Citizen’s United Further Tilted Playing Field to 1%
Today is the second anniversary of Citizen’s United, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down restrictions on independent campaign spending by business corporations and their supporters.
Noting that the Citizen’s United ruling “further tilted the playing field in favor of the 1 percent and against the 99 percent whose voices are being drowned out by excessive corporate spending and influence,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says we must reform the system “to restore the corporation to its rightful place.”
In doing so, the greatest care must be taken to ensure that the Bill of Rights’ protections for real people, including protections for democratic organizations and movements, are not inadvertently weakened. The AFL-CIO will work to support efforts to rein in corporate power that simultaneously protect our nation’s Bill of Rights, and to ensure those efforts are focused on the most effective means to address corporate dominance of our political system.
Read Trumka’s full statement here.
Supreme Court Backs Wal-Mart in Pay Discrimination Case
The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled 5-4 that as many as 1.6 million women who are current or former Wal-Mart employees cannot sue Wal-Mart for pay discrimination in a class-action suit. A lower court had ruled that the women could join together in a class action.
But the court did not rule on the women’s claims of systematic and company-wide pay and promotion discrimination.
Ten years ago, a group of women who worked at Wal-Mart stores, led by Betty Dukes, filed a lawsuit alleging the corporation engaged in company-wide gender discrimination by paying women less than men, promoting fewer women to management positions and promoting male employees more quickly.
United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) President Joe Hansen called the decision “deeply disturbing.” The UFCW has been a longtime supporter of Wal-Mart workers’ fight for justice.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says working people are disappointed by today’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of Wal-Mart.
Our courts should be available to working men and women who seek to challenge discriminatory promotion and pay practices by their employers. Today’s decision continues a disturbing trend of closing the courthouse doors to workers seeking redress against corporations.
The ruling means the already uphill battle for women to fight pay discrimination will get even worse. John Nichols at The Nation writes that the ruling is “a big win for Wal-Mart, and for other large firms that may not choose to treat employees fairly.” The court ruled on the grounds that
the class-action status that could potentially involve hundreds of thousands of current and former female workers was too large.
Join March 29 Rally to Support Wal-Mart Women
Hundreds of people will show their support outside the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday, when the High Court hears oral arguments in what could become the largest class-action civil rights suit in U.S. history.
The Stand with the Women of Wal-Mart rally will take place as the nation’s highest court hears arguments on Wal-Mart v. Dukes to decide whether the case can move forward as a class action.
Ten years ago, a group of women who worked at Wal-Mart stores, led by Betty Dukes, filed a lawsuit alleging the corporation engaged in company-wide gender discrimination by paying women less than men, promoting fewer women to management positions and promoting male employees more quickly. The case, now a class action, has made its way to the Supreme Court.
Wal-Mart is challenging the decision by a lower court to allow the women employed at Wal-Mart stores across the country to join together in a class-action lawsuit to challenge pay and promotion practices that discriminate against women.
Obama Uses Recess Appointments for NLRB and Other Blocked Nominations
President Obama announced on Saturday he will use recess appointments to fill 15 important positions that Republican senators have blocked for an average of 214 days. Two of those appointments are Craig Becker and Mark Pearce to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Says Obama:
The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees. But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis. Most of the men and women whose appointments I am announcing today were approved by Senate committees months ago, yet still await a vote of the Senate.
AFL-CIO Backs NLRB in Supreme Court Case—Seat Obama Nominees Now
Last July, President Obama nominated three attorneys to fill the five-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). But Republican senators have blocked action on nominees to the board, which has been operating with just two members since 2008.
Since then, the NLRB has issued nearly 600 rulings and five federal appeals courts have ruled that cases decided by the two current members—one a Republican and the other a Democrat—are valid.
But several employers objected to the two-person decisions and one, New Process Steel, which was on the losing end of several cases, appealed a decision against it claiming the NLRB’s ruling was invalid because just two members were sitting on the board.
Texas May Bar Students from Learning About Cesar Chavez, Thurgood Marshall
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| César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall: Outlaws in Texas? |
United Farmworkers founder César Chávez is an unfitting role model for students, and former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is not an appropriate historical figure. So say “expert reviewers” in their report to the Texas State Board of Education, which recommends removing the two U.S. leaders from the social studies curriculum taught to its 4.7 million public school students.
The ranting of these extremists has the potential to turn into mass censorship—Texas is such a mega-purchaser of textbooks that the state’s required curricula drives the content of textbooks produced nationwide.
The Texas Freedom Network, which monitors actions by religious reactionaries on the state’s school board, points out that two of the “expert reviewers” are unqualified to be on the panel and were appointed mainly because of their background as religious ideologues.
David Barton, founder of the conservative Christian advocacy group WallBuilders, and the Rev. Peter Marshall, an evangelical minister from Massachusetts who runs Peter Marshall Ministries, were appointed to the state school board in March.
