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.
New Hampshire Lawmakers Try to End Worker Lunch Breaks
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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?
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 »
In Online Townhall, Mich. Gov. Snyder Opposes RTW
AFL-CIO Field Communications staffer Cathy Sherwin sends us this report.
Following the State of the State address last week, Michigan’s Gov. Rick
Snyder held an online town hall meeting. Participating on Twitter using the
hashtag #AskGovSnyder, union workers, the Michigan State AFL-CIO and progressive allies kept the questions coming – on jobs, needed infrastructure investments and education.
Many of the #AskGovSnyder tweets reflected priorities outlined in the Michigan 2012 Jobs Plan, introduced by Michigan State AFL-CIO President Karla Swift. The Jobs Plan has the support of a broad coalition of affiliate unions of the Michigan AFL-CIO and allies, including the Michigan League for Human Services, Progress Michigan and We Are the People. Many of the same organizations – and individual union members – joined in the Twitter Town Hall. The diverse voices asking tough questions were noted by Michigan Public Radio.
The Town Hall was also a great opportunity to educate the community on “right to work” for less. When Snyder answered a question by opposing “right to work,” workers and community groups spread the news far and wide. With extremist politicians in Michigan, as well as Indiana, New Hampshire and across the country pushing so-called “right to work,” educating the public about these unnecessary and divisive anti-worker laws couldn’t be more timely. Check out some of the #AskGovSnyder Tweets … and look for opportunities to #AskYourElectedOfficials about the issues that matter. Read the rest of this entry »
New Hampshire Lawmakers: Public Workers Aren’t Taxpayers
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| Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger joins union members at a rally in New Hampshire. |
AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report.
Workers in New Hampshire took over the floor of the New Hampshire House chamber yesterday to testify against a spate of anti-collective bargaining bills debated in the House Labor Committee. The hearings were relocated to the people’s chamber after the hearing rooms were flooded past their capacity by more than 600 firefighters, state workers, truck drivers, teachers, and community members protesting the most recent anti-worker onslaughts in the Granite State.
Barely a month after right-to-work was definitely beaten down in the House, the House Labor Committee held a hearing on a slew of anti-worker bills ranging from dues deduction and other attempts to dismantle aspects of the labor relations law, to HB 1645, an outright repeal of collective bargaining for public employees.
State representative Andrew Manuse, sponsor of HB 1645, made it clear that he had no idea of what his bill would actually do after he compared a firefighters’ job to “changing a light bulb,” claimed he “respected” public workers—while trying to take away their rights—and said public employees “weren’t taxpayers.”
Diana Lacy, president of the State Employees Association, promptly asked Rep. Manuse to refund her $250,000 in back taxes.
But the most contentious bill, HB 1570, would allow public-sector workers to opt out of a union Read the rest of this entry »
Check Out Visits by Jobless Workers to Lawmakers’ Capitol Hill Offices
Jobless workers and members of the faith and labor communities visited lawmakers in Congress yesterday to urge them to extend unemployment insurance (UI) for the long-term unemployed. Hundreds gathered for a rally on Capitol Hill before fanning out to talk with individual lawmakers.
Check out these video clips of visits to lawmakers from New Hampshire, Colorado, Florida and North Carolina.
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N.H. Workers Buoyed by Today’s Victory
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AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report.
Workers and union leaders in New Hampshire were ecstatic that months of hard work in New Hampshire paid off today when the state House failed to override Gov. John Lynch’s (D) veto of a so-called right to work bill. Nearly 100 teachers, firefighters, postal workers and others showed up to ask their legislators to support the veto during the high-stakes session day and urged lawmakers to withstand pressure from Republican presidential candidates Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry as well as a rowdy group of Americans for Prosperity volunteers bused into New Hampshire for the day.
“I was confident that the reps on our side would be there, but it was still really nerve-wracking in the House,” said Felicia Augevich, a Fairpoint employee and member of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1400 who helped monitor the session at the Legislature today.
I’m really proud of how everyone came together—Democrats and Republicans, private-sector and public-sector workers. We’re hoping that the victory today will send a positive message to the public, to the middle class, and to all of New Hampshire that collective bargaining really is what guarantees good wages and benefits for Americans. We’ve had one victory, but we still have a lot ahead of us.
‘Right to Work’ for Less Defeated Again in New Hampshire
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AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report from New Hampshire.
The Republican Speaker of the New Hampshire House enlisted no fewer than five Republican presidential candidates today in an unsuccessful attempt to convince state representatives to override Gov. John Lynch’s veto of a “right to work” for less bill (H.B. 474).
In a callous move to bully and bore lawmakers who opposed the ”right to work” law, Speaker Bill O’Brien turned the legislative session into a Republican presidential forum, inviting the candidates to spend more than three hours giving stump speeches to a captive audience of both Democrat and Republican lawmakers. More than 100 firefighters, teachers and other workers from every edge of the state turned out to protest the potential vote on “right to work” for less and to ask the candidates to keep state issues out of the debate around the primary.
The Republican candidates were quick to endorse O’Brien’s anti-worker agenda, sucking up to him on a state issue that they knew little to nothing about. As Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) read from her prepared remarks, residents booed as she erroneously stated:
In New Hampshire, Pro-Union Candidates Win 4 of 4 Special Elections
AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report from New Hampshire.
Union-endorsed working family candidates have gone for four-for-four in the special elections held after Republican House Speaker Bill O’Brien rolled out an anti-middle class agenda that puts partisan high-horsing above the needs of Granite Staters. Peter Leishman, a Democrat from Hillsborough, swept the final special election for state representative by an astounding 20-point margin on Tuesday night.
The elections were directly tied to O’Brien’s attempt to make New Hampshire the first so-called right to work state in the Northeast. From Politico:
This is the fourth straight union-endorsed victory in New Hampshire since the state speaker’s attempted override of John Lynch’s veto of what they viewed as Wisconsin-style, anti-labor efforts.
N.H. Speaker Fails Again to Override ‘Right to Work’ Veto
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AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report from New Hampshire.
Following weeks of speculation, William O’Brien, the speaker of the New Hampshire state House, failed to call a vote to override Democratic Gov. John Lynch’s veto of a so-called right to work legislation in a special session today after O’Brien realized he may not have the votes needed to override the veto. After Lynch vetoed H.B. 474 in May, O’Brien has scrambled to catch opponents of the “right to work” for less law off guard, holding unscheduled votes, changing the agendas on session days and bombarding session days with roll-call votes in order to ensure that he can push through an override of the veto.
