ALEC Education ‘Academy’ Launches on Island Resort
This is a cross-post by Dustin Beilke from PR Watch.
Today, hundreds of state legislators from across the nation will head out to an island resort off the coast of Florida to a unique “education academy” sponsored by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). There will be no students or teachers. Instead, legislators, representatives from right-wing think tanks and for-profit education corporations will meet behind closed doors to channel their inner Milton Friedman and promote the radical transformation of the American education system into a private, for-profit enterprise.
What Is ALEC Scoring on Its Education ‘Report Card’?
Little is known about the agenda of the ALEC education meeting taking place at the Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island. The meeting is not open to the public and recently even the press has been kicked out of meetings and barred from attendance. So to understand the ALEC agenda with regard to education, it is important to examine ALEC’s education “scorecard.” Imagine getting a report card from your teacher and finding out that you were graded not on how well you understood the course material or scored on the tests and assignments, but rather on to what extent you agreed with your teacher’s strange public policy positions. That is the best way to understand ALEC’s 17th Report Card on American Education, released last week.
The report card’s authors are Matthew Lardner, formerly of the Goldwater Institute, and Dan Lips, currently of the Goldwater Institute and formerly of the Heritage Foundation. They give every state’s public schools an overall grade based on how they rate in 14 categories. Homeschooling, alternative teacher certification, charter schools, private school choice and virtual learning make up seven of the 14 categories. Of the other seven categories, two rate the states’ academic standards and the other five have mostly to do with the way states retain “effective” teachers and fire “ineffective” ones. Read the rest of this entry »
Reagan’s Union-Busting in PATCO Strike Reverberates Today
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Jim Morin was a former Air Force air traffic controller when he joined the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 1977 and was assigned to one of the busiest airports in the nation, New York’s LaGuardia, where he became secretary-treasurer of the PATCO local.
But even as air traffic was growing and the air traffic control system was working at near capacity, the FAA was cutting staffing numbers and forcing controllers to work longer hours, especially in the spring and summer when thunderstorms would back planes up across the country.
We’d get hammered. So many planes and so few places to put them. It just wore you down, especially if you worked swing shift [3-11 p.m.]. The fatigue factor was huge and a lot of suggestions we made just fell on deaf ears.
In 1981, Morin says controllers knew they were risking their jobs when 12,000 went on strike after negotiations broke down. But they stuck together in solidarity. President Ronald Reagan followed through on his threat and fired the controllers and busted PATCO. That’s still reverberating today, says Morin.
The major ramification for organized labor today is that employers are no longer hesitant to go ahead and hire or threaten to hire replacement workers and workers and unions are very hesitant to use it [strike] now. As far as conservatives are concerned, they point to the strike and the firings as a shining moment in labor history.
Morin was part of a forum at the AFL-CIO today in Washington, D.C., where Georgetown University associate history professor Joseph McCartin, author of the definitive book on the PATCO strike, Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America, explored the strike’s impact on the labor movement and its connection to the erosion of collective bargaining as a path for workers to get to and stay in the middle class. Read the rest of this entry »
NYT: Wisconsin’s Warning to Union-Busters
Impressive editorial in today’s New York Times on Tuesday’s recall elections in Wisconsin. Here’s an excerpt, but you really need to read the full piece here.
[Gov. Scott] Walker and his colleagues tried to paint the unions as unwilling to sacrifice a bit of their pensions and health benefits in rough fiscal times. It was heartening to see more than 160,000 Wisconsin voters reject that false notion. The unions had already agreed to significant concessions on both; what the Republicans really wanted was to break their organizing ability by ending bargaining on anything except wages and limiting raises to inflation.
Confessed Union Buster Shares Trade Secrets with Delta Flight Attendants
The late Martin Jay Levitt spent 19 years “on the dark side,” running 250 union-busting campaigns for corporations around the country. He was good at it, too, losing a mere five.
In this video, “Confessions of a Union Buster,” Levitt share his experience, trade secrets and tips with Delta Air Lines’ more than 20,000 flight attendants who will begin voting Sept. 29 on forming a union with the Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA). The video was produced by Delta AFA using excerpts from Levitt’s seminars and book of the same name.
Two of the main gospels of any anti-union campaign, says Levitt, are misinformation and fear.
A union buster without the atmosphere or climate of fear is like working without one leg and one arm. Fear is essential. Fear is like caviar, lobster and filet mignon to a union buster. Along with breaking the law, the element and emotion of fear is vital.
Ohio Gov. Candidate John Kasich Hates Unions
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John Kasich, the Wall Street executive—as he keeps reminding everyone—running for Ohio governor has made a career of hating and baiting unions. A brand-new video details his deep disdain for unions and workers. In it, Kasich (R) rants that giving workers a voice through unions “threatens our American values.”
That’s quite a different track record from Gov. Ted Strickland, the son of a steelworker who supports workers and their unions and signed a law to give Ohioans stronger collective bargaining rights.
Narrated by an Ohio worker speaking “from one working stiff to another,” the video demonstrates the job-killing and anti-union record of the former U.S. House member, who voted against good wages and voted to outsource jobs in favor of union-busting “right-to-work” for less laws. As the narrator succinctly puts it, Kasich has a long record of “screwing workers.”
Let’s Ground U.S. Airways’ Union Buster
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In a pitch for its anti-union services, a notorious union-busting firm, Labor Relations Institute (LRI), tells perspective clients:
“The Number One advantage companies have over unions during [union] election campaigns is access to voters. Simply put, you can compel employees to listen to your campaign messages.”
US Airways is buying the pitch—literally. The airline is paying LRI $375 an hour to fight workers seeking to form a union with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) at Piedmont Airways. The 3,000 gate and ramp workers seeking a union make far, far less than $375 an hour.
You can help the Piedmont workers by sending a message to U.S. Airways Doug Parker urging him to cut ties with the union busters. Click here to go to American Rights at Work and tell Parker:
Your employees have worked hard to make your airline a success; they should be able to decide for themselves if they want to form a union—without the outside interference and coercion from a firm like LRI.
Private Equity Firms, Our New Corporate Masters?
Workers returned Tuesday to the job at Stella D’oro Biscuit Co. in the Bronx after a judge ordered the company reinstate the 136 employees who had remained strong throughout a brutal 11-month strike. But before they could even walk through the doors, they were greeted with the anti-union response by the company’s private equity firm owners, the 21st century’s mutation of the robber barons: Brynwood Partners announced it would shut down operations in October. (“Private equity firms” is the euphemism those leveraged buyout corporations adopted after leveraged buyout got a bad name in the 1980s.)
Established more than 75 years ago, Stella D’oro is a nationally known maker of specialty baked goods and until recently was a family-owned business. But a series of corporate buyouts ultimately resulted in Brynwood’s 2006 purchase of the company. And a private equity firm’s only reason for existing is to make money-lots of it. Even robber barons ultimately had to ensure they had enough workers on the job because those companies made money by making things. Not so for today’s private equity firms. Closing shop and making off with the profits is what they do.
What Book Do You Want Obama to Read?
| It’s time the economy worked for everyone again. That’s the message of this new TV ad in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. |
Over at Washington Monthly, the editors asked a few Famous Names to describe the book they think President Obama should read. But they did not ask the rest of us.
So I’d like to submit a suggestion. In fact, I’ll go easy on the new president and offer up a report rather than an entire book.
Consultants, Lawyers and the “Union Free” Movement in the USA since the 1970s, by British economist John Logan, analyzes the emergence of professional “union-busters,” providing case studies of each of the main groups comprising the industry: law firms, consultants, industry psychologists and strike management firms.
At 18 pages, it’s an easy read for a president who holds his books right-side-up. But the information is crucial for an understanding of why the nation needs passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Big Business lobbyists are all over the new administration and Congress trying to convince lawmakers that corporations are even-handed and open-minded—and therefore no change is needed to current labor laws because the laws are so fair now. NOT.
