A Thousand Letters to Tom Corbett
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This is a cross-post from Working America’s Main Street blog.
Working America members, teachers and unemployed Pennsylvanians on both sides of the state delivered more than 1,000 handwritten postcards to Gov. Tom Corbett’s regional offices in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. We wanted Corbett to know the drastic, widespread and ultimately disastrous results of the budget cuts he enacted last year. We wanted him to make good on the rhetoric used in his first year, which called for “shared sacrifice.”
There has been a great deal of sacrifice. But it has not been shared. It has been targeted, acute and painful. And while the brunt has fallen on students, low-income families and public workers, 70 percent of Pennsylvania’s businesses pay nothing in income taxes.
“The budget cuts have added to the pool of unemployed workers by contributing to the elimination of 14,000 jobs in education alone,” says Mary Karscig, an unemployed nurse and Working America member who wrote to Corbett. Some 21,000 Pennsylvanians lost their jobs due to budget cuts alone, many of them due to nearly $900 million slashed from public education. We’ve written about the many school districts in Pennsylvania now facing the fiscal brink, with the bankrupt Chester Upland School District as a sign of things to come. The New York Times reported yesterday that 75 percent of Pennsylvania classrooms now have more kids than they did in 2010.
“I feel worried about the impacts of these cuts on my job search, and I am even more worried about their impacts on my son’s job search,” says Mary.
She adds: “My son will go wherever there is a job, and there is a pretty high chance he’ll have to move out of state.”
Yep, That Makes Sense
Why shouldn’t teachers be paid more? Because the Bible says it would be wrong, according to an Alabama Republican state legislator.
Really.
“It’s a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach,” said State Sen.
Shadrack McGill, who was quoted in Dekalb County’s Times-Journal.
See, teaching is a calling, not something a good teacher would do for money. Raising a state legislator’s pay, though, is cool with the Bible because it makes for less vulnerability to corruption. “He needs to make enough that he can say no, in regards to temptation.”
Wonkette does a nice job of explaining it here.
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 »
Fear of Anti-Immigration Law Leaves Empty Classrooms, Idle Farms
More from Alabama, where a delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders is investigating the state’s recently passed anti-immigrant law. Follow the delegation here.
A grade school child is there one day and gone the next. Dependable laborers don’t show up to pick crops on a farm.
“It’s incredible,” said local AFT President Vi Parramore.
I have teachers tell me that kids are disappearing overnight. Not unenrolling and leaving. Just all of a sudden gone, just gone! Crops are rotting in the fields!
Parramore shared what she knew at a roundtable at the Beloved Community United Church of Christ in Birmingham, Ala. The roundtable was part of a tour by national African American labor and civil rights leaders to help shed a light on one of the harshest immigration laws in the country and how it invokes inhumanity reminiscent of the Jim Crow South. The delegation has investigated firsthand the impact of Alabama’s H.B. 56 on the lives of Latino working families.
Early in the day, the group toured a trailer park. Later, they met with small business owners. Alabama’s punitive anti-immigration law has cast a chill over the state’s Latino population. According to news reports, the new law says that police must report to federal authorities anyone they detain if they have a “reasonable suspicion” the person may be in the country illegally.
Massachusetts Workers Mobilize as Deficit Deadline Looms
AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report.
As the congressional Super Committee’s deadline for a federal deficit reduction plan nears, more than 2,600 teachers, ironworkers, construction workers, nurses and others took to the streets in Massachusetts in recent days with a single message: no cuts.
Labor leaders and workers across the state have petitioned Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to pledge to protect America’s workers from devastating cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and have been making their voices heard—through postcards, forums with their members of Congress, resolutions and even an electronic billboard or two.
“We’re here to say no cuts to Social Security, no cuts to Medicare, no cuts to Medicaid, no cuts to the Postal Service,” Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Steven Tolman told thousands of workers and seniors from across New England at the Wang Theater in Boston,
and we want it for you, we want it for us and we want it for our children and grandchildren.
The Republican Jobs Plan: Jobs? What Jobs?
To paraphrase that classic Wendy’s hamburger ad, when it comes to the Republicans’ so-called jobs plan, “Where’s the Jobs?
Senate Republicans successfully filibustered President Obama’s American Jobs Act and blocked a vote on a break-out provision that would enable some 400,000 teachers, firefighters and other first responders to get or keep a job. Republicans vow to do the same on an upcoming infrastructure jobs bill and other pieces of American Jobs Act when they come up for votes. Meanwhile, House Republicans have even refused to put the bill to a vote.
Why are they fighting so hard against creating jobs? Because they claim they have a better jobs plan. Oh yeah? Since when is a plan that’s heart and soul is tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, the rollback of essential federal regulations—including Wall Street reform—and the repeal of health care reform a jobs bill?
Take a look at some of these comparisons of the American Jobs Act and the Republican jobs bill.
- The American Jobs Act would create 1.9 million jobs, according to Moody’s Analytics. Moody’s says that the Republican jobs plan won’t “address [the cause of the current weakness] in the short term….In fact, they could be harmful in the short term.” Read the rest of this entry »
How Rich Are the Richest? Here’s How
The Occupy Wall Street movement has been proven correct about the wealthiest 1 percent getting vastly richer while the rest of us 99 percent-ers are falling further behind.
Now, United for a Fair Economy parses out just what that wealth really means. The nonprofit economic justice organization notes that the 400 wealthiest families in the United States collectively own $1.37 trillion dollars—a figure that’s nearly incomprehensible. So United for a Fair Economy made that figure real with a list of showing 11 things that $1.37 trillion can buy.
- The richest 400 could pay the mortgages of every house in the whole country for 14 full months.
- The richest 400 can pay off all credit card debt for every single person in the entire United States. Imagine that! No more credit card debt looming over your shoulders!
- The richest 400 can pay for three and a half years worth of gas for every driver in the country.
- The richest 400 households can afford to triple the number of teachers in the United States, then give every single one a $30,000 raise. Teachers are being laid off everywhere, their salaries are being cut, and they are suffering. Teacher-to-student ratios in schools are abysmal. But what can we do about it when so much wealth is in the pockets of so few families?
For the full list, click here.
Iowans Tell Wisconsin Gov. Walker to Go Home
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AFL-CIO Field Communications staffer Cathy Sherwin sends us this report.
When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker headed over to Iowa to raise money for the right-wing special interest group, the Heritage Foundation, union members and Occupy Des Moines protesters were there to greet him. A crowd of more than 200 filled the sidewalk outside the fundraiser: teachers and jobless Iowans, construction workers and retirees, community activists and families with children.
Joining the crowd, Iowa Federation of Labor President Ken Sagar talked with reporters about why this “Welcome Walker” protest was so important.
Gov. Walker needs to understand that we recognize what he’s done to working people and the middle class in Wisconsin and we don’t need that here in Iowa. We don’t need to destroy jobs, we need to create jobs.
Inside the private event, Iowa’s Gov. Terry Branstad seems to have been listening intently to Read the rest of this entry »
Thousands of Ohioans Mobilize to Urge ‘NO’ Vote on Issue 2
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AFL-CIO Field Communications Coordinator Andrew Richards sends us the latest from Ohio.
Thousands of Ohio working families went door to door canvassing across the state over the weekend to get out the vote against Issue 2/S.B. 5. With a little more than two weeks left until Election Day, Nov. 8, Ohioans are working furiously to talk with as many Ohioans about how Issue 2/S.B. 5 is unsafe, unfair and has hurt our communities because it takes away the ability of public employees to collectively bargain for a middle-class life. In Cincinnati, Ohio Federation of Teachers/AFT President Sue Taylor joined workers and community members to kick off a get-out-the-vote event before working families fanned out across the area to knock on doors.
(If you’re in Ohio, pledge to vote “NO” on Issue 2 and vote early. Click here.)
Ohio Firefighters, Working Families Rally to Vote ‘NO’ on Issue 2
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Deborah Dion with the Ohio AFL-CIO field program sends us this.
More than 250 firefighters and working families rallied for an early vote in Mansfield, Ohio, to defeat Issue 2. Voting “NO” on Issue 2 would repeal S.B. 5, passed earlier this year, that gutted collective bargaining rights for public employees. Working families gathered at the historic Mansfield Fire Museum, which celebrates firefighter history, heritage and the first responders that keep the community safe. Immediately following the rally, a caravan of a dozen jeeps carried 85 firefighters to the Richland County Board of Elections where they cast their vote against Issue 2/S.B. 5.
Click here for more photos from the event.
Speaking at the rally, Dan Crow, president of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 266 and an active firefighter with the City of Mansfield, said: Read the rest of this entry »
