January.

The unemployment rates for adult men (7.7 percent) and African Americans (13.6 percent) declined in January. The unemployment rates for adult women (7.7 percent), teenagers (23.2 percent), whites (7.4 percent) and Hispanics (10.5 percent) were little changed.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist Heidi Shierholz says today’s figures show “a labor market where all the moving parts seemed to be moving in a solidly good direction.”

Strong payroll employment growth was matched by a falling unemployment rate, strong employment growth in the household survey and a growing share of the population with jobs….It’s important to keep this growth in context, however—the jobs deficit is so large that even at January’s growth rate, it would still take until 2019 to get back to full employment.  We need reports this strong and stronger for the next several years to get back to good health in the labor market.

Warehouse workers, school, bus drivers, teachers, mechanics, telecommunication and manufacturing worker all have recently won a voice at work with AFL-CIO unions.

More than 350 employees at IKEA Distribution Center in Perryville, Md., voted by an overwhelming margin to join the Machinists (IAM ) despite opposition from IKEA managers who hired Jackson-Lewis, the well-known union-busting law firm. District 4 Business Representative Joe Flanders says the workers, “were able to see through the scare tactics.”

Last year, the Danville, Va.-based employees at Swedwood, a wholly-owned subsidiary of IKEA, voted to join the IAM.

In DuPont, Wash., more than some 350 workers who repair military helicopters and do site maintenance site maintenance and repair work for defense contractor URS Corp. Wash., voted to join IAM District Lodge 751. The workers have been without a pay or cost of living increase for more than four years, says new IAM member John Davis, and “a bunch of people got fed up.”

In Avon, Ky., 219 workers (see photo) at Allsource Global Management at the Bluegrass Station base voted to join the IAM. They are material coordinators for the distribution of military equipment.

Workers at former Alltel facilities—acquired in 2009 by AT&T—continue to choose the Communications Workers of America (CWA), through a majority sign-up agreement between CWA and AT&T. In a majority sign-up, the company agrees to remain neutral and recognize the union after a majority of employees signs authorization cards. Recently in New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota and Montana more than 150 workers joined CWA.

Late last, month 282 Cablevision technicians and dispatchers in Brooklyn voted to join CWA Local 1109. Click here for an in-depth look at the workers’ victory.

Workers at a GE Transportation plant in Kansas City, Mo., fought back against back against a hired gun, anti-union campaign and voted to join the Electrical Workers (IBEW). Workplace safety concerns following the 2010 on-the-job death of a co-worker and a long-list of broken promises by management spurred the nearly 100 workers to fight for a voice at work.  Click here for a detailed look at the struggle from the IBEW Now News blog.

More than 70 bus operators, mechanics, maintenance and other workers at Colonial Intermediate Unit 20 at several locations in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley voted to join the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 282. Colonial provides various school services, including transportation to 13 school districts.

Twenty teachers at the Evergreen Charter School in Hempstead, N.Y., won representation with AFT affiliate New York State United Teachers (NYSUT). But the fight is not over.  NYSUT is seeking reinstatement of special education teacher Jill Haag who was fired Dec. 2 when she was 8 1/2 months pregnant. The union says she was illegally fired for her for her work organizing the union. Haag regularly wore a lanyard stating, “Unions and Charters Working Together,” and urged parents to sign the petition in support of the union.  Click here for more from AFT.

In Fraser, Mich., the teachers and staff at the Arts Academy in the Woods, a charter school voted 20-to-1 to join Michigan Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff, an affiliate of AFT Michigan.

The Affordable Care Act has saved nearly 3.6 million people enrolled in Medicare $2.1 billion on their prescription drugs in 2011, finds a new report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says the health care reform law signed by President Obama in 2010:

is already saving money for millions of Americans with Medicare. As we move forward, we will close the donut hole completely and save even more money for everyone with Medicare.

The Affordable Care Act—which Republican lawmakers are fighting to repeal—provides a 50 percent discount on brand-name prescription drugs and, beginning this year, a 14 percent discount on generics. Last year, it provided a 7 percent discount on covered generic medications for people who hit the prescription drug coverage gap known as the donut hole, with more than 2.8 million beneficiaries receiving $32.1 million in savings on generics.

Overall, the 3.6 million Americans who hit the donut hole saved an average of $604 on the cost of their prescription drugs. The Affordable Care Act closes the donut hole completely by 2020.

Click here for a state-by-state look at donut hole savings figures for today’s donut and here for a fact sheet.

If you’re frustrated about the wage gap that persists between male and female workers, you can channel your energy into a new contest sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor and President Obama’s National Equal Pay Task Force.

The Equal Pay App Challenge invites the public to create innovative software applications that use the department’s data to educate users about the pay gap, and provide tools to combat it.

Women earn about 80 cents for every dollar earned by men doing comparable work—and the gap is wider for Latinas and African American women. Over a lifetime, the pay gap results in lost wages, reduced pensions and diminished Social Security benefits.

Of course, unionized women do better than their unrepresented sisters, thanks to the power of collective bargaining. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that union women earn nearly 34 percent more than nonunion women.

Software apps that “improve the accessibility of pay data broken down by gender, race and ethnicity, and provide coaching on early career pay, pay negotiation or career mentorship” are among the goals of the challenge. March 31 is the deadline and prizes will be awarded around Equal Pay Day in April. Find development tools here.

Today, hundreds of state legislators from across the nation will head out to an island resort off the coast of Florida to a unique “education academy” sponsored by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). There will be no students or teachers. Instead, legislators, representatives from right-wing think tanks and for-profit education corporations will meet behind closed doors to channel their inner Milton Friedman and promote the radical transformation of the American education system into a private, for-profit enterprise.

What Is ALEC Scoring on Its Education ‘Report Card’?
Little is known about the agenda of the ALEC education meeting taking place at the Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island. The meeting is not open to the public and recently even the press has been kicked out of meetings and barred from attendance. So to understand the ALEC agenda with regard to education, it is important to examine ALEC’s education “scorecard.” Imagine getting a report card from your teacher and finding out that you were graded not on how well you understood the course material or scored on the tests and assignments, but rather on to what extent you agreed with your teacher’s strange public policy positions. That is the best way to understand ALEC’s 17th Report Card on American Education, released last week.

The report card’s authors are Matthew Lardner, formerly of the Goldwater Institute, and Dan Lips, currently of the Goldwater Institute and formerly of the Heritage Foundation. They give every state’s public schools an overall grade based on how they rate in 14 categories. Homeschooling, alternative teacher certification, charter schools, private school choice and virtual learning make up seven of the 14 categories. Of the other seven categories, two rate the states’ academic standards and the other five have mostly to do with the way states retain “effective” teachers and fire “ineffective” ones.

ALEC’s education bills encompass more than 20 years of effort to privatize public education through an ever-expanding network of school voucher systems, which divert taxpayer dollars away from public schools to private schools, or the creation of new private charter schools with public funds, and even with private online schools (who needs actual teachers when you can have a virtual one?). The bills also allow schools to loosen standards for teachers and administrators, exclude students with physical disabilities and special educational needs, escape the requirements of collective bargaining agreements and experiment with other pet causes like merit pay, single-sex education, school uniforms, and political and religious indoctrination of students.

States where students score well on tests but where ALEC’s legislative agenda around school choice, charters, merit pay, de-unionization and alternative certification have not yet taken hold get low grades. States where elected officials are gung-ho for ALEC’s agenda but the students are not faring so well are still graded generously.

Ranking Policy, Not Performance
While ALEC’s report card and its many appendices weigh in at hefty 130+ pages, it is markedly slight on evidence that school choice, charters, or firing more teachers improve student performance. Indeed, the report card itself even makes this case by also ranking each state’s students’ performance on the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) exam, the largest and most accepted national, standardized assessment of student knowledge in several subject areas.

Massachusetts, Vermont, New Jersey, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Kansas, New Hampshire and New York comprise the top 10 states in NAEP performance. Among them, only Colorado is among the 13 states ALEC gives a B or better on its report card. Vermont, even though it scored number two on the NAEP, is tied for dead last for policy with a D+. Missouri, ALEC’s star pupil
with an A-, scored 47th on NAEP.

“It’s a compendium of the progress of the ALEC agenda and it has nothing to do with educating students,” says Julie Underwood, dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Underwood, who wrote about ALEC for The Nation last summer and has studied the organization extensively, notes that the most interesting and potentially useful data in the report card is left out of each state’s grade calculation. There are tables ranking states according to the NAEP performance of low-income students, students of color and students with disabilities, but this is not added in the final grade.

“Why is that not part of the state’s A to F grades?” Underwood asks. Missouri ranks 43rd in low-income students’ 4th grade reading score improvement and 34th in math improvement, but still got the top grade. Utah is 49th and 37th, but was still one of the few states to score a B or better from ALEC. Maryland is number one in reading improvement and number 2 in math improvement, but drew a C-.

Union-Busting Applauded
Her answer comes in the report card’s introduction, where Lardner and Lipps call 2011 “The End of the Beginning in the Battle for K-12 Reform.” Legislative efforts to weaken and defeat unions were so successful in places such as Florida, Indiana and Wisconsin last year that, according to the authors, we have entered a new era for ALEC’s education policy agenda.

Comparing the union fight to Britain’s defeat of Germany in Egypt to secure the Suez Canal, Lardner and Lips crow that in 2011, “For the first time, the unions suffered major policy defeats in a large number of states across a wide array of policy issues.”

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels wrote the report card’s forward, lamenting how the unions in his state once had a voice in issues such as the length of the school day, academic freedom and, generally, the content of their work, says his state has turned the corner. “Collective bargaining will now be limited to wages and benefits and will no longer stand in the way of effective school leadership or student progress,” Daniels writes.

Indiana’s ALEC grade improved to a B from a C+ in 2010 even though its NAEP scores declined from 13th to 17th. Indiana did, however, pass several pieces of legislation in the last year that were influenced by ALEC model bills, including the creation of a statewide voucher school program, merit pay and restricted collective bargaining rights for teachers, and deep budget cuts.

ALEC Education Policy ‘Academy’ at Island Resort, No Students Allowed
The report card, released during National Charter School Week, also comes during the ramp-up to ALEC’s annual “K-12 Education Reform Academy” at the swanky Ritz-Carlton in Amelia Island, Fla. The non-profit group Fund Education Now intercepted one of ALEC’s invitations to legislators in Florida delineating the junket’s deluxe (and gratis) accommodations and summarizing the opportunity to learn more about school privatization and giving teachers their comeuppance.

You are cordially invited to attend ALEC’s K-12 Education Reform Academy,
February 3-4, 2012 at the Ritz-Carlton in Amelia Island, Florida. For invited
legislators like you, ALEC will cover your room for up to two nights at the host
hotel. ALEC will also reimburse up to $500 for travel expenses, which includes
coach airfare, cabfare, and a reimbursement of 55.5 cents per mile driven.

This event will address the top reforms in K-12 education that ALEC believes
each state must have to ensure the successful and productive education for all
American students. We will discuss what you as a state legislator can do to
address a variety of issues surrounding K-12 education reform, including charter
schools accessibility, accountability and transparency, standards for teacher
excellence, open enrollment, vouchers, tax credits, and blended learning
options.

Fund Education Now co-founder Kathleen Oropeza says the “academy” is closed to the press and the public and Amelia Island itself is secluded from the outside world and heavily policed. The meeting’s agenda is so secretive that Oropeza has been unable to track one down.

“The island is a challenge for protesters, and we think they chose it for that reason,” Oropeza says.

However, a raft of ALEC legislative and corporate members are certain to be there. These include online school businesses such as K-12 Inc., Insight Schools, and Connections Academy a division of Connections Education LLC. These for-profit schools will likely join with their allies from the Heritage Foundation, Texas Public Policy Center, The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Hoover Institution, the Alliance for School Choice and more.

Today, the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida (DPCF) called on Florida legislators to boycott the island retreat. Caucus President Susan Smith stated, “The secretive process of allowing corporate lobbyists and billionaires to write legislation, which they then pass off to Florida legislators, is a betrayal of the intent of representative government. The closed-door gathering of legislators is not government in the sunshine.”

See the ALEC education bills and learn more about the ALEC’s Public Education Task Force at the Center for Media and Democracy’s ALEC Exposed website.

If you tried to complete the Union Plus Scholarship application prior to the Jan. 31 deadline, please accept our apologies for any problems you may have experienced submitting your application in the past couple of days.  Our partner’s online application system had trouble handling the recent extremely high volume of activity, but we’ve worked with them to resolve the issues.

We have a record of all applicants who logged in or attempted to log in to the application system since Jan. 29, 2012 and our provider sent an e-mail to all applicants at 12 pm ET on Feb. 1, 2012.  This e-mail noted that your application has been re-opened and you have until 5 p.m. (EST) Friday, Feb. 3  to login to complete and submit your application. NOTE:  E-mails were sent to the email address provided during the set up your scholarship login ID.

Also, at 12 p.m. ET on Feb. 1, an e-mail was sent to all applicants that successfully submitted, verifying  your complete application was received.

If you do not get an e-mail, please send a request to open your application to info@unionplus.org and make sure to include your login ID. You can also check your e-mail junk or spam folders in case the message was delivered to those folders.

NOTE:  If you had NOT already started your application before the Jan. 31 deadline, we are NOT accepting NEW scholarship applications at this time.

Thanks for your understanding and good luck with your education pursuits!

Really.

“It’s a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach,” said State Sen.
Shadrack McGill, who was quoted in Dekalb County’s Times-Journal.

See, teaching is a calling, not something a good teacher would do for money.  Raising a state legislator’s pay, though, is cool with the Bible because it makes for less vulnerability to corruption. “He needs to make enough that he can say no, in regards to temptation.”

Wonkette does a nice job of explaining it here.

On Dec. 18, a dozen retirees, men and women in their 60s, 70s, even 80s, began occupying a median strip along Route 33 in front of the closed Century Aluminum smelter in Ravenswood, W.Va. In tents and under tarps, a small group stays overnight, despite hypertension, arthritis and other old age ailments. One has suffered a stroke.

These vulnerable people expose themselves to weather extremes although some have no health insurance at all. Century canceled it. That’s why they’re occupying Century.

The retirees labored their entire lives for wages and pensions comparably lower than those of other aluminum workers. They did it believing they made those sacrifices in exchange for good, lifelong health coverage. Over the past two years, however, Century evicted them, about 540 retirees altogether, from the insurance plan.

The betrayal burns. Executives at Century, corporate 1 percenters, committed the same sort of treachery that is being condemned by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators representing the victimized 99 percent across the country. Thus the retirees adopted the grandchildren’s protest tactic of encampment.

Century shuttered the 50-year-old Ravenswood smelter in February of 2009, throwing 651 workers out of jobs. Century, headquartered in Monterey, Calif., didn’t go bankrupt though. It still operates aluminum plants in Kentucky, South Carolina and Iceland. And it didn’t immediately cancel promised insurance for retirees.

Nine months after the shutdown, it announced it would terminate as of June 1, 2010 health benefits for retirees eligible for Medicare. Then on Nov. 1, 2010, Century told its retirees who weren’t yet eligible for Medicare that it would stop paying for their coverage as of Jan. 1, 2011.

This revoking of earned benefits isn’t an isolated incident or a fluke. It is part of a pattern documented by Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Ellen E. Schultz in her new book “Retirement Heist.” The subtitle is, “How companies plunder and profit from the nest eggs of American workers.

She describes in gory detail how corporations raided worker pension accounts, siphoning off surpluses that would be needed later to prop up plans damaged by the Wall Street collapse. She provides detailed accounts of executives gouging the funds to pay for their own exorbitant retirement packages. She tells of corporate executives ending retiree health insurance and freezing pensions but deceptively calling the changes improvements, so that CEOs could pump up company profits with money that had been pledged to workers.

While breaking promises to workers and violating contracts, these CEO 1 percenters falsely portrayed themselves as beleaguered champions of workers, valiantly attempting to preserve underfunded pensions. Like Costa Concordia Captain Francesco Schettino saving himself while abandoning passengers on his sinking cruise ship, the captains of industry padded their own pockets with pension and health care funds intended for retirees, then deserted the workers. Schultz describes the CEO scams this way in the book:

“In reality, they’re the silent pirates who looted the ships and left them to sink, along with the retirees, as they sailed away safely in their lifeboats.”

Most of the Costa Concordia passengers survived, but more than a dozen drowned. In West Virginia, most of the retirees are still kicking. A leader among the Century occupiers, Karen Gorrell, explained:

“We may have one foot in the grave, but we are kicking like hell with the other.”

But some have succumbed. Gorrell, wife of a 33-year veteran aluminum worker, says Century has retiree blood on its hands.

She tells of two tragedies. There’s Bryce Earl Turner who Karen encountered after her first meeting with Century retirees in Ravenswood. He was scared and sick. Both alternatives he faced — buying private insurance or paying for his leukemia treatments out of pocket — were way beyond his means. Losing his insurance was a death sentence. The retirees worked desperately to get him more time.

With the help of West Virginia’s U.S. senators, Jay Rockefeller and Joe Manchin, and a provision in Obama’s health care reform law, the retirees managed to get coverage extended to Sept. 1, 2011. Bryce Earl Turner, 59, who worked 37 years at the aluminum plant, died the next day.

The other tragedy is Sam McKinney. He attended a meeting of the retirees on Feb. 14, 2011. He said he feared losing the insurance because his wife was ill. Karen recounts:

“He was very emotional because he had taken his wife to Charleston to try to get some assistance with her health care costs and had been turned down.”

He said, she recalled, that it was hard to believe that in America after a person expended his usefulness to industry, a corporation could coldly cast him aside as if his life had no value.

After the meeting, Sam McKinney took his wife to Outback Steakhouse in Parkersburg for Valentine’s Day. As they left, he collapsed and died in the parking lot. Karen is sure the stress killed him. Wrongful stress. Stress he’d not have experienced if Century was good for its word.

Karen says of Turner and McKinney:

“It was murder without a gun.”

Though Century failed to fulfill its obligation to pay for retiree health care, it handed its last CEO, Logan W. Kruger, $4.9 million in 2010. That’s twelve times more than Americans pay their president, the leader of the free world. Century gave Kruger another $6.2 million to leave last November. Still, he’s suing for $20 million on top of that. Century also is defending against a lawsuit filed for the retirees by the United Steelworkers (USW) union, which represented most of the Century workers.

The USW hopes, however, to resolve the dispute outside the courtroom, with the help of the retirees and West Virginia lawmakers. The elderly agitators managed to win the support of the state’s U.S. senators, its governor and its legislature. So last year when Century went begging to the state for $20 million it claimed it needed to re-open the Ravenswood smelter, the lawmakers sent Century away empty handed with a directive to settle with the retirees before seeking reconsideration.

Not long afterward, Century booted Kruger, and the new management team is negotiating with the USW and the retirees.

The protesters don’t have what they want yet, and they’re not leaving their tents until they do.

Century gave the retiree occupiers port-o-potties and installed concrete barriers to prevent cars careening on an icy Route 33 from plowing through the encampment.

Very nice gesture. But resuming payment for promised health insurance would be a whole lot better.

AFL-CIO Field Communications staffer Cathy Sherwin sends us this from the Indiana statehouse.

Far from conceding defeat after the passage of a so-called right to work (RTW) bill, tens of thousands of Hoosier workers came together in solidarity to march from the statehouse to Super Bowl village in Indianapolis. From the steps of the statehouse, Indiana AFL-CIO President Nancy Guyott said today would mark a new start to taking back the state, starting with “the biggest march Indiana has ever seen!”

Construction workers and teachers, grocery clerks and truck drivers cheered on the workers and elected officials with chants of “Remember November,” vowing to take back the state door by door, neighborhood by neighborhood. WISH-TV has some great aerial footage here.

The overreach and extreme politics that led to today’s vote—including actions by RTW supporters that included shutting the doors to the statehouse, cutting off debate and an ad campaign bankrolled by secret special interests have given the voting public a window into the Indiana Capitol. In poll after poll, Hoosier voters say they don’t approve of these strong-arm tactics by GOP leaders.

By using his final months in office to push this divisive attack, Gov. Mitch Daniels has tarnished his legacy, an outcome that he predicted only a few years ago when he said “right to work” would cause a “civil war.”‘ At today’s rally and march after the vote, that quote was turned on its head by Guyott. She called out the governor but said that today’s vote was the opposite of a civil war, “brother against brother,” because in Indiana,

[b]rothers and sisters were standing together to work for the sake of their children and grandchildren.

A new poll of 500 small business owners finds that cutting regulations is far down their list of priorities to boost their businesses. They say weak customer demand—not government regulations—is their biggest concern and that the best way to create jobs is to eliminate incentives to move jobs overseas.

The boogieman of regulations is fifth on the list after ending job export incentives, boosting consumer demand, increasing consumer purchasing, and investing in infrastructure like roads and bridges.

The poll was conducted by American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance and Small Business Majority. Says John Arensmeyer, founder and CEO of Small Business Majority:

Despite the heated rhetoric, regulations simply aren’t small businesses’ top concern. Small businesses can be the jobs engine we need to jumpstart the economy, but not if legislators are focusing on something that isn’t their top problem. Policymakers should listen to what real small businesses are saying and act accordingly.

BTW, 86 percent of those surveyed say regulations are a necessary part of a modern economy. Maybe “modern” is what’s confusing Republican pols and policy wonks.  Click here for the full survey.

It seems there’s no public service or piece of property that private companies are not eyeing as potential revenue streams.  While funding anti-government think tanks like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), companies like Corrections Corporation of America, Waste Management, Maximus, Intuit, Laidlaw, Northrup Grumman, Koch Companies, Macquarie Capital Advisers, Pinnacle West, and UnitedHealthcare are hoping to use government as their candy store.

They want to take over our roads, bridges, parking lots, water systems, college dorms, and prisons.  And they want to deliver public services like transit systems, school cafeterias, trash and recycling pick up, mental health services and many others.  The following is a quick scan of just some of the proposals.

Water

The Emergency manager of Flint, Mich., is considering selling off its water and sewer systems to the highest bidder. The systems are currently generating revenues for the city.

Long Island’s Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano’s proposal is proposing to privatize the county’s sewage treatment system.  Mangano also announced the privatization of Long Island Bus company to Veolia Transportation.

The Texas Lower Colorado River Authority is selling 18 retail water and wastewater systems in the Hill Country and in its southeast service area to [Canada-based] Corix Infrastructure.

Schools

School districts across the country are planning to contract out custodial, clerical, cafeteria and bus services. In Michigan, home to the right-wing, privatization think tank, the Mackinac Center, lots of
school districts are moving forward with plans including Muskegon Heights, West Branch-Rose City, Rochester districts.

The real estate industry, seeing potential profits from the growth in charter schools, wants in. One company, Entertainment Properties, a real estate investment trust, primarily a movie theater landlord, now owns 34 charter-school properties and sees “a huge capacity to grow.”

Prisons

The Florida Senate failed to vote on a controversial proposal to private prisons in South Florida.   A labor community coalition including AFSCME, Teamsters, the Justice Policy Center, Grassroots Leaders and the Police Benevolent Association mobilized members and press opposition.  Perhaps the Gainesville businessmen who were sentenced to federal prison for paying kickbacks to the former secretary of the state department of corrections official after the prison canteens system was privatized had an impact.

Liquor

The liquor industry is pushing hard to take control of state systems that now generate funds for cash-strapped governments.  Ohio Gov. John Kasich is privatizing the state’s liquor distribution system in a $1.4 billion dollar deal.  The Idaho Federation of Reagan Republicans submitted a citizen’s initiative to the secretary of state’s office that would privatize liquor sales in Idaho and eliminate the state Liquor Division.

Michigan Gov. Snider is proposing to deregulate the state’s alcohol distribution system. The Michigan Liquor Control Commission generates an estimated $330 million for the state’s general fund.  Snider’s Liquor Control Rules Advisory Committee is stacked with representatives from sectors that profit from alcohol sales.

It’s not all bad news. Record profits at state-owned liquor stores in  Virginia “may have sounded the final death knell for Gov. Bob McDonnell’s proposal to privatize” them.