Ariz. Update: ‘Focus on Real Priorities,’ Union, Community Leaders Today at Capitol
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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.
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 »
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.
Arizona: The New Wisconsin
Donna Gratehouse, who blogs at DemocraticDiva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.
A slate of bills introduced in the Arizona Legislature this session would wipe out public-sector unions in our state. If Gov. Jan Brewer (R) signs them into law, which is likely, they would ban collective bargaining by public employees, end automatic payroll deductions for dues and prohibit compensation for performing union duties. These measures go even further than the union-stripping bills that enraged Wisconsinites last year and, unlike in Wisconsin, Arizona police and fire unions would not be exempted.
Conservatives and business groups in Arizona have been longing to dismantle public-sector unions for decades and are using the downturn in the state’s economy as an excuse to implement their anti-labor and anti-government agenda. Arizona has been a so-called right to work state since its inception and has one of the lowest percentages of unionized workers in the country already.
Leading the way on this assault on public workers is a Phoenix-based “think tank,” the Goldwater Institute, which was instrumental in drafting the bills under consideration.
Moreover, no less than elected officials, public employees are trustees of the power delegated by citizens to the government. Public-sector unions violate a basic public trust when they use collective bargaining to secure one-sided and obviously unsustainable benefits. For these reasons and others, the Goldwater Institute recommends that Arizona join North Carolina and other states that completely prohibit state and local government officials from contracting with public employee unions, requiring all employment relationships to be individually negotiated.
This is because individuals have far less leverage in negotiations than groups, obviously.
The Goldwater Institute is the Arizona affiliate of the State Policy Network, a national right-wing Read the rest of this entry »
Why the Tucson Ethnic Studies Ban Matters
Donna Gratehouse, who blogs at DemocraticDiva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.
Hundreds of high school students walked out of their Tucson, Ariz., schools Monday in a coordinated protest against the banishment of the district’s acclaimed Mexican American Studies program. This from Common Dreams:
In recent days, administrators and board members have issued a series of conflicting and inaccurate statements and carried out the extreme actions of confiscating books in front of children.
Last week, a recently hired assistant superintendent from Texas told Tuscon students to “go to Mexico” to study their history–nevermind that most of their families have been in the United States for decades.
If you are not familiar with the Tucson Mexican American Studies saga, Sunday’s New York Times
editorial summarizes the current situation nicely and says in part:
The Tucson Unified School District has dismantled its Mexican-American studies program, packed away its offending books, shuttled its students into other classes. It was blackmailed into doing so: keeping the program would have meant losing more than $14 million in state funding. It was a blunt-force victory for the Arizona school superintendent, John Huppenthal, who has spent years crusading against ethnic-studies programs he claims are “brainwashing” children into thinking that Latinos have been victims of white oppression.
More background and a disclosure: I ran (sadly, unsuccessfully) against John Huppenthal for State Senate in 2006. That was also the year Republican Tom Horne was reelected to his second term as Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction. Killing the Mexican American Studies program – often referred to as MAS or “ethnic studies” – was really Horne’s crusade from the beginning.
It all started in 2006, when famed labor organizer Dolores Huerta addressed a Tucson high school assembly. Huerta is known for being feisty and pulling no punches – ideal qualities for a labor organizer – and in her characteristic style at the assembly she made the blunt observation that “Republicans hate Latinos.” Read the rest of this entry »
Arizona. An Economic Model to Avoid
Donna Gratehouse, who blogs at DemocraticDiva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.
Arizona, as the pithy Jon Stewart put it a while back, is the “meth lab of
democracy.” The Grand Canyon State has achieved international notoriety for legalizing guns in bars, SB1070 [anti-immgrant legislation], a Birther Bill, and of course, the antics of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, among other things.
We are so proud! But our reputation for zany characters and appalling social legislation notwithstanding, Arizona has been no slouch at pushing an economic agenda very favorable to the upper crust and very unfriendly to working families. We are one of the top go-to states of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as a fertile ground for its horrendous ideas.
This year, ALEC and its BFFs at the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry are pushing hard for capital gains tax cuts. Capital gains, put simply, are the profits earned from the sale of a property or investment. Long-term capital gains are capped at 15 percent at the federal level, thanks to the Bush tax cuts. States collect capital gains tax too, usually at ordinary income rates. ALEC wants to eliminate state capital gains taxes entirely. The AZ Chamber has a slightly less ambitious goal for Arizona. Read the rest of this entry »
AFL-CIO, National Immigration Forum Call for Immediate Suspension of Secure Communities in Alabama
This from Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs.
The AFL-CIO and the National Immigration Forum (NIF) sent a joint letter yesterday to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stressing the urgent need to change the Secure Communities program.
The Secure Communities program, implemented a few years ago by Homeland Security, was created to empower local law enforcement agencies to report undocumented immigrants with criminal records to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. But rather than making America’s communities safer, a recent investigation by the Justice Department confirmed the program has in many instances led to racial profiling.
Bad Economics: Cutting Federal Workers, Jobs
Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl doesn’t want to to pay for a one-year extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut by taxing the wealthiest 1 percent. He wants to take it out of the pay of federal workers.
Kyl is proposing to maintain the current pay freeze in place for federal workers and requiring the government hire only one new employee for every three who leave the federal workforce. A Senate vote on the the freeze-pay-and-cut-jobs idea from Kyl could happen as early as tonight.
Federal workers have already shouldered an enormous burden, contributing more than $60 billion to deficit reduction because of the current two-year pay freeze put in place about a year ago, according to AFGE.
Across-the-board pay freezes dampen the American economy, and arbitrary federal job cuts prompt federal agencies to privatize services and to hire expensive contractors, which costs taxpayers twice as much, according to a study by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group. Read the rest of this entry »
NLRB: Federal Law Pre-Empts State Secret-Ballot Amendments
Today, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) took steps to enforce workers’ rights as guaranteed by U.S. law. The board advised the attorneys general of Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah that so-called secret ballot amendments to their state constitutions are pre-empted by the National Labor Relations Act, which offers workers two paths to choosing a union.
The board also has authorized its acting general counsel to file federal lawsuits, if necessary, to stop the states from enforcing the laws. The amendments have already taken effect in South Dakota and Utah and are expected to become effective soon in Arizona and South Carolina.
Under the federal law, workers may choose a union by voting in a secret-ballot election conducted by the NLRB or they may persuade an employer to voluntarily recognize the union after a majority sign authorization cards. Because the state amendments in question prohibit the voluntary recognition option, they “interfere with the exercise of a well-established federally protected right,” the NLRB said in a release.
You can read the NLRB release here.
Arizona Union Leader Says Today’s Shooting ‘Has No Place in a Democracy’
Here’s a statement from Rebekah Friend, executive director and secretary/treasurer of the Arizona AFL-CIO, about today’s tragedy in Tuscon, Ariz., in which a gunman shot Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in the head as she met outside a grocery store with constituents. The gunman, who is in custody, also allegedly shot and killed Chief Judge John Roll of the U.S. District Court for Arizona and an unidentified nine-year-old girl.
The shooting of Congresswoman Giffords, her staff members and others in Tucson this morning comes as a terrible shock. Congresswoman Giffords has always been a dedicated servant to the working families of her community, and it is heartbreaking to hear that she was shot as she was meeting with her constituents to listen to their concerns. This senseless attack on a leader like Congresswoman Giffords and working Arizonans has no place in a democratic society like ours.
From reports I have received from United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 99 President Jim McLaughlin, it appears that no Safeway grocery store workers represented by UFCW 99 were hurt in the shooting.
Today, I and other leaders in the labor movement are asking union members and all Arizonans to keep Congresswoman Giffords, the other victims and their families in their thoughts and prayers.
