UNION2

=see UNION 3 519
capt 918 see bak==<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/497093-republicans-blasting-china-forget-that-the-gop-enabled-beijings">https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/497093-republicans-blasting-china-forget-that-the-gop-enabled-beijings</a>ref
just free mkt BS or corps wanted?<a href="https://www.uschamber.com/press-release/facts-over-fear-win-china-pntr-debate">https://www.uschamber.com/press-release/facts-over-fear-win-china-pntr-debate</a>
facts Over Fear Win China PNTR Debate<div id="timelineanchor" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px -10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; height: 10px; position: relative; top: -60px;" /><div class="content-section" style="max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; max-width: 960px; position: relative;"><article class="node-74259 node node-document view-mode-full clearfix" about="/press-release/facts-over-fear-win-china-pntr-debate" typeof="sioc:Item foaf:Document" style="max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 20px;"><header style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;" /><div class="field field-name-field-event-date field-type-date field-label-hidden" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 6px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="field-items" style="max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="field-item even" style="max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;">Tuesday, May 23, 2000 </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="field-items" style="max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded" style="max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;">WASHINGTON, D.C. – United States Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue called today's bipartisan House vote granting permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to China "a victory of fact over fear and a historic win for the American economy and our national security."The truth about free trade won today," said Donohue. "PNTR opens China's markets for American products, businesses and farmers, and creates jobs for workers here at home. Once Congress focused on the facts, no amount of union pressure to isolate this country could defeat the fact that this trade deal with China is in America's best interest."American business and workers – from the new economy to the old and the small to the large – clearly recognized the significance of this vote," he said. "As co-chair of the Business Coalition for U.S. – China Trade, we worked with a broad based group of supporters, from the grassroots to the Congress, to overcome an all-out blitz of misinformation by union leaders and their allies."This was a bipartisan victory, Donohue concluded, and he commended members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, for many of whom "this was a particularly tough vote, given the tremendous pressure from the opponents of free trade."The Chamber has actively supported the China trade deal by mobilizing a massive grassroots effort in 66 congressional districts, beginning over a year before the vote. In addition, 20 lobbyists fanned out across Capitol Hill organizing over 400 congressional meetings and more than 30 Chamber field staffers organized numerous events in targeted congressional districts."This vote recognizes that the China trade agreement is overwhelmingly in our favor. China's concessions are its price of admission to the WTO," said Donohue. "The choice was clear: embrace and benefit from China as a trading partner, or stick our heads in the sand and hope they go away. Congress made the right choice today."The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world's largest business federation representing more than three million businesses and organizations of every size, sector and region.</div></div></div></article></div>=<div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley" class="mw-redirect" title="Mohawk Valley" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Mohawk Valley</a> formula is a plan for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaking" class="mw-redirect" title="Strikebreaking" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">strikebreaking</a> purportedly written by the president of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Rand" title="Remington Rand" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Remington Rand</a> company <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Rand,Jr." class="mw-redirect" title="James Rand, Jr." style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">James Rand, Jr.</a> around the time of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Rand_strike_of_1936%E2%80%931937" class="mw-redirect" title="Remington Rand strike of 1936–1937" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Remington Rand strike</a> at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilion,New_York" title="Ilion, New York" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Ilion, New York</a> in 1936/37.The plan includes discrediting union leaders, frightening the public with the threat of violence, using local police and vigilantes to intimidate strikers, forming associations of "loyal employees" to influence public debate, fortifying workplaces, employing large numbers of replacement workers, and threatening to close the plant if work is not resumed.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-nation-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[1]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-IAMAW-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[2]</a>The authenticity of the written plan has never been clearly established. Although it was allegedly published in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Manufacturers" title="National Association of Manufacturers" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">National Association of Manufacturers</a> Labor Relations Bulletin, no original copy has been found, nor does NAM list it among its pamphlets from that era.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[3]</a>[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary,_secondary_and_tertiary_sources" title="Wikipedia:No original research" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">non-primary source needed</a>] Parts of the plan use language sympathetic to the views of labor organizers. The Remington Rand company did indeed ruthlessly suppress the strikes, as documented in a ruling by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Relations_Board" title="National Labor Relations Board" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">National Labor Relations Board</a>, and the plan has been accepted as a guide to the methods that were used. At least one source names the strikebreaker <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Bergoff" title="Pearl Bergoff" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Pearl Bergoff</a> and his so-called "Bergoff Technique" as the origin of the formula.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[4]</a> Rand and Bergoff were both indicted by the same federal grand jury for their roles in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Rand_strike_of_1936%E2%80%931937" class="mw-redirect" title="Remington Rand strike of 1936–1937" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Remington Rand strike</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky" title="Noam Chomsky" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Noam Chomsky</a> has described the formula as the result of business owners' trend away from violent strikebreaking to a "scientific" approach based on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda" title="Propaganda" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">propaganda</a>. An essential feature of this approach is the identification of the management's interests with "Americanism," while labor activism is portrayed as the work of un-American outsiders. Workers are thus persuaded to turn against the activists and toward management to demonstrate their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotism" title="Patriotism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">patriotism</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[5]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">Elements of the formula[</h2>The following is the text of the Mohawk Valley formula as quoted in the labor press:<ol style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 3.2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0.1em;">When a strike is threatened, label the union leaders as "agitators" to discredit them with the public and their own followers. Conduct balloting under the foremen to ascertain the strength of the union and to make possible misrepresentation of the strikers as a small minority. Exert economic pressure through threats to move the plant, align bankers, real estate owners and businessmen into a "Citizens' Committee".</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Raise high the banner of "law and order", thereby causing the community to mass legal and police weapons against imagined violence and to forget that employees have equal rights with others in the community.</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Call a "mass meeting" to coordinate public sentiment against the strike and strengthen the Citizens' Committee.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Form a large police force to intimidate the strikers and exert a psychological effect. Utilize local police, state police, vigilantes and special deputies chosen, if possible, from other neighborhoods.</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Convince the strikers their cause is hopeless with a "back-to-work" movement by a puppet association of so-called "loyal employees" secretly organized by the employer.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">When enough applications are on hand, set a date for opening the plant by having such opening requested by the puppet "back-to-work" association.</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Stage the "opening" theatrically by throwing open the gates and having the employees march in a mass protected by squads of armed police so as to dramatize and exaggerate the opening and heighten the demoralizing effect.</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Demoralize the strikers with a continuing show of force. If necessary turn the locality into a warlike camp and barricade it from the outside world.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Close the publicity barrage on the theme that the plant is in full operation and the strikers are merely a minority attempting to interfere with the right to work.With this, the campaign is over—the employer has broken the strike.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-IAMAW-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[2]</a></li></ol>A similar, although more nuanced and longer, version was published in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nation" title="The Nation" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The Nation</a> in 1937.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-nation-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[1]</a></div><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/software-engineers-at-prominent-tech-firm-say-they-were-fired-for-trying-to-unionize/">Software engineers at prominent tech firm say they were fired for trying to unionize</a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/nicole-karlis/" title="Posts by Nicole Karlis" class="author url fn" rel="author">Nicole Karlis</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/salon/" title="Posts by Salon " class="author url fn" rel="author">Salon </a></div>===
<h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/the-labor-tide-is-rising-new-union-militancy-bypasses-parlor-politics-in-favor-of-direct-action/">labor tide is rising: New union militancy bypasses parlor politics in favor of direct action</a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/bob-hennelly/" title="Posts by Bob Hennelly" class="author url fn" rel="author">Bob Hennelly</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/salon/" title="Posts by Salon " class="author url fn" rel="author">Salon </a></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content">Leading

up to former Vice President Joe Biden getting into the 2020 race the

corporate news logic was that it was only an old reliable hand like his

that could…</div>
ANas <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/as-anchor-steam-workers-sign-union-cards-the-craft-brewing-industry-is-poised-for-a-labor-movement/" style="font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" color="color" transition="transition" all="all" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" inline="inline" important="important" font-size="font-size" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" line-height="line-height"> Anchor Steam workers sign union cards, the craft brewing industry is poised for a labor movement</a><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 12px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/nicole-karlis/" title="Posts by Nicole Karlis" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit;">Nicole Karlis</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/salon/" title="Posts by Salon " class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit;">Salon</a></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A movement for workers to form a union at legendary Bay Area craft brewery Anchor Brewing Company is officially underway. By last Thursday, an undisclosed number of workers signed union…</div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/the-single-most-important-pro-labor-speech-of-the-shutdown-was-not-given-by-aoc/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/the-single-most-important-pro-labor-speech-of-the-shutdown-was-not-given-by-aoc/</a><div></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/under-assault-trumps-gop-and-supreme-court-unions-lead-massive-get-out-vote-effort-midterms-we-vote">https://www.alternet.org/under-assault-trumps-gop-and-supreme-court-unions-lead-massive-get-out-vote-effort-midterms-we-vote</a></div><div>
</div><div>In  the face of a coordinated, corporate-funded assault on their <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/02/opinion/unions-labor-day-strike.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">very existence</a> by President Donald Trump, Republicans at the federal and state level, and the <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/06/27/siding-billionaires-against-workers-supreme-courts-janus-ruling-assault-labor" style="text-decoration-line: none;">right-wing Supreme Court</a>, labor unions nationwide have mobilized massive numbers of <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/27/you-cant-eat-gdp-reminder-most-workers-are-struggling-trump-and-corporate-media-tout" style="text-decoration-line: none;">struggling workers</a> to turn out for Tuesday's critical midterms with the goal of defeating anti-union candidates and electing politicians willing to fight for progressive policies that benefit the working class like Medicare for All, a higher minimum wage, and the fundamental right to organize.</div>"The Culinary Workers Union registered 10,300 voters for the midterms. This union really gets it done. Still impressed by what I saw reporting on them in Vegas."
—David Jamieson, Huffington Post"We don't know any other way," said Geoconda Arguello-Kline, the Secretary-Treasurer for the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas, which has <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/las-vegas-union-voter-registration-midterm-elections_us_5be0b487e4b09d43e321e7a8" style="text-decoration-line: none;">registered over 10,300 new voters</a> ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections to defeat Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.). "For us, it's a very natural way to survive here in Las Vegas: organize, organize."With the rallying cry, "<a href="https://www.culinaryunion226.org/vote" style="text-decoration-line: none;">We vote, we win!</a>" the union has provided resources for workers to learn about the candidates on the ballot, spread the word about the issues at stake in the midterms, and find the closest polling site.  The Culinary Union's get-out-the-vote efforts have been replicated throughout the nation, including in so-called "right-to-work states," where Republican legislatures have barred unions from collecting dues from all workers they represent in collective bargaining efforts to raise wages and improve working conditions."Things aren't changing for the better like they thought would happen. Real wages are not keeping pace with inflation. We haven't replaced the well-paying manufacturing jobs that we lost."
—Tim Burga, Ohio AFL-CIOIn Southern states like North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia, the Communications Workers of America (CWA)—which represents 700,000 workers nationwide—say it organized canvassing, mail, and phone bank operations that resulted in over four million door knocks."In the Midwest, where workers have suffered from <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/10/the-color-of-economic-anxiety" style="text-decoration-line: none;">decades of deindustrialization</a>, corporate outsourcing, and neglect from politicians who so often claim to care about their plight, the AFL-CIO says it has convinced thousands of union workers who backed Donald Trump in 2016 to turn out for progressive Democrats on Tuesday."About half of union households that voted for Trump said they are planning to vote for Democrats in two key statewide races," Vox <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/5/18059058/ohio-senate-governor-race-union-workers" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a> on Monday, citing figures from the Ohio AFL-CIO. "That includes 51.4 percent of Trump voters who plan to cast a ballot for progressive Democrat Richard Cordray for governor and 49.9 percent of Trump voters who favor incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown—the only Democrat currently holding statewide office."Tim Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, said many union workers who initially backed Trump have realized after two years of <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/22/corporations-are-literally-going-wild-says-trump-he-signs-tax-bill-most-americans" style="text-decoration-line: none;">plutocratic policies</a> and stagnant wages that the president and his billionaire-filled cabinet are not on their side, and never were."Things aren't changing for the better like they thought would happen," Burga said. "Real wages are not keeping pace with inflation. We haven't replaced the well-paying manufacturing jobs that we lost."With a historic number of House Democratic candidates <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2018/10/23/new-survey-over-half-congressional-races-democratic-candidates-support-medicare" style="text-decoration-line: none;">backing Medicare for All</a>, National Nurses United (NNU)—the largest organization of registered nurses in the U.S.—has also been tirelessly canvassing and phone banking in Maryland, Florida, and the many other states where candidates are standing up to America's disastrous for-profit healthcare industry.See NNU's full list of all 225 House Democratic candidates running on Medicare for All <a href="https://medicare4all.org/candidates/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">here</a>.<div>
</div><div></div> =<a href="https://www.alternet.org/heres-why-california-kidney-dialysis-clinics-are-spending-111-million-defeat-modest-ballot">https://www.alternet.org/heres-why-california-kidney-dialysis-clinics-are-spending-111-million-defeat-modest-ballot</a>... funds raised to support the No on 8 campaign are the most a campaign has spent on one side on a U.S. ballot measure since 2002, according to an <a href="https://www.apnews.com/4e87f73f2ee04a30bab050b67b01da0e" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Associated Press analysis</a>. Dialysis provider Fresenius Medical Care pushed the total amount of funds for the opposing campaign past the previous record — $109 million, which pharmaceutical companies spent to oppose a measure limiting prescription drug costs — with a $5 million donation last week.According to the nonpartisan California legislative analyst's office, dialysis companies bring in nearly $3 billion in annual profits from their California operations — yet, according to one dialysis patient Salon spoke to, Lorraine Lewis of Los Angeles, they claimed they couldn’t afford to give her a package of chicken broth after a treatment. She described her experiences at two DaVita centers in Los Angeles as “cold” and like an “assembly line.”“It was obvious to me they were understaffed and overworked,” the 71-year-old told Salon. “I witnessed a death and that [made me feel] crazy, because I said, ‘the same thing can happen to me.’”The man whom Lewis saw die during treatment was left unattended, according to her account, seemingly because of staffing issues.“Two minutes later she [the technician] comes around and she looked at him and she started working on him and she went to call for the nurse and they put the put him on the floor, and gave him CPR but it didn’t work,” she recalled.The massive sum spent to defeat the measure, and harrowing stories like Lewis's, belie the companies' claims that the measure will have an adverse impact on the dismal conditions in many dialysis clinics. Indeed, given that the proposition requires corporations to return excessive profits that aren't spent on improving patient care, and limit what insurance companies are required to pay for dialysis care, it seems like a minor regulation that would help prevent the kinds of dystopian scenes patients have experienced in said clinics.Dialysis is a life-saving treatment. It helps patients with kidney failure by removing their blood from their bodies with a machine, cleaning out the toxins and waste, and putting it back in the body, a function patients' kidneys can no longer successfully do. A typical four-hour session can be grueling for patients, however. Moreover, there have been reports of unsterile environments in the California centers — blood stains on the floor among them — and terrible patient care. Yet each patient who has a private insurance provider is charged nearly $150,000 a year — a 350 percent markup of the cost of care, according to those supporting the measure.Just this last summer, two California families were awarded $253 million in damages in a lawsuit against DaVita for wrongful deaths — verdicts the company <a href="https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article214205774.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">said they would appeal.</a>Opponents claim Proposition 8 will keep clinics from covering all of their costs.“When you add everything up it will only cover 69 percent of a clinic’s total operating costs,” Fairbanks, from the campaign advocating against the proposition, told Salon. “Prop 8 bans managerial costs and doesn’t allow things that you absolutely must have in order to have business in California, such as insurance, as a healthcare facility you must have medical malpractice insurance.”Yet patients' experiences reveal that many clinics are already spending barely more than the minimum on their patients and facilities — and indeed, Proposition 8 would raise that minimum. Lewis, who has been a dialysis patient for six years, said one time after leaving her treatment at a Los Angeles DaVita treatment center she felt “weak.” Another patient was nearby when this happened and called the center for help, to which she was told there was nothing they could do because Lewis “had left the premises.” He wheeled her back.“I asked for chicken broth and was told that they no longer do that because they can’t afford it,” she said. “They make $150,000 a year on me [and] they can’t afford a package of chicken broth soup.”Sean Wherley, a spokesperson for the Service Employees International Union–United Healthcare Workers, the organization that sponsored the measure, explained to Salon how Proposition 8 ended up on this year’s ballot.“Two years ago dialysis workers approached the union with concerns about poor patient care,” he said. “They attempted to organize, but they never held a vote because they came under tremendous pressure from these companies,” he said. “Some received threats to be fired, and efforts just flatlined.”Wherley said industry threats that the centers will close if the proposition passes are merely a “scare tactic.”“They have the means to keep these clinics open, it just won’t be at the outrageous profit margins they are making today,” he said. “They have chosen not to invest in their patients.”Fairbanks claimed patient care in California is “very good,” noting there is “always room for improvement.” “They have patients who have seen bugs, and I’m sure they have, but that doesn’t mean all throughout the state of California the situation here is that patient care is suffering,” she said.Yet Wherley pointed to a report  by the California Department of Public Health that found more than <a href="https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CHCQ/LCP/CDPH%20Document%20Library/2018-19%20Annual%20Fee%20Report.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">1,400 deficiencies during inspections</a> at dialysis clinics in fiscal year 2016-2017.“The industry is claiming the clinics in California are the best in the country, [but] the California Department of Public Health found more than 1,400 deficiencies in these clinics after only assessing a quarter of them,” he noted.
see amazon bezos <div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">10/18</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">45 min training video on early warning signs of union eg hang out, use words livable wage raplh nader radio</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 class="node-title" style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; width: 164px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/amazons-minimum-wage-hike-not-what-it-seems" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: 700; outline: currentcolor none medium;">Amazon’s Minimum Wage Hike Is Not What It Seems</a> AN</h2></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=$15/hr employees whole food, what about contractors? bernie BEZOS billamazon just hit 1 trillion value?<div>=</div></div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/story/103863/union_card_or_master_card--how_a_nation_of_workers_became_a_nation_of_debtors">https://www.alternet.org/story/103863/union_card_or_master_card--how_a_nation_of_workers_became_a_nation_of_debtors</a>It has been apparent for some time that the 20th Century US social contract is defunct beyond repair. Now the economic system faces the prospect of collapse as well. Not surprisingly, these developments are related. They did not come about overnight. Looking back, it's easy to see that the system which emerged from the post-Bolshevik revolution, mass industrial production era of the 1920's, 30's and 40's was beginning to unravel by the end of the 1970's. Union membership provides a helpful lens through which to view the process. During the 1960's union membership bounced up and down within a narrow range ending the decade slightly higher than it began. But starting in 1970, it began a steady decline. In 1970 union workers were 29.6 percent of the work force. At those numbers, unions were able to exert considerable leverage over the wages, benefits and working conditions of all workers. By 1980 union workers were down to 23.2 percent of the total workforce. By the year 2000, union members represented just 13.5 percent of all workers. Today it is about 12.1 percent. Conventional wisdom holds that Ronald Reagan caused the decline of unions by busting the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) in 1981. Not so. What Reagan and his advisors understood was that union power was already on the wane. Did they know for certain that they could attack PATCO and get away with it? Probably. But even if they didn't, they deemed it a risk--a "probe," if you will--worth taking. Either way, they did bust PATCO. Consequently, the message that unions could be beat came through for all to see. Employers got the point and stepped up their already fierce resistance at the bargaining table. And they devoted new and effective resources to defeating organizing efforts by their workers. Workers also got it that unions were weakening. That too made organizing tougher. Corruption scandals and other difficulties added to problems of unions. As the power of unions declined, real wages for workers declined too. Most economists agree that measured in constant dollars, wages in the US have been effectively stagnant since about 1975. Unions were indisputably an effective instrument for building a broad "middle" class. They did so by applying sufficient power to assure that workers shared in the value that they were helping to create. As industrialization brought enormous innovation and productivity, workers waged epic struggles that won them the wages to buy what they were making. Working conditions improved. Home ownership, car ownership and college for the children of workers became widespread. Pensions and employer paid health care became the norm. But. But. But. For many reasons unions were less effective at sustaining the newly huge middle-class than they had been at creating it. (The how and the why of the inability of US unions to perceive, let alone counteract, the new forces coming into play in the 1970's is an interesting and important but different topic.) Declining union membership and power is, however, only one variable in the equation that has brought us to the white hot economic and political meltdown now dominating our news and our lives. Another critical variable is this: as the wallets of workers held fewer and fewer union cards, credit cards were filling up those very same wallets. Workers were in effect trading union cards for MasterCard's. In the process workers became the proverbial frogs in the pot on the stove. The temperature kept getting closer to the boiling point. But the water felt just fine. Because even though worker power was in decline, worker consumptionwas going up. Color TV's replaced black and white TV's, only to be replaced again by bigger screen TV's and now LCD's and Plasmas. Vehicles got bigger and better and working families had more of them. Shopping malls proliferated and shopping itself became the national religion. Cell phones, computers, video games, boats, iPods and snowmobiles--workers had stuff, lots and lots of stuff. The whole economy grew. How could this happen in the face of stagnant real wages? Three reasons. Technological political and economic forces made global production both possible and necessary. That in turn made it possible to stabilize and in many cases lower costs and prices for goods and services. The social upheaval of the 60's helped create conditions that brought women into the workforce in great numbers. The added income helped to offset the decline in wages for men. Last and anything but least, credit, not wages, came to drive purchasing and consumption. For workers, debt came from all over: credit cards; longer and longer terms for auto loans; huge college loans; "creative" financing for mortgages. A whole kit and caboodle of financial entanglements enmeshed workers, students, just about everybody. The "middle" class became the debtor class. Between 1970 and 2000, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Federal Reserve Bank, household debt relative to disposable personal income nearly doubled. In 2006, David A. Gaffen reported in the Wall Street Journal that "households'...debt-to-income ratio reached an all time high 131.1%." (Exploding public debt is an important component of this dynamic too. According to Federal Reserve Board data, between 1957 and 2007 the inflation adjusted total debt load per person in the US increased $145,432, equivalent to an increase of $581,728 per family of 4. That number, of course, does not include long-term costs of the war in Iraq or of ongoing taxpayer funded bailouts of financial companies.) That debt is bondage is a profound moral truth. But it is an important shaper of political and economic consciousness as well. The more you are in debt, the less likely you are to rock the boat. Take on your employer? Go on strike? Risk your job by trying to start a union? What, and miss a credit card payment? Don't you get it? I'm maxed out. Risk getting my car getting reposed? You've got to be kidding. Some of this attitude is quite conscious. Much of is more below the surface. Either way, this kind of debt profoundly changes many things including the relationship of the worker to the employer. It's one thing to "owe my soul to the company store." But this debt is different. This debt creates a mindset by which the paycheck and the employer who provides it come to be seen as a protector from the demands of the lender. It is the credit card company and the collection agency that become the greatest source of worry and harassment. To be sure, there are those who have felt little or no grief at all. Others have overcome financial challenges and setbacks. There is no denying that for quite a long time, this system seemed to work just fine. In garden variety daily life terms, living standards were going up. Millions of working class families had fulfilling and decent lives. Many still do. But this arrangement changes politics too. Economically satisfied workers can "afford" political engagement on social issues such as gun ownership or abortion if they choose to be involved at all. And if you have a growing 401 K--which you have been led to believe is far more secure than Social Security--why wouldn't you have a literally "conservative" political outlook? Why not align with the politics that come with living in a "gated" community to defend against the less well off hordes? From that outlook, it's easy to imagine immigrants and/or "angry" African Americans as being seen as a much bigger threat than financial shenanigans on Wall Street. Thus are born "Reagan Democrats." Moreover, from church, media and political pulpit alike comes a very sophisticated propaganda drumbeat. Relentlessly it pumps out the message that is that if you are on debt overload, you and you alone made bad choices. You didn't manage your money well. You should be contrite, even ashamed. The last thing you should do is think you have anything in common with any one else--even if millions are in exactly the same situation. Even less should you consider that you are a victim of extremely cynical and deliberate manipulation. Did not the Credit Card Masters of the Universe barefacedly testify before Congress that it was they who needed protection from irresponsible borrowers? And did not a substantial majority of the "people's" representatives from both political parties in Congress agree with them? (As the righteous Elizabeth Warren has pointed out, those very same credit card companies routinely troll bankruptcy fillings to get names of bankruptcy filers to whom they then send credit cards solicitations! See <a href="https://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/warren-reports/" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">here</a> for terrific information on debt dynamics from Elizabeth Warren and her band of researchers. The New York Times recently published <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/business/22target.html?em" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">an excellent article</a> on this subject as well.) But credit card solicitations are not the only toxic Kool-Aid that's been on offer. The same institutions told us too that 401-K's are safer and better than either social security or a union negotiated pension. Why? Because private investments and personal responsibility are good and government and collective action are bad, that's why. It's all enough to make your head swim. Partly that's because through it all You're On Your Own (YOYO). Even now, workers have some degree of union protection--whether they belong to a union or not. Unions and the threat of unions retain a small degree of leverage over some employer behavior. Debtors have nothing. No one even pretends to care about them except lenders who will offer more credit at terms worse than what you have now or "credit counselors" who will help you--oh, and incidentally help themselves and help the lenders who got you into trouble in the first place too. 
The result is now before us. Absent any restraining force whatsoever, the financial masters of the universe went wild. They invented ways to make money out of whole cloth. They ENRONed the economy of the world. Let's take a deep breath and go back to the beginning for a minute. The "cost" of forming or joining a union seems high. As a worker, you are told over and over again that you might lose your job because you'll get fired for being a union supporter or that your employer will close up shop altogether if it goes union. And enough employers do just that, so the threat is entirely credible. And even if you get a union you'll pay dues. And you will hear again and again what a dumb thing that is. You will learn repeatedly about workers who go on strike only to settle for wages and benefits that are worse, not better. The media will tell you over and over about union companies that shrink or move all their work to Mexico or China or go out of business entirely.

At the same time workers get offers of "cheap" credit in the mail virtually every day. The choice seems clear. Union membership? Expensive. Risky. At least a little bit scary.

The credit that gets you your car(s), your plasma TV, your home and college tuition for your children? That seems "cheap." Isn't the word "free" the single most common word in credit solicitations? Admittedly sometimes there can be a downside to all this credit. Well actually, more often than not the lenders, especially credit card companies do treat their customers like shit. They raise rates and add incomprehensible and ever more expensive fees. When you call them to argue or just get an explanation you enter voice mail hell. Or if you do reach someone they might respond by lowering your credit limit or adding yet another fee. Collection agencies can really make you life miserable. And yes, politicians of both parties do keep changing the rules so that lenders can basically do whatever they want. Until just the last few weeks they were virtually all for "deregulation." (Suddenly they are all "born again" regulators. Hmmm.) Speak up as Dennis Kucinich, Danny Schecter and others have done and you will be marginalized as a kook, a whiner or an extremist. And yes it can be annoying that the perpetrators of this economic bondage are living very large while you are struggling more and more every day. But, hey, don't be ungrateful. You live in the "ownership society"! Really? Do you own your stuff? Or is it in effect rented? Or is it maybe that the finance companies own you? And by the way, if they are so morally and otherwise superior, how are they doing at managing the system they created? Sisters and brothers, the debt society truly is a house of cards. MasterCard's, VISA cards, Discover Cards, Debit cards. And it is built on sand at that. The whole damn thing rests on a foundation of credit default swaps and commercial paper and sub-prime mortgage bundles and hedges and leverage and god only knows what other hocus pocus. But now. But now? Make no mistake about it--the financial equivalent of Hurricane Katrina is blowing that house down. Naturally, the very same people who built the house in the first place are trying to patch it up. Why wouldn't they? In the short term we should probably wish them the best. So far, however, the only solution they seem to have to the debt crisis is to create a more debt. A lot more debt. 
Clearly, we need to start designing and building a new house altogether. In the 20th century, the Flint sit-down strike and the Montgomery Bus Boycott stand as icons of successful struggles by working men and women to win economic and social justice against daunting opposition. It's time to do it again.see janus vNN 7/18 maplight shows gop dominates pacs, where are vaunted unions there?https://www.alternet.org/here-are-10-ways-workers-are-truly-screwed-trump-erainteresting connect the dotsANLabor Day has been a national holiday in the U.S. since 1894. Many struggles for workers’ rights that have occurred since then, from the labor movement and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s/early 1940s to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. And history not only teaches us that gains in economic justice are incremental—it is also demonstrates that gains can easily be lost when workers aren’t vigilant about protecting them. The Donald Trump era has been a painful reminder of that fact: from Social Security and Medicare cutbacks to anti-union right-to-work laws to an increasingly far-right Supreme Court, the Trump administration and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress are determined to obliterate what’s left of FDR’s New Deal and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.Here are ten ways in which, on Labor Day 2018, America’s embattled working class is seriously screwed in the Trump era.1. Union Membership Has Reached Historic Lows<div style="margin-bottom: 20px;">In 1954, union membership in the U.S. <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/27/union-membership/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reached 34%</a>, according to the Congressional Research Service; in other words, slightly more than one-third of workers were unionized when Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. But in 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), only 10.7% of salaried U.S. workers belonged to unions. That 10.7% figure includes both public-sector and private-sector workers; in the private sector, only <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none;">6.5% of U.S. workers</a> were unionized last year. And it’s important to remember that not only do unions have a positive impact on their members—they promote better working conditions across the board. So the more unions decline in the U.S., the worse it will be for American workers. 2. The Growth of Right-to-Work LawsSo-called right-to-work laws—which are more accurately described as “right-to-work-for-less laws” or “union-busting laws”—were largely a southern phenomenon in the past. But thanks to Republican governors and/or Republican state legislatures, some northern states have become “<a href="https://www.alternet.org/labor/northern-right-work-laws-how-southern-phenomenon-has-been-moving-north" style="text-decoration-line: none;">right-to-work” states</a> in recent years—including Missouri under Republican Gov. Eric Greitens and Wisconsin under Gov. Scott Walker. Some northern states have resisted this terrible trend: Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, who is seeking reelection this year, has been <a href="https://www.facebook.com/WolfForPA/posts/10100535803183124" style="text-decoration-line: none;">very outspoken against</a> right-to-work laws—and his running mate, Braddock, PA Mayor John Fetterman, is a Bernie Sander supporter with a very pro-union history. But if Republicans maintain control of both houses on Congress in November, they could pass a national right-to-work law—thus wiping out any pro-union laws at the state level throughout the U.S.  3. Republicans Long to Shred What’s Left of the New Deal and the Great SocietyWhen Donald Trump was putting together his administration in December 2016 and President Barack Obama was weeks away from leaving office, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (an enthusiastic Trump supporter) declared that Trump’s victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election represented a “great effort to break out of the <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/gingrich-brags-that-republicans-are-coming-for-everything-fdr-accomplished-28a1b1d46224/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Franklin Delano Roosevelt model</a>.” Indeed, today’s Republicans would love to shred what’s left of FDR’s New Deal and, by extension, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society—and the Trump administration has favored draconian cuts to Social Security and Medicare, both of which House Speaker Paul Ryan would love to privatize. 4. The Trump Administration’s Endless Attack on Health Care Reform“<a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/after-being-taken-wrong-hospital-while-unconscious-woman-faces-bankruptcy-medical" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Medical bankruptcy</a>” is a term that one seldom hears in Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Japan; that’s because most of the developed world, apart from the U.S., has universal healthcare. People born and raised in Switzerland, Norway or Italy, in fact, are appalled when they hear the term “medical bankruptcy” and find out that Americans really do lose their life savings, homes, cars and other assets when they have the misfortune of suffering a major illness. For all its flaws and shortcomings, the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare, did improve the U.S.’ troubled healthcare system somewhat: <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-obamacare-enrollment-20180403-story.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">millions of Americans</a> who lacked health insurance before the ACA have it now. But Republicans, although unable to overturn the ACA so far, have been fighting hard to <a href="https://robertreich.org/post/177038904195" style="text-decoration-line: none;">undermine and weaken it</a>—and the more Republicans are able to roll back health care reform, the more medical bankruptcies the U.S. can expect.5. The Repeal of Net NeutralityNet neutrality is the principle that ISPs (Internet service providers) must treat all Internet traffic equally. Under Barack Obama-era Net neutrality rules, ISPs could not treat YouTube, Amazon or Wikipedia, for example, as “premium traffic” and treat them differently from an upstart e-commerce company. ISPs could charge extra for connection speeds under Net neutrality rules: if Verizon wants to charge FiOS consumers more for a 940 megabytes-per-second download speed than a speed of 150 MBps, that’s perfectly legitimate (just as a 55” flat-screen TV is naturally going to cost more than a 32” flat-screen TV). But Net neutrality forbids traffic-based discrimination in the U.S.—or rather, it did before Ajit Pai, head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under Trump, <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/net-neutrality-is-now-really-officially-dead-open-internet-congress-now-what/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">abolished Obama-era Net neutrality rules</a>. Effective June 11, 2018, ISPs can now pick and choose when it comes to online traffic—thus putting small online businesses at a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/abrams/2018/05/30/small-business-lose-if-net-neutrality-goes-away/653679002/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">major disadvantage</a>.Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, asserted that ending Net neutrality “amounts to a tax on small businesses that they just can’t afford. It allows the largest, most powerful companies to squash their competition by cutting competitive deals with big ISPs, who will become the gatekeepers of the free market, picking and choosing which businesses succeed and which ones fail.”6. The Trump Administration’s Hostility to Green EnergyThanks to climate change, the horrific conditions predicted in the 1973 science fiction film “Soylent Green” (starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson) are turning out to be frighteningly accurate. Weather related-disasters have occurred throughout history, but with climate change, they are <a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/here-are-6-summer-2018s-worst-weather-related-nightmares" style="text-decoration-line: none;">occurring more frequently</a>. And while climate change imperils everyone, the rich are better able to cope with its nightmarish effects. The rich can more easily move when sea levels rise; they are better able to afford more heat in the winter or more air conditioning in the summer. Climate change is not only an environmental issue: it is also a class issue—and when Trump favors fossil fuels over green energy, insists that climate change is a hoax and appoints the worst EPA head in the agency’s history (Scott Pruitt), it is the working class who suffer the most.[not to mention green jobs > eg coal]7. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Move to the Far RightIn 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court is much more conservative than it was under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1950s and 1960s—and if Trump has his way, it will move even further to the right both socially and economically. Trump’s nominees so far—first  Justice Neil Gorsuch, now Judge Brett Kavanaugh—are far-right “strict constructionists” or “originalists” in the vein of the late Antonin Scalia. And with a Scalia-ish Supreme Court, one can expect a lot of <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brett-kavanaugh-ruled-against-workers_us_5b454316e4b048036ea39006" style="text-decoration-line: none;">anti-working class decisions</a> that are anti-union, pro-corporatist and anti-consumer.  8. The U.S.’ National Minimum Wage Remains StagnantIn the U.S., the federal minimum wage hasn’t begun to keep up with the cost of living. The federal minimum wage was raised to $7.25 in 2009, and it hasn’t been raised since then. Although Sen. Bernie Sanders and many of his allies have been pushing for a national minimum wage of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2015/oct/13/bernie-sanders-federal-minimum-wage-15-per-hour-video" style="text-decoration-line: none;">$15 per hour</a>, that isn’t going to happen as long as Donald Trump is president or Republicans dominate either house of Congress. And even if  Democrats managed to retake both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate in the November midterms, Trump could veto any minimum wage increases that Congress passed.9. Too-Big-to-Fail Is Bigger Than EverTen years have passed since the start of the Great Recession and the financial meltdown of September 2008, which was the worst economic event in the U.S. since the crash of 1929. In 2018, unemployment is much lower than it was in 2009 or 2010; even so, millions of Americans never fully recovered from the <a href="https://www.alternet.org/new-recession-coming-here-are-11-things-we-should-do-survive-it" style="text-decoration-line: none;">losses they suffered</a> during the Great Recession (which ranged from home foreclosures and savings accounts wiped out to periods of extended unemployment or underemployment). And the banksters who were deemed “too big to fail” and received generous bailouts in 2008 and 2009 (from Bank of America to Wells Fargo to Goldman Sachs) have increased in size considerably and become even more potentially dangerous than they were back then. In fact, Nomi Prins (author of “Collusion: How Central Bankers Ruled the World”) has asserted that the next crash could be <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/05/14/there-could-be-a-crash-bigger-than-the-2008-crisis-author-says.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">even worse than 2008</a>.10. The Rent Is Still Too Damn HighHome ownership was an important element of the New Deal; to FDR, home ownership and the equity that goes with it symbolized a middle class life and the American Dream. But in recent years, becoming a homeowner has become <a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/proof-american-dream-has-been-indefinitely-deferred" style="text-decoration-line: none;">increasingly difficult</a>—especially in large urban areas, where rents and home prices have been soaring. In January, a study by the apartment search website RentCafe.com analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data for 2006-2016 and found that homeowners are <a href="https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/market-snapshots/change-renter-vs-owner-population-2006-2016/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">now a minority</a> in 22 of the U.S.’ most populous cities. Many Americans are spending way too much on a rent, but they can’t afford a mortgage either. Jimmy McMillan is right: the rent is too damn hig=<a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/unions-just-scored-a-win-against-the-trump-administration/">https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/unions-just-scored-a-win-against-the-trump-administration/</a>yay, appeal expectedUnions just scored a victory against the Trump administration, which has steadily been working to weaken the power of organized labor. A federal judge in Washington on Friday struck down most provisions of three executive orders that made it easier for government agencies to fire workers and restricted the ability of their unions to negotiate with managers.US District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ruled that the executive orders, signed by President Donald Trump in May, conflicted with Congress’ opinion that good-faith union negotiations are vital to the public interest. While “the president has the authority to issue executive orders that carry the force of law with respect to federal labor relations, it is undisputed that no such orders can operate to eviscerate the right to bargain collectively as envisioned in the [statute],” Jackson <a href="https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2018cv1261-58" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">wrote</a>.The executive orders told federal agencies to give underperforming employees less time to improve their work before firing them—just three months, as opposed to 120 days previously. The orders also made it more difficult for federal workers to appeal their performance evaluations; greatly reduced the amount of time federal employees could devote to union business during regular work hours; and told agencies not to negotiate over important workplace issues, including the number of employees assigned to particular projects.More than a dozen federal employee unions sued to block the orders. “Employees are really frightened,” Loni Schultz, a union official representing employees in the Social Security Administration, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/business/trump-federal-workers-unions.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">told the New York Times</a>. “They’re frightened about losing jobs. They have house payments, car payments, child care.”Judge Jackson’s decision does leave a few provisions of the executive orders in place, including one that allows federal agencies to unilaterally implement changes to a union agreement if members are found to be bargaining in bad faith.The Federal Workers Alliance, a coalition of 13 federal employee unions, applauded the judge’s ruling. “We are very pleased that the court agreed that the president far exceeded his authority, and that the apolitical career federal work force shall be protected from these illegal, politically motivated executive orders,” Sarah Suszczyk, co-chair of the group, said in a statement. “It is a wonderful day to be a federal employee and a union member!” the American Federation of Government Employees, the country’s largest federal employee union, <a href="https://twitter.com/AFGENational/status/1033381527034441728" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">tweeted</a>. Friday’s ruling comes just weeks after a Supreme Court decision <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/06/how-the-supreme-courts-latest-ruling-could-decimate-public-sector-unions/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">weakened</a>public-sector unions by barring them from requiring fees for representation from both union and non-union members, overturning years of precedent.  (Federal employees were already exempt from paying dues or fees unless they wanted to.)“[T]he entire labor movement will not be pushed around,” tweeted Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO. “Together, we’re fighting back and winning.”unite rt 2 fail<p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">A robust but police-compliant crowd of protesters stood behind law enforcement’s lines of separation, booing and shouting as the extremists made their way into the station with a law-enforcement escort.<p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">On the station platform, a train designated “Special” awaited the racists, who were given priority boarding. It was only after they descended the escalator to the platform that police broke lines to let in the media, who found themselves blocked off—by another line of police—from entering the train car occupied by 20 or so attendees of Kessler’s “white civil rights” rally.<p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">In the train car directly behind the white-supremacists-only car, photographers tried to shoot pictures of Kessler and his crew through two sets of cloudy windows, while a police officer stood guard at the door that led to their specially guarded means of conveyance into the heart of the nation’s capital.<p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><img class="size-medium wp-image-495254 alignright" src="http://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/20180812_144013-350x197.jpg" alt="" srcset="http://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/20180812_144013-350x197.jpg 350w, http://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/20180812_144013-850x478.jpg 850w, http://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/20180812_144013-768x432.jpg 768w, http://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/20180812_144013-700x394.jpg 700w, http://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/20180812_144013-250x141.jpg 250w, http://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/20180812_144013-180x101.jpg 180w, http://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/20180812_144013-560x315.jpg 560w, http://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/20180812_144013-400x225.jpg 400w" sizes="(max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; height: auto; max-width: 100%; border: 0px; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 1em 1em;" /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">It was only a few days before that members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, the union representing rank-and-file Metro workers, <a id="LPlnk711549" class="x_OWAAutoLink" href="http://fortune.com/2018/08/04/unite-the-right-rally-unions/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">leaked the transit agency’s plans</a> for the white nationalists’ special train car(s) to the media. (Anticipating more rally-goers, the original plan called for three special cars.)<p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">“More than 80% of Local 689’s membership is people of color, the very people that the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist groups have killed, harassed and violated,” Local 689 leaders said in a <a id="LPlnk175026" class="x_OWAAutoLink" href="https://thinkprogress.org/dc-metro-considering-giving-special-treatment-to-white-supremacists-attending-rally-bdc5fbd95d19/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">statement provided to ThinkProgress</a>. “The union has declared that it will not play a role in their special accommodation.”<p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">Subsequently, Metro Board Chair Jack Evans <a id="LPlnk648428" class="x_OWAAutoLink" href="http://fortune.com/2018/08/05/d-c-metro-white-nationalists/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">made a statement</a> suggesting that that the agency had backed off that plan, but on the afternoon of the August 12 rally, it appeared to be in full force.<p dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">rww<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">whoohoo</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/missouri-right-work-proposition-defeated">https://www.alternet.org/missouri-right-work-proposition-defeated</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">on  Tuesday night, voters in Missouri <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/8/7/17655690/missouri-election-proposition-a-right-to-work" style="text-decoration-line: none;">defeated</a> Proposition A, a referendum which would have allowed a "right to work" law to go into effect in the state.</div>This marked the first time a right to work law has ever been defeated by popular vote. It is an enormous setback for Missouri Republicans, who had made imposing this law a signature policy goal after winning full control of the state government in 2016.Right to work laws, which currently exist in 27 states, ban labor unions and businesses from negotiating a "security agreement" in bargaining, in which a union may collect "agency fees" from workers who are not a member of the union. Since unions generally <a href="https://labored.missouri.edu/documents/2005-10.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">represent all workers in a workplace</a>, not simply their own members, these fees cover the cost of bargaining for nonmembers and prevent free ridership — and lead to <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/eliminating-fair-share-fees-and-making-public-employment-right-to-work-would-increase-the-pay-penalty-for-working-in-state-and-local-government/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">wage increases</a>.  Corporations and right-wing politicians, however, have painted these fees as a threat to individual freedom and sought to pass laws banning them — which has depressed union membership and wages around the country. Earlier this year, they persuaded the <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/janus-v-american-federation-state-county-municipal-employees-council-31/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Supreme Court</a> to void all such security agreements in public sector unions. Workers in the private sector, however, are still free to pursue them in states without right to work laws.In February 2017, then-Gov. Eric Greitens — who later resigned amid an unrelated <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/4/11/17227132/eric-greitens-missouri-governor-rape-sexual-assault-nonconsensual-force-revenge-porn-blackmail" style="text-decoration-line: none;">sexual assault and blackmail</a> scandal — <a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article130983664.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">signed</a> the right to work bill in Missouri. In response, outraged union workers <a href="https://themissouritimes.com/46106/right-to-work-set-to-appear-on-november-ballot-after-signatures-certified/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">got a referendum</a> on the ballot to overturn it, with AFL-CIO <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/8/7/17655690/missouri-election-proposition-a-right-to-work" style="text-decoration-line: none;">mobilizing</a> steelworkers and construction workers to go door to door to gather hundreds of thousands of signatures.Republicans were desperate to win this vote, even going so far as to pass a law <a href="https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/right-to-work-vote-moved-to-august-primary-election/article_7b92ec4c-8bf2-564d-aa2f-85275743d8ad.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">moving the referendum</a> from the November ballot to the August primary in the hope lower turnout would kill the measure. But in the end, it wasn't even close. Voters <a href="https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/missouri-votes-on-proposition-a-county-by-county-results/html_d1ee8bc2-407d-5d00-be5c-5e3b7f5b84b7.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">rejected</a> right to work 67.5 to 37.5.In Missouri, workers stood up and said no to the erosion of their right to organize. And the business interests pushing to undermine unions have been put on notice.<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/scott-walker-trump-wisconsin-teacher-union/">https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/scott-walker-trump-wisconsin-teacher-union/</a><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/06/27/trumps-supreme-court-strikes-blow-government-workers-good-paying-jobs/">https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/06/27/trumps-supreme-court-strikes-blow-government-workers-good-paying-jobs/</a>In a major blow to organized labor and good paying government jobs, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that government workers who choose not to join a union cannot be charged fees to reimburse the union for the cost of representing them in collective bargaining.The decision was 5-4 in the Janus vs. AFSCME Council 31 case, with Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch supplying the deciding vote. Justice Samuel Alito, who actively invited a challenge to union fees, wrote the decision for the Court’s right-wing majority.In today’s decision, Alito wrote that the fees, called “agency fees,” violated the First Amendment. In doing so, Alito overruled a 41-year-old Supreme Court decision legalizing these fees in the Abood vs. Detroit Board of Education decision.The decision ushers in “right to work” style conditions for public employees in states across the nation. These anti-union measures <a href="http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2017/08/racist-who-pioneered-right-work-laws" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">originated in the Jim Crow South</a> as a means of undermining unions who were organizing black and white workers together in the same shop. Predictably, Koch brothers groups–such as Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and the State Policy Network–cheered the ruling, while union leaders prepared to renegotiate thousands of contracts and deal with a new legal landscape for unions across the land.<h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">CROWN JEWEL IN ASSAULT ON UNIONS BY RIGHT-WING BILLIONAIRES AND CORPORATIONS</h2>The case should be seen in the context of a sustained assault by extremist billionaires, corporations, and foundation on unions, the organized voice of working families and a major player in campaigns and elections on the Democratic side.Over the past decade, as ALEC legislators aggressively advanced union-busting bills in red states like Wisconsin, Michigan, West Virginia and Kentucky, a slew of rapid fire cases were advanced by allied groups in blue states, as Center for Media and Democracy detailed in an <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/features/janus_supreme_court_unions_investigation.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">award-winning article</a> on the Janus case. A number of these cases, including Knox v. SEIU (2012), Harris v. Quinn (2014), and Friederichs v. California Teachers Association (2016), made it to the U.S. Supreme Court and were used by Justice Alito to justify the Janus decision.The Janus case originated with Republican Governor Bruce Rauner of Illinois. The American Federation of State County and Municipal Workers (AFSCME) represents state workers in Illinois and campaigned hard against the venture-capitalist in his 2014 race for governor. When Rauner was found not to have standing, attorneys from the <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Illinois_Policy_Institute" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">Illinois Policy Institute</a>–a State Policy Network think tank–substituted Illinois child care worker Mark Janus as the lead plaintiff. Rauner said that “taking this issue on was one of my primary reasons for running for governor in the first place,” and flew to Washington, DC this week to await the ruling.The case involves the obscure technical issue of agency fees. In over 20 states, even if public sector workers do not want to be represented by a union, they must pay agency or “fair share fees” to cover the cost of their representation. These fees were ruled fair and constitutional in 1977 by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Abood decision, to prevent a “free rider” problem and because unions are legally required to represent all workers in a bargaining unit. The fees fund the unions’ collective bargaining process and other services they provide to state workers; they cannot be used for political action.Justice Alito wrote that the free rider problem was not a “compelling state interest.”<h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“WEAPONIZING” THE FIRST AMENDMENT</h2>Dissenting justices portrayed the case is a radical re-write of labor law, with dramatic consequences for dozens of states and thousands of binding contracts.“There is no sugarcoating today’s opinion. The majority overthrows a decision entrenched in this Nation’s law–and in its economic life–for over 40 years,” wrote Kagan,who read her dissent from the bench. In doing so the Court has “weaponized the First Amendment,” she said.The radical nature of the case was explained by Justice Kagan during oral arguments:<blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 40px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Twenty-three states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, all would have their statutes declared unconstitutional at once. Thousands of municipalities would have contracts invalidated. Those contracts probably cover millions, maybe up to over 10 million, workers. So property and contract rights, the statutes of many states and the livelihoods of millions of individuals affected all at once. When have we ever done something like that? What would be the justification for doing something like that?</blockquote>Kagan also wrote that in overturning Abood the Court “disregards the defining characteristic of this free-rider argument–that unions, unlike those many other private groups, must serve members and non-members alike…. That special feature was what justified Abood.”“But the worse part of today’s opinion is where the majority subverts all known principles of stare decisis,” the principle that rulings should be based on precedent, Kagan wrote. The majority can’t just “throw some gratuitous criticisms into a couple of opinions and a few years later point to them as ‘special justifications’ for their actions,” she said.Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers had previously stressed this point. “Rarely is there a situation where a next-generation Supreme Court overrules or changes precedent of a unanimously decided opinion. This is a completely ideological movement to end unions as we know it and to redefine the First Amendment as a weapon against people,” <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2018/05/randi_weingarten_qa.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">she said</a>.<h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">TRUMP COURT ATTACKS BOTH PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SECTOR WORKERS</h2>The decision, along with the recent <a href="https://host.madison.com/ct/opinion/column/mary-bottari-epic-fail-supreme-court-turns-back-clock-to/article_2d61881f-950f-5281-8822-68bf06669a28.htm" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">EPIC Systems v. Lewis</a> case, will make the Trump-Gorsuch court one of the worst for working families in history. Gorsuch wrote the May 2018 EPIC Systems decision, which held that businesses can prohibit their workers from banding together to battle their employers in court in disputes over a wide array of issues such as wage theft, sexual harassment, civil rights, and gender discrimination.“This is probably the most relentlessly anti-democratic and specifically anti-worker court since the ‘Lochner Era’ of the late 19th and early 20th century,” University of Wisconsin Law Professor Joel Rogers told the Center for Media and Democracy.“But Janus shows it’s arguably worse, since it doesn’t even respect freedom of contract. This Court doesn’t stand for the ‘rule of law,’ which means putting constraints on the arbitrary and abusive use of power. It’s ‘let’s concoct a legal justification for giving abuse a free rein,'” said Rogers. The 1905 Lochner case held that limits on the work day or work week violated the Constitution.“These are two devastating 5-4 decisions–two decisions that could have easily gone the other way but for the sabotage of the appointment of Merrick Garland,” said Courtlyn Roser-Jones, visiting Assistant Professor at the Ohio State Mortiz College of Law. Garland was appointed by President Obama in 2016, but the Republican Senate refused to confirm him leading to Trump’s appointment of Neil Gorsuch.The Janus decision could lead to weaker unions, lower wages for government workers, and poorer public services.“We are living in a system that is rigged to benefit special interests and billionaires, all at the expense of working people. Today’s radical decision by the Supreme Court is a blatant slap in the face for educators, nurses, firefighters, police officers and all public servants who make our communities strong and safe… [U]nions will continue to be the best vehicle on the path to the middle class,” said Lily Eskelsen García, President of the National Education Association.And the agenda is broader that just unions, the court is going after the policies that unions advocate for, say experts.“This is a concerted, corporate-funded effort to get rid of public employee unions–to stop them from advocating for higher minimum wages, affordable healthcare or a right to paid sick leave, to stop them winning wages and benefits that force private sector employers to raise their own wages, and to stop them from insisting on a level of public services–schools, libraries, transportation and more–that we all have a right to just by dint of being citizens,” said Gordon Lafer, a professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center.<h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">TEAM TRUMP IS BUILDING A LASTING ANTI-WORKER LEGACY, BUT UNIONS ARE FIGHTING BACK</h2>The Trump administration frequently claims to be on the side of the little guy, but it is building a strong track record of harming workers and working families in the courts, in Congress, and in administrative agencies.The 2018 EPIC Systems ruling will harm millions of non-union workers who will be newly subject to arbitration. The huge tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed into law by Trump the end of 2017 will exacerbate an already profound income inequality gap between the wealthy and working families. And the Trump administration has aggressively rolled back a 2016 rule strengthening overtime protections for low- and middle-income workers, and took steps to gut regulations that protect restaurant workers from having their tips taken by their employers. Michael Arria noted in <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/09/17/in-attacking-overtime-pay-trump-is-hurting-his-biggest-fans_partner/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">Salon</a> that by “attacking overtime pay, Trump is hurting his biggest fans.”But unions are not sitting idly by. Massive teachers’ strikes have succeeded in winning major concessions for government workers in multiple states. “Don’t count us out,” said AFT’s Weingarten. “Workers are sticking with their unions, because they know that unions are the best vehicle for workers to get ahead.”Richard Trumka, the head of the national AFL-CIO, also noted the recent revival of organized labor. “All over the country, workers are organizing and taking collected action as we haven’t seen in years. More than 14,000 workers recently formed or joined unions in just a single week. This followed a year where 262,000 workers organized and the approval of unions reached a new high.”“The corporate narrative of the labor movement’s downfall is being dismantled by working people every single day,” said Trumka.<hr style="box-sizing: content-box; border-color: rgb(221, 221, 221) currentcolor currentcolor; border-style: solid none none; border-right: 0px none; border-bottom: 0px none; border-left: 0px none; border-image: initial; border-collapse: collapse; clear: both; margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" />Mary Bottari</div><a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/07/17/book-review-fall-wisconsin-uplifting-read">https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/07/17/book-review-fall-wisconsin-uplifting-read</a>A must-read on the summer book list is The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics, by Dan Kaufman. This remarkable book takes readers on a winding journey through the Native American, Scandinavian, and Socialist roots of the Badger State to its latest incarnation as a Trump satellite state.“Donald Trump’s victory may have shocked the Clinton campaign and media pundits, but the result merely heralded the final stage of Wisconsin’s dramatic transformation from a pioneering beacon of progressive, democratic politics to the embodiment of that legacy’s national unraveling,” writes Kaufman.Wisconsinites have had a front row seat to this unraveling. But this is not a gloomy book, nor the dry, didactic reporting of the mainstream newspapers stripped of historical context and evocative language. It is a beautifully drawn portrait of resistance told via the voices of the state’s beleaguered citizenry.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase;">PORTRAIT OF RESISTANCE</h2>The book highlights Mike Wiggins, the chairman of the Bad River Band, and other tribal leaders who successfully battled the Gogebic Taconite iron-ore strip mine in the Penokee Hills after the company crafted its own bill and paid millions to buy off the state legislature. “The tribes, Wisconsin’s first conservationists, have now become the last hope, the only group with any power to stop the dismantling of the state’s environmental heritage,” writes Kaufman in one of the book’s most affecting chapters.It stresses the national importance of the fight over Act 10, Walker’s union-busting legislation, which blindsided the voters–even Republicans. “Walker’s agenda, which was always there but nobody knew it, really came from somewhere else, like the Koch brothers, the national party, and ALEC [the American Legislative Exchange Council]. I don’t think it was a local agenda, frankly,” said former GOP State Senator Barbara Lorman.It details the chutzpah of average citizens who step up to run for office when no one else will. From Lori Compass, who single-handedly launched a recall against Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald in 2011, to Randy Bryce, the ironworker who battled ALEC’s anti-union “right to work” bill and the gutting of prevailing wage. In 2018, Bryce decided to step up and take on one of America’s most prominent politicians, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.Dozens of other Wisconsinites, including Tia Nelson, Jesse Barnes, Tim Cullen, Curt Meine, Todd Albaugh, Dave Poklinkoski, Marvin DeFoe, Dale Schultz, Tim Cullen, and more, are interviewed and paint a portrait of a resistance that didn’t waver though the deck was stacked against them. Included in this list is Rep. Fred Kessler, who found a way to challenge the GOP’s unprecedented partisan gerrymandering in federal court and get it ruled unconstitutional. Woven into the these tales are the stories of Chief Buffalo, “Fighting Bob” La Follette, socialist Emil Seidel, environmentalist Aldo Leopold, educator John Bascom, Congressman Victor Berger, Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, and other historical figures.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase;">CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE</h2>Kaufman writes that “ALEC played an essential role in the conservative network that has transformed Wisconsin,” highlighting three ALEC measures: school vouchers, right to work, and voter ID.[CRONON?]This became crystal clear to a young mom living and working in Madison named Chris Taylor. Walker’s attack on unions and on the public schools where her kids went to school inspired Taylor to run for office in 2012 and, once elected, she continued to dig deeper into the group’s radical agenda, which has prompted over 100 American companies to stop funding it. Just last week, long-time supporter ExxonMobil <a href="https://www.prwatch.org/news/2018/07/13368/alec-too-extreme-exxon-long-term-alec-board-member-dumps-alec-over-climate-denial" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">stopped funding ALEC.</a>“ALEC defines the parameters of what’s possible,” Taylor explains in the book. Since being elected to the State Assembly, Taylor has taken it upon herself to attend ALEC meetings as often as possible in order to report on the organization for multiple outlets. Taylor describes in the book how isolated she feels in a sea of conservatives, including being chased through the halls of one meeting by a drunken legislator.Taylor explains well the critical “infrastructure” that the GOP built in the state with the support of the $900 million Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which the Center for Media and Democracy exposed in an 11-part series <a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/05/05/documents-detail-bradley-foundation-efforts-build-right-wing-infrastructure-nationwide/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">in 2017</a>, and how that infrastructure was critical to the election of Trump and the defeat of Clinton. This infrastructure included candidate training, ALEC politicians, state-based “think tanks,” legal teams, and phony media outlets.Even in Democratic circles, the expanse and effectiveness of this infrastructure is not widely understood. “‘Republicans have a network, they have an infrastructure.’ We don’t. We might pick up a seat or two here and there, but until we have an infrastructure as strong as theirs, we’re going to lose,” says Taylor.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase;">A NATIONAL MODEL</h2>The book tells a tale of how Wisconsin “went from a state widely admired as a ‘laboratory of democracy’ to a testing ground for national conservatives” bent on making key states Republican strongholds. “Those efforts have been wildly successful, culminating in Wisconsin’s startling deliverance of the White House to Donald Trump,” writes Kaufman.Grover Norquist explains the centrality of Walker’s Act 10 legislation to the Trump election in the book: “Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016 did not lay the groundwork for Republican political dominance. But the March 2011 signing of Act 10, a dramatic reform of public-sector labor laws, by Wisconsin’s Scott Walker certainly did. To understate it: If Act 10 is enacted in a dozen more states, the modern day Democratic Party will cease to be a competitive power in American politics. It’s that big a deal.”Norquist’s anti-union coalitional efforts, hyper-funded by the Kochs and the Bradley Foundation, helped take the Wisconsin “model” national. The nation is now facing an Act 10 of its own, as Trump’s pick to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, served up the deciding vote for the June Janus vs. AFSCME Council 31 decision, which will introduce “right to work” conditions nationwide, as the Center for Media and Democracy detailed in an award-winning investigation <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/features/janus_supreme_court_unions_investigation.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">in February.</a><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase;">HOPING FOR AN ENCORE</h2>Kaufman followed his book with a New York Times essay “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/07/opinion/sunday/progressive-populism-wisconsin-trump.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">Progressive Populism Can Save Us From Trump</a>.” Many in Wisconsin, who gave Bernie Sanders 71 of 72 counties in 2016, hope he is right.There is only one flaw in Kaufman’s important book. Walker’s brain, R.J. Johnson, is only mentioned once. Johnson, a native of Florida, is not only Scott Walker’s chief political advisor, but he also oversaw and funneled some $20 million in dark money into the 2011-2012 recall races, and millions more into Senate, Assembly, and judicial races, prompting a criminal investigation by a Republican state prosecutor. Johnson has been responsible for the most disgusting political ads ever aired <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/R.J.Johnson" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">in the state</a>, the utter destruction of the Wisconsin Supreme Court (turning one of the state’s most respected institutions into what The New Yorker called a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-destruction-of-the-wisconsin-supreme-court" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">“disgraceful mess”</a>), and the wholesale dismantling of Wisconsin’s clean election laws. Few political operatives have had such as impact on the state as this slavish servant of secret money in campaigns and elections.Let’s hope Kaufman is saving material for his next book.<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/billionaire-wolves-think-they-can-fool-us-wearing-workers-clothing">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/billionaire-wolves-think-they-can-fool-us-wearing-workers-clothing</a>gerard prz steelworkers
Hundred millionaire Bruce Rauner just couldn’t wait to tell Illinois state workers that the U.S. Supreme Court had given them what he considered a gift.Within hours of the court’s ruling in the Janus case last week, Rauner, the Republican governor of Illinois, emailed state workers to tell them the decision meant they no longer needed to pay either dues or fair share fees to their labor union but the union would still be required to represent them.What a deal! Free service! And it was <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-bruce-rauner-janus-afscme-20180604-story.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">brought to them by Rauner</a>! The governor had filed the lawsuit that led to the Janus decision. When a court tossed him as plaintiff, the right-wing foundations whose billionaire donors paid for the lawsuit drummed up replacement plaintiffs including Mark Janus. He’s an Illinois child support worker who refused to join the union and pay dues and who didn’t even want to pay the smaller fair share fee of <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-bruce-rauner-janus-afscme-20180604-story.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">$45 a month</a> charged to non-members to cover the union’s costs of bargaining for the...it was that fee that the Supreme Court said government workers had a free speech right not to pay. The court said unions do not have a corresponding free speech right to refuse to represent non-members.While Rauner was sending his email urging Illinois workers to bankrupt their unions, right-wing “foundations” across the country started spending the tens of millions they’d <a href="https://portside.org/2018-07-03/right-wing-business-funded-groups-are-preparing-use-janus-decision-bleed-unions-internal" style="text-decoration-line: none;">received from billionaires like the Walton family and giant corporations like AT&T</a> to do the same thing. These groups are emailing, calling and visiting the homes of government workers.Of course, right-wing billionaires couldn’t be expected to do this work themselves. Work up a sweat walking door-to-door? No way!  So they set up these “foundations” to hire stand-ins, people who look like regular Joes and who are trained to mouth billionaire propaganda. These “regular Joes” will tell state and local government workers that they can give themselves a raise by starving their labor union of funds and still get first-rate union representation. These are wolves in workers’ clothing.<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/15/rightwing-thinktanks-secret-plot-against-unions" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Guardian newspaper revealed in May</a> that the State Policy Network, a group devoted to causes favoring right-wing billionaires and corporations, had raised $80 million and organized 66 similarly radical “foundations” across the country to destroy labor unions. They prepared an anti-union toolkit to personally target government workers as soon as the court handed down the Janus decision.The toolkit includes advice for anti-union canvassers, including: when talking to union members, dumb down language and pretend to care about them. It says canvassers should say to union members, “the best interest of union leaders should never be placed above the best interest of union members.”
Wisconsin is right-wing union haters’ touchstone. There, an extremist Republican governor and legislature adopted draconian anti-union measures, restricting issues that government workers could raise in collective bargaining, forbidding fair share fees and requiring unions to recertify every year by receiving affirmative votes from more than half of members and assuming those who did not participate had voted against the union.Of course, it neglects to urge the canvassers to say, “the best interests of billionaires should never be placed above the best interest of workers.”One Wisconsin labor organization representing teachers <a href="https://portside.org/2018-07-03/right-wing-business-funded-groups-are-preparing-use-janus-decision-bleed-unions-internal" style="text-decoration-line: none;">lost 60 percent of its members</a>. Overall in Wisconsin, the percentage of union members in the workforce <a href="https://portside.org/2018-07-03/right-wing-business-funded-groups-are-preparing-use-janus-decision-bleed-unions-internal" style="text-decoration-line: none;">declined from 14.1 percent in 2011 to 9 percent in 2016</a>. Simultaneously, pay and benefits declined. For teachers, salaries sank <a href="https://portside.org/2018-07-03/right-wing-business-funded-groups-are-preparing-use-janus-decision-bleed-unions-internal" style="text-decoration-line: none;">2.6 percent and benefits dropped 18.6 percent</a>.Losing the power of collective bargaining didn’t work out so well for these workers. But right-wingers believe workers are stupid and must be talked down to, so persuading them to quit their labor organizations and ultimately bankrupt them will be easy.This is more than an effort by billionaires to slash workers’ income. It’s also a campaign to steal workers’ political power, to silence them. The more unions that billionaires can bankrupt, the less money available to support candidates and causes that help workers.
It was, after all, a Democratic president and Democratic Congresses that created a clear legal path for workers to form labor unions and that created Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act requiring insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions.None of nonmembers’ fair share fees can be used on politics. But unions spend a small portion of members’ dues money to support issues important to workers and on political candidates who pledge to secure programs like Social Security and Medicare. That is almost always Democratic candidates.Tom McCabe, the millionaire CEO of the Freedom Foundation, one of the State Policy Network anti-union groups, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/10/union-killers-freedom-foundation" style="text-decoration-line: none;">told the Guardian</a>, “Our goal is to help people who we believe are being held in bondage against their will.” The State Policy Network wrote its donors that it would “rescue” government workers from unions.Right. That’s billionaires riding in on their white stallions to “free” working people from their bonds to labor unions, the organizations workers created to secure better wages and working conditions for themselves.Economic self-interest could prompt some workers to drop out of unions if they think they can get the benefits of being in a union for free.But workers may not like being talked down to by flunkies for billionaires. And despite what the State Policy Network thinks, workers are not stupid. They know if their unions have less money, they’ll be weaker in negotiations and politics. They know that what happened to workers in Wisconsin could happen to them.They know that massive strikes this year by ill-paid teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and Kentucky – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/opinion/janus-supreme-court-worker-militant-action-unions.html?action=click&module=Intentional&pgtype=Article" style="text-decoration-line: none;">states that forbid teachers to strike</a> – won raises for them and other state employees.The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/janus-afscme-public-sector-unions/563879/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">added 1,250 members</a> in West Virginia after the teacher walk out there, and the National Education Association (NEA) <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/janus-afscme-public-sector-unions/563879/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">signed 2.2 percent more</a> members in states where teachers struck.Though membership had been declining for decades, unions <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/biggest-gains-in-union-membership-in-2017-were-for-younger-workers/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">added 262,000 members</a> last year. And now they’ve got the <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2018/0627/Court-ruling-a-blow-not-a-knockout-to-public-unions" style="text-decoration-line: none;">support of 61 percent of Americans</a>, up from a low of 48 percent in 2009.Also, union members are talking to union members about the value of sticking with the union. Members of the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/janus-afscme-public-sector-unions/563879/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">AFT are meeting one-on-one</a> with teachers in 10 states, asking them to sign cards recommitting themselves to the union. They’ve got 530,000 so far, and are working toward the full 1.7 million members.So that knock at the door might be a fellow union member and not a billionaire’s flunky after all.RAGA ballotpedia bs<ul style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0.3em 0px 0.6em 1.6em; padding: 0px;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Arizona won a successful challenge against the National Labor Relations Board which challenged the state’s constitutional amendment guaranteeing worker’s rights to vote by secret ballot on whether to join a union. This case set valuable precedent that will allow these issues to be resolved at the state, not federal, level.</li></ul><ul style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0.3em 0px 0.6em 1.6em; padding: 0px;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Republican AGs played a pivotal role in defeating the NLRB's politically motivated attempt to disallow Boeing's business expansion in South Carolina.</li></ul>gorsuch screws us on janus; janus sez agency fee violates 1st AMEND<h1 class="entry-title h2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1;">Supreme Court Rules Against Unions: Janus V. AFSCME</h1><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-june-27-2018/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-june-27-2018/</a><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">devos combine dept ed with labor?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/environment/trumps-attack-federal-labor-unions-harms-epa-environment-and-public-health" style="">https://www.alternet.org/environment/trumps-attack-federal-labor-unions-harms-epa-environment-and-public-health</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">no lnx</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trump's Attack on Federal Labor Unions Harms the EPA, Environment and Public Health</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By marginalizing federal employees, Trump is risking America’s health and ecosystems.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By John O'Grady / Independent Media Institute June 22, 2018, 9:15 PM GMT</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And, history is definitely repeating itself. President Donald Trump’s rule-by-decree executive orders, especially regarding federal labor unions, remind me of the late Rev. Friedrich Niemöller, a German Lutheran pastor best known for a widely paraphrased statement:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Because I was not a Socialist.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Because I was not a Trade Unionist.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Because I was not a Jew.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>As Trump rejects trade unions and would marginalize their members, it is time for Americans to speak out. On May 25, 2018, he issued three executive orders savagely attacking the largest sector of trade unionism—the federal sector. Trump is dangerous. He is also as serious as a heart attack on public employees and their unions’ official time, space arrangements and federal civil service protections. The Labor and Employee Relations Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is already chomping at the bit to implement Trump’s three anti-union executive orders, two of which target labor organization and one that makes it easier to fire federal civil servants. Part of that effort is to deny union members the opportunity—and their privilege—to visit with lawmakers on official time. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Should you be worried that these executive orders attacking federal unions—which are comprised of scientists and engineers—might negatively impact the environment and public health? Yes, if you’re concerned that a surge in allowable levels of particle and ozone pollution in Pennsylvania can harm children’s lungs. Yes, if you’re concerned that this White House will permit further contamination of drinking water resources in our Great Lakes. Yes, if you’re concerned that EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s arbitrary choices for Superfund remediation will give, according to an EPA press release, “immediate and intense action” to some sites, while ignoring more acutely in-need and neglected toxic lands in Houston and across the nation. Yes, if you’re concerned that continued inaction is exacerbating the climate crisis along America’s Atlantic and Gulf coasts.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Without AFGE Council 238—the union for more than 8,000 EPA workers—there will be no one to let Congress know exactly what is going on at the EPA under Pruitt’s unethical leadership. There will be more pressure put on EPA staff to certify state and local laboratories that don’t meet minimal standards, to approve air, water and land permits absent adequate protection of human health and the environment. And approvals of dangerous pesticides would be rushed through without adequate scientific review. In a nutshell, without the union protecting whistleblowers, they will not blow the whistle because they need their jobs to pay their mortgage, utilities and children’s education.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">To Trump’s discontent, labor is organized—and protesting. It will, however, require action by the judicial branch to rectify the president’s trampling on the legislative branch and existing statutes. So, perhaps America is moving backwards in time. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Take, for example, the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883. Following the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881 by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled job seeker, Congress passed the act, which was introduced by Sen. George Pendleton (D-Ohio). It provided that federal government jobs be awarded based on merit and through competitive exams. It stopped the appointment of people to governmental offices merely because of their political affiliation or their connection to the president. The law offended politicians who belong to a small clique that controls a political party. These “machine politicians” realized that with the Pendleton Act in place, they would have to find new means of income, as they could no longer count on donations from the wealthy hoping to receive jobs.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fast forward to 2018, and Trump has made cronyism the order of the day, filling the executive branch with many who are simply unqualified to hold their positions. Trump would deny working families benefits protected by the Constitution. Those rights include collective bargaining on pay and working conditions, legal services, personal representation, health and safety and fairness. Trump’s executive orders would prevent our federal workforce from organizing. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>Ultimately, Trump would end civil service protections and destroy labor’s federal sector unions. In February 2017, Trump quietly hired James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation to handle labor and employment policy. Sherk believes that federal workers are overpaid; he opposes increasing the minimum wage and expanding workers’ rights. He was indoctrinated at the Koch-funded Hillsdale College that has helped to advance the corporate agenda of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, to undermine the rights of workers using their so-called model legislation, which benefits special interests in more than a third of our 50 states. </div><div>
</div><div>The right-wing Heritage Foundation was Sherk’s proving ground for Trump’s White House. It’s where he honed his craft of limiting the influence that unions have and undermining workers’ rights. Sherk is also a proponent of local governments pushing “right-to-work laws,” statutes in 28 states that prohibit agreements between employers and labor unions. Notably, three major aspects in right-to-work states are: 1) The right to work for significantly less money; 2) the right to work with less training; and 3) the right to work with fewer safety conditions.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Considering the fact that most Republicans disdain unelected federal employees and labor unions comprising working women and men, it’s difficult to feel optimistic. It’s hard to hold out much hope for the federal sector and labor unions under the Trump regime. If federal sector unions go, then the “Save the U.S. EPA Campaign”—a national campaign being conducted by AFGE Council 238 and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) to stop the destruction of the EPA—goes away as well. The interests of the coal and fossil fuel industries will continue to be placed above those of the American public. The abuse of taxpayer dollars will also go on, while jobs and programs that are critical to the health and safety of America’s air, water, land and endangered species will be drastically cut or even eliminated. Science will be undermined. Public health will suffer.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trump and Pruitt are reducing protections of federal employees to enshrine an era of cronyism. Simultaneously, they threaten the environmental protections for all Americans by refusing to staff open positions at EPA. By design, that will result in fewer civil servants keeping our land, water and air clean. Trump and his chief sycophant at the EPA will call that ‘Victory!’</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But the blame does not fall entirely on the Republicans. It is shared by the Democrats who consistently fail to vigorously support labor unions. For years, the pendulum has remained to the far right. As a result, one agency and department after another fail to meet objectives because they are not only understaffed and under-budgeted, but are filled with toadies. Meanwhile the people’s work doesn’t get done. The American taxpayers and voters are not served, while the Koch Brothers and their Republican cohorts get richer and more powerful. Worse yet, the best and the brightest younger generation is no longer attracted to government positions because they are treated with hostility, like second-class citizens. Morale at the EPA is down, because the moralities of America’s elected leaders are in the gutter. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“…Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist.” Who’s next? Maybe the Democrats?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2018/6/1/headlines/federal_employees_sue_to_halt_trump_assault_on_union_rights">https://www.democracynow.org/2018/6/1/headlines/federal_employees_sue_to_halt_trump_assault_on_union_rights</a><a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/05/22/epic-fail-supreme-court-strips-non-union-workers-power/">https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/05/22/epic-fail-supreme-court-strips-non-union-workers-power/</a>

===<a href="http://xxx">format messed up, see bak</a><a href="http://xxx">big blank maybe fixed?</a><a href="http://xxx">capt 318</a><a href="http://xxx">

This is newer content,as of 8/13</a>

===</a>

<a href="http://xxx">=</a><a href="http://xxx">omg</a><a href="http://xxx">https://www.democracynow.org/2018/5/16/koch_brothers_backed_effort_to_sabotage</a><a href="http://xxx">Internal documents obtained by The Guardian show how a network of right-wing think tanks have launched a nationwide effort to convince members of public sector unions to stop paying dues. The effort is backed by $80 million in funding from billionaires like the Koch brothers, who expect a favorable decision from the Supreme Court this month in a case that could let workers who benefit from union-negotiated contracts avoid paying union dues if they opt not to join the union. The campaign comes as North Carolina teachers staged a massive walkout today, shuttering hundreds of schools, on the heels of major strikes by teacher unions in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Arizona. For more, we speak with Ed Pilkington, chief reporter for The Guardian in the U.S. His new report is an exclusive look at “How rightwing groups wield secret 'toolkit' to plot against US unions.”</a><a href="http://xxx"></a><a href="http://xxx">ref</a><a href="http://xxx">https://XXXtheguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/15/rightwing-thinktanks-secret-plot-against-unions</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">Rightwing activists are launching a nationwide drive to persuade public-sector trade union members to tear up their membership cards and stop paying dues, posing a direct threat to the progressive movement in America.</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal that a network of radical conservative thinktanks spanning all 50 states is planning direct marketing campaigns targeted personally at union members to encourage them to quit. The secret push, the group hopes, could cost unions up to a fifth of their 7 million members, lead to the loss of millions of dollars in income and undermine a cornerstone of US progressive politics.</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">“Well run opt-out campaigns can cause public-sector unions to experience 5 to 20% declines in membership, costing hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in dues money. This can affect the resources and attention available for union leaders to devote to political action campaigns,” the internal documents say.</a><figure class="element element-embed" data-alt="doc" style="margin: 1rem 0px 0.75rem; position: relative;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">The anti-union marketing drive is the brainchild of the State Policy Network (SPN), a coast-to-coast alliance of 66 rightwing thinktanks that has an $80m war chest to promote Donald Trump-friendly regressive policies such as low taxes and small government. The group is funded by such billionaire conservative donors as the Koch brothers and the Walton Family Foundation that stems from the Walmart fortune.

...exposed by the Guardian has revealed the political motives behind the network’s attacks on unions. It aims to “defund and defang” public sector unions as a means to “reverse the failed policies of the American left”.</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">The goal, the group said, was “permanently depriving the left from access to millions of dollars in dues extracted from unwilling union members every election cycle”.</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">The Guardian has now obtained what SPN is calling a “toolkit” of advice to its followers on how to go about fomenting “union reform” – a euphemism for draining unions of members and cash. The “toolkit” sets out four “tactics” for depleting their power – “effective union reform”, in its language.</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font style="background: transparent; touch-action: manipulation; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; top: 0px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; left: 0px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; z-index: 0; opacity: 0; display: inline !important;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://xxx">
“To get employees to opt-out of their union,” the documents say, “they first need to know they have a choice. A direct marketing campaign to union represented public employees that combines mail and digital outreach helps raise awareness and raise opt-out rates.”</a><font style="background: transparent; touch-action: manipulation; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; top: 0px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; left: 0px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; z-index: 0; opacity: 0; display: inline !important;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://xxx">One of those tactics is the opt-out campaign.</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font style="background: transparent; touch-action: manipulation; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; top: 0px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; left: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-indent: 200%; white-space: nowrap; position: absolute; z-index: 0; opacity: 0;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://xxx">The SPN blueprint sets out how to acquire the private details of union members through state freedom of information laws so that opt-out propaganda can be targeted directly at them. It says: “Access to lists of union members is essential to this project. The most common means of obtaining lists is through requests made under state public records laws.”</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font style="background: transparent; touch-action: manipulation; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; top: 0px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; left: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-indent: 200%; white-space: nowrap; position: absolute; z-index: 0; opacity: 0;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://xxx">The toolkit is being circulated at a vital moment for public sector trade unions. The </a><font style="background: transparent; touch-action: manipulation; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; top: 0px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; left: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-indent: 200%; white-space: nowrap; position: absolute; z-index: 0; opacity: 0;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://xxx"><span style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; touch-action: manipulation; border-bottom: 0.0625rem solid rgb(220, 220, 220); transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">wave of school teachers’ strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado and elsewhere has reinvigorated the labor movement as a key part of the resistance to stagnating wages, waning resources and a hostile White House.</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">More perilously, the US supreme court is poised to deliver its ruling any day in <span style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; touch-action: manipulation; cursor: pointer; border-bottom: 0.0625rem solid rgb(220, 220, 220); transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">Janus v AFSCME, one of the most important trade union cases in recent times. If the five conservative justices on the highest court vote in favor of the anti-union plaintiff, as many expect, they would deal a severe blow to organized labor by giving employees the right to opt-out of paying their share of the costs of collective bargaining even though they benefit from negotiated higher wages and improved conditions.</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">That in turn would give the green light to conservative groups like SPN to step up their efforts to encourage mass resignations of union members. As a clear statement of intent, SPN invited Mark Janus, a child support worker in Illinois who is the named plaintiff at the center of the supreme court case, to speak at its annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, last August.</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">Carrie Conko, SPN’s vice president of communications, said that “workers should be able to decide for themselves if payment of union dues and fees is a good use of their hard-earned money or if their money is better spent elsewhere”. SPN’s aim was not political, rather it was “simply about protecting free speech”.</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">Public-sector unions had created a problem for themselves, Conko said, by leaving some workers to feel they were being used. The Janus case might actually help government unions improve their standing with members as “they will need to prove their worth by providing better representation to earn the voluntary dues”.</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the Guardian documents revealed the extent of secret planning by rightwing groups in advance of the supreme court’s Janus ruling. “These documents make clear that Janus v AFSCME is not a case brought by individuals trying to have a voice, it’s a case brought by wealthy forces to eliminate worker voice and power.”</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">She added that rightwing billionaires such as the Kochs “know working families only have power through their unity as a union, and they will stop at nothing to destroy that. But we have seen unprecedented support for our unions and the opportunities they enable for a better life – when the Janus decision day comes, we will stand united, ready to act and fight back against the forces that want to silence workers.”</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">One of the SPN thinktanks, the <span style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; touch-action: manipulation; cursor: pointer; border-bottom: 0.0625rem solid rgb(220, 220, 220); transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Washington state, has already begun campaigning and fundraising on the back of a Janus ruling that goes against the unions. It has been mailing out to supporters in which it says “we are gearing up in a major way to launch an extensive education and activation campaign to take full advantage of a favorable ruling in this historic case”.</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">The foundation goes on to say: “The consequences of a favorable ruling are huge. Imagine tens, even hundreds, of millions of dollars currently used to push damaging leftwing causes and candidates … vanishing.”</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">In 2016 the Freedom Foundation ran a <span style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; touch-action: manipulation; cursor: pointer; border-bottom: 0.0625rem solid rgb(220, 220, 220); transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">brazen campaign in Washington and Oregon in which it went knocking on the doors of more than 10,000 childcare and home care workers telling them that under a <span style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; touch-action: manipulation; cursor: pointer; border-bottom: 0.0625rem solid rgb(220, 220, 220); transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">previous US supreme court ruling they could opt out of paying union dues. In <span style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; touch-action: manipulation; cursor: pointer; border-bottom: 0.0625rem solid rgb(220, 220, 220); transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">the document obtained by the Guardian, SPN boasts that the foundation’s operation cost the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in those states $8.8m in lost dues and legal fees.</a><a href="http://xxx">=</a><div class="DocumentPreview-meta" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="DocumentPreview-icon-block" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="http://xxx">Despite some public antagonism over Trump — including flirtations with replacing him as the nominee with Ryan at the Republican National Convention —  the Koch brothers have enjoyed <span style="outline-color: initial; outline-width: initial; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out;">incredible access with his administration. The president’s lawyer, Don McGahn; the president’s chief liaison to Congress, Marc Short; and the president’s counselor, Kellyanne Conway all previously worked for the Koch network before taking their current positions in the White House. Ethics forms reveal that <span style="outline-color: initial; outline-width: initial; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out;">officials across the government, including at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, previously served at Koch think tanks or other Koch groups. Vice President Mike Pence also <span style="outline-color: initial; outline-width: initial; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out;">maintains a very close relationship with the Koch brothers.</a></div></div><div data-reactid="200" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="http://xxx">The Koch brothers are also hoping to fundamentally reshape other aspects of American society, including labor unions and the judiciary.</a><a href="http://xxx">The memo details efforts to weaken the power of labor unions, including a broad attack on private sector labor unions in states controlled by Republicans in 2017. Meanwhile, the memo notes that the Trump administration has shelved a number of Obama-era rules that were viewed as too friendly to workers and labor unions, including the Overtime Rule and the Joint Employer Rule. The latter would have reduced the barriers for workers at franchise businesses, like fast food outlets, to form a union.</a><a href="http://xxx">“Labor reform is not an overnight process; advancing major federal labor reform requires a long-term strategy,” it adds. To that point, the Koch network plans to press forward with the Employee Rights Act, legislation to extend right-to-work laws nationally and set up new barriers for labor activists hoping to form new unions.</a><a href="http://xxx">The memo notes that they believe Justice Anthony Kennedy will soon retire, and the effort to replace him will be “far more contentious” than the effort to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch.</a></div><a href="http://xxx"></a><a href="http://xxx">9/17 busted</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">
</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx"> Hurricane Harvey was still generating devastation -- and countless public workers worked night and day on search and rescue -- a little known ally of the American Legislative Exchange Council was meeting a short distance away planning an attack on public sector workers nationwide. </a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">  </a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">The $80 million network of state “think tanks” and other right-wing organizations known as the  State Policy Network (SPN) held a closed-door confab with Koch operatives, corporate donors, and ALEC staff to coordinate an assault on public sector unions to advance political control by right wing politicians in state houses nationwide. </a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">  </a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">While these groups say they are advancing “worker rights,” documents obtained by CMD and featured in the Guardian lay bare their true political agenda. </a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">  </a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx"> “A network of conservative think tanks with outposts in all 50 states has embarked on a ‘breakthrough’ campaign designed to strike a ‘mortal blow’ against the American left. The aim is to ‘defund and defang’ unions representing government employees as the first step towards ensuring the permanent collapse of progressive politics,” wrote the  Guardian. </a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">  </a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx"></a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">You can read the Guardian expose here and access the documents at ExposedbyCMD.org. </a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">https://www.theXXXguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/30/rightwing-alliance-unions-defund-defang</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">long doc no link</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">Rightwing activists across the US have launched a nationwide campaign to undermine progressive politicians by depriving them of a major source of support and funding – public sector unions.</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">
</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">A network of conservative thinktanks with outposts in all 50 states has embarked on a “breakthrough” campaign designed to strike a “mortal blow” against the American left. The aim is to “defund and defang” unions representing government employees as the first step towards ensuring the permanent collapse of progressive politics.</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">
</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">
</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">Bernie Sanders attacks 'greedy' Nissan for waging anti-union campaign</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx"> Read more</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">The campaign carries a powerful echo of the populist creed espoused by Donald Trump. The president was propelled into the White House last November after unexpected victories in several previously Democratic rust belt states including Michigan and Wisconsin, both of which have endured withering attacks on trade unions in recent years.</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">The new assault is being spearheaded by the State Policy Network (SPN), an alliance of 66 state-based thinktanks, or “ideas factories” as it calls them, with a combined annual budget of $80m. As suggested by its slogan – “State solutions. National impact” – the group outlines an aim to construct a rightwing hegemony throughout the US, working from the bottom up.</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url(" /><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">To do that, it first has to sweep aside the public sector unions and their historic ties to Democratic and progressive politicians. In a 10-page fundraising letter, part of a set of documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy and published by the Guardian today for the first time, SPN sets out its mission in frank language that does not disguise its partisan ambitions.</a><a href="http://xxx">[doc]</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">The author of the letter, SPN’s president and CEO Tracie Sharp,describes the $8m “breakthrough” campaign as a “once-in-a-lifetime chance to reverse the failed policies of the American left … We are primed, right now, to deliver the mortal blow to permanently break its stranglehold on our society.”</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url(" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="http://xxx">Sharp pitches the battle against unions as the start of a war on progressive politics, with the ultimate goal of winning elections for rightwing candidates. “Big government unions are the biggest sources of funding and political muscle for the left – and a major obstacle to the ability of voters to reclaim control of American government. To win the battle for freedom, we must take the fight to the unions, state by state.”</a><a href="http://xxx">The target of such union-bashing, she openly admits, is to “defund and defang one of our freedom movement’s most powerful opponents, the government unions”. The long-term objective is to “deal a major blow to the left’s ability to control government at the state and national levels. I’m talking about permanently depriving the left from access to millions of dollars in dues extracted from unwilling union members every election cycle” (emphasis in original).</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">SPN will be discussing its anti-union and anti-left agenda on Wednesday at its annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas. Its morning session will look at how “labor reform” can be pursued with renewed vigor under the Trump administration.</a><a href="http://xxx">The discussion will feature some of the key architects of SPN’s political strategy, including Vincent Vernuccio who pioneered anti-union legislation in Michigan, and Tom McCabe of the Freedom Foundation, who has sent his foot soldiers on an aggressive offensive against collective bargaining in the US north-west.</a><a href="http://xxx">Mary Bottari, deputy director of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) which tracks the rise of rightwing groups in America, said the fundraising letter and other SPN documents published by the Guardian cast light on the conservative game plan. “It’s very rare to catch conservative thinktanks talking so openly and blatantly about their long-term political aims. These documents reveal to us that SPN’s goals are entirely political – they have no concern for workers or union members, their only goal is winning elections to advance rightwing causes.”</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">Bottari added: “An $80m campaign to ‘defund and defang’ public sector unions is remarkable, both in its size and in its ambition.”</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">Public sector unions have come under growing fire from conservatives in recent years. While unions operating in private companies have been diminished since the 1980s – their membership plummeting from about 17% of the workforce in 1983 to just 6% today – their equivalents in the public sector such as teacher, local government, police and fire officer unions have remained relatively stable, at around 35%.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">But in 2010, Scott Walker, the newly elected governor of Wisconsin, opened a new front in America’s partisan war when he passed Act 10, stripping public sector unions of the power to bargain collectively and forcing them to re-certify themselves every year with electoral backing from more than 50% of all workers, not just those voting. The move has spawned a rash of imitations across Republican-controlled states, with Iowa and Indiana passing similar laws, and a further 15 states introducing legislation – encouraged by SPN, which has framed a model bill to make it easier for Republican legislators to adopt the changes.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">A total of 28 states have also passed “right to work” laws that allow workers in private companies to refuse to join unions despite enjoying the fruits of collective bargaining.</a><a href="http://xxx">Though the long-term consequences of such union restrictions have yet to be fully understood, there are early indications that the impact could be profound even at presidential level. Since Act 10 came into effect in Wisconsin, public sector union membership has slumped by 40%, or about 136,000 people.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">How a father's tragedy moved the Teamsters to fight an opioid distributor]</a><a href="http://xxx">Trump won Wisconsin last November by just 23,000 votes.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">A similar pattern can be seen in Michigan where unions have shrunk steadily since a right-to-work law came into effect in 2013, with a loss of at least 30,000 members. Trump took Michigan, to the shock of Hillary Clinton and her supporters, by just 11,000 votes.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">When asked whether anti-union laws in Michigan and Wisconsin had affected the outcome of the presidential race, Matt Patterson of the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform said: “No question in my mind. Hard to fight when your bazooka’s been replaced by a squirt gun.”</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">Carrie Conko, SPN’s vice president of communications, said that the network does not involve itself in political campaigns. “Labor reform is an issue where SPN has been clearly on the side of workers who are against forced unionization and the use of their hard-earned wages to support causes they don’t believe in. If workers choose to support their unions agenda that is fine – but, right now, in many states they don’t have a choice or a voice.”</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">Conko’s statement echoed the language used in an SPN “toolkit”, also published here for the first time, that advises Republican policymakers on how to campaign for anti-union legislation. “Be pro-worker, not anti-union,” the pamphlet says. “Frame union reform from the point of view of the members and how the reform helps them have a greater voice in their union. Don’t rant against unions. We’ve all been frustrated by the actions of public sector unions to block pro-freedom reforms, but publicly venting these feelings is counterproductive.”</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">SPN’s disclosure of its political and partisan objectives in the new documents could arouse the interest of investigators from the Internal Revenue Service. The group is constituted as a 501(c)(3) organisation, which renders it exempt as a charity from taxation.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">Marc Owens, a partner with Loeb & Loeb who worked as an IRS lawyer specializing in charitable tax exemptions, said that the provision was designed for charitable purposes, not for lobbying against public sector unions or for activities to influence the outcome of elections. “A charity that does those things is not engaging in charitable activities and that puts its tax exempt status in jeopardy,” he said.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">Conko told the Guardian that SPN takes “great care to be fully in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations”.</a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx"><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url(" /></a><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><span class="a-icon a-icon-popover" https="https" m.media-amazon.com="m.media-amazon.com" images="images" g="G" auiclients="AUIClients" amazonuibasecss-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.v2.png="AmazonUIBaseCSS-sprite_1x-4424f4f4dd8ca9a98584abfc3b833ba8f12eb36a.V2.png" background-size="background-size" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" text-top="text-top" margin="margin" em="em" width="width" height="height" background-position="background-position" opacity="opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url("><a href="http://xxx">=</a><a href="http://xxx"></a><a href="http://xxx">They are back! The ALEC, Koch, State Policy Network crowd and their funders are behind the latest legal attack on unions Janus v. AFSCME, which is being heard today in the U.S. Supreme Court.      As we predicted, they are outside the court holding signs saying “Stand with Workers,” but this crowd of fraudsters is against prevailing wages, living wages and even state minimum wages. They battle quality health care and paid sick days, they want to voucherize and corporatize our public schools. They are not the friends of workers but of the deep pocketed special interests who are working to rig the economy in their favor.      “This form of ultra-conservatism is geared toward making sure that there is no organized power outside of big business and wealthy, organized donors,” says a Harvard professor of government and sociology in our special report for <span style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; outline-color: initial; outline-width: initial;">In These Times. </a><a href="http://xxx">mary b</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">http://inthesetimes.com/features/janus_supreme_court_unions_investigation.html</a><a href="http://xxx">THE ROMAN GOD JANUS WAS KNOWN FOR HAVING TWO FACES. It is a fitting name for the U.S. Supreme Court case scheduled for oral arguments February 26, Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, that could deal a devastating blow to public-sector unions and workers nationwide.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">In the past decade, a small group of people working for deep-pocketed corporate interests, conservative think tanks and right-wing foundations have bankrolled a series of lawsuits to end what they call “forced unionization.” They say they fight in the name of “free speech,” “worker rights” and “workplace freedom.” In briefs before the court, they present their public face: carefully selected and appealing plaintiffs like Illinois child-support worker Mark Janus and California schoolteacher Rebecca Friedrichs. The language they use is relentlessly pro-worker. </a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">From the March 2018 issue</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">Behind closed doors, a different face is revealed. Those same people cheer “defunding” and “bankrupting” unions to deal a “mortal blow” to progressive politics in America.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">A key director of this charade is the State Policy Network (SPN), whose game plan is revealed in a union-busting toolkit uncovered by the Center for Media and Democracy. The first rule of the national network of right-wing think tanks that are pushing to dismantle unions? “Rule #1: Be pro-worker, not anti-union. … Don’t rant against unions. … Using phrases like ‘union fat cats’ and ‘corrupt union bosses’ and other negative language reduces support for reform.”</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">And yet, SPN groups have systematically spearheaded attacks on unions and workers in statehouses and courtrooms nationwide. The Janus case, and its precursor, Friedrichs v. the California Teachers Association, represent SPN’s most audacious move yet, an effort to kneecap the unions of public-sector workers—including teachers, nurses, sanitation workers, park rangers, prison guards, police and firefighters—in a single blow.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">“TRUST TEACHERS!”</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">On Jan. 11, 2016, about 100 people bundled in coats and mittens mill around the Supreme Court steps. They hold signs with little red apples that read, “Trust Teachers!” and “Respect Teachers? Then respect their First Amendment rights!”</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">From a distance, it looks like a teachers’ rally. A closer look reveals an odd array of participants. Grover Norquist, the man who wanted to drown government in a bathtub, cheerfully declines an interview as he breezes by. Daniel Turner, who worked for the education reform task force of the far-right American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), waves a “Trust Teachers!” sign from behind the podium. Near him stands Chantal Lovell from SPN’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a group credited with jamming a union-busting bill through Michigan’s lame duck legislature in 2012. A representative from SPN’s Arizona-based Goldwater Institute is present, as is a fellow from the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity (who also declines an interview).</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">The night before, SPN organized a dinner for representatives of its member groups who had flown in for the oral arguments. Among its members were the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in Friedrichs and 12 groups that had filed supporting amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs. The suit was filed on behalf of Rebecca Friedrichs and nine other California teachers who wanted to stop paying their “fair share fees”—money paid by non-union members to cover the costs of collective bargaining.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">On the courthouse steps, a woman with a bullhorn tries to rev up the audience. “Who do we trust?” she asks. “Teachers,” murmurs the crowd. “Who?” she yells. “Teachers!” Now they have the hang of it. The podium is emblazoned with the hashtag #IStandWithRebecca.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">Friedrichs deadlocked the Court 4-4 after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, leaving the status quo of union fees in place. Expect a repeat of this courthouse scene February 26. SPN is once again rallying the troops and a #StandWithMark hashtag is already circulating.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">Janus has its origins in a lawsuit filed by billionaire Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner. Rauner issued an executive order in 2015 instructing Illinois to stop collecting fair share fees. At the same time, he filed a federal lawsuit to speed the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court. Two SPN member groups—the Illinois Policy Institute and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation—joined the suit with plaintiff Mark Janus, who makes a much more sympathetic poster child than a billionaire venture capitalist. When Rauner was found not to have standing, Janus was allowed to pursue the suit.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">Janus is a child-support worker employed by the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services. “The union voice is not my voice,” Janus wrote in a Chicago Tribune op-ed. “The union’s fight is not my fight. But a piece of my paycheck every week still goes to the union.” His lawyers will argue before the Court that if “money is speech” in a post-Citizens United world, then fair share fees are unconstitutional “forced” or “coerced” speech.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">The Court decided 40 years ago in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that fair share fees are constitutional. The decision tried to balance the right of a union to exist against the rights of any workers who don’t want to be members. Since unions must represent all employees in contract negotiations, the Court held that nonmembers could be assessed a fee to cover the costs associated with this representation. But, the Court said, nonmembers could not be charged for costs associated with political activities. Today, fair share fees and political fees are separated. The Abood decision is not a good enough compromise for the Janus lawyers, who argue everything a public-sector union does is political.</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx"></a><a href="http://xxx">Overturning Abood would be “a right to a free ride, nothing more, nothing less,” says Joel Rogers, a University of Wisconsin law professor. “There’s no question that it’ll have a devastating financial effect on public-sector unions, at least in the short tem.”</a><a href="http://xxx">...</a><a href="http://xxx">=</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/25/business/economy/labor-court-conservatives.html?smid=tw-share</a><a href="http://xxx">Behind a Key Anti-Labor Case, a Web of Conservative Donors</a><a href="http://xxx">By NOAM SCHEIBER and KENNETH P. VOGELFEB. 25, 2018</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">In the summer of 2016, government workers in Illinois received a mailing that offered them tips on how to leave their union. By paying a so-called fair-share fee instead of standard union dues, the mailing said, they would no longer be bound by union rules and could not be punished for refusing to strike.</a><a href="http://xxx">“To put it simply,” the document concluded, “becoming a fair-share payer means you will have more freedom.”</a><a href="http://xxx">The mailing, sent by a group called the Illinois Policy Institute, may have seemed like disinterested advice. In fact, it was one prong of a broader campaign against public-sector unions, backed by some of the biggest donors on the right. It is an effort that will reach its apex on Monday, when the Supreme Court hears a case that could cripple public-sector unions by allowing the workers they represent to avoid paying fees.</a><a href="http://xxx">One of the institute’s largest donors is a foundation bankrolled by Richard Uihlein, an Illinois industrialist who has spent millions backing Republican candidates in recent years, including Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. Bruce Rauner of Illinois.</a><a href="http://xxx">Tax filings show that Mr. Uihlein has also been the chief financial backer in recent years of the Liberty Justice Center, which represents Mark Janus, the Illinois child support specialist who is the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case.</a><a href="http://xxx">And Mr. Uihlein has donated well over $1 million over the years to groups like the Federalist Society that work to orient the judiciary in a more conservative direction. They have helped produce a Supreme Court that most experts expect to rule in Mr. Janus’s favor.</a><a href="http://xxx">The case illustrates the cohesiveness with which conservative philanthropists have taken on unions in recent decades. “It’s a mistake to look at the Janus case and earlier litigation as isolated episodes,” said Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a Columbia University political scientist who studies conservative groups. “It’s part of a multipronged, multitiered strategy.”</a><a href="http://xxx">In doing so, these donors have not just brought labor to the brink of crisis but threatened the Democratic Party as well.</a><a href="http://xxx">Amid changes in the campaign finance landscape and the decline of private-sector unions, the party and its candidates have increasingly relied on major public unions for funding, including hundreds of millions of dollars in direct and indirect spending during the 2016 presidential cycle. Those unions include the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, whose Council 31 is the defendant in the Janus case.</a><a href="http://xxx">Mark Janus, the plaintiff in a Supreme Court case challenging mandatory union fees, at the Illinois State Capitol. Credit Whitney Curtis for The New York Times</a><a href="http://xxx">A recent paper by Mr. Hertel-Fernandez and two colleagues may foretell what Democrats can expect if Mr. Uihlein and his fellow philanthropists succeed. It found that the Democratic share of the presidential vote dropped by an average of 3.5 percentage points after the passage of so-called right-to-work laws allowing employees to avoid paying union fees. That is larger than Democrats’ margin of defeat in several states that could have reversed their last three presidential losses.</a><a href="http://xxx">And that is clearly on the mind of Republicans. In a recent interview, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, acknowledged the potential of the Janus case to hurt Democratic fund-raising for the coming midterm elections. “In states where they got rid of the automatic deduction and employees figured they could keep their own money, they did,” he said. “So it could have an impact.”</a><a href="http://xxx">Conservative groups aren’t alone in locking arms to advance an ideological agenda. For decades, liberal donors and foundations, sometimes working together through coalitions like the Democracy Alliance, have promoted liberal goals in a variety of ways. Some backed groups, like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, that used litigation to move American society leftward.</a><a href="http://xxx">But the extent of the coordination on the right often dwarfs liberal efforts. Especially on the state level, conservative groups are “doing different things, mobilizing different constituencies,” Mr. Hertel-Fernandez said. “But they’re all working with one another. You don’t see the same thing on the left.”</a><a href="http://xxx">As the percentage of unionized private-sector workers has collapsed in recent decades, public-sector unions, which have held steady in the mid-30s since the early 1980s, have increasingly become a target.</a><a href="http://xxx">Conservatives chafe at the unions’ political influence, which they believe not only props up the Democratic Party but also drives up government spending and skews public policy on issues like education.</a><a href="http://xxx">In 2011, Wisconsin rolled back the right of most public unions to bargain over anything other than wages and eliminated the requirement that nonmembers pay fees. The portion of unionized public-sector workers in the state plummeted from half to just over one-quarter within five years.</a><a href="http://xxx">In seeking to produce similar results nationally, conservative donors have created a symbiosis between groups aiming to overturn Supreme Court precedent favorable to unions and groups that take advantage of those rulings to drain unions of members.</a><a href="http://xxx">The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Wisconsin, which had over $800 million in assets in 2016, has funded both kinds of organizations.</a><a href="http://xxx">In a 2014 case brought by a group that had received more than $1 million in contributions from the Bradley Foundation, the Supreme Court ruled that home-care aides and other “partial-public employees” paid through Medicaid could not be forced to pay fair-share fees if they left their unions. Unions say these fees, typically about 80 percent of standard dues, are necessary to compensate them for representing nonmembers in bargaining and grievance proceedings.</a><a href="http://xxx">A fund-raising solicitation from the Illinois Policy Institute, one of several groups that have fueled efforts to weaken public-sector unions.</a><a href="http://xxx">Then in 2016, the court heard a case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, that could have struck down fair-share fee requirements for all public employees represented by unions in more than 20 states, including California, Illinois and New York. The case was brought by a group that has received millions of dollars from the Bradley Foundation.</a><a href="http://xxx">During 2015 and 2016, the foundation also substantially increased its contributions, totaling well over $1 million, to groups like the Independence Institute of Colorado and the Freedom Foundation of Washington State. Those groups have used such tools as direct mail, phone calls and door knocking to persuade public-sector workers to give up union membership.</a><a href="http://xxx">Richard Graber, the chief executive of the Bradley Foundation, said the foundation avoided short-term tactical considerations in its giving. But he acknowledged that the increase was driven partly by the recent Supreme Court developments, which promised to make such opt-out campaigns more compelling for union members. (Some conservative groups are currently raising money for even more ambitious opt-out campaigns to take advantage of a favorable ruling this year.)</a><a href="http://xxx">Our columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin and his Times colleagues help you make sense of major business and policy headlines — and the power-brokers who shape them.</a><a href="http://xxx">In February 2016, the month after the Supreme Court heard the Friedrichs case, Justice Antonin Scalia died, depriving conservatives of a decisive fifth vote to strike down mandatory union fees. That gave the Liberty Justice Center, backed by Mr. Uihlein, a chance to try again.</a><a href="http://xxx">Few philanthropists have funded a more sweeping assault on labor than Mr. Uihlein, who with his wife, Elizabeth, founded a Wisconsin-based shipping supply company called Uline.</a><a href="http://xxx">Mr. Uihlein is an ardent conservative who considers many Republican office holders too moderate on fiscal and social issues, according to those who know him.</a><a href="http://xxx">“It’s not just politics for him,” said his friend Leonard A. Leo, the Federalist Society executive vice president, who declined to offer specifics on Mr. Uihlein’s views. “I think he is philosophically attuned to conservative ideas,” added Mr. Leo, whom the Trump White House enlisted to shepherd the Supreme Court nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch, Justice Scalia’s successor.</a><a href="http://xxx">The Uihleins have spent tens of millions of dollars over the past decade supporting Republican candidates and committees. That includes contributions to super PACs backing the 2016 presidential campaigns of Mr. Walker and Mr. Cruz, and at least $250,000 to help Mr. Walker survive a 2012 recall election. (Mr. Uihlein did not respond to a request for comment.)</a><a href="http://xxx">The Uihleins appear to be preoccupied with state employee pensions and the unions that negotiate them.</a><a href="http://xxx">“Bruce is the only one in the race who isn’t beholden to public-sector unions,” Mr. Uihlein said of Mr. Rauner, the year before his 2014 election as Illinois governor, in an interview with Crain’s Business Chicago. The Uihleins gave more than $2.5 million to his campaign.</a><a href="http://xxx">Justice Neil Gorsuch speaking in November before the Federalist Society, which seeks a judiciary aligned with conservative values. He filled the Supreme Court seat vacated by Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016. Credit Sait Serkan Gurbuz/Associated Press</a><a href="http://xxx">Mr. Rauner has been a major ally in the fight against public-sector unions. Shortly after taking office in 2015, he challenged the constitutionality of mandatory union fees in federal court.</a><a href="http://xxx">By the time a judge ruled that Mr. Rauner lacked standing for his lawsuit, the Illinois Policy Institute, which drew more than one-third of its $5.8 million in revenue that year from Mr. Uihlein’s foundation, had found a viable plaintiff to replace him: Mark Janus. The Liberty Justice Center and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which Mr. Uihlein also contributes to, represented Mr. Janus in court.</a><a href="http://xxx">Since then, the policy institute has sought to persuade state employees to leave their union through its mailing campaign. It said it had obtained employees’ names through Freedom of Information Act requests.</a><a href="http://xxx">Mr. Rauner’s administration has amplified the institute’s message, and vice versa. In an August 2016 email to state workers, the administration highlighted a benefit of giving up union membership and urged workers to visit a website that would help them do so. The policy institute soon promoted the same website and provided similar guidance in its mailings to state workers.</a><a href="http://xxx">Mr. Uihlein’s foundation has supplemented these efforts by supporting a nonprofit called Think Freely Media, which uses storytelling techniques to champion free-market ideas, including right-to-work laws. The Uihlein foundation contributed more than $1.5 million to Think Freely from 2014 to 2016, the last year for which tax records are available.</a><a href="http://xxx">At the center of this network is a longtime conservative activist named John Tillman, who serves as the chief executive of the Illinois Policy Institute as well as the chairman of the Liberty Justice Center and Think Freely Media.</a><a href="http://xxx">In an interview, Mr. Tillman, who managed a call center earlier in his career and talked up his “marketing-centric approach” to promoting free enterprise, said the institute is fighting the enormous power of union leaders but is not anti-union per se.</a><a href="http://xxx">“In the late 1800s, early 20th century, business owners had all the power, and workers had very little power,” he said. “Unions and collective bargaining emerged as a way to level the playing field. I think it was an amazing story of success.”</a><a href="http://xxx">But in other contexts, Mr. Tillman has been less conciliatory.</a><a href="http://xxx">In a fund-raising solicitation by the policy institute in December, Mr. Tillman claimed credit for helping more than 2,600 workers leave their union, resulting in a loss of $1.2 million in union revenue.</a><a href="http://xxx">“It’s time for Illinois to throw off the shackles of big labor and big government,” he wrote.</a><a href="http://xxx">“When you and I look around Illinois and see the devastation the union-dominated status quo has inflicted,” he continued, “we simply have no choice.”</a><a href="http://xxx"></a><a href="http://xxx">Follow Noam Scheiber and Kenneth P. Vogel on Twitter: @noamscheiber, @kenvogel</a><a href="http://xxx"></a><a href="http://xxx">will break tie wrong way</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/heres-right-wing-plan-destroy-unions-and-hinder-democratic-fundraisin</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><a href="http://xxx"> Monday, the Supreme Court heard a major case that will substantially weaken public-sector unions and diminish the strength of the Democratic Party.</a><a href="http://xxx">That case is Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, which will determine whether public-sector unions can collect fees from non-union employees. </a><a href="http://xxx">It sounds like a simple and technical issue, but the outcome could change the fate of public-sector unions, the strongest-standing bulwark of labor organizing in a time when many private unions have largely faded.</a><a href="http://xxx">Unions need to be able to enforce fees on non-members because these employees could otherwise reap the benefits of collective bargaining, such as higher payer, job protection, and good working conditions. Without the power to enforce fees on non-members, unions could be substantially weakened because there would be a strong incentive for employees to free-ride and not pay the fees — ultimately undermining the benefits of collective bargaining. </a><a href="http://xxx">Opponents say that forcing non-member to pay union fees violates the First Amendment because unions engage in political speech. However, the court already ruled on those arguments in 1977 in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, coming down in favor the unions. There's no reason for the court to take the issue again. Even many conservative legal analysts disagree with that the court should hear Janus.</a><a href="http://xxx">But the court heard a similar case last year, and it came down 4-4 after Justice Antonin Scalia died. It's widely believed that Scalia would have voted against the unions. Justice Neil Gorsuch is almost certain to follow this path. </a><a href="http://xxx">As the New York Times reports, major conservative donors have backed this aggressive legal attack on public sector unions. And it's not just about labor — it's a political attack to weaken the Democratic Party, which draws substantially on public-sector unions for financial and organizational support. </a><a href="http://xxx">As Eric Segall, a law professor at Georgia State, argues, there's no constitutional basis for the conservative justices to rule against unions and overturn Abood.</a><a href="http://xxx">"If the Justices were to take their prior rules regarding precedent (and federalism interests) seriously, they would not overturn Abood," Segall writes. "[I]t will demonstrate yet again that the values and politics of the Justices trump their alleged commitments to legal principles and the rule of law. Moreover, if the Justices overturn Abood, it will be because Justice Gorsuch, not Judge Garland, now sits on the Court, not because the first amendment forbids states from making the decision to require all public sector employees to financially support the unions that represent their best interests."</a><a href="http://xxx">
</a><div style=""><a href="http://xxx"></a></div><a href="http://xxx"></a><a href="http://xxx">milennial charter teachers // uber?</a><a href="http://xxx">https://www.alternet.org/charter-school-teachers-are-organizing</a><a href="http://xxx">==</a>

<a href="http://xxx">https://www.alternet.org/labor/new-supreme-court-case-could-drastically-drain-unions-resources</a>

<p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; line-height: 32px !important;"><a href="http://xxx">hould Mark Janus prevail in his Supreme Court case, public-sector employees in California and other states who now pay agency fees instead of union dues will be able to  opt out of any payment at all—even though they can still benefit from collective bargaining contracts and turn to the union with grievances, enjoying a free ride that drains union resources.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The ruling would undermine the ability of public-sector unions—about half of U.S. organized labor—to set standards for wage and workplace conditions. The resulting financial pressure will hamper unions from taking lead roles in policy debates on such issues as health care. “The short-term [goal] is to reduce the ability to collect dues,” said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs. “The long-term aim is to weaken collective bargaining.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Anti-union forces, often funded by corporate-backed foundations, have been on the attack for decades. One stunning victory was the 2011 passage of Wisconsin’s Act 10, that state’s “budget repair” bill. Republican Governor Scott Walker, long a vocal enemy of public-sector unions, introduced it to address a $3.6 billion budget shortfall.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Act 10 gutted public-sector union collective bargaining rights, leaving unions unable to negotiate wages—except raises attached to the cost-of-living—along with pensions, work conditions such as hours worked, sick leave and vacations. In other words, all the things that, for many, make it worth paying union dues.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The law also loosened restrictions on local governments’ hiring and wage policies, while allowing wage freezes and requiring higher employee health-care contributions.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Act 10 knee-capped labor as a political force in an historically union state — the first to recognize public-sector unions. By 2014 the once-robust Wisconsin State Employees Union had lost 60 percent of its members; its annual budget dropped from $6 million to $2 million. Then came the defections. In 2013 the nearly 6,000 prison guards staffing Wisconsin’s correctional facilities voted to leave WSEU for the newly-created Wisconsin Association for Correctional Law Enforcement, which cut dues from WSEU’s roughly $36 monthly rate to WACLE’s $18. WACLE now represents approximately 5,900 state security workers.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">“The two major public-sector unions both lost about 80 percent of dues-paying members,” Joel Rogers, a University of Wisconsin, Madison professor of law and sociology, told Capital & Main. Rogers is also the founder of an organization called COWS, touted as “the national high-road strategy center” think tank.  Shrunken union budgets hobbled the ability to operate effectively on policy issues and support labor-friendly candidates. “They are basically nowhere near what they were in terms of political forces,” Rogers said.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Employees whose livelihoods had taken a hit with budget cuts weren’t in a mood to pay dues to a union without collective bargaining power. So they quit—bleeding unions of funds.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">“Which is what it was all about,” said Rogers.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Labor’s post-Act 10 relative absence from the Wisconsin policy arena, Rogers continued, has contributed to “an across the board assault on all public goods, starting with the K-12 system and the university—that was about 1.5 billion worth of cuts—environmental deregulation, the Department of Natural Resources stripped of powers and evacuated of scientists, endless stuff on deregulation [and] corporate liabilities have been reduced–increasing pressure to privatize public goods.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Governor Walker, Rogers added, was backed by donors not widely known outside Wisconsin, but whose political footprint extends far beyond the state. They included Diane Hendricks, who made a fortune in the roofing-supply business. A backer of Scott Walker’s presidential PAC who donated $500,000 to defeat a union-backed recall effort against the governor, she is heard here in a YouTube clip asking Walker to turn Wisconsin into a red state; he replies that the first step is dealing with public-sector bargaining.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">There was also Michael Grebe, a corporate attorney and former Marine, who chaired Walker’s gubernatorial and anti-recall campaigns. He recently retired as CEO of the Bradley Foundation, which from 2001 to 2009 donated nearly as much money to ultra-conservative causes as foundations backed by the Koch Brothers and the Scaife family combined. Efforts aimed at dismantling public infrastructure included: vouchers for private schools and cutbacks in public employee benefits and collective bargaining rights.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">“We’re part of the right-wing movement,” Grebe told the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel. “I don’t think it’s conspiratorial.”</a>

</div>

<p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; line-height: 32px !important;"><a href="http://xxx">The Wisconsin labor organizations that are now managing to hold their ground are those that had cultivated a strong base before Act 10 and are adjusting strategies to reach their members and different constituencies.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Michael Rosen is a past president of American Federation of Teachers Local 212, which represents 1,400 faculty and professional staff. “Strong unions that were very active and had a mobilized membership were able to maintain [their] membership,” Rosen said.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Heather DuBois Bourenane of Wisconsin Public Education Network reflects on her organization’s efforts to organize at parent and teacher house meetings, to ramp up use of Facebook and other digital channels, to pack public state budget meetings and to launch postcard campaigns and write letters to news editors.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">She was a mother with two kids in the school system holding down two part-time university teaching jobs and a third assistantship when Act 10 passed. She had marched against it and now has a sharpened sense of the need to be on guard. “We hope people look at us in Wisconsin and lift us up as lessons learned.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The Golden State boasts the largest number of union members in the country at 2.6 million, with 53 percent represented by public-sector unions. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is one of the two largest; Service Employees International Union is another. Janus victorious would not be nearly as onerous for California as Act 10 was for Wisconsin, as Act 10 effectively extinguished public-sector collective bargaining. Still, Janus would provide a huge anti-labor win.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">“Rough estimates are that within three years, 20 to 40 percent of union members would stop paying dues,” said Fred Ross, a veteran organizer with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245, which represents 2,500 public-sector transit and power workers throughout California. Unions would have to operate with between 20 and 40 percent less revenue, he added.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Unions are the largest source of campaign contributions to Democratic Party legislators—many of whom support such union-backed measures as worker protections, the $15 hourly minimum wage and immigrant-rights protections, said Steve Barkan, a Los Angeles-area campaign consultant. Janus “tips the scales further toward corporate interests,” he said.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Public-sector unions were under attack in California before Janus. Labor activists like Ross have been organizing for months, some for years, to counter its potential effects. Ross’ local has developed a targeted strategy based on a volunteer organizing committee. Some 250 union member organizers are charged with building relationships with 10 other members to explain the union’s role in winning benefits and protecting rights—and signing them up as voluntary dues-paying members.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Unions for home-care workers — those paid from public funds to work in private homes caring for low-income infirm persons — got hit hard by the 2013 Harris v. Quinn decision that has similarities to the Janus case. The 5-4 Supreme Court ruling said home health-care workers didn’t have to support their unions financially.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">“Harris is our Janus,” said Doug Moore, executive director of the United Domestic Workers Homecare Providers Union (UDW) and an AFSCME International Vice President. Before the Harris decision, “We had 68,000 [people] ” Moore said. “We lost 20,000 [fees-paying non-members] overnight” after the decision came down.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">As the Harris decision approached, the union went into high-gear to connect with its base. Most of the millions of homecare workers in the U.S. are women of color; about one-quarter live below the poverty line and more than half need public assistance to get by.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The UDW created focus groups that discovered the home-care workers’ main concern was being able to obtain more hours for severely infirm clients like those with Alzheimer’s. Staff expanded existing efforts at In-Home Supportive Services worker orientation sessions in 21 counties around the state to make presentations. There were house visits, efforts to match Facebook profiles to email, a button on the website to sign up, going paperless and doing sign-ups via tablet—anything that would engage and listen to members, and convey the value of the union. There are now 72,000 dues-paying members — approaching double the UDW’s pre-Harris level.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The same story applied to SEIU Local 2015, which also represents public-sector home-care workers. Harris threatened Local 2015’s voluntary membership rates. The union began to look at ZIP codes—connecting homecare workers that live within blocks of one another but would never meet on the job. Facebook and Twitter helped. Membership increased by 48 percent, said Kim Evon, a Local 2015 vice-president. “Our demographic tends to be 70 percent women of color—and the average age is 55. We make a lot of assumptions that they are not plugged in but they are. Mail is that thing that piles up and gets stuck in the circulars from Vons.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">In a September organizing blitz, 16 different Southern California unions approached adjunct faculty at East Los Angeles College to join the California Federation of Teachers; meanwhile, SEIU 99, which organizes non-professional campus workers, informed child care providers of the benefits of belonging to a union. Private-sector janitors and security guards and other workers visited public-sector workers who are going to be impacted by Janus.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Alfonso Garcia was one of them. A union member since 1987, Garcia is currently an organizer for United Steelworkers Local 675, and has talked to part-time teachers, childcare providers and homecare workers in their homes to explain what a union does—about benefits, job security and meeting with management. “One voice, that’s just one person,” he said. “One thousand—that’s a better voice. The union gives us a voice.”</a>

<div style=""><a href="http://xxx">https://www.alternet.org/devos-vision-beyond-privatizing-education</a></div>

</a></div>

<div style=""><a href="http://xxx">If  Betsy DeVos enjoys the occasional quaff of champagne on her private jet, the recent news that the Supreme Court is poised to deliver a knock-out blow to public sector unions presented a reason to celebrate. The announcement was made just hours before DeVos alit in Harvard Square last week, where she was the star attraction at a school choice conference. At Harvard’s Kennedy School, DeVos was met by one of the largest protests she has encountered to date: an all-ages demonstration vs just about everything Trump’s Secretary of Education has said and done during the past seven months. Inside, the event was tense, even hostile—another rocky outing in a tenure replete with them. Or at least that is the conventional wisdom. </a></div>

</a></div>

<a href="http://xxx">Turning red</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The latest Supreme Court case to take aim at the unions, Janus vs AFSCME Council 31, began two years ago with a suit filed by yet another right-wing billionaire: Illinois’ Bruce Rauner. While it is framed by conservatives as a case about individual rights and freedom, the aptly named “Janus” is about politics and power. Public sector unions, virtually the only ones left, provide the bank and the foot soldiers that get Democrats elected. At their best, they’ve spearheaded progressive causes that go far beyond the interests of their members. In Massachusetts, the teachers unions have been the driving force behind successful campaigns for a minimum wage hike, paid sick time for all workers, and are now pushing a tax on millionaires. The unions are also virtually the last organized defense of what’s left of our safety net—Social Security and Medicare; the right wants those next.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Just days before DeVos appeared at Harvard, she was back in Michigan, taking what was essentially a victory lap. She exhorted the crowd at a conservative gathering on Mackinac Island to pat themselves on the back for the Mitten State’s having gone Republican in the 2016 Presidential election—the first time since 1988. “We in Michigan have a lot to be proud of, but nothing more than that,” DeVos said. The story of just how the DeVos’ pulled off the feat of turning Michigan red is long and ugly, involving mountains of cash, the steady erosion of representative democracy, and a decades-long effort to dismember the state’s once powerful teachers union: the Michigan Education Association.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Michigan went right-to-work in 2012, ushered into the former cradle of industrial unionism via the DeVos’ trademark combo of political arm twisting and largesse. Another DeVos-inspired law made it illegal for employers, including school districts, to process union dues, while simultaneously making it easier for corporations to deduct PAC money from employee paychecks. This summer the DeVos’ succeeded in driving a final nail into the MEA’s coffin: the GOP-controlled legislature essentially eliminating pensions, among the last tangible benefits that teachers in Michigan receive from their unions. The union leaders I spoke to when I traveled through the state reporting on DeVos’ legacy were candid about the increasingly precarious state of their organizations. But far worse lies ahead. The demise of retirement benefits means that new teachers have little incentive to join the unions; the shrinking terrain of collective bargaining gives veteran teachers little reason to remain in them.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Dark money days</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The specter of Harvard students, standing in silent protest during DeVos’ talk was a powerful one; the banner declaring “Our Students Are Not 4 Sale” a blunt rejoinder to a vision in which schools are akin to food trucks. But the sign reading simply “Dark Money” may best have captured DeVos’ ethos, her family’s M.O., indeed her very path to the Trump cabinet.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The sign was actually a reference to a current dark money controversy simmering in Massachusetts, where the chair of the Massachusetts Board of Education, Paul Sagan secretly chipped in $500K from his own deep pockets to last year’s ill-fated campaign to expand the number of charter schools in the state. (Sagan’s defense was that he didn’t want to be perceived as politicizing the issue). The organization that bundled the contributions of Sagan and an array of out-of-state billionaires was later spanked with the largest campaign finance fine in Massachusetts history, a ruling that is now being touted as a potential gamechanger for states that are awash in untraceable cash.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Protesters carried signs demanding that both DeVos and Sagan be "dumped," but only the latter was tarred with the dark money brush. Even among DeVos' detractors, her role in ushering in our new era of dark money has gone largely unheralded. Campaign workers gathering signatures among the demonstrators for a ballot measure that would reduce the influence of money in politics, had no idea, for example, that DeVos herself was a driving force behind Citizens United. But as Jane Mayer describes in Dark Money, removing any restrictions on political spending has been central to the family’s mission, dating back decades.Long before Betsy DeVos was railing against the “red tape” that stifles public schools, she and her clan were seeking to free the campaign finance system from the burdensome regulations limiting the size of the checks they could write and their influence.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The family funded one long-shot legal challenge after another targeting various campaign finance laws. In 1997, DeVos became a founding board member at the James Madison Center for Free Speech, an organization that had as its goal ending all legal restrictions on money in politics. “Soft money,” DeVos wrote in a column for the Capitol Hill magazine Roll Call, was just “hard earned American dollars that Big Brother has yet to find a way to control.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">That the balance of power has shifted from parties to a handful of outrageously wealthy zealots, “a tiny, atypical minority of the population,” as Mayer described, is now undeniable. See for example, a recent New York Times storyabout the coming battle of the billionaires, in this case Mercer vs. Koch, over whose grim libertarian vision of the future will be imposed upon the rest of us. Unions are among the last brake on this transfer of power—now they’re under existential threat.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">DeVos lite</a>

<a href="http://xxx">A recent poll found that DeVos remains the most disliked official in Trump’s cabinet—not an easy feat to pull off in a gallery of rogues. The depths of her unpopularity are due, not to to the fact that liberals and progressives hate her harder but because her divisiveness crosses partisan lines. When I traveled to Van Wert, OH this spring to take in the spectacle of a joint school visit by DeVos and the American Federation of Teachers’ Randi Weingarten, I encountered one Trump supporter after another who still liked their guy, even his other cabinet members, but not DeVos. Her single issue, using taxpayer dollars to send kids to private religious schools, has never been popular with voters, and her Margaret Thatcher “there is no school system” line makes little sense in places like Van Wert, where local schools play an outsized role in binding communities together.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">After seven months on the job, DeVos may finally be shrugging off the “nitwit” rep she earned during her disastrous confirmation hearings. DeVos’ Title IX speech at George Mason was sophisticated and skillful, winning plaudits, even from critics. At the Harvard protest, I spotted but a single reference to grizzly bears, on a sign that lay abandoned on the sidewalk. As for the Secretary herself, she gives every indication of being quite pleased with the progress she’s making, and why shouldn’t she be? “Hasten slowly,” is how DeVos described her family’s motto in a recent interview. DeVos’ own family and the one she married into, have sought to impose their vision of a country free of unions and dependence on government, including “government schools,” for two generations. Now, after decades of slow hastening, they’re almost there.In other words, this should be fertile territory for Democrats. But the coming decimation of public sector unions also means that the Democrats will be more dependent than ever on corporate money, especially from the financial sector. Accept the growing influence of the party’s biggest donors, comprised of Wall Streeters, hedge funders and Silicon Valley elites, and you also get their cramped and narrow vision of what is possible. And the moneyed influencers within the Democratic Party share a vision of education—personalized, privatized, union free—that’s increasingly difficult to distinguish from the one DeVos espouses

...

;HB 4003, the Michigan “Right-to-Work Act” that has provoked mass demonstrations in Lansing and other Michigan communities.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Section after section, line after line, of the Michigan legislation mirrors the ALEC model legislation, as revealed by the <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">“ALEC Exposed” project. “The legislation is straight out of the Koch-funded ALEC playbook,” <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">explains Brendan Fischer, the staff counsel with the Center for Media and Democracy. At some points, the Michigan lawmakers shifted words, from “resign or refrain from…a labor organization” in the ALEC model legislation to “refrain or resign from…a labor organization” in one of the two Michigan bills.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">At other points, the Michigan Republicans <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">simply lifted whole sections verbatim, outlining how workers who get the advantage of union representation will not have “to pay any dues, fees, assessments or other charges, of any kind or amount” to a labor organization.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The willingness of legislators in Michigan and, it should be noted, other states to simply take marching orders from ALEC is troubling enough.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">But even more troubling is the reason why corporations and politicians in states where the middle class was forged by organized labor agree on the “need” to advance anti-labor legislation.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">This is not about economic development, growth or job creation. And it is certainly <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">not about “freedom,” as Michigan Governor Rick Snyder claims.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">This is about <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">warping democracy so that corporations have a consistent upper hand, with the result being that those politicians who are willing to do the bidding of corporations and wealthy donors are more likely to prevail. In this sense, the best way to understand the recent rush to enact anti-labor legislation is as part of the same initiative that has produced <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">restrictive Voter ID laws, schemes to limit early voting and proposals to eliminate same-day registration.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">What distinguishes the anti-labor initiatives is that they do not explicitly seek to make voting more difficult. They seek to make it harder for groups that seek high turnout to get voters motivated, to get voters organized and to get them to the polls.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Ultimately, however, the end result of the assault on labor rights is the same as a direct assault on voting rights: a diminished democracy.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Democracy is, of course, about more than elections. And that’s where the anti-union push becomes even more significant. It seeks to narrow the discourse by weakening groups that offer an alternative to a Wall Street–dictated future for communities, states and the nation.

...Southern states enacted their laws restricting labor organizing and political engagement decades ago, at a time when legislators and governors in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and other bastions of segregation feared that integrated unions would unite white workers and African-American workers on the side of social improvement. <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">That created barriers to the labor movement in the South at a time when it was still growing in much of the country.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Now, however, the anti-labor push has come north.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">There is a reason ALEC and its corporate sponsors want to undermine unions.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">In states such as Michigan, and Wisconsin, and Ohio, and Indiana, organized labor provides a political counterbalance to corporations. Unions cannot and do not match the spending on elections by wealthy donors and corporations. But the willingness of unions to commit financial and human resources to political fights makes a huge difference at election time in states where the labor movement has a significant presence. The 2012 election results—particularly the <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">big wins for President Obama and Democratic Senate candidates in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—point to the connection.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">This is not, however, simply about Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives. Among the <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">Michigan legislators who opposed the latest attack on union rights were six state House Republicans. Unions have long traditions of aiding Republicans, and even social conservatives, who have proven to be allies of working people.Prominent conservatives once opposed “right to work” laws, <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">as <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">Ronald Reagan did at the start of his political career, writing as he launched his 1966 California gubernatorial race: “I also was a leader of our [Screen Actors] Guild in the fight in 1958 against the [California] right-to-work bill. I am still opposed to right-to-work.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Now, for the most part, conservatives have cast their lot with corporations. And the demand of corporations, particularly those engaged in the ALEC project, is that politicians who want to earn the favor of corporations and wealthy donors such as Charles and David Koch or Michigan right-wingers <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">Dick and Betsy DeVos must advance anti-labor legislation.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Anti-labor laws in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan—and the attempts to do so in states such as New Hampshire—have been <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">advanced by political figures with ALEC ties. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is an ALEC alumnus, as is Ohio Governor John Kasich. Among the key sponsors of the Michigan law that Governor Snyder signed today was <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">state Senator <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">Dave Hildenbrand, a Republican who famously paid his ALEC dues with taxpayer funds.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Those political figures are determined to limit the ability of unions to engage in political activity on behalf or working families, communities, public services and public education.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Why? By making it harder for unions to organize and to represent workers, “right to work” laws make it easier for corporations to get their political allies elected. The corporations and the legislators come together in the American Legislative Exchange Council. They produce “model legislation” to advance their project. And that project is about rewriting the rules so that the corporations win.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">“What they’re doing is basically, betraying democracy,” says Teamsters president James Hoffa, who promises <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(207, 14, 14); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; transition: opacity 0.2s; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: initial !important;">a great struggle to restore labor rights in Michigan.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Hoffa’s point is well taken.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Michigan politicians have betrayed democracy.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">And democracy betrayed is democracy denied.</a>

<a href="http://xxx"> Hurricane Harvey was still generating devastation -- and countless public workers worked night and day on search and rescue -- a little known ally of the American Legislative Exchange Council was meeting a short distance away planning an attack on public sector workers nationwide. </a>

<a href="http://xxx">The $80 million network of state “think tanks” and other right-wing organizations known as the  State Policy Network (SPN) held a closed-door confab with Koch operatives, corporate donors, and ALEC staff to coordinate an assault on public sector unions to advance political control by right wing politicians in state houses nationwide. </a>

<a href="http://xxx">While these groups say they are advancing “worker rights,” documents obtained by CMD and featured in the Guardian lay bare their true political agenda. </a>

<a href="http://xxx"> “A network of conservative think tanks with outposts in all 50 states has embarked on a ‘breakthrough’ campaign designed to strike a ‘mortal blow’ against the American left. The aim is to ‘defund and defang’ unions representing government employees as the first step towards ensuring the permanent collapse of progressive politics,” wrote the  Guardian. </a>

<a href="http://xxx">You can read the Guardian expose here and access the documents at ExposedbyCMD.org. </a>

<a href="http://xxx">https://www.theXXXguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/30/rightwing-alliance-unions-defund-defang</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Rightwing activists across the US have launched a nationwide campaign to undermine progressive politicians by depriving them of a major source of support and funding – public sector unions.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">A network of conservative thinktanks with outposts in all 50 states has embarked on a “breakthrough” campaign designed to strike a “mortal blow” against the American left. The aim is to “defund and defang” unions representing government employees as the first step towards ensuring the permanent collapse of progressive politics.</a>

</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Bernie Sanders attacks 'greedy' Nissan for waging anti-union campaign</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The campaign carries a powerful echo of the populist creed espoused by Donald Trump. The president was propelled into the White House last November after unexpected victories in several previously Democratic rust belt states including Michigan and Wisconsin, both of which have endured withering attacks on trade unions in recent years.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The new assault is being spearheaded by the State Policy Network (SPN), an alliance of 66 state-based thinktanks, or “ideas factories” as it calls them, with a combined annual budget of $80m. As suggested by its slogan – “State solutions. National impact” – the group outlines an aim to construct a rightwing hegemony throughout the US, working from the bottom up.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">To do that, it first has to sweep aside the public sector unions and their historic ties to Democratic and progressive politicians. In a 10-page fundraising letter, part of a set of documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy and published by the Guardian today for the first time, SPN sets out its mission in frank language that does not disguise its partisan ambitions.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">e author of the letter, SPN’s president and CEO Tracie Sharp,describes the $8m “breakthrough” campaign as a “once-in-a-lifetime chance to reverse the failed policies of the American left … We are primed, right now, to deliver the mortal blow to permanently break its stranglehold on our society.”</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Advertisement</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Sharp pitches the battle against unions as the start of a war on progressive politics, with the ultimate goal of winning elections for rightwing candidates. “Big government unions are the biggest sources of funding and political muscle for the left – and a major obstacle to the ability of voters to reclaim control of American government. To win the battle for freedom, we must take the fight to the unions, state by state.”</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The target of such union-bashing, she openly admits, is to “defund and defang one of our freedom movement’s most powerful opponents, the government unions”. The long-term objective is to “deal a major blow to the left’s ability to control government at the state and national levels. I’m talking about permanently depriving the left from access to millions of dollars in dues extracted from unwilling union members every election cycle” (emphasis in original).</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">SPN will be discussing its anti-union and anti-left agenda on Wednesday at its annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas. Its morning session will look at how “labor reform” can be pursued with renewed vigor under the Trump administration.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The discussion will feature some of the key architects of SPN’s political strategy, including Vincent Vernuccio who pioneered anti-union legislation in Michigan, and Tom McCabe of the Freedom Foundation, who has sent his foot soldiers on an aggressive offensive against collective bargaining in the US north-west.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Mary Bottari, deputy director of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) which tracks the rise of rightwing groups in America, said the fundraising letter and other SPN documents published by the Guardian cast light on the conservative game plan. “It’s very rare to catch conservative thinktanks talking so openly and blatantly about their long-term political aims. These documents reveal to us that SPN’s goals are entirely political – they have no concern for workers or union members, their only goal is winning elections to advance rightwing causes.”</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Bottari added: “An $80m campaign to ‘defund and defang’ public sector unions is remarkable, both in its size and in its ambition.”</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Advertisement</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Public sector unions have come under growing fire from conservatives in recent years. While unions operating in private companies have been diminished since the 1980s – their membership plummeting from about 17% of the workforce in 1983 to just 6% today – their equivalents in the public sector such as teacher, local government, police and fire officer unions have remained relatively stable, at around 35%.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">But in 2010, Scott Walker, the newly elected governor of Wisconsin, opened a new front in America’s partisan war when he passed Act 10, stripping public sector unions of the power to bargain collectively and forcing them to re-certify themselves every year with electoral backing from more than 50% of all workers, not just those voting. The move has spawned a rash of imitations across Republican-controlled states, with Iowa and Indiana passing similar laws, and a further 15 states introducing legislation – encouraged by SPN, which has framed a model bill to make it easier for Republican legislators to adopt the changes.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">A total of 28 states have also passed “right to work” laws that allow workers in private companies to refuse to join unions despite enjoying the fruits of collective bargaining.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Though the long-term consequences of such union restrictions have yet to be fully understood, there are early indications that the impact could be profound even at presidential level. Since Act 10 came into effect in Wisconsin, public sector union membership has slumped by 40%, or about 136,000 people.</a>

</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">How a father's tragedy moved the Teamsters to fight an opioid distributor</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Trump won Wisconsin last November by just 23,000 votes.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">A similar pattern can be seen in Michigan where unions have shrunk steadily since a right-to-work law came into effect in 2013, with a loss of at least 30,000 members. Trump took Michigan, to the shock of Hillary Clinton and her supporters, by just 11,000 votes.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">When asked whether anti-union laws in Michigan and Wisconsin had affected the outcome of the presidential race, Matt Patterson of the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform said: “No question in my mind. Hard to fight when your bazooka’s been replaced by a squirt gun.”</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Carrie Conko, SPN’s vice president of communications, said that the network does not involve itself in political campaigns. “Labor reform is an issue where SPN has been clearly on the side of workers who are against forced unionization and the use of their hard-earned wages to support causes they don’t believe in. If workers choose to support their unions agenda that is fine – but, right now, in many states they don’t have a choice or a voice.”</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Conko’s statement echoed the language used in an SPN “toolkit”, also published here for the first time, that advises Republican policymakers on how to campaign for anti-union legislation. “Be pro-worker, not anti-union,” the pamphlet says. “Frame union reform from the point of view of the members and how the reform helps them have a greater voice in their union. Don’t rant against unions. We’ve all been frustrated by the actions of public sector unions to block pro-freedom reforms, but publicly venting these feelings is counterproductive.”</a>

</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">SPN’s disclosure of its political and partisan objectives in the new documents could arouse the interest of investigators from the Internal Revenue Service. The group is constituted as a 501(c)(3) organisation, which renders it exempt as a charity from taxation.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Marc Owens, a partner with Loeb & Loeb who worked as an IRS lawyer specializing in charitable tax exemptions, said that the provision was designed for charitable purposes, not for lobbying against public sector unions or for activities to influence the outcome of elections. “A charity that does those things is not engaging in charitable activities and that puts its tax exempt status in jeopardy,” he said.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Conko told the Guardian that SPN takes “great care to be fully in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations”.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">http://www.alternet.org/labor/indentured-servitude-returns-america</a>

<a href="http://xxx">https://kpfa.org/episode/against-the-grain-march-21-2017/</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Jane F. McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age Oxford University Press, 2016</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Who Rules America?</a>

<a href="http://xxx">http://www.alternet.org/labor/trump-gutting-labor-unions-advancing-right-work</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Alternative facts are nothing new; politicians have been making stuff up since they first crawled out of the primordial swamp. One of the most successful lies in modern US politics has been that of “right to work” laws, which break unions under the guise of protecting workers, one of which was introduced in Congress on Wednesday afternoon and will probably break unions in the country for good.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">A national right to work law has been a pipe dream of corporate lobbyists, the chamber of commerce, the Koch brothers, and the politicians on their payroll for decades, and is about to become a reality. Right to work laws already exist in more than half the states in the country, where unions are weak or nonexistent, wages are correspondingly low, and workers are correspondingly disposable. In theory, these laws are about guaranteeing workers’ freedom of association. In practice, they’re about keeping workers from forming unions, by making unions financially unsustainable.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The main lie told by right to work proponents is that such laws put an end to “compulsory union membership”. It’s flat-out false; there is no such thing, and hasn’t been since 1947, when the Taft Hartley Act made the closed shop – a type of contract where union membership was a condition of employment – illegal. Nowhere in the US, whether you’re in a right to work state or not, can you be forced to be a member of a union, or fired for refusing to join one.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The second lie is that such laws protect workers from having their dues money go to political causes they don’t support. Nowhere in the country can you be forced to donate to a politician, campaign or political organization you don’t support. If you’re a dues-paying union member, you already have a right to simply not donate to your union’s political fund, and plenty of union members exercise it.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">What right to work laws, including this bill, do is outlaw a specific type of voluntary, private employment contract that employers and employees may agree on. Under this agency shop contract, which must be voted on and approved by a majority of employees, workers agree to pay a fair share provision – a fraction of the dues amount that union members pay – to cover the costs of bargaining and enforcing the workplace contract.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The reason such contracts exist at all is because, under the same 1947 law that banned compulsory union membership, unions are bound by what are called “duties of fair representation”. Under DFRs, they are legally required to provide the same services to everyone in a workplace, such as filing grievances, providing legal counsel, or defending someone if they’re disciplined, whether they are union members or not.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">This also assures that everyone gets the same benefits from a union contract: health insurance, vacations, rules that say your boss can’t just fire you if he wakes up one day and decides he doesn’t like your face. The idea is to prevent unions from discriminating against those who choose not to join. Obviously, if you’re going to receive a benefit automatically whether you join or not, the incentive is to free-ride. Agency shop contracts are set up to make sure everyone shares the costs so that those grievances get filed. Right to work laws encourage everyone to free-ride until the union is broke, can’t provide those benefits to anyone, and eventually ceases to exist.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Right to work proponents often point to the money unions throw at politicians, mostly Democrats, as justification for starving unions financially. But right to work laws don’t defund political activities, because no worker is compelled to fund them in the first place. The only union functions this law will defund are things like contract bargaining and grievance filing: precisely those everyday workplace activities that Republicans say unions should be restricted to doing.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">It bears repeating: the contracts this law will ban are voluntary and agreed on democratically. They are not imposed on anyone by the government, the union or the company. Normally, outlawing a voluntary business contract between private parties is the kind of thing Republicans consider government meddling. And there’s something distinctly unconservative about forcing an institution to provide benefits to non-paying non-members while encouraging them to freeload. But if it’s about crushing unions, they always manage to find an excuse.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Certainly bill sponsors Steve King and Joe “You Lie” Wilson would never let ideological consistency get in the way of an opportunity to crush their opponents. Nor would President Trump, who was elected promising to fight for American workers. Unions are, after all, the only real vehicle for workers to defend their interests, whether in the workplace or the political arena. Taking that away from them leaves workers at the mercy of their bosses and politicians. Which is the whole point, and the only thing this law was ever designed to do.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">http://www.alternet.org/labor/kentuckys-attack-unions-provides-glimpse-gops-impending-war-workers</a>

<a href="http://xxx">For 95 years—all the way back to 1921, when Warren G. Harding was president—Kentucky Democrats had maintained control of the state House of Representatives.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">When Tea Party darling Matt Bevin, who ran as the “right-to-work” candidate, rode the national GOP wave and succeeded Democratic Governor Steve Beshear in 2014, the Kentucky House became the sole bulwark blocking the implementation of his anti-union agenda. Naturally, heading into the 2016 elections, the right wing turned all its firepower against the Democrats’ six-seat house majority. It worked—and it wasn’t even close. Republicans won an astounding 13 seats to gain a commanding 64-36 majority, making Kentucky one of 25 states with GOP trifecta-control.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">It didn’t take long for Republican legislators to introduce their stable of anti-union measures: a right-to-work bill that bans unions from requiring mandatory dues for all workers covered by their contracts; a repeal of the state’s prevailing wage law, meaning that public construction projects would no longer be required to pay their workers based on a community survey (usually meaning a union pay-scale); and banning public-employee unions from striking and from using member dues for political contributions.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">It’s also the first of many attacks on unions that will materialize during the Trump presidency.With Democrats completely out of power, unions had little recourse—beyond workers protesting in the chambers—to combat the legislative onslaught. Over the weekend, Republicans passed all three bills (in addition to a 20-week abortion ban) with emergency clauses ensuring they would be implemented immediately after Bevin signs them into law. Kentucky is now the 27th right-to-work state, and the last state in the South to pass such a law. “It’s an attack on the working people,” Chris Kendall, a member of a Kentucky Plumbers and Steamfitters Union local told the Lexington Herald-Leader as he protested right-to-work at the state capitol in Frankfort on Saturday. “It’s almost like we’re the enemy somehow, that it’s the politicians against us. And all we’re trying to do is earn an honest day’s wage.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">In public, conservatives argue that right-to-work is about ensuring freedom in the workplace by using fear-mongering rhetoric about mandatory union membership. But they fail to mention that, by law, union membership can’t be mandatory; it’s the payment of union dues for collective bargaining services—which benefit all workers in unionized shops—that is required with union security clauses. The reality, as research consistently shows, is that, on average, workers make less—about 3.1 percent—in states with right-to-work laws compared with states without those laws. Right-to-work’s other effect is to create a “free rider” problem for unions, which are forced to provide services for all workers in union shops without any compensation from the non-members they bargain for and represent in disputes with management.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Conservatives also argue that prevailing wage laws are a leading cause of bloated government spending. What surveys have shown, however, is that there are no adverse affects associated with government projects that pay a prevailing wage.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Attacking unions is a top GOP priority not because of actual concern for workers or public services. Rather, it’s about undermining the left’s most effective tool for convincing working people to vote for more pro-worker candidates, who are almost invariably Democratic, and curtailing unions’ ability to finance Democratic candidates. Right-to-work laws and bans on political contributions from dues are primarily about draining unions’ coffers and breaking up concentrated worker power. </a>

<a href="http://xxx">Kentucky was once a union stronghold, thanks to strong membership density in the state’s heavy-industry sectors like coal mining and manufacturing. But, as those types of jobs have disappeared and the GOP’s war on unions ramped up, Kentucky’s union membership dramatically eroded—a trend that has played out across the country. The state’s union membership reached its peak in 1989, but has fallen since then. In 2015, 11 percent of Kentucky’s workforce— about 187,000 workers—was unionized, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Right-to-work will only further accelerate that decline.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">With Trump’s win and the GOP’s continuing majorities in the House and Senate, the party now has unified federal control for the first time since 2006—and in those 10 years, the party’s anti-union strain has become even more mainstream and vitriolic. Republicans in the House and Senate will soon begin pushing for a national right-to-work law and a repeal of the Davis Bacon Act (the federal prevailing wage), bringing to the national stage what has for the past decade been limited to state-level fights. Trump has already indicated his support for a national right-to-work law and his top allies, from Vice President-elect Mike Pence on down, have close ties to the Kochs’ anti-union political crusade in the states.The Bevin-led attack on Kentucky workers comes straight out of the right-wing playbook for states. Since the 2010 elections, Republicans, with ample funding from the Koch brothers, have pushed through right-to-work and prevailing wage repeals in such former union strongholds as Indiana, Michigan, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. With statehouse gains in 2016, Republicans are also expected to pass right-to-work measures in Missouri and New Hampshire. But that’s not all.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The challenge for unions in a right-to-work landscape becomes a battle for relevance—and convincing members that the services unions provide are still important. Whether they can do that in Kentucky, and soon, nationwide, is a question that looms large for the future of the labor movement. </a>

<a href="http://xxx"> Justin Miller is a writing fellow for The American Prospect.</a>

</div>

<a href="http://xxx">By Richard Eskow

<span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Campaign for America’s Future</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The decline of unions has probably cost you, or someone close to you, thousands of dollars since last Labor Day.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">A <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">new study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that income for nonunion workers fell substantially as union membership declined. And it hasn’t fallen because of some immutable economic law. It’s a casualty of war – cultural and political war.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">If union enrollment had remained as high as it was in 1979, nonunion working men in the private sector would have earned an average of $2,704 more per year in 2013. The average non-unionized male worker without a college degree would have earned an additional $3,016, and those with only a high school diploma or less would have earned $3,172 more. (The differences were less striking for women because of workforce changes since the 1970s.)</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The decline in union membership is costing nonunion workers a total of <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">$133 billion per year, according to EPI.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Canada resembles the U.S. in many ways, but union membership there hasn’t fallen like it has here. Why not? In a word, <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">union-friendlier policies – the kind our country should be embracing, but isn’t.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">We need unions. EPI’s study confirms that they play a key role in reducing economic inequality, which is a <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">growing crisis. The pay gap between CEOs and average workers has skyrocketed in recent decades – from about <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">20:1 in 1965 to somewhere between <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">204:1 and<span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">331:1 today.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Unionization also narrows the racial wage gap, according to a new study from the <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Center for Economic and Policy Research.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">It’s easy to understand how unions benefit their own members. How do they help nonunion workers? EPI explains that nonunion employers “may raise pay for some workers to forestall an organizing drive.” They also respond to “the standards that unions help establish through politicking for labor-friendly policies,” and from the fact that unions are “a cultural force arguing for a ‘fairer share’ for working men and women.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">That “cultural force” is important. In the mid-20th century, people believed in “a fair deal for working people.” Labor Day was created to honor workers.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Then something changed. Popular culture in the 1980s glamorized greedy Wall Streeters and celebrated the Gilded Age excesses of a tiny but highly visible ultrawealthy class. (Remember Gordon Gekko, and “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”?) Then tech entrepreneurs hijacked our national mythos with an internet-fueled ideological fantasy: that anybody with a great idea could become a billionaire on the Web.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Never mind that most startups failed, or that internet wealth accelerated growing inequality, or that digital success increasingly depends on a web of incestuous relationships among Silicon Valley executives and investors.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Apple’s <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">exploitation of Chinese workers didn’t dent the myth. Neither did the illegal labor practices among some big-name tech companies, including Apple, Pixar, Adobe and Google, that led to a 2011 class-action lawsuit and a <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">$415 million settlement in 2014.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">But by then, working people had lost their place in the national pantheon. How could the rights of “ordinary” men and women compete with the jet-piloting or turtleneck-wearing star power of billionaire CEOs, those temperamental tyrants whose collective passage from nerdy losers to corporate predators had forged a new Hero’s Journey for our soul-sick age?</a>

<a href="http://xxx">As for the political war: Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower bragged about union growth during his first term as president, but Republicans have been solidly anti-union ever since. Democratic Party leaders shifted their affections toward Wall Street in the 1990s. “New Democrats” were also quick to embrace the boyish billionaires of the tech boom. Soon these fickle Dems were treating labor like a loyal but unsophisticated uncle at some chic downtown soirée.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Today there’s a new myth: the “sharing economy.” Nearly half of New York City’s residents live <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">below or near the poverty line. They won’t change their fate by becoming Uber drivers, any more than the residents of our blighted postindustrial wastelands will achieve middle-class prosperity by renting out their bedrooms on Airbnb.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The idea that anyone can succeed on the internet is a warmed-over Horatio Alger story for the digital era. Underlying it is that age-old cynical con: If you’re poor, blame your own moral failure.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Forget the “sharing economy”; get a union instead.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">How much has the war on unions cost your family since last Labor Day: $2,000? $3,000? More? And what price has our society paid in division, despair and hate? Racism is the oldest act of cultural and political warfare in the book.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">We can’t change the past, but we can change the future. Unions are exploring <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">new ways to reach nonunion workers. The Fight for $15 is gaining momentum. Progressive populism is on the rise. Working people can hope for a better life in Labor Days yet to come.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Better yet, they can fight for it.</a>

</div>

<footer class="entry-meta" style="clear: both; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://xxx">This entry was posted in <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">PPJC Picks and tagged <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">labor, <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Unions by <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">PPJC Admin2. Bookmark the <span style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">permalink.</a></footer>

<h4 style=" line-height: 1.3em; margin-top: 0.909em; margin-bottom: 0.909em;"><a href="http://xxx">The Role of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the Anti-Union Network

</a></h4>

</div>

<h2 style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-top: 0.667em; margin-bottom: 0.667em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://xxx">Lobbying</a></h2>

<li style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://xxx">In 2004, the Chamber spent $24.5 million lobbying the federal government.8

</a></li>

<li style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://xxx">The Chamber works closely with the Bush administration9 and prominent anti-labor conservatives on Capitol Hill such as Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA), head of the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections.  An anti-workplace safety zealot, Norwood was given the Chamber’s Spirit of Enterprise Award for his pro-Chamber voting record.  Norwood caused controversy this year for his insensitivity during Congressional hearings on the Sago mineworkers tragedy, and for lobbying loudly against renewal of the Voting Rights Act.</a></li>

<li style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://xxx">The Chamber lobbies to oppose pro-worker legislation, including the Family Time and Workplace Flexibility Act, Fair Minimum Wage Act, and an expansion of the Family and Medical Leave Act.10

</a></li>

<li style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://xxx">Among the Chamber’s legislative priorities is opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act , which would strengthen labor law and provide workers with the right to union representation via the card check process when a majority present signed union authorization cards to their employers.11  On May 4, 2006, the Chamber sent a letter to all Republican members of Congress urging them to support the Secret Ballot Protection Act,12 which would outlaw union recognition through card check.  The Chamber also operates a website urging its members to pressure Congress on the issue.13</a></li>

</ul>

<h2 style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-top: 0.667em; margin-bottom: 0.667em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://xxx"> Litigation</a></h2>

<li style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://xxx">Its recent litigation efforts include an attempt to strike down a California law prohibiting the use of tax dollars for anti-union activity, and litigation to overturn county “Peace Agreement” ordinances.14

</a></li>

<li style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://xxx">The Chamber recently filed amicus briefs in two significant cases before the National Labor Relations Board to argue for rulings that limit the ability of workers to form unions.  One case could define millions of workers as supervisors, revoking their right to organize, and the other could effectively quash the card check method of organizing.15

</a></li>

<li style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://xxx">The Chamber has also lobbied the Bush administration on nominations to the National Labor Relations Board,16 and succeeded in placing one of their staffers on the Board.  In 2002, President Bush appointed Michael Bartlett, then Director of Labor Law Policy for the Chamber, to sit on the five-member Board in a recess appointment that lasted nearly one year. </a></li>

</ul>

<h4 style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-top: 0.909em; margin-bottom: 0.909em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://xxx">Sponsoring propaganda</a></h4>

<h2 class="itemTitle" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 4px; border: 0px; line-height: 39.6px; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://xxx">Unions Have Blunted Bids to Curb Political Spending</a></h2>

<a href="http://xxx">Wednesday, 29 June 2005 00:29by: Anonymous</a></div>

<a href="http://xxx">    Unions Have Blunted Bids to Curb Political Spending

    By Andy Furillo

The Sacramento Bee</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Monday 27 June 2005</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    It's one thing for a state to pass a law forcing unions to get annual written consent before spending their members' dues money on politics.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    But it's another thing entirely to make it work, as four of the five states with so-called "paycheck protection" laws on the books have learned.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    With California voters poised to consider an employee-consent law for government workers on November's special election ballot, only Utah is seeing its effort to check union political spending change the public policy world.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    In Washington, the unions have blunted employee-consent laws in the courts and are spending money on politics like never before. In Michigan, union political outlays still reach into the millions, while in Wyoming, labor spending increased after passage of employee-consent laws.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Idaho's voluntary contribution law has since been enjoined in federal courts.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Robert P. Hunter, a senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich., a free-market public policy think tank, said employee-consent laws have done nothing to curb union spending in the big-shouldered Great Lakes state.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    "They are very heavy participants in the political process in Michigan, and I think that pretty much the amount of money spent on noncollective bargaining purposes is pretty much unfettered and there is pretty much a green light for the unions," Hunter said.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    While employee-consent advocates lament the ineffectiveness of the laws, opponents say the measures can still cause significant disruption to labor's political spending.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    "It sets up bureaucratic red tape and costs unions money figuring out how to deal with the law and the legal challenges," said Ken Jacobs, deputy chairman of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Berkeley. "At least in the beginning, it does have a chilling effect as people determine how to respond."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Lew Uhler, the anti-tax activist pushing the California measure, said the effect on money is secondary to the primary intent of the law - making sure workers approve of how their money is spent.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    "When the unions have to ask permission, and that is really enforced, then the individual member is protected, and that's what we're striving for," Uhler said.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    California's initiative would require public employee unions to get each member's annual written consent before they could spend their cash on politics. Right now, union officials say workers sign off on the political dues payments only when they first start their jobs.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Of the five states with "paycheck protection" on the books, only the Utah and Idaho laws apply exclusively to public union workers. A California measure that would have applied to all union labor in the state was defeated at the polls in 1998.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Besides differences in the type of workers they affect, the laws also vary in the kinds of spending they target and whether they allow government agencies to collect and transfer political cash to the unions even if the workers agree to it.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    But according to the Institute on Money in State Politics based in Helena, Mont., which tracks money flowing to state candidates, political party committees and ballot initiatives, one thing is clear about union spending in most "paycheck protection" states - it remains substantial.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Washington voters approved employee consent in 1992 as part of an overall initiative to reform the state's campaign finance system. Unions spent $1.6 million that year. According to the Montana institute, the number more than doubled by last year, to $3.3 million.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Advocates of the law blamed the outcome on a 1998 court settlement in which the state attorney general's office agreed to let the 78,000-member teachers union use general dues money for some political purposes. In exchange, the union paid $100,000 in fines and attorneys' fees and refunded some money to its members.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    "The law is a good law - it is a good policy," said Michael Reitz, director of labor policy for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, the leading employee consent advocacy group in the Pacific Northwest. "But basically, through the attorney general, (the settlement) created a huge loophole that the unions can exploit."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Washington Education Association President Charles Hasse said that since the settlement, his 78,000-member union does use general dues cash on lobbying and initiative measures. The union obtains written consent, however, from about 8 percent of its membership to finance a political action committee that contributes to individual candidates.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    "Now we've found a way to deal with it," Hasse said of the state's employee-consent law.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    In Michigan, union political spending hit $4.4 million in 1998, four years after employee consent became law. It hasn't been below $2.2 million since. (The Montana institute does not have complete figures on political spending in the state before 1996.)</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Hunter, the researcher for the conservative-tilting Mackinac group, said the Michigan law applied only to "hard money" contributions for candidates and political action committees and not to "soft" contributions to the state parties - and that the unions shifted their tactics as a result.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Larry Roehrig, secretary-treasurer of the 72,000-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 25, said that about a quarter of his membership is signing consent forms these days to keep the candidate coffers full.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    "It steeled our resolve," Roehrig said of the impact of "paycheck protection" on union spending.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    The Wyoming Legislature approved an employee-consent law in 1998, a year when union spending totaled $64,517. The figure zoomed to $173,428 in 2002 and settled back to $92,152 last year.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Idaho passed an employee-consent measure for government union members in 1997, but the bill did not stop their spending even before the labor groups obtained an injunction in 2003 to hold it up, according to the Montana institute's tabulations. Public sector union contributions increased from $79,949 in 1996 to $175,034 in 2002.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Only in Utah has "paycheck protection" reverberated as intended - with a significant impact on public policy, its advocates say.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Since the Utah Legislature sanctioned the "Voluntary Contributions Act" for public employees in 2001, public employee unions - the only ones targeted by the law - have seen their political contributions fall from $285,761 in 2000 to $232,211 in 2002. The total rose to $278,713 in 2004. But Utah's teachers union - the state's biggest - says its employee contributions are off this year by more than 70 percent.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    With the teachers union on its heels financially, the Utah Legislature passed a bill this year that provides tuition tax credits for "special needs" students, which teachers opposed as a voucherlike move to undercut public education.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Royce Van Tassell, executive director of the pro-voucher group called Education Excellence in Utah, said the bill never would have become law without "paycheck protection."</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    "Not a chance," Van Tassell said. "The union just doesn't carry the stick that it used to."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    The Utah Education Association said that since voluntary contributions became law, the percentage of union teachers donating money for politics has dropped from 68 percent to 6.8 percent, with its PAC contributions dropping from $143,000 a year to $40,000.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    "No doubt the Republican majority is trying to silence opposition to their program," said UEA attorney Michael McCoy. "Not just through winning votes in the House and Senate, but by destroying people and groups who oppose their policies."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">    Utah's law segregates political contributions from general union dues and bars the state from collecting the political cash and passing it on to the unions. While fighting the state collection provision in court, the Utah teachers union in the meantime has set up an electronic transfer system for employees through their checking or credit card accounts, McCoy said.</a>

</div>

</a><div class="block-inner clearfix"><a href="http://xxx">

</a><div class="content clearfix"><a href="http://xxx">

</a><h1 id="page-title" class="title"><a href="http://xxx">Judge OKs slashing of union coal miners' health benefits as part of bankruptcy solution</a></h1>

</div>

</a><div class="articlebyline" style=""><a href="http://xxx"> Brian Roewe  |  May. 30, 2013 </a></div>

</a><div class="clearfix" style="">

</div>

</a></div></nav>

</div>

</a><a href="http://xxx">A St. Louis judge has ruled that Patriot Coal Corp. can rework its union contract as well as slash health benefits to retired union workers as part of its path out of bankruptcy.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">U.S. Bankruptcy Court Chief Judge Kathy A. Surratt-States of Missouri's Eastern District ruled Wednesday afternoon that Patriot can reject its past collective bargaining agreements, which includes "cradle to grave" benefits for nearly 23,000 miners and their dependents.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">[See "W.Va. prayer rally calls for justice for coal miners in health care limbo" for NCR's previous coverage of the Patriot Coal bankruptcy case.]</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The decision comes as a blow to members of the United Mine Workers of America, who alleged Patriot's formation was an attempt to escape full payment of the benefits -- $1.6 billion in long-term health and retirement obligations -- by the two companies previously responsible for coverage, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">In a press release, UMWA president Cecil Roberts said the decision is "wrong, unfair and fails to fully recognize the coming wave of human suffering that will be experienced by thousands of people throughout the coalfields."...</a>

<a href="http://xxx">==

</a><a href="http://xxx">

</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/02/13030/koch-fueled-groups-launch-offensive-against-wv-working-families</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">West Virginia Senate President Bill Cole's spokesman said Monday that Cole "will travel throughout West Virginia and beyond...." to talk about his legislative agenda that limits workers' rights.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">And, boy, did he go beyond, according to David Gutman of the Charleston Gazette-Mail.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Cole flew to a world far away from West Virginia when he traveled this weekend to the luxurious Esmeralda resort, which describes itself as creating "an atmosphere of luxury and relaxation unmatched" in Palm Springs, California, the winter playground of the rich and powerful like billionaire Charles Koch, who has an estate there.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The entire Esmeralda resort was reserved for the weekend by the billionaire Koch brothers for an exclusive gathering with other billionaires who paid at least $100K to be members of their little club of the super-rich and plot behind closed doors about how to spend nearly half a billion dollars more this year, to get what they want in federal, state, and local elections and the changes to our laws that come with victory.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">David and Charles Koch's billionaires' club--dubbed the "Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce"-- has already spent nearly $400 million over the past few months to influence 2016, but where most of it has been spent and which of the 500 elite gave how much is being kept secret from the public--at least for now.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">(Meanwhile, at the billionaires' event, the Koch PR operation got free press about its new "poverty" initiative, which was trying "to raise" $15 million from attendees. That may sound like a lot, but Koch Industries makes almost that much every single hour of every single day, with more than $115,000,000,000 in estimated annual revenue; the Koch brothers' combined wealth is estimated to be nearly $100 billion. With millions of Americans in poverty, some might call the initiative "greedwashing.")</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Anyway, Cole's office says his meeting with the Kochs and other out-of-state billionaires at the luxury spa was not a "political event" because he did no fundraising or campaigning, at that event.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Will the people of West Virginia be told who paid for his travel to sunny Palm Springs in the heart of winter or for his hotel and meals at the posh resort? Did he get a speaker's fee to talk "in his official capacity" to the Kochs and their billionaire buddies? Did club Koch pay him and cover his meals and drinks, under exceptions from gift rules the West Virginia legislature has created for itself?</a>

<a href="http://xxx">One thing that is known is Cole "specifically addressed his legislation to make West Virginia the 26th right-to-work state" in his remarks to the "500 high-spending donors," as Gutman noted. Those big spenders are part of what is increasingly known as the "Kochs' secret cabal," despite the efforts of Charles Koch's PR machine to woo select press.</a>

<h2><a href="http://xxx">The Right to Work "Fix"--Is the Fix in?</a></h2>

<a href="http://xxx">Cole has claimed that "Right to Work" would "fix" West Virginia's economy.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">That's one way of putting it.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">But as expert economists at the Economic Policy Institute have demonstrated repeatedly:</a>

<a href="http://xxx">"Misleadingly named right-to-work (RTW) laws do not, as some unfamiliar with the term may assume, entail any guarantee of employment for people ready and willing to go to work. Rather, by making it harder for workers' organizations to sustain themselves financially, state RTW laws aim to undermine unions' bargaining strength. Because RTW laws lower wages and benefits, weaken workplace protections, and decrease the likelihood that employers will be required to negotiate with their employees, they are advanced as a strategy for attracting new businesses to a state. But EPI research shows that RTW laws do not have any positive impact on job growth."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">While the buying power of most American workers has stagnated, the 20 richest people in the country have accumulated more wealth than the combined wealth of 150 million of their fellow citizens, most of whom have worked hard their whole lives--but didn't inherit multi-million dollar trust funds and corporations from their dad, like David and Charles Koch did.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Who could possibly be behind the push for policies that make it harder for workers--in West Virginia and other states--to negotiate for better wages, safer working conditions, and basic benefits to protect their families from bankrupting illnesses?</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Good question.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The answer: the Kochs and the operations they help finance to remake state law to fit their hostile view of workers' rights to collectively bargain or to secure measures like prevailing wage.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Welcome to the murky world of ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), the State Policy Network (SPN), and David Koch's Americans for Prosperity (AFP)—all of which are financially aided by the Kochs' riches along with funding from some of their fellow billionaire travelers.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">(SPN, which directs funding to its affiliates, has received funding from Koch-controlled philanthropy and also from secretive donor vehicles connected to the Kochs. SPN has recently stepped into a more prominent role in coordinating the defense of attacks on workers' rights, as with their efforts working with other Koch operatives around the Supreme Court's hearing in the Friedrichs case.)</a>

<a href="http://xxx">RTW is backed by that Koch-fueled alliance, groups that front for the interests of corporations and CEOs like the Kochs, whose legislative agenda helps the rich get richer despite their recent PR coup on "addressing" poverty.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">How are the groups pushing that legislative agenda?</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Through RTW and Prevailing Wage Repeal bills. These are just two of parts of the ALEC agenda, bills that drive down wages of Americans who work for a living. (Let's save discussion of their wage-killing free trade measures for another day.)</a>

<a href="http://xxx">RTW severely limits union power and, with it, worker power and pressure for better wages; similarly, the prevailing wage repeal sends construction wages into a race to the bottom.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">It's like Goliath lobbying to outlaw slingshots.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The syndicate backing RTW is financed by bully billionaires, led by two brothers raised on hatred of unions by their extremist daddy--who praised the Axis powers led by Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito, whom many of our grandfathers later risked their lives or died to defeat, and who belittled the American work ethic, saying in 1938 that "the only sound countries in the world are Germany, Italy, and Japan, simply because they are all working and working hard," as Jane Mayer notes in her book "Dark Money."</a>

<h2><a href="http://xxx">Here's the Koch-Fueled Playbook Deployed, in State after State</a></h2>

<a href="http://xxx">The Koch-fueled alliance of ALEC, SPN, and AFP follows a predictable script:</a>

<a href="http://xxx">* a state legislator introduces an ALEC-style Right to Work bill (state Sen. Cole is an ALEC member);</a>

<a href="http://xxx">* some think tank experts from SPN or its allies provide "reports" and/or testimony extolling the purported benefits of RTW;</a>

<a href="http://xxx">* and the Koch Brothers' phoney "grassroots" group, AFP, throws some small rallies in while making targeted media buys.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">That's the formula we saw in Michigan, when an ALEC politician introduced a word-for-word copy of the ALEC RTW bill in late 2012.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The Michigan SPN affiliate, the Mackinac Center, played a key role in making the bill law; it was given the top award by billionaire allies of the Kochs at the next SPN meeting for its role in enacting right to work, despite telling the IRS it did "0" lobbying.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">And, David Koch's AFP, through its Michigan operation, orchestrated rallies to back up the ALEC/SPN lobbying agenda.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The Koch cabal's operatives followed the same formula in Wisconsin last year: with the ALEC RTW bill introduced, testimony from a Mackinac Center rep, and a "study" authored by ALEC "scholar" Richard Vedder commissioned by a Wisconsin SPN affiliate. In Wisconsin, AFP not only organized rallies in support of the measure but also spent around $1 million on pro-RTW ads.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">A few months after Wisconsin's governor, Scott Walker (an ALEC alum) signed RTW into law, a similar cast of characters took up prevailing wage repeal in the state.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">There was an ALEC model bill and backing from the Mackinac Center and the Wisconsin SPN affiliate, and then AFP bought ads to peddle the repeal.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) also weighed in; despite claims that it just represents small businesses, it has received big sums from—you'll never guess—Kochs' Freedom Partners. Koch Industries, which is one of the biggest and richest corporations in the world, is about as far from being a small business as possible.</a>

<h2><a href="http://xxx">Will West Virginia Become the Latest Victim of the Koch-Fueled Hit Job on Workers?</a></h2>

<a href="http://xxx">The latest showdown, with the Koch Billionaire Cash Machine in one corner and many Working People in the other, is in West Virginia, where team Koch is looking for billionaire-friendly politicians to pack the one-two punch that helped put Wisconsin on the ropes: RTW and prevailing wage repeal.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">RTW passed the West Virginia Assembly last year, and was the number one priority of the state Senate, apparently: it was the first bill introduced this session, SB-1.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Guess who the bill's sponsor is?</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Bill Cole. The guy who just spent the weekend with the Kochs and their billionaire buddies, in the lap of luxury in Palm Springs.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Cole is a big fan of ALEC's "Rich States Poor States" report, which Koch money has underwritten before. It's part of the Koch game plan.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Now in its 8th edition, Rich States, Poor States is a severely discredited study that ranks the "economic outlook" of states based on--wait for it--whether they've adopted all of the Koch-fueled ALEC's legislative agenda. Like what? Like RTW.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">According to ALEC, West Virginia's economic outlook dropped from 30th to 36th among the 50 states. But passing RTW could fix things, when it comes time for the next manufactured rankings of ALEC.</a>

<h2><a href="http://xxx">What's the Matter with Kansas? Success in Koch/ALEC World, Not the Real World</a></h2>

<a href="http://xxx">Let's take a closer look at those ALEC rankings.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Astonishingly, ALEC ranks Kansas 16th and puts West Virginia at 36. ALEC spent a lot of time in its report trying to defend Kansas. After all, it's the home of Charles Koch and Koch Industries and it's the land of the economic disaster wrought by Koch politicians going almost full Koch on economic policy.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">By comparison, Democratic-led Minnesota's economy is so booming that it has been able to increase support for its public university system and invest in its infrastructure, but it is ranked by ALEC as 48th worst out of 50 states.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Welcome to the up-is-down, good-is-bad worldview of ALEC. It's like some sort Bizarro Superman planet.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Under the Koch/ALEC economic analysis, West Virginia should change its laws to be more like Kansas than Minnesota. For the second year in a row, Minnesota is the top state in the nation for residents' confidence in the state's economy while West Virginia's economic confidence has fallen at the highest rate in the nation, according to that annual Gallup poll. </a>

<a href="http://xxx">But, as CMD recently noted, "The biggest benefits of Governor Brownback's tax program went to the top 1% while actually increasing taxes for the bottom 20%. Kansas now has the 9th most unfair tax system of any state in the country, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The poorest 20% of Kansans pay 11.1% of their income in state taxes, while the richest 1% pay just 3.6%. ALEC's supply-side policies are getting a cold reception among Kansas residents."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Adopting the Koch/ALEC agenda in Kansas has been such a disaster that in 2014 more than 100 Republicans--including the former state chairman--endorsed Brownback's Democratic opponent for governor. Although he somehow managed--with help from the Kochs--to keep his seat, a recent poll found that "Governor Brownback is the most disliked governor in the country, with an approval rating of only 26%."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Yet, Cole seems to think ALEC's rankings are worth more than the paper they are written on. Some Republicans in Kansas seem to have seen it differently.</a>

<h2><a href="http://xxx">But a Former Politician, a Koch Man from Michigan, Says Go for It</a></h2>

<a href="http://xxx">When not hobnobbing in Palm Springs with the Koch brothers and other billionaires, Cole has been busy urging his colleagues in the state Senate to follow the lead of Pete Lund, who used to be the Majority Whip in the Michigan House.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">According to information provided to PRWatch, Cole has told West Virginia Republicans that Lund, "who led the charge when Michigan adopted a right-to-work law, urged West Virginia lawmakers to stay the course and be confident that making West Virginia a RTW state is the right thing to do."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">He even quoted Lund as saying "Once the bill has passed, the false scare tactics from the opposition will stop all-together as workers begin to celebrate their now freer workplace and the economic boost inherent in RTW states."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Lund says that, but what's the reality, not the ALEC version of it?</a>

<a href="http://xxx">A comprehensive examination has shown that "Wages in RTW states are 3.1 percent lower than those in non-RTW states, after controlling for a full complement of individual demographic and socioeconomic factors as well as state macroeconomic indicators. This translates into RTW being associated with $1,558 lower annual wages for a typical full-time, full-year worker."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Why ignore the math that becoming a RTW state is basically like voting to give your constituents a pay cut?</a>

</blockquote>

<a href="http://xxx">Perhaps you noticed the part about Lund being a former legislator. In 2014, two years after Michigan became a RTW state, Lund decided not to seek re-election.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Where did he go?</a>

<a href="http://xxx">To David Koch's AFP. Of course.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">As of at least two months ago, Lund was the state director of the Michigan arm of Americans for Prosperity. How much he has been paid to peddle the Kochs' agenda from outside the state legislature is unknown.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">So a state legislator pushes through divisive legislation, sought by one of the Kochs' key advocacy/elections groups, that has the effect of making it harder for Michigan workers to make ends meet. And then he gets a sweet gig leading that Koch group in the state. Those are the kind of revolving door politics that most Americans, no matter their political party, despise.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Yet here is Peter Lund--Koch man--telling West Virginians what they should do.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Peter Lund is another voice in the chorus for the ventriloquist Kochs whose money makes it appear as though there is a groundswell of wide public demand to pass billionaire-backed legislation like RTW. It's on their wish list and it meets the ALEC purity test--even if it leaves workers in RTW states with about one mortgage payment less per year than workers in states whose leaders have not drank the Koch Kool-aid.</a>

<h2><a href="http://xxx">But ALEC Is already Celebrating that WV May Give It a Win</a></h2>

<a href="http://xxx">Meanwhile, the Koch-funded ALEC is already celebrating the prospect of West Virginia becoming the 26th right to work state, and it is cooing about the supposed benefits of the legislation, according to--shocker--its own Rich States Poor States report.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">West Virginia has the distinction of having one of its top industries, coal mining, also rank as one of the country's most dangerous professions. Study after study has found that labor unions significantly improve worker safety, as well as better wages and benefits. But the low prices for methane gas, known commercially as natural gas, has led utilities to switch from coal, and the economy of West Virginia and hundreds of small towns have staggered.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">In that climate of fear about the future, ALEC's Rich States, Poor States offers an elixir that purports to cure what ails you--like snake oil salesmen in days of yore.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">No matter what the problem, to Koch-fueled groups the solution is always trickle down policies that have failed America, like more tax cuts for the rich along with RTW and repealing the prevailing wage--which mean fewer obstacles to prevent managers and CEOs of corporations from paying themselves more by paying workers less.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">But "get paid less" is hardly a winning slogan, so the Koch machine peddles the RTW/anti-prevailing wage agenda under the guise of helping worker "freedom."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">So again the formula is set in motion: a model bill echoing the ALEC agenda is introduced. Next come the SPN "scholars" making cookie-cutter claims to back ALEC's cookie-cutter legislation.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Enter Vincent Vernuccio of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan who testified in support of the ALEC-SPN legislative agenda in Wisconsin last year.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Apparently, if you are looking for people to testify in favor of RTW, it's a small world.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">"Aside from right-to-work states having lower unemployment, higher job growth, higher wage growth, and higher population growth," Vernuccio said in a memo sent to a West Virginia lawmaker, "Right-to-work is really about one thing: freedom."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Sure. Freedom. Freedom for corporations to pay hard-working Americans less.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Also chiming in was Jim Shaffer of the Public Policy Foundation, West Virginia's affiliate of the State Policy Network, reciting that RTW is "a personal choice."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Model bill. Check. SPN think tank supports. Check. Now cue up the marketing blitz for David Koch's Americans for Prosperity.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">As the National Journal reported, "Americans for Prosperity is pushing for a right to work bill in West Virginia with mailers and an online ad campaign backed by ‘a strong five figure buy,' according to AFP regional communications director Christian Hertenstein. The group also launched a website dedicated to the issue."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">"The two direct mail pieces ... were sent out beginning in December, encourage people to call their state representatives and ask them to support the measure."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">AFP even boasted about its PR campaign: "The statewide effort to support right to work will include radio ads, direct mail, door-knocking, phone-banking and direct engagement with legislators." Cue former Rep./current AFP leader Lund.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">What is the return on investment for the Koch-fueled playbook so far? The bill passed the House of Delegates on January 27, and the state Senate is about to consider it--now that Cole is back from his fab trip to see the Kochs on the West coast.</a>

<h2><a href="http://xxx">Repealing Prevailing Wage Is also in the Queue in West Virginia</a></h2>

<a href="http://xxx">West Virginia is also about to take up a repeal of the prevailing wage law, too, even though reputable studies have consistently found that prevailing wage laws do not increase government contracting costs. Independent studies have show that repealing prevailing wage laws does not save taxpayer money, primarily because higher-wage construction workers are much more productive or effective than lower-paid, less skilled workers.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Repealing the prevailing wage does, however, drive down "labor costs" while increasing profits for CEOs and corporations, if that's how worker in West Virginia want to measure success--at the expense of their own wages.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">It will come as no surprise that the Koch-funded ALEC has long lobbied for the "Prevailing Wage Repeal Act."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">ALEC's fingerprints in West Virginia were also caught on film: last year, as the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on repealing the prevailing wage law, one state lawmaker was seen perusing the ALEC.org website, according to a photo snapped by state Sen. Bob Beach.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Koch funding has planted the seeds for the repeal effort in countless other ways. For example, as far back as 2009, the state SPN affiliate published a report authored by the "Charles G. Koch Doctoral Fellow" at West Virginia University who--guess what--called for the repeal of the state's prevailing wage.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">A more recent study--commissioned by the state building trades union--calculated how repealing the prevailing wage would reduce worker pay by tens of millions of dollars each year cumulatively.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Times are tough in West Virginia.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">And for those working for a living they could get even tougher--if the ALEC-SPN-AFP playbook goes unchecked and the Koch machine gets its way.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">CMD's Lisa Graves, Brendan Fischer, and Nick Surgey contributed research to this report.</a>

</div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">ALEC Exposed</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://xxx">Koch Exposed</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">Labor</a></div>

</div>

</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/02/majority-states-now-have-right-work-laws</a>

<a href="http://xxx">West Virginia, once a bastion of organized labor, will soon join the ranks of the right-to-work states that have undercut union participation. The Republican-dominated state legislature on Friday overrode Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s veto of a right-to-work bill, becoming the 26th state in the nation to pass such legislation.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Right-to-work laws bar unions from negotiating contracts that require all workers represented by a union to pay dues—in effect guaranteeing workers the union’s protections and representation regardless of whether they contribute. The laws are broadly understood to weaken unions.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The bill faced fierce opposition from unions, who organized protests at the state capitol and launched TV and radio ad campaigns to fight the legislation. But it also had money behind it, courtesy of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group backed by the Koch brothers that has lobbied for right-to-work laws across the nation. One of the West Virginia bill’s key proponents, Republican gubernatorial candidate and state Senate president Bill Cole, touted his efforts to pass the right-to-work bill at a Palm Springs retreat organized by the Kochs earlier this year.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">According to the US Census Bureau, West Virginia had a higher poverty rate than all but 10 states between 2011 and 2013. Many communities have been hit hard by the loss of thousands of mining jobs in recent years. Republican lawmakers claimed that loosening labor laws was necessary to attract businesses to the state. Democrats have argued that it will ultimately hurt workers, and that the bill was aimed primarily at diminishing unions’ political clout.</a>

</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">http://www.alternet.org/labor/why-supreme-court-should-leave-well-enough-alone-and-let-workers-build-unions</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Current discussions regarding the Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case now before the U.S. Supreme Court are missing the critical implication of this debate. The case revolves around whether a public sector union employer negotiated collective bargaining agreement can include a provision for what is known as “agency fee.” Agency fee refers to a payment that employees who choose not to join a labor union pay the union for purposes of representation. It is not, contrary to some statements in the media, union dues. It is something very different.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">News reports regarding the Friedrichs case suggest that the main threat to unions and workers posed by the elimination of agency fee is the draining of union resources that can be used for political action, a major objective of the political right. Yet that threat, while real, is secondary to the more fundamental threat: the elimination of resources badly needed in order to represent workers in their work lives.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Central to the National Labor Relations Act, which has guided labor relations since its passage in 1935, and the subsequent Supreme Court decision upholding it in 1937, are two notions: first, that the public policy of the United States was to support collective bargaining and industrial peace, both of which were seen as crucial cornerstones to labor/employer relations in the USA. Second, that a union selected by a vote of eligible workers is the exclusive representative of the workers of the particular bargaining unit.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The Court has been very clear, especially since its seminal ruling in Steele v. Louisville Railroad (1944), that a labor union must represent the collective interests of the workforce and must also represent the interests of individual workers who are threatened by actions on the part of management that allegedly violate the collective bargaining agreement. The Court has maintained that the union must represent such workers irrespective of union membership.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">What does this mean concretely? It means that an individual worker who chooses not to join the union that represents his or her bargaining unit will benefit by what the union negotiates and can go to the union and demand representation in the face of any contract violation. Thus, a non-union worker can gain all of the benefits of representation yet pay nothing. This defines “right to work,” the clear intent of which is to make it exceedingly difficult for a labor union to represent workers and build their power.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Some on the political right suggest that the Friedrichs case has something to do with freedom of speech. That is pure sophistry. There are no freedoms being suppressed. Consider this scenario. Let’s say that a town has a voluntary tax program. Citizens may voluntarily pay taxes but should they choose not to, they are, nevertheless, entitled to public services, e.g., police and fire department; water and sewer. How many towns in the USA operate on that basis?  How many towns and cities would even consider such an approach? Would a voluntary tax program advance the freedom of speech of those who disagree with decisions by the local government?</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Labor unions cannot fully operate without funds derived from fees paid by workers covered by the collective bargaining agreement. The agency fee was created as a mechanism to offset the costs of representation. It does not require that a worker pay union dues. It does not compel a worker to adopt a position any issue. It acknowledges that the beneficiaries of a system of collective bargaining have a responsibility to shoulder some of the costs of collective bargaining.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court against the California Teachers Association is a decision that advances the notion that an institution obligated by law and precedent to represent all, must do that using only the resources of those who are committed to the organization rather than  the resources of all those benefiting from the work of that institution.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">A friend told me a story that put this all together. A postal worker chose not to join his union. As part of the federal sector, he was not obligated to join. One day his hours of work were changed. The worker went ballistic because this change would unsettle his entire life. Despite the fact that he was not a member of the union he went to the union for representation. The union fought on his behalf and won him back his original hours. My friend then asked this worker whether he was going to now join the union. The worker smiled and said, “No, I don’t have to.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">A decision against the California Teachers Association is a decision in favor of greed and against the notion of personal and collective responsibility. It is nothing more than a cynical move in equally cynical times.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a talk show host, writer and activist.  He is the author of 'They’re Bankrupting Us!' And Twenty Other Myths about Unions. Follow him at www.billfletcherjr.com.</a>

</div>

</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/02/13031/reporters-guide-koch-playbook-right-work</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">West Virginia is the latest front in a national battle to undermine worker rights bankrolled by the billionaire Koch brothers.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The effort in West Virginia to enact a Right to Work law (Senate Bill 1) and repeal the state's prevailing wage (HB4005) is following the same playbook used in Michigan and Wisconsin, involving a similar cast of Koch-backed out-of-state characters to drive the agenda.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The connections to the Koch brothers are numerous:</a>

<a href="http://xxx">◘    Last weekend, January 30-31, the Koch brothers held an exclusive donor gathering at a luxury hotel in Palm Springs, California. West Virginia Senate President (and Right to Work bill sponsor) Bill Cole was one of only seven elected officials from the entire country to attend the event. “He specifically addressed his legislation to make West Virginia the 26th right-to-work state,” Cole's spokesperson told the Charleston Gazette-Mail.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">◘    Both anti-worker bills, Right to Work (Senate Bill 1) and Prevailing wage repeal (HB4005), mirror model legislation promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which receives a substantial part of its funding from Koch Industries and other entities controlled and funded by the Koch brothers. ALEC is closely tracking the West Virginia legislation.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">◘    David Koch's Americans for Prosperity (AFP) has spent significant resources in West Virginia to push Right to Work, including through direct mail and television ads. AFP conducted similar activities promoting Right to Work in Michigan (2012) and Wisconsin (2015).</a>

<a href="http://xxx">◘    An AFP representative named Pete Lund has been promoting Right to Work in West Virginia and offering advice to legislators. Lund was previously the Michigan House Majority Whip, and after sponsoring Right to Work in that state in 2012, he received a job at AFP as State Director for Michigan.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">◘    The Koch-funded State Policy Network (SPN) is playing a similar role in West Virginia as it played in other states. In Michigan, the state SPN affiliate the Mackinac Center played a key role in promoting Right to Work in 2012, and later received SPN's top award for that effort. Then, SPN published a document titled “You Can Too” in which it promoted the successful campaign to pass Right to Work in Michigan using the ALEC model. In 2015, the Mackinac Center's Victor Vernuccio testified in Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin SPN affiliate also supported Right to Work. In West Virginia, Mackinac's Vernuccio has similarly testified in favor of right to work, and the state SPN affiliate, The Public Policy Foundation of West Virginia, has backed the anti-worker measures.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">◘    Koch and SPN groups are also backing prevailing wage repeal. In 2009, for example the state SPN affiliate The Public Policy Foundation of West Virginia published a study authored by the “Charles G. Koch Doctoral Fellow” at West Virginia University, which called for the repeal of West Virginia’s prevailing wage.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">For further details, contact the Center for Media and Democracy.</a>

<h1 class="title" itemprop="name" style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px none; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1; letter-spacing: -0.05em; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://xxx">VOICES: Media fails to reveal anti-union agenda of labor 'experts' in Tennessee</a></h1>

<p style=" margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 19.5px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px; border-style: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color; -moz-border-top-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; border-image: initial; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://xxx">By Chris Brooks</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The United Auto Workers (UAW) are going in for round two at the Chattanooga Volkswagen (VW) plant. The National Labor Relations Board will be conducting a union representation election at the East Tennessee factory on Dec. 3 and 4. The election, which was <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-width: medium; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit;">contested by Volkswagen, is for a so-called "micro-bargaining unit" of approximately 162 maintenance employees, who work to maintain the machines and assembly lines in the plant.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The UAW is hoping that a micro-unit election will provide a different result from the previous, internationally scrutinized union vote at the Chattanooga plant that ended in failure for pro-union workers. In that election, out-of-state corporate front groups, such as Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform,descended on Chattanooga to join the chorus of Republican state leaders, such as Gov. Bill Haslam and U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, in condemning unions and spreading nightmarish fantasies of the devastation that would be unleashed should the UAW be voted in. The results were announced on Valentines Day 2014, with workers voting 712 to 626 against the union. As a result, the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant remains the lone factory in the Volkswagen Group that has no official mechanism, through either a recognized union or a works council, through which workers can formally articulate and advocate on behalf of their interests.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Following the failed election, documents leaked to Nashville's News Channel 5 exposed the extent to which Republican politicians, professional anti-union consultants, and employer groups coordinated their efforts to defeat the UAW. John Logan, professor of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University, said that this may be the first time in U.S. history that the government and third party groups, but not the employer, were actively involved in an anti-union campaign, which Logan described as "top-down class warfare in Tennessee" and "a zero-sum ideal where the freedom of the wealthy and powerful is premised on the subordination of everyone else." Much and more of the coordinated attack on the union organizing drive has been reported in progressive media, but with all the examples of outright political threats and overt anti-union propaganda, the more banal, and therefore normalized, examples of how the business press has presented anti-union perspectives with an air of supposed objective authority often got lost in the mix.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">One example was <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-width: medium; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit;">a report by Media Matters for America, a progressive research and information center, which criticized prominent Tennessee newspapers for aiding the antiunion efforts by "omitting critical context in their coverage of the union vote." The "critical context" that Media Matters accused Tennessee newspapers of omitting was that "unionization enjoys majority support among Volkswagen workers" in the lead-up to the union election and that news reports "conspicuously" avoided the connections between "right-wing group's ties to the union opposition."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">One of the Tennessee papers criticized by Media Matters was the Chattanooga Times Free Press (CTFP), which is the paper of record for the region in which the Volkswagen plant is located and the majority of the workers live. The CTFP has engaged in particularly astonishing sins of omission in its continued reporting on the UAW organizing drive at Volkswagen. For example, from August 2013 to November 2015, the CTFP printed 16 stories that contained quotes from prominent union buster John Raudabaugh. Of those stories, only five (see HERE,HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE) contained any reference in the text of the article to Raudabaugh's being employed by the National to Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTWLDF), while 11 of those 16 did not (see HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE,HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE).</a>

<a href="http://xxx">In an investigation of the NRTWLDF, The Progressive described the organization as "a national leader in the effort to destroy public and private sector unions" that raised over $25 million in 2012 alone, making the NRTWLDF "a powerful instrument of the corporate and ideological interests that want to keep wages low and silence the voice of organized labor in the political arena." The NRTWLDF's power was on full display in Chattanooga, as Raudabaugh provided free legal representation to anti-union Volkswagen workers in their fight against the unionization drive on several occasions.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">And yet, the local Chattanooga paper, in 11 out of 16 stories in which he was quoted, refused to make mention of Raudabaugh's connection to the NRTWLDF, where he has worked since 2012. In one particularly scandalous example, the Chattanooga Times Free Press published an article entitled <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-width: medium; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit;">"VW union, yea or nea? Ex-NLRB member says UAW not needed in Chattanooga for works council" that was entirely centered on Raudabaugh's theory that VW workers and the company could "reach a win-win  outcome without having to pay a third party." As in the other 10 articles, the paper referred to Raudabaugh as a former National Labor Relations Board director and law professor at Ave Maria School of Law without any mention of his affiliation with the NRTWLDF. Yet, even the descriptions that they do provide are missing "critical context."</a>

<a href="http://xxx">According to his profile on the National Right to Work website, Raudabaugh "hold's [sic] the Reed Larson Professorship of Labor Law at Ave Maria School of Law. The Professorship was jointly established by the Foundation and Ave Maria to offer courses on workplace litigation and employee freedom." The NRTWLDF press release issued to announce his hiring states that Raudabaugh splits his time between providing legal assistance to anti-union workers and teaching at the "jointly established" professorship at Ave Marie law school, where law students work with Raudabaugh on research and the writing of briefs on behalf of the NRTWLDF.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Both the Ave Maria University and the the town of Ave Maria are owned by former Domino's pizza owner and extreme right-wing billionaire Thomas Monaghan, who financed the construction as part of his dream to create an insulated conservative  Catholic community. According to the Wall Street Journal, Monaghan's medieval vision for this project, which has cost him hundreds of millions of dollars, is to create a town in which he can "control what goes on there" and residents "won't be able to buy a Playboy or Hustler magazine" and businesses are specifically forbidden from selling "the pill or the condoms or contraception." Thanks to a special law passed by the Florida state government at the behest of Monaghan, he and the Barron Collier development corporation not only own a majority of the town's property but arethe ultimate government authority in Ave Maria, and can remain so forever. Empowered by the state government to a dictatorial reign, Monaghan's Catholic corporate dystopia has become a reality and Ave Maria has been described as a "miniature theocratic fiefdom" and compared to"fascist regimes." It's not hard to see why the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation would feel right at home.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Unfortunately, the Chattanooga Times Free Press is not alone in functioning as an organ of anti-union propaganda. Both Reuters and the Associated Press have provided space for Raudabaugh to make anti-union statements while failing to make any mention of his being employed by the NRTWLDF. Parsing the corporate media's treatment of Raudabaugh, we can see a recurring theme: By avoiding "critical context," a prominent union buster, employed by a multimillion-dollar anti-union political operation in partnership with an extreme right-wing Catholic university founded by a conservative billionaire in a 21st century company town, magically becomes just another more-or-less neutral authority on labor relations, even after filing charges on behalf of anti-union Volkswagen workers against both the UAW and the company.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">http://www.southernstudies.org/2015/12/voices-media-fails-to-reveal-anti-union-agenda-of-.html</a>

<a href="http://xxx">(Chris Brooks is a graduate student in the Labor Studies program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an organizer living in Chattanooga.)</a>

</article>

</div>

<a href="http://xxx">Wisconsin Gov. <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Scott Walker’s labor plan, released this week, would do more than undermine unions on a nationwide scale: It would also hurt a multi-million-dollar source of campaign donations to Democrats.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">While union membership across the country has<span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">shrunk, campaign contributions have risen. During the last presidential election cycle, labor<span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">gave $141.3 million to federal candidates, political parties and outside spending groups – almost double what the sector donated in 2008. Labor’s contributions were nearly as generous in the 2014 midterms, totaling $140.7 million.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Nearly all of labor’s 2012 donations to candidates and parties – 90 percent – went to Democrats, with President Barack Obama coming in as the biggest <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">recipient at $618,000. But unions also gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to individual House and Senate candidates, with Sens. <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) ranking among the top draws for labor money that cycle.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Unions representing teachers, auto workers and public employees were the top<span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">donors: The <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">National Education Association, the <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">United Auto Workers Union and the<span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees each gave more than $10 million.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Walker’s <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">plan would eviscerate the power of unions. The GOP presidential hopeful would abolish the National Labor Relations Board, which investigates allegations of unfair labor practices, and eliminate federal employee unions. Public sector unions, which include employees at all levels of government, <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">donated $14.7 million to Democrats in 2014.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">“Further, I will stand in solidarity with any governor, Republican or Democrat, who fights the big-government special interests in their state and takes on collective bargaining reform like I did in Wisconsin,” he wrote in his plan.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">In 2011, Walker pushed a controversial bill to restrict collective bargaining for most of his state’s public employees. It passed despite protests at the capitol in Madison that <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">drew nationwide news coverage. This year, he signed into law a bill to make Wisconsin the 25th “right-to-work” state – one in which workers can’t be compelled to join or pay dues to a union as a condition of employment, even if the union negotiates collective bargaining agreements that benefit them. Walker now hopes to pass a “right-to-work” law at the federal level that would require states to opt out of the policy if they disagree with it.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">“Democrats and union bosses are panicking because I want to end the special treatment and taxpayer-funded giveaways they’ve benefited from for years, and they know I’ll deliver results for hardworking families no matter who stands in the way,” Walker said in a <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">statement the day after releasing his plan.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Walker also would have the Department of Labor provide information about the costs of collective bargaining policies, and how much states would save if they changed them. And Walker said he’d require federal worker unions to publicly report what portion of membership dues they use for political activity.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">David Cox Sr., the national president of the <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement that prohibiting “federal employees from having their union dues voluntarily deducted from their paychecks, as Scott Walker has promised to do if elected president, is a blatant political attack on federal employees and an attempt to wipe labor unions off the map.” Union dues, he noted, are not used for political contributions, but for “negotiating better working conditions, protecting employees from discrimination and retaliation” at work, and other activities.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Contributions to candidates come mostly from the unions’ PACs, which are funded by donations from union employees and members separately from any dues they pay. And unions use large sums from their treasuries not to contribute to candidates, but to run their own ads on behalf of favored candidates or to contribute to other outside spending groups that do so.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The NEA, for instance, underwrote its own super PAC, the <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">NEA Advocacy Fund, to the tune of $21.8 million in the 2014 cycle. That group in turn spent $5.8 million on ads benefiting Democratic candidates, including $3 million used for attacks on North Carolina’s <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Thom Tillis, who went on to win a Senate seat. The AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization for many labor unions, and some of its affiliate unions gave a total of about $18 million to the <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">AFL-CIO Workers’ Voices PAC. That super PAC reported spending more than $2 million on ads attacking Republican candidates or supporting Democrats, including about $424,000 backing Sen.<span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> Mark Begich, the Alaska Democrat who lost his re-election effort.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Labor also gave $10.9 million and $15 million to <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">House Majority PAC and <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Senate Majority PAC, respectively. They are the Democratic Party’s super PACs that support congressional candidates.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Losing those sources of support would be a “huge blow to Democrats,” said Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a veteran observer of politics. “They’ve already suffered a huge blow from the attempts and successful efforts in Wisconsin and a number of other states to undercut public employee unions.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Unions provide not only financial support for Democrats, Ornstein said, but also boots on the ground to do grassroots organizing – which has long rankled Republicans.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">“[A] lot of the efforts we’ve seen in undercutting unions have been strongly focused on undercutting the Democratic Party’s political base,” Ornstein said. But Walker’s plan is “much, much broader,” wiping out the concept of unions and collective bargaining.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Ray La Raja, an associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, said Walker’s blueprint would make it more difficult – but not impossible – for unions to engage in politics.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">“Unions will find ways to spend their other cash on politics if they can,” La Raja said.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Besides, while Walker’s plan “would have a dramatic impact” on Democrats, it’s unlikely to happen, said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball newsletter at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Even if Walker were elected president, Republicans would need to overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate to extend “right to work” nationwide and end federal employee unions.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">And Ornstein said he viewed the proposal as an example of a candidate throwing “radical Hail Mary passes to show he’s different.” Walker has slid in the <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">polls while non-establishment candidates like <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Donald Trump and <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Ben Carson (and now, maybe, Carly Fiorina) dominate the field. But Ornstein doubted a focus on union issues would give Walker more traction.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Senior researcher Douglas Weber contributed to this story.</a>

</div>

Categories: <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">501(c) groups <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Campaign finance <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Labor

Tags: <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">American Federation of Government Employees, <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Brianna Gurciullo, <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">labor unions, <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">National Education Association, <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">National Labor Relations Board,<span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">right to work, <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Scott Walker, <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">unions, <span style="text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">United Auto Workers Union</a></footer>

<a href="http://xxx"> OMG National Association of Manufacturers v. National Labor Relations Board (2013)—A court approved a poster from the employer informing workers they had the right not to join a union, but struck down a rule requiring that a sign be posted informing workers of their right to form and join unions and bargain collectively, because the Constitution protects the corporation's right not to speak, </a>

<h1 property="dc:title" datatype="" class="node-title"><a href="http://xxx">Robert Reich: Why Americans Are Screwed and Europeans Are Not</a></h1>

</div>

<div class="byline economy"><a href="http://xxx">By Robert Reich [1] / Robert Reich's Blog</a></div>

<div class="story-date"><a href="http://xxx">March 15, 2015</a></div>

</a></div>

<div id="atstbx" class="at-share-tbx-element addthis_32x32_style addthis-smartlayers addthis-animated at4-show" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; -webkit-animation-fill-mode: both; -webkit-animation-duration: 1s; opacity: 1 !important;"><a href="http://xxx">The U.S. economy is picking up steam but most Americans aren’t feeling it. By contrast, most European economies are still in bad shape, but most Europeans are doing relatively well.</a></div>

</div>

<a href="http://xxx">What’s behind this? Two big facts.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">First, American corporations exert far more political influence in the United States than their counterparts exert in their own countries.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">In fact, most Americans have no influence at all. That’s the conclusion of Professors Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, who analyzed [2] 1,799 policy issues — and found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Instead, American lawmakers respond to the demands of wealthy individuals (typically corporate executives and Wall Street moguls) and of big corporations – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The second fact is most big American corporations have no particular allegiance to America. They don’t want Americans to have better wages. Their only allegiance and responsibility is to their shareholders — which often requires lower wages  to fuel larger profits and higher share prices.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">When GM went public again in 2010, it boasted [3] of making 43 percent of its cars in place where labor is less than $15 an hour, while in North America it could now pay “lower-tiered” wages and benefits for new employees.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">American corporations shift their profits around the world wherever they pay the lowest taxes. Some are even morphing into foreign corporations.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">As an Apple executive told [4] the New York Times, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">I’m not blaming American corporations. They’re in business to make profits and maximize their share prices, not to serve America.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">But because of these two basic facts – their dominance on American politics, and their interest in share prices instead of the wellbeing of Americans – it’s folly to count on them to create good American jobs or improve American competitiveness, or represent the interests of the United States in global commerce.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">By contrast, big corporations headquartered in other rich nations are more responsible for the wellbeing of the people who live in those nations.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">That’s because labor unions there are typically stronger than they are here — able to exert pressure both at the company level and nationally.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">VW’s labor unions, for example, have a voice in governing the company, as they do in other big German corporations. Not long ago, VW even welcomed [5] the UAW to its auto plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. (Tennessee’s own politicians nixed it.) </a>

<a href="http://xxx">Governments in other rich nations often devise laws through tri-partite bargains involving big corporations and organized labor. This process further binds their corporations to their nations.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Meanwhile, American corporations distribute a smaller share of their earnings to their workers than do European or Canadian-based corporations. </a>

<a href="http://xxx">And top U.S. corporate executives make far more money than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The typical American worker puts in more hours than Canadians and Europeans, and gets little or no paid vacation or paid family leave. In Europe, the norm [6] is five weeks paid vacation per year and more than three months paid family leave.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">And because of the overwhelming clout of American firms on U.S. politics, Americans don’t get nearly as good a deal from their governments as do Canadians and Europeans.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Governments there impose higher taxes on the wealthy and redistribute more of the wealth to middle- and lower-income households. Most of their citizens receive essentially free healthcare and more generous unemployment benefits than do Americans.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">So it shouldn’t be surprising that even though U.S. economy is doing better, most Americans are not.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The U.S. middle class is no longer the world’s richest. After considering taxes and transfer payments, middle-class incomes in Canada and much of Western Europe are higher [7] than in the U.S. The poor in Western Europe earn more than do poor Americans.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Finally, when at global negotiating tables – such as the secretive process devising the “Trans Pacific Partnership” trade deal — American corporations don’t represent the interests of Americans. They represent the interests of their executives and shareholders, who are not only wealthier than most Americans but also reside all over the world. </a>

<a href="http://xxx">Which is why the pending Partnership protects the intellectual property of American corporations — but not American workers’ health, safety, or wages, and not the environment.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The Obama administration is casting the Partnership as a way to contain Chinese influence in the Pacific region. The agents of America’s interests in the area are assumed to be American corporations.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">But that assumption is incorrect. American corporations aren’t set up to represent America’s interests in the Pacific region or anywhere else.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">What’s the answer to this basic conundrum? Either we lessen the dominance of big American corporations over American politics, or we increase their allegiance and responsibility to America.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">It has to be one or the other. Americans can’t thrive within a political system run largely by big American corporations — organized to boost their share prices but not boost America.</a>

</div>

<span style=" font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19.6px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://xxx">Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker meanwhile has signed a so-called right-to-work bill, striking a blow to organized labor four years after he gutted collective bargaining rights for public sector workers. Labor groups had staged mass protests against the bill, which makes Wisconsin the 25th "right-to-work" state. The bill Walker signed was taken practically verbatim from model legislation proposed by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council. It bars the mandatory collection of union dues, but critics say it is a wholesale attack on collective bargaining power.</a>

</a></div>

<div class="print-site_name" style=""><a href="http://xxx">Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)</a></div>

<div class="print-breadcrumb" style=""><a href="http://xxx">Home > The Cruel Politics of One GOP Governor's Agenda to Fleece the Public</a></div>

<h1 property="dc:title" datatype="" class="node-title"><a href="http://xxx">The Cruel Politics of One GOP Governor's Agenda to Fleece the Public</a></h1>

</div>

<div class="byline news-politics" style=""><a href="http://xxx">By Jane McAlevey [1] / JaneMcAlevey.com [2]</a></div>

<div class="story-date" style=""><a href="http://xxx">February 18, 2015</a></div>

</div>

<a href="http://xxx">Editor's note:You can listen to Jane McAlevey, author of the book from Verso, Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement [3] discuss this article and other topics with Doug Henwood this Thursday February 19 on his show Behind the News KPFA at  [4]12pm PST [4].</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The new governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner, is a hedge fund manager whose salary last year was $60 million [5]. He spent $65.9 million—including $27.6 million of his own money [6]—buying his last election, and he’s about to introduce an austerity program that will make most folks in Illinois think they are living in austerity-wracked Greece, with less idyllic weather. While he’s generating national headlines by trash talking unions, he is quietly taking a scalpel to every important social program in the state, starting with an Illinois program that subsidizes high-quality childcare for 160,000 low-income kids. Instead of extending a small tax increase that passed the Illinois legislature in 2011, staving off a crisis, he’s letting the increases expire. Rauner is methodically manufacturing an economic crisis for his state, one that will let him do what he has long been set on doing: shrink the government and squeeze the 99 percent.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Rauner’s latest executive order extends last summer’s Supreme Court ruling in Harris v. Quinn, which created right-to-work union rules for some public employees, homecare and childcare workers, to all public employees. Government workers in Illinois, and nationally, have long had the right to refuse union membership, and instead of full dues they pay a discounted 60 percent, known in labor parlance as an agency fee, in consideration of the representation and benefits they receive, along with members, from union protection and negotiation. What had been long-settled law on agency fees accepts that a worker might prefer to withhold the roughly 40 percent of dues that a union earmarks for political use. Harris v. Quinn undid this for homecare and childcare workers across the country, setting the stage for a national right-to-work law applying to government workers. Rauner’s order, effective immediately, states that the government will collect all the agency fees and deposit the money in an escrow account—achieving his object of starving union coffers beforethe courts can decide whether his action is legal, and perhaps before the next election cycle.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Rauner hopes to smash labor in Illinois so that he can take a baseball bat to it nationally. He has retained a high-powered legal team that is steering this case to the US Supreme Court and into the longing arms of Samuel Alito, who has already indicated his preference for the Rauner interpretation of Harris v. Quinn at the national level. Rauner’s cynicism was on full display in both his use of an executive order—the same weapon Obama has been deploying over the loud objections of the organized right wing—and in his choice of language, echoing Karl Marx’s description of workers as cogs in the wheel of capitalism by calling union dues “a critical cog in the corrupt bargain that is crushing taxpayers.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Rauner is firmly entrenched in the corporate right wing of the Republican party. In an infamous video clip [7] from the summer 2011 Aspen Institute of Ideas, Jonah Edelman, cofounder of Stand for Children, describes how Bruce Rauner suggested that they set up an office in Illinois with the explicit purpose of decimating the Chicago Teachers Union:</a>

<a href="http://xxx">“When Bruce Rauner, a mutual friend…asked, after seeing we had passed legislation in several states, including Colorado, that we look to Illinois, I was skeptical, frankly. But after interviewing 55 different folks in the landscape, the speaker of the house, senate president, the minority leadership, education advocates…I was very surprised to see a tremendous political opening,”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The corporate right has a worldview, and, as Edelman’s speech demonstrates, it also has a power analysis from which all strategy flows. In the 1930s, the progressive movement’s analysis of power rested squarely on the faith that workers in large numbers—organized workers—could challenge unfettered corporate power and improve social conditions. And for many generations, through their unions, that is what they did. Now, progressives in and outside of unions have replaced power structure analysis with short-term tactical maneuvers that rely on something fashionably known as narrative change, done best through paid social media, devoid of vision and without the active participation of large numbers of workers. Worse still, despite our defeats in Wisconsin, our own movement continues to throw large numbers of women and African-Americans under the bus by characterizing public service workers as somehow different from, and of lesser importance than, the heroes of the twentieth century’s labor struggles, the largely white male labor force of heavy industry.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">In Rich Yesselson’s widely read 2013 article in Democracy magazine, “Fortress Unionism,” the author calls on all progressives to circle the wagons in defense of what remains of today’s unions: “labor can, without undertaking lengthy and expensive campaigns to organize new workers, work to buttress the areas in which is it already strong, extend its alliances with other progressive groups, and even train the worker leaders of tomorrow.” Good idea! Then the bus rolls up as Yesselson continues, “I am speaking here only about private-sector unions, which face a deep crisis. Public-sector unions have their own well-known dilemmas, but require a completely different discussion.” In another recent piece, “Toward a New Solidarity,” he states that “the general public is the ‘employer’ that pays the wages and benefits of both the public sector union members and staff.” This is straight from the right-wing playbook, and it’s wrong. Given the bailouts of the auto industry, the gargantuan subsidies to pharmaceutical companies in the name of research, the public lands “we” donate to the cattle and mining industry, to name a few, “we” the general public pay a hefty chunk of the so-called private sector’s salary, too. What private sector? “Fortress Unionism” articulates very well why it’s so important to protect and defend what we have, and it offers some excellent ideas, but Yeselson’s analysis veers off the road when it separates the interests of labor’s public and private “sectors.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">This same logic appears in a buzz-getting 2014 book by Jake Rosenfeld called What Unions No Longer Do, but Rosenfeld replaces Yesselson’s bus with a steamroller. Echoing Ronald Reagan, Rosenfeld titles his second chapter “Government Is Not the Answer: Why Public Sector Unionism Won’t Rescue the Labor Movement.” Tell that to the mothers of the 160,000 kids in Illinois who are about to lose their access to childcare. Both Yesselson and Rosenfeld bemoan how few strikes take place these days, but the most massive strike in recent times, a strike that riveted America, that completely shut down production in a vital sector—education—was led in Illinois by mostly female teachers, who enjoyed unprecedented community support because they declared that their strike was about more than school workers and more than their wages. The strike was about defending the broad class interests of Chicago’s mostly black families. And they meant it.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Yes, the Taft Hartley Act did a lot of damage to the labor movement’s ability to engage in solidarity strikes, but in my last reading of the law, I didn’t find that unions must surrender all known forms of solidarity. In Illinois right now, many unions, public and private, have made the decision to endorse Mayor Rahm Emanuel. That self-destructive folly wasn’t legislated by Taft Hartley, nor was the selling out of the overwhelmingly female workforce who devote their lives to public service. Notably, among leftists and liberals, it’s men who take the “government unions don’t matter” position, and it is past time for men in the movement to take note that the economy has changed and that women-led professions are now the strategic professions. And it’s time we all sit up and, instead of writing books and articles saying that they are different, or that they matter less, we need to ask these unions how we can help them win.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">From the 1970s through the 1990s, the corporate right gutted the power of the biggest organized labor force of that time: factory workers. It did this by creating global trade rules that put US labor in direct competition with workers in repressed countries who were earning $1 a day. Then it started a drumbeat about unionized workers in the United States being overpaid, and while national opinion was marshalled to the message, Rauner’s predecessors were wrecking the lives of millions of blue-collar families and their communities. Now the same right-wing drumbeat is rolling again, demonizing today’s most heavily unionized workforce, those overcompensated toilers—mostly women—doing public-service work. And now they’ve added a new riff: the fiction that these workers are overpaid at “our” expense, not a faceless corporation’s, not the Koch brothers subsidies, because “we” taxpayers are government workers’ real employers. But it’s only a riff, a marketing strategy. The right wing knows that in labor there are no “sectors.” Public or private, it’s the same struggle, about workers exercising their collective power and regulation.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">There is only one economy. The false dichotomy of private and public sector is hardly recognized by Rauner’s crowd, the private equity investors and financiers who are really crushing the taxpayers, who suck up the nourishment meant for a whole society through the subsidies, contracts and all manner of fees they receive from government. The truth about “special interests” is that the government spends far, far less providing low-wage working mothers with childcare than it does providing the 1 percent with funds for its unimaginably lavish lifestyle. What private sector? What public sector?</a>

<a href="http://xxx">We can reject the right’s message and foil its strategy by building a fortress for all workers in Illinois and across the country.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Jane McAlevey is the author of Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement [3], now out in paperback (Verso, 2014).</a>

</div>

<div class="left facebook"><a href="http://xxx">        Share on Facebook Share</a></div>

<div class="right twitter"><a href="http://xxx">        Share on Twitter Tweet</a></div>

<div class="typos"><a href="http://xxx">Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [8]</a></div>

</div>

<div class="print-source_url"><a href="http://xxx">Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/cruel-politics-one-gop-governors-agenda-fleece-public</a></div>

<a href="http://xxx">Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jane-mcalevey

[2] http://janemcalevey.com

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Expectations-Hell-Fighting-Movement/dp/1781683158

[4] http://www.kpfa.org/all-programs/behind-news-doug-henwood

[5] http://www.ctunet.com/blog/bruce-rauner-problem-with-facts

[6] http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20141104/NEWS02/141109937/cost-of-a-vote-for-governor-23-90-winning-the-election-priceless

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kog8g9sTDSo

[8] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on The Cruel Politics of One GOP Governor's Agenda to Fleece the Public

[9] http://www.alternet.org/

[10] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B</a>

</div>

<a href="http://xxx">anti union zones http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/01/12720/ALEC-Wisconsin-Milwaukee</a>

<a href="http://xxx">berman superbowl ad ~ union</a>

<a href="http://xxx">http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/01/12721/union-busting-front-group-run-super-bowl-ad</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY AND WORKPLACE</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Not Lovin' It: McDonald's Falls Flat at Enhancing Its Public Image</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The company's PR initiatives can't disguise its unfair labor practices.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">By Jim Hightower / AlterNet January 20, 2015</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Print</a>

<a href="http://xxx">50 COMMENTS</a>

<a href="http://xxx">McDonald's is scrambling, and I'm not talking about eggs. You know your business has what image consultants call "quality perception issues" when you have to launch a PR initiative that publicly addresses such questions as: "Does McDonald's beef contain worms?"</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Thornier yet for the world's largest burger machine is its boneheaded response to the remarkable, ongoing rebellion by fast-food workers, who're demanding a $15-an-hour wage and the freedom to unionize without corporate retaliation. The overpaid and clueless executives at McDonald's responded by -- guess what? -- retaliating against hundreds of the employees who joined the protests. Big Mac managers illegally reduced the hours (and therefore the pay) of those who joined the "Fight For 15" campaign, spied on them, interrogated and threatened them, and imposed restrictions on their freedom even to talk about unions or working conditions.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The corporation now faces federal charges on hundreds of labor law violations -- as well as rising customer anger over its ham-handed tactics. Naturally, McDonald's responded by apologizing and raising worker's wages.</a>

</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Ha! Just kidding. Instead, it's running a new series of TV ads that, astonishingly, tries to tap into people's emotions about such tragic events as 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing, as well as linking its logo to people's positive feelings about veterans, birthdays, and even "love." McD's corporate marketing director explains that the ads are all about the Golden Arches shining bright in every community, being with us through the good and the bad. As she puts it, "Who better to stand up for lovin' than McDonald's?"</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">What a joke. For over a decade the burger behemoth has pushed its product with an advertising slogan that exuberantly proclaims, "I'm Lovin' It."</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">But it turns out that putting words of praise in customers' mouths doesn't sell more burgers -- in fact, customers have been putting fewer Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets, and other McEdibles in their mouths, causing sales to sag. This decline in affection has to do with the corporation's boring burger, unappetizing news reports that some of its suppliers have been repackaging expired meat, its corporate-wide policy of paying poverty wages, its ruthless anti-union tactics and its cynical strategy of having tax payers subsidize its labor costs by directing employees to go on food stamps and Medicaid.</a>

</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Not to worry, though, for new CEO Don Thompson (the second replacement in the top slot in only two years) is all over these boo-boos. Is he offering real improvements in quality, wages and benefits, and corporate attitude?...</a>

<a href="http://xxx">'EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT' NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A UNION AT VW: A Tennessee Volkswagen plant that was the site of a fierce union battle has adopted a new policy for recognizing employee organizations -- and it looks suspiciously like something anti-union forces have been angling for. (12/18/2014)</a>

<a href="http://xxx">http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/18/republican_funded_anti_labor_campaign_succeeds</a>

</div>

<a href="http://xxx">2/14 billboards to keep VW union out</a>

<a href="http://xxx">tenn http://www.newsmax.com/US/grover-norquist-union-volkswaqen-tennessee/2014/02/07/id/551465</a>

</div>

<div class="byline economy" style=""><a href="http://xxx">giroux, attack on unions, stop thinking http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13367-the-corporate-war-against-teachers-as-public-intellectuals-in-dark-times</a></div>

<a href="http://xxx">tudies show the laws have no effect on economic development, but are associated with lower wages, lower union membership</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Labor groups have continued to mount pressure against Republican-led efforts to roll back collective bargaining rights. While much of the focus has centered on collective bargaining, many elected leaders have been expressing support for the “right to work” law as another legislative measure to curb labor’s influence in the workplace.

On Tuesday, Sen. Jim DeMint, joined by seven other Republican senators, introduced the "National Right to Work Act" as a way to reportedly boost the economy and raise wages.

The “right to work” legislation has been at the crux of the conflict in Indiana, where labor supporters are expected to gather this week to continue their protests against the assault on public-sector unions. Although the measure in Indiana has reportedly been withdrawn for now, the proposal has seemingly extended beyond the Heartland as other elected leaders are now considering the idea in their own state.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">“Right to work” laws prohibit contracts that require workers to pay for union representation fees. In the United States, unions are mandated to represent workers in a bargaining unit for all workers. But “right to work” outlaws union fees for non-union workers within a union shop who still enjoy the benefits of collective representation.

Critics have pointed out that “right to work” is the latest Republican effort to trim union finances, and to a greater extent, their campaign contributions toward Democratic officials. It isn’t a coincidence that states with "right to work" laws have lower union membership rates either. Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says the law is also a way to hinder labor’s survival. He writes:</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The outcome is obvious; unions will have a much more difficult time staying in place, as many workers will take advantage of the opportunity to get all the benefits of union representation without paying for them. The unions that do survive will be much weaker if the government forces the union to represent people who don't have to pay for its services.</a>

</blockquote>

<a href="http://xxx">Recently, Indiana has been the most notable supporter of the legislation in their efforts to join the 22 states - mostly in the South and Southwest - that currently have “right to work” laws. In Indiana, the House committee voted in favor of sending the bill to the House even though Republican Governor Mitch Daniels backed off his support at the moment since it could hamper other proposals. But elected leaders in Missouri, Maine and even historically union-strong states like Pennsylvania have also expressed a desire to pass the bill.

Many of these state officials have supported the bill because it would apparently address budget concerns, spur businesses and create jobs. Several studies have found otherwise.

When it comes to attracting businesses, reports have shown that “right to work” laws have little effect. Instead, states with “right to work” laws have no impact on economic growth or employment, according to research by Lonnie Stevans, Professor of Information Technology and Quantitative Methods at Hofstra University.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The 2009 study compared “right to work” states with those that don’t have the law. It found that states' right to work laws “yield little or no gain in employment and real economic growth,” according to the text excerpt provided by American Rights At Work, a workers' rights advocacy group.

More recent studies have found similar conclusions. In a recent briefing paper by the Economic Policy Institute, the nonprofit think-tank examined the case of Oklahoma which, in 2001, became the most recent state to adopt the law. The study said Oklahoma enacted the bill to draw manufacturing jobs, which had increased for a decade prior to the “right to work” bill. But employment in this sector fell after the state implemented the legislation, suggesting that the law’s impact on jobs was almost nil. The report also adds that the legislation did not have any positive impact on employment either:</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The RTW law in Oklahoma did not buffer it from the country’s employment crisis in 2001-2003 or the Great Recession, either. Compared to the six states that border it, Oklahoma was no better off in terms of its unemployment rate or its rate of job growth in 2010 than it was in 2000, prior to enactment of its RTW law.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Finally, the number of out-of-state businesses opening plants in Oklahoma decreased following the adoption of RTW. Furthermore, more than 160 Oklahoma employers have announced mass layoffs and 100 facilities have closed since RTW was enacted.</a>

</blockquote>

<a href="http://xxx">This proposal might be gaining steam, but it doesn’t benefit workers in almost any sense. Wages are roughly $5,000 lower for all employees in "right to work" states, according to the AFL-CIO. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that wages are 3.2 percent lower in "right to work" states than states that aren't.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">This is just another tactic promoted by Republicans looking to reduce the bargaining and financial power of unions. For workers, job prospects with the so-called “right to work” aren’t as rosy as they might seem.</a>

</div>

<h2 class="sechead-article-author" style=" margin: 2px 0px 7px; text-transform: uppercase;"><a href="http://xxx">ABOUT THIS AUTHOR</a></h2>

<a href="http://xxx">Akito Yoshikane is a freelance writer based in Chicago. He can be reached at akitoyoshikane [at] gmail.com</a>

<h4 style=" font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://xxx">More by Akito Yoshikane</a></h4>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://xxx">Without More Jobs, Further Global Unrest Looms: ILO</a></li>

<li><a href="http://xxx">LA Car Wash Workers Sign Industry’s First Union Contract</a></li>

<li><a href="http://xxx">Locked-Out American Crystal Workers to Meet With Co.—This Time With Federal Help</a></li>

<li><a href="http://xxx">Two-Tier System Remains in UAW Deal with Ford</a></li>

<li><a href="http://xxx">Occupy Wall Street Spotlights Precarious State of Youth</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

<h4 style=" font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://xxx">Recent Working ITT Stories</a></h4>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://xxx">‘From Bean to Cup,’ Starbucks Labor Action Heats Up</a></li>

<li><a href="http://xxx">How Big Banks Shortchange Their Workers</a></li>

<li><a href="http://xxx">Unions Furious with Illinois Democrats Over Pension Cuts</a></li>

<li><a href="http://xxx">Spy vs. Spy at Walmart</a></li>

<li><a href="http://xxx">Wait for Medical Relief Drags on for Last of Ground Zero Victims</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

lteNet / By Lynn Stuart Parramore [1]</a></div>

<h1 property="dc:title" datatype="" class="node-title"><a href="http://xxx">Bombshell: Plutocrats Brazenly Collude to Hurt State Economies and Screw Working People</a></h1>

</div>

<a href="http://xxx">These days, many Americans walk around feeling like no matter how hard they work, how much they manage to save or how carefully they plan for the future, the game is rigged against them. They suspect that behind closed doors, CEOs and Wall Street honchos are eagerly scheming to rip them off.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Their worst fears of corruption and collusion just came true in Illinois, where corporate titans were caught red-handed in the act of Rigging the Game.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Let’s step inside a recent gathering of the corporate-backed Union League Club of Chicago, where former Illinois Attorney General Ty Fahner, who now leads a band of plutocrats known as the “Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago,” recently launched into an hour-long diatribe on the evils of state pensions.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Fahner, a top GOP fundraiser, can’t abide the notion that teachers, firefighters, nurses and other public workers in the state of Illinois can still expect a decent retirement. Not a luxurious retirement, mind you — the average pension is $32,000 a year, and most state employees will not receive Social Security. But even a modest retirement for hard-working people is too much for today’s fatcats.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Fahner is part of a virulent strain of public raiders and economic crackpots who have become dominant in the Republican Party (and increasingly among the Democrats, too) who are hell-bent on destroying unions and attacking public employees. Ultimately they wish to privatize everything and reduce their tax responsibilities down to nothing.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">That’s why Fahner has declared war on pensions and is promoting a pension crisis in order to justify it.He has called for cost of living cuts, raising the retirement age, capping pension earnings and shifting the cost of the pension obligation of teachers to local school districts,many of which are too poor ever to pay.He styles himself as a savior who wants only to protect the public from debt, when in reality he is a brutal plutocrat who will stop at nothing to line his pockets at public expense and reduce his and his friends' taxes.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Illinois has real problems. However, Fahner desperately hopes the public will not catch on to the fact that states are having difficulty paying out pensions because of the lack of revenue caused by a Wall Street-driven financial crisis and the deep recession it set off, regressive taxes, and the myriad bond scams financiers have already inflicted on states, cities, towns, and municipalities which have triggered funding crises for pensions and other programs. (See "How Wall Street Fraudsters Plunder Public Finances, And 5 Ways to Fight Back [2].")</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Fahner has tried a number of dirty tricks to attack pensions in his career. But his most recent admission is absolutely breathtaking in its brazenness: He boasted of working to scam the Illinois bond rating.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">During Fahner’s talk to the Union League Club, an unidentified person in the audience suggested that pressuring credit agencies to rig the state bond ratings in order to attack pensions might be a jolly good idea. Fahner gleefully replied that he had already thought about that — and his group has tried it.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Audience member: “Maybe sometimes you gotta be irresponsible to be responsible. If a political solution really doesn’t produce a favorable outcome, maybe you really need a market solution. And a market solution, I don’t mean bankruptcy, I mean actually talking down the state rating even further so the state’s bonds essentially become below investment grade. And it drives up the borrowing cost to the state and all of us to a significant level enough that you really feel the public pressure…”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Fahner: “The Civic Committee, not me, but me and some of the people that make up the Civic Committee… did meet with and call – in one case in person – and a couple of calls to Moody’s and Fitch and Standard & Poors, and say, How in the hell can you guys do this?"</a>

</blockquote>

<a href="http://xxx">Fahner went on to take credit for downgrades to Illinois credit ratings, saying, "If you watch what happened in the last few years, it's been steadily down.”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Check out the video at minutes 46:30 to 49:43 for the full remarks on the ratings scam: “Fahner: Civic Committee helped jaw down state’s bond rating [3].”</a>

<a href="http://xxx">As the audience member correctly adduced, pushing down the bond rating is a great way to screw workers, the state and taxpayers. Pension funds buy bonds, often from the state, to stay financially healthy. In order for the pension fund to buy the bond, it must have a passing grade. If the grade is lowered, say from A to B, the price of the bond goes down, and the pension fund will suffer a loss. If the bond rating is dropped below a minimum standard, then the pension fund must sell the bond, and take a much bigger loss.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">Lowering the bond rating also has the effect of artificially inflating the interest rates that bond holders must pay on future bonds, making them more expensive to buy and reducing the state’s ability to borrow. The basic idea is to manufacture a crisis by financially starving pension funds. Fahner & Co. know this will put political pressure on Illinoisans to take away worker pension benefits.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">In a nutshell, here’s what the video reveals:</a>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://xxx">Corporate honchos — some of whom may have a vested financial interest in Illinois bonds — feel perfectly comfortable calling and exerting pressure on ratings agencies.</a></li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://xxx">Ratings agencies are political entities whose supposedly impartial research can be influenced and perhaps even bought.</a></li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://xxx">CEOs think nothing of willingly and knowingly screwing the bond rating and economic standing of their home state in order to enact their anti-worker philosophy and fatten their own bank accounts.</a></li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://xxx">Proclaiming you are “fixing” state fiscal problems is a great cover for potential insider self-dealing in the bond market.</a></li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://xxx">Committing economic treason against fellow citizens and taxpayers is simply a matter of course for today’s American plutocrats.</a></li>

</ul>

<a href="http://xxx">The We Are One Illinois union coalition has released a statement [4] condemning Fahner and calling for an investigation into the matter:</a>

<a href="http://xxx">"Ty Fahner and unnamed members of his corporate-backed committee have shown their true colors. Fahner bragged openly about joining members of the business-backed group, behind closed doors, in lobbying credit rating agencies to lower Illinois' bond ratings in an irresponsible and unethical attempt to put the state in an even more difficult position. They show total contempt for the taxpaying public, total disregard for the difficult fiscal challenges the state faces, and total hypocrisy over their alleged care for the working families of Illinois.”</a>

</blockquote>

<a href="http://xxx">In addition, a serious conflict of interest may exist if either these unnamed CEOs or the big corporations they control profited in any way from lobbying to make Illinois pay more interest on its bonds—bonds which they or their corporations may hold.”</a>

</blockquote>

<a href="http://xxx">All right. What the hell can be done about this shameless hustle?</a>

<a href="http://xxx">The state attorney general should immediately open an investigation into whether any members of Fahner’s group sold bonds before the downgrades, based on their conversations. That is plainly insider trading. Everyone who held bonds at the time of the downgrades also took a loss. Attorneys general and treasurers in other states whose portfolios took a hit should also consider suing, given that political pressure seems to have played a role in causing their losses. Ditto for private holders and other unions—anyone who had the bonds at the time of the downgrade.</a>

<a href="http://xxx">It’s time for the trustees of the pension funds to stand up for those whose interests they are charged with protecting, and not shrug off one more crime against the public interest that reduces pensions for working people.</a>

</div>

<div class="tags" style=""><a href="http://xxx">See more stories tagged with:

</a><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden">

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">attorney general [5],</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">business [7],</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://xxx">Civic Committee [8],</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">Commercial Club of Chicago [9],</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://xxx">Credit rating agency [10],</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">Debt Financing [11],</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://xxx">economics [12],</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">Fahner & Co. [13],</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://xxx">finance [14],</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">Financial economics [15],</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://xxx">financial services [16],</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">illinois [17],</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://xxx">investment [18],</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">labor [19],</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">pension [21],</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://xxx">Pensions crisis [22],</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">Person Career [23],</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://xxx">Person Location [24],</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">republican party [25],</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://xxx">social issues [26],</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">Ty Fahner [27],</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">Union League Club of Chicago [29],</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://xxx">Union League Club [30],</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://xxx">business-backed [32],</a></div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://xxx">fundraiser [33],</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://xxx">political solution [34]</a></div>

</div>

<div class="print-source_url" style=""><a href="http://xxx">Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/economy/illinois-pension-attack-collusion</a></div>

<a href="http://xxx">Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/lynn-stuart-parramore

[2] http://www.alternet.org/economy/wall-street-and-municipal-fraud

[3] http://capitolfax.com/2013/07/23/fahner-civic-committee-helped-jaw-down-states-bond-rating/

[4] http://www.weareoneillinois.org/news/coalition-calls-for-investigation-into-corporate-ceos-who-lobbied-for-illinois-bond-downgrades

[5] http://www.alternet.org/tags/attorney-general

[6] http://www.alternet.org/tags/bond

[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/business-0

[8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/civic-committee

[9] http://www.alternet.org/tags/commercial-club-chicago

[10] http://www.alternet.org/tags/credit-rating-agency

[11] http://www.alternet.org/tags/debt-financing

[12] http://www.alternet.org/tags/economics-0

[13] http://www.alternet.org/tags/fahner-co

[14] http://www.alternet.org/tags/finance-0

[15] http://www.alternet.org/tags/financial-economics

[16] http://www.alternet.org/tags/financial-services-0

[17] http://www.alternet.org/tags/illinois-0

[18] http://www.alternet.org/tags/investment-0

[19] http://www.alternet.org/tags/labor-0

[20] http://www.alternet.org/tags/paul-ryan-0

[21] http://www.alternet.org/tags/pension-0

[22] http://www.alternet.org/tags/pensions-crisis

[23] http://www.alternet.org/tags/person-career

[24] http://www.alternet.org/tags/person-location

[25] http://www.alternet.org/tags/republican-party

[26] http://www.alternet.org/tags/social-issues-0

[27] http://www.alternet.org/tags/ty-fahner

[28] http://www.alternet.org/tags/usd

[29] http://www.alternet.org/tags/union-league-club-chicago

[30] http://www.alternet.org/tags/union-league-club

[31] http://www.alternet.org/tags/bank-0

[32] http://www.alternet.org/tags/business-backed

[33] http://www.alternet.org/tags/fundraiser-0

[34] http://www.alternet.org/tags/political-solution

[35] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B</a>

</div>

</div>

</figure></div>

</div></div></div>