Public Employees Aiding Residents Throughout Irene
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From the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), whose employess are represented by AFGE, to local workers answering emergency calls, government workers have been playing a major role in the cleanup effort of Hurricane Irene. Two of those workers, one in Rutland, Vt., and one in Princeton, N.J., lost their lives while trying to help keep their communiteis safe during the storm.
State and local officials throughout the East Coast are praising public employees as they spearhead the cleanup after the massive storm and return communities to normal as soon as possible.
It’s a Tough Call. Who’s the Worst Governor Ever?
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There have been a lot of really bad governors over the years. But working families are confronted with quite a bumper crop of despicable state chief executives who are hell-bent on eliminating good middle-class jobs, giving the wealthy and corporations big tax breaks, undermining voters’ rights, cutting funding for education and jobs and more.
But in this era of Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Ohio’s John Kasich, New Jersey’s Chris Christie and a rogue’s gallery of others, just who is the worst? The Transport Workers (TWU) says it’s time to put that question to a vote.
TWU’s just-launched “Worst Governor Ever” (see video) summer election will decide.
TWU President James Little says the election—part of the union’s Workers’ Rights Are Human Rights campaign—will expose the extreme agenda of reactionary governors and let Americans send a message to the governor of their choosing that he or she is the worst governor ever.
New Taxes Won’t Turn Millionaires into Fleeing Tax Refugees
Any time the idea that the very wealthiest among us ought to pony up their fair share is raised, Republican lawmakers issue dire warnings. ”If—heaven forbid—millionaires are asked to pay a little more in taxes, they will flee like flocks of migratory birds looking for a warmer welcome elsewhere. Their vast wealth forever lost.”
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) used that shaky rationale when he vetoed a small increase on taxes for millionaires in each of the past two years. In March, he told the state legislature:
Ladies and gentlemen, if you tax them, they will leave.
But a new study shows Christie and others are wrong.
“Tax Flight Is a Myth” from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) finds:
Compelling evidence shows that this claim is false. The effects of tax increases on migration are, at most, small—so small that states that raise income taxes on the most affluent households can be assured of a substantial net gain in revenue.
N.J.’s Christie Poised to Sign Bill Ending Health Care Bargaining for 500,000
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) will join the rogue’s gallery of governors that includes Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Ohio’s John Kasich and others who have attacked the collective bargaining rights of public service workers when he signs a bill this week that takes way the rights of half a million public employees to bargain for health care.
The bill won final approval from the state legislature Thursday in what New Jersey AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech called “a terrible moment for New Jersey’s working class.”
This is bad public policy for teachers, police, firefighters, state and local government workers, and all middle-class workers who serve our communities through public service.
In state Senate testimony earlier this month Wowkanech told lawmakers that today’s harsh economic conditions “were not created by the middle class, they were created by the greed of Wall Street profiteers, yet it is our members that are being blamed.” Read the rest of this entry »
New Jersey High Court Rejects Christie Education Cuts
Education cuts made last year by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) were so large that the state Supreme Court today ruled they violated the state’s constitutional requirement to provide a “thorough and efficient system of free public schools.”
The court’s ruling on Abbott v. Burke requires the state to allocate an additional $500 million to 31 lower-income districts in New Jersey in the coming fiscal year. Christie has indicated he will comply with the court order, but his attempts to balance the state budget on the backs of children and working families continue. On May 21, more than 35,000 working people protested Christie’s budget cuts at one of the largest-ever demonstrations at the state Capitol in Trenton.
The New Jersey State AFL-CIO said the additional funds will go to the state’s neediest students, an important step forward in promoting equal access to quality education in New Jersey.
Fire Fighters Reach Agreement with City of Houston—and More Bargaining News
The Fire Fighters (IAFF) reached a tentative agreement with the city of Houston, and more news from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,400 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.
NEGOTIATIONS
IAFF, City of Houston: The Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association/IAFF Local 341 reached a tentative agreement with the city of Houston that will avoid what would have been the first layoff of firefighters in the city’s history. The deal now goes to the 4,000 members of Local 341 for a ratification vote.
Fla. Nurses Win Union Voice; NNU Puts New Spin on Bad Govs
In Planation, Fla., registered nurses at Florida Medical Center voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to join the National Nurses Organizing Committee-Florida, an affiliate of the National Nurses United (NNU).
The 250 RN’s join the more than 5,000 Florida nurses in 14 hospitals around the state who have recently voted for a union voice to help them boost patient care. Says Delia Kan, an intensive care RN at the hospital:
Florida Medical Center RNs want to improve nurse-to- patient staffing in our hospital which will help us retain and recruit experienced nurses. RNs are gaining the power to have an effective independent voice in everyday patient care decisions that will improve the quality of care that our patients and our community deserve.
Also today, NNU announced a new online game show, Wheel of Misfortune. Unlike Wheel of Fortune where most of the slots are winners, there’s not a single winner on this wheel.
The game divides the Wheel of Misfortune into 10 slots, one each for the 10 worst governors in the natoon: Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Jan Brewer of Arizona, Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, Rick Perry of Texas, Rick Scott of Florida, Paul LePage of Maine, Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Rick Snyder of Michigan, Chris Christie of New Jersey, and John Kasich of Ohio. Read the rest of this entry »
Worker Deaths Belie Politicians’ Portrayal of Public Employees
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Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), New Jersey Chris Christie (R) and politicians around the nation are running campaigns to demonize public employees and lay the blame for state budget problems at their feet.
They conveniently ignore the dedicated and many times dangerous work public employees do every day–like AFSCME Local 379 member Billy Rhynalds and Teamsters (IBT) Local 117 member Jayme Biendl, both of whom were killed recently on the job.
Rhynalds was setting up traffic cones Feb. 2 after heavy rains struck western Washington, flooding roads and knocking down power lines. When a cottonwood tree fell on the highway, it hit and killed Rhynalds.
Biendl, a corrections officer at the Monroe (Wash.) Correctional Complex, was murdered Jan. 29 as she worked alone in the prison chapel.
IAFF’s Schaitberger: ‘Scapegoating Workers Won’t Solve Anything’
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The attacks on firefighters and other public employees by state politicians like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) are “like a tsunami rolling across the country….The attacks have never been greater, more serious or so vicious,” says Fire Fighters (IAFF) President Harold Schaitberger.
Today the IAFF launched a campaign exposing lawmakers and others (see video) who are aggressively scapegoating firefighters and paramedics for state and city economic woes. Says Schaitberger in an In These Times column:
An increasing number of governors are joining New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s anti-worker chorus. Too bad they’re all off-key. Wall Street’s recklessness, not public employee pensions, caused our nation’s financial collapse. Scapegoating workers won’t solve anything. Read the rest of this entry »
With Jersey Deep in Snow, Gov. Christie Had Fun in Sun
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Meaning no disrespect to the world’s most famous and lovable rodent, but New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) response to last week’s massive snow storm that hammered the Garden State and other East Coast states was literally Mickey Mouse.
While tough and dedicated New Jersey state workers—the same workers Christie has spent his tenure attacking—cleared snow-covered roads and worked to keep residents safe and warm, Christie was vacationing at Disney World.
In fact, he’s out of the state so frequently a new website, “Where’s Chris Christie,” chronicles his vagabond ways for New Jersey voters. The website was launched by Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC). In an e-mail to some 19,000 New Jersey members, PCCC co-founder and New Jersey native Adam Green writes:
Partying with Mickey Mouse while serious incidents are happening back home isn’t leadership. This is just the latest time that Christie has left the state at a critical moment—putting his own interests above New Jersey’s.
