Ky. Working Families Not Resting on Big Lead in Gov.’s Race
 |
||||
|
||||
Union-endorsed Gov. Steve Beshear (D) is up two dozen points over state Senate President David Williams (R), his challenger in the gubernatorial race, which will be decided Nov. 8. Still, Bill Londrigan, Kentucky State AFL-CIO president and member of the Elevator Constructors (IUEC), warns that:
“Anything can happen between now and Election Day. We can expect a whole lot of money coming into the state to undermine our candidate. You can never rest until it’s over. If you do, you give the other side a chance to catch up. We are going to work as hard as we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The latest Louisville Courier-Journal/WHAS11 Bluegrass Poll has Beshear, who also earned the state AFL-CIO endorsement in 2007, leading Williams by 24 points.
Four years ago, Beshear unseated Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher. Jeff Wiggins, a United Steelworkers member (USW) and president of the Paducah-based Western Kentucky AFL-CIO Area Council, says, “Williams is another Fletcher.”
Rep. Steve King Measures Workers’ Worth in Soybeans
A HT to our friends at Media Matters for catching Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) comparing electricians, teachers and other workers to bushels of soybeans and corn.
King, in a House floor speech calling for the elimination of prevailing wage laws on federal Department of Homeland Security construction projects, argued that the Davis-Bacon Act is an intrusion on the free market and that workers were merely commodities whose worth fluctuates up and down, according to supply and demand—like a pound of pork.
Labor is a commodity just like corn or beans or oil or gold, and the value of it needs to be determined by the competition, supply and demand in the workplace.
The Davis-Bacon prevailing wage law ensures that workers—real life human beings with families, not something traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange—on public construction projects paid for with taxpayer dollars are paid a wage comparable to the local standard or “prevailing” wage. They prevent unscrupulous contractors from low-balling bids and undercutting community wages with cheap, unskilled labor.
As Joe Burns points out at Common Dreams.org:
To management, human labor is a simply commodity—nothing more, nothing less. A commodity is an object traded in the marketplace without differentiation, such as lumber, oil, or soybeans. In this context, commodities are inputs into the production process. They are things.
I wonder how many bushels of corn we could get in trade for King.
Attack on Middle-Class Jobs, Workers Is Nationwide
 |
|
The incredible response and mobilizations against the coordinated attacks on workers’ rights and middle-class jobs in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana have grabbed most of the media spotlight during the past few weeks.
But there are other serious assaults under way in dozens of states, pushed by corporate CEOs and their Republican puppets. Perhaps flying lowest under the radar is one of the most drastic measures, one that even its own supporters blatantly call Michigan’s “financial martial law.”
The so-called emergency managers bill would allow Gov. Rick Snyder (R) to declare a “financial emergency” in a city or school district and appoint a manager with broad powers, including the ability to fire local elected officials, break contracts, seize and sell assets, eliminate services—and even eliminate whole cities or school districts without any public input, according to the Michigan Messenger.
Last week, more than 1,500 people jammed the Lansing Capitol building to protest the bill during the state Senate’s debate. Ken Bower, a United Steelworker (USW) Local 2-21 member from Escanaba, Mich., said:
I’m here to tell the governor that he has to stop this attack on working-class citizens. Removing the people that we put into office without any check or balance is completely undemocratic.
New House ‘Workforce’ Committee Highlights Anti-Union Goals
Last week, we highlighted a move by House Republicans who are so incensed at the word “labor”—because some folks might complete the phrase with the word “union”—that they ripped out the word “labor” from the name of the House Education and Labor Committee.
While the re-naming game comes off as childish and petty, a look at what the newly named House Education and Workforce Committee has at the top of its agenda is a serious assault on workers and their unions.
The committee’s revamped website includes a screed against workers, unions and labor laws decked out in rhetoric about defending workplace democracy.
SMWIA Member Gets Missouri Labor Post; N.Y. State AFL-CIO Endorses Candidate with Union Background
 |
||||
|
||||
Carla Buschjost, a member of Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) Local 36, in St. Louis, is the new director of the Division of Labor Standards in the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (DOLIR). Meanwhile in New York, Scott Murphy, a candidate in the special election for the 20th Congressional District seat, won the backing of the New York State AFL-CIO this weekend. Murphy is the son of a postal worker and a teacher.
Appointed late last month, Buschjost will oversee the division’s worker safety sections as well as the state’s child labor and prevailing wage laws. Says Buschjost:
I am passionate about stronger enforcement of laws that create stronger and safer workplaces.
