A Wisconsin federal district court judge has ruled that some key elements of Wisconsin’s Act 10—Governor Scott Walker’s anti-collective bargaining law—violates the equal protection rights of affected state employee unions.
The ruling extends to the law’s prohibition of automatic dues collecting and the requirement that the affected unions hold annual recertification elections requiring a majority of the union’s workforce members.
At the heart of the court’s ruling is the exemption Scott Walker gave to police and firefighter unions who remain free to automatically collect membership dues and require no annual recertification vote.
Walker has long claimed that these unions were given special treatment because the state could not afford a strike or any disruption of the critical services provided by police and firefighters as a result of being saddled with the restrictions placed on the general service unions.
The remaining unions have never bought the explanation, believing that the exemption was payback for the support given to Walker’s candidacy by the police and firefighters. Clearly, Federal District Judge William Conley agreed, writing in his ruling published today,
The fact that none (emphasis provided by the Judge) of the public employee unions falling into the general category endorsed Walker in the 2010 election and that all (emphasis provided by the Judge) of the unions that endorsed Walker fall within the public safety category certainly suggests that unions representing general employees have different viewpoints than those of the unions representing public safety employees. Moreover, Supreme Court jurisprudence and the evidence of record strongly suggests that the exemption of those unions from Act 10’s prohibition on automatic dues deductions enhances the ability of unions representing public safety employees to continue to support this Governor and his party.
Wisconsin Education Association Council et al. v. Scott Walker, et al.
Acting on the ruling, the Court issued an injunction allowing all of the state’s public employee unions to begin the automatic collection of member dues and striking the requirement that they recertify each and every year.
In a statement on the ruling, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman, Mike Tate, said;
Scott Walker’s so-called budget repair bill has been divisive, unfair, radical and offensive to the values of Wisconsin. Now it’s been found to be offensive to the Constitution. Wisconsin deserved better than this bill, just as it deserves better than Scott Walker.
Governor Scott Walker is facing recall on June 5th.
By: Rick Ungar, Contributing Writer, The Policy Page, Forbes, March 30, 2012
March 31, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Collective Bargaining, Public Employees | Anti-Union, Politics, Recall Walker, Scott Walker, Unions, William Conley, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Recall |
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The past 15 months have seen a remarkable assault by the GOP on federal labor rights.
Republicans have introduced numerous bills designed to undermine the National Labor Relations Act, all with wonderfully deceptive names suggesting they would strengthen the rights of ordinary workers: Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act, Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act, Employee Rights Act, Jobs Protection Act, Employee Workplace Freedom Act, Secret Ballot Protection Act, National Right to Work Act, Truth in Employment Act, National Labor Relations Reorganization Act, and others.
Republicans on the federal level have also attempted to defund and abolish the National Labor Relations Board, subjected its Democratic members to repeated subpoenas and requests for information, protested President Obama’s recess appointments to the board, joined lawsuits by corporate and anti-union organizations and threatened Congressional Review Acts – which could happen within weeks – to block the implementation of new board rules streamlining union certification elections and requiring notice posting on federal labor rights.
Rarely, if ever, has the board, and the rights it enforces, been subjected to such relentless attacks. And the attacks continue. While impressive, this assault on federal labor rights pales in comparison to what has been happening – occasionally in full view, but mostly with little notice – at the state level. Almost everyone knows about the 2011 legislation stripping public sector workers of collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin and Ohio, and Indiana’s 2012 “right-to-work” (RTW) legislation, which outlaws union security agreements.
However, the sheer number of anti-union bills supported by GOP-controlled legislatures demonstrates the breadth and depth of the party’s anti-unionism. So what is happening in the states?
In addition to Indiana, at least 18 other states have considered RTW measures. South Carolina and Tennessee passed bills strengthening RTW legislation that has been on the books for six decades, while another RTW state, Virginia, attempted to write RTW into its constitution. And last week, the New Hampshire House passed a RTW bill identical to one vetoed last year by the state’s Democratic governor. Other states that may act on RTW this year — sometimes over the wishes of the GOP establishment — through legislation or ballot initiatives include Maine, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio.
In addition to high-profile bills in Wisconsin and Ohio, at least 13 other states have considered legislation that would eliminate or restrict public sector collective bargaining. New Jersey eliminated public sector bargaining over health benefits, Oklahoma outlawed collective bargaining for municipal employees, and Tennessee replaced bargaining for public school teachers with “collaborative conferencing.” And at least 14 states have considered legislation that would ban public employers from deducting union dues from employees’ paychecks, thereby making it difficult for unions to finance their basic activities. Last week, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed a measure prohibiting public schools from deducting union dues from the paychecks of teachers and other employees.
Many Republican legislatures have promoted bills that, while not directly attacking labor rights, are clearly intended to weaken unions, including unions in the building trades and public schools. 14 states have introduced legislation restricting Project Labor Agreements, and 11 have bills attacking prevailing wage laws, both of which protect building trades standards.
At least 28 states have considered charter school and voucher bills that would weaken public school unions, and others have bills privatizing most schools services, along with bills privatizing transportation, water supply, port authorities, airport security, liquor distribution, prisons and prison medical services, Medicaid delivery, state park vendors, kindergarten development and evaluation, and every municipal service imaginable.
At least 10 states have introduced so-called “paycheck protection” measures, which are designed to place strict limits on the use of union dues money for political purposes, while placing few, if any, restrictions on corporate political spending. Alabama, Arizona and North Carolina passed paycheck measures in 2011 – though all three bills have been challenged in the courts – while California and New Jersey have upcoming paycheck ballot initiatives.
Deception dominates in the messaging on state bills. California’s paycheck ballot initiative is ludicrously misnamed “Stop Special Interest Money Now.” Backers of the bill, the ultra-conservative Lincoln Club of Orange County, co-produced “Hillary: The Movie,” which led to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The Lincoln Club welcomed Citizens United as a “victory for free speech,” but now claims that its measure is a balanced effort to remove all special interest money from state elections, to the extent allowed by federal law. In reality, it would undermine the ability of unions to engage in core political activities but have almost no impact on corporate political spending.
This type of obfuscation is central to Republicans’ anti-union strategy. If the party were unable to hide behind deceptive messaging, it would be exposed as a front for the American Legislative Exchange Council and other extreme organizations.
And finally: not one new job has been created by this tsunami of anti-union legislation.
March 26, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Labor, State Legislatures | Anti-Union, GOP, Labor Rights, NLRB, Paycheck Bills, Politics, Republicans, Workers |
2 Comments
We hear a lot of talk from politicians in Lansing about creating jobs and making education a top priority, but Michigan’s middle class families know talk is cheap.
Last year our elected officials cut more than $1 billion from our K-12 schools, community colleges and universities so they could provide a $1.7 billion tax cut for businesses. These cuts won’t reduce class size, they won’t address barriers to student success, and they won’t put people back to work.
Now a small group of anti-union politicians and corporate special interests like the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are trying to make Michigan a so-called right-to-work state.
Let’s be clear. This is nothing more than a blatant power grab that will weaken the middle class and won’t create jobs.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.”
A right-to-work law in Michigan would give even more profits to CEOs at the expense of our jobs, our retirement security and our kids’ future.
In states with right-to-work laws, employees earn an average of $1,500 less per year, have a lower standard of living and no job security. Currently, six of the 10 states with the highest unemployment rates in the nation have right-to-work laws on the books.
Of course, we all know this isn’t really about rebuilding Michigan’s economy. If it were, middle class families in states that have passed right-to-work laws would be better off, but that’s simply not the case.
In fact, in right-to-work states like Mississippi, Texas and Idaho, workers’ pensions were gutted. Thousands of workers who had been contributing to their pensions for decades were left with broken promises and no retirement security.
The politicians and corporate special interests who are pushing this unfair legislation know that unions are a check on corporate greed, and they are working overtime to silence the collective voice of our teachers, nurses and firefighters.
Corporate CEOs spent more than $1 billion to elect politicians who are willing to do their bidding and give them free rein over our economy.
If these attacks succeed in weakening unions, what will be left to check corporate power and fight outsourcing? CEOs will be able to rob workers of their voice, to lower wages and to ship even more jobs to China.
Gov. Rick Snyder has said he doesn’t want Michigan to become a right-to-work state, and I couldn’t agree more.
This issue is far too divisive, and will tear Michigan apart at a time when we should be focused on creating jobs and investing in public education to give our kids a better future.
When it comes to rebuilding our economy, talk is cheap. And since right-to-work is all about shortchanging workers, it’s clear this flawed proposal is wrong for Michigan.
By: David Hecker, Guest Columnist, Detroit Free Press, February 12, 2012
February 12, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Collective Bargaining, Union Busting | Anti-Union, Education, Jobs, Michigan, Middle Class, Politics, Rick Snyder, Right-to-work law |
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Gov. Jan Brewer is pushing a radical anti-union bill that makes Wisconsin’s law look lax.
Not content to let Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Ohio’s John Kasich get all the fame (and recall elections, and ballot referenda) for their attempts to curtail union workers’ rights, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators have jumped into the fray and proposed their own anti-union bills in recent weeks.
Along with South Carolina’s Nikki Haley and Indiana’s Mitch Daniels, Arizona’s Jan Brewer, not content with making her state the least friendly to immigrants and people of color, has decided to get in on the union-busting action as well, introducing a bill that makes Walker’s and Kasich’s attacks on public workers look mild.
Brewer, the Republican left in charge of the state after President Obama tapped Janet Napolitano to be his secretary of Homeland Security, has been planning anti-union moves since last spring with the backing of the Goldwater Institute. (Named for Barry Goldwater, the think tank pushes for “freedom” and “prosperity” — as long as it’s not the freedom or prosperity of state workers.)
It’s not just Arizona’s right-wingers who are pushing Brewer to beat up on unions – John Nichols at the Nation notes that Walker may have had a hand in helping push an anti-labor agenda, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is involved. In a speech to the right-wing policy shop behind many of these anti-union bills last year, Brewer complained about her inability to fire government employees and supervisors’ difficulty “disciplining” workers.
This week, the Republicans in the state Legislature introduced moves that would make collective bargaining for public workers completely illegal. Here, we break down what you need to know about Brewer and the GOP’s anti-worker agenda.
1. The bill would go further than Wisconsin’s, making collective bargaining completely illegal for government workers.
SB 1485, the first of the bills to take on union rights, declares that no state agency can recognize any union as a bargaining agent for any public officer or worker, collectively bargain with any union, or meet and confer with any union for the purpose of discussing bargaining.
While Wisconsin’s law bans public employees from bargaining over everything but very small wage increases, Arizona’s bill bans collective bargaining outright and refuses to recognize any union as a bargaining unit. Existing contracts with unions will be honored, but not be renewed if this bill passes.
2. Arizona includes police and firefighters in its ban.
Scott Walker famously exempted public safety workers — police officers and firefighters — from his attacks on union workers, but many of them joined the protests anyway. In Ohio, John Kasich’s bill, overturned by his constituents this past November, included the police and firefighters in its elimination of bargaining rights. Now Brewer and her legislative compatriots have decided that police and firefighters should lose their bargaining rights as well.
Arizona, as Dave Dayen at FireDogLake noted, “is changing to a purple state because of an extreme legislature which first demonized immigrants, in what could start a backlash among the Hispanic community. Now, flush with that success, the legislature will demonize police and firefighters. It’s not exactly a textbook strategy for a lasting majority.”
Walker’s attempt to divide and conquer public sector unions by attacking some and not others didn’t work; perhaps that’s why later attempts at similar bills didn’t bother giving special treatment to public safety workers. But as we saw in Ohio, the support of the traditionally conservative police and firefighters’ unions helped unite the state’s voters and bring out record numbers to vote down the bill. Arizona seems to be asking for trouble by targeting police and firefighters with this bill.
3. The state would ban government employers from deducting union dues automatically from a worker’s paycheck.
Not content with banning bargaining, the Arizona legislature is also out to make sure unions can’t collect any money for the work they do. SB 1487 inserts language into existing law that says “This state and any county, municipality, school district or other political subdivision of this state may not withhold or divert any portion of an employee’s wages to pay for labor organization dues.”
This move obviously is aimed to hit unions right in their wallets — taking away the funding they need in order to do more organizing, and carry out political activity.
4. Arizona would ban the government from allowing employees to do union work on company time.
Laura Clawson at Daily Kos notes that in addition to the other measures, Arizona’s Republicans also want to eliminate “release time,” a practice “in which union stewards and other representatives are allowed to spend work time on certain union functions, such as contract negotiations or handling grievances.”
Union stewards and representatives are full-time employees who take on additional responsibilities on top of their jobs—a move like this makes it harder for them to carry out those responsibilities to their fellow workers without fear of facing sanctions from their bosses. Specifically banned by the bill, SB 1486, are “activities that are performed by a union, union members or representatives that relate to advocating the interests of member employees in wages, benefits, terms and conditions of employment.”
5. Brewer also wants to eliminate any job protections for workers, buying them off with pay raises.
Brewer plans to offer public workers their first pay raise in years, a 5 percent increase. The tradeoff? They have to opt out of job protections some of them currently enjoy, including the right to appeal demotions and protection from being fired without cause – they have to become at-will employees.
Like most “merit pay” arrangements, this one sounds good at first — hard-working people will get raises! — but workers see right through it. Odalys Hinds, who works in the state health lab, told the Arizona Republic, “No way will I do it. I won’t take it — it basically would take away our rights. My retirement’s gone up. My insurance has gone up. There’s going to come a day when I’m going to have to pay the state to work.”
6. Arizona is already a “right-to-work” state
The kicker to all this? Arizona workers already enjoy fewer protections than those in Ohio and Wisconsin. Arizona is a so-called right-to-work state, where unions cannot collect a fair share of the direct costs of representation from workers who opt out of joining the union — even though the union is compelled to represent all workers.
This means that unlike the Midwestern states, Arizona has few union members already and that means there are fewer people who are likely to be outraged and moved to protest by attacks on collective bargaining. Yet Brewer, the Goldwater Institute and the Republicans in the Legislature aren’t content with what they have and are moving to make public sector unions all but irrelevant, by making it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs.
Arizona now has a strong Republican majority in the Legislature, and so barring a change of heart by a handful of GOPers, the anti-union measures are likely to pass. But if Brewer continues to antagonize working people in her state, John Nichols notes, Arizona does have something else in common with Wisconsin — provisions that allow for the recall of the governor and state legislators, provisions that were used just last year to remove Russell Pearce, the state senator responsible for the state’s hideous anti-immigrant law, from office.
February 7, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Arizona, Labor | Anti-Union, Collective Bargaining, GOP Governors, Jan Brewer, Jobs, Politics, Scott Walker, Workers Rights |
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Tea partiers are gung-ho to help the Wisconsin governor fend off a recall vote—and their fate may well be tied to his.
As soon as April, millions of Wisconsinites will vote on whether to oust Gov. Scott Walker—a rising Republican star and arguably the most polarizing governor in politics today—just two years into his first term in office. Walker’s recall election is a referendum on his hardline conservative agenda, including curbing collective bargaining rights for state workers and slashing education funding. For Walker himself it’s a pivotal moment in his young political career.
The recall fight is also a crucial test for the tea party, the populist movement that helped elect Walker in 2010, vigorously defended him during last winter’s protests over his anti-union “budget repair” bill, and has been organizing to prevent his ouster. The movement’s support is flagging, its clout dwindling, its buzz mostly gone. But now, tea partiers at the state and national levels are rallying around Walker’s recall defense, hoping a victory could bolster the movement in a critical election year. A defeat, on the other hand, would give ammo to liberals and conservatives alike who say the tea party is all but dead.
In recent months, the Tea Party Express, a national organization, and the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama, a tea party-linked political action committee, have waded into the recall fight, blasting out more than a dozen emails to supporters and launching a $100,000 “money bomb” fundraiser to help defend Walker. They argue that the outcome has national implications for the 2012 presidential election; a Tea Party Express email to supporters in January announced that Wisconsin is “Ground Zero for the Battle Against Obama’s Liberal Agenda.”
The Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama says it has raked in small donations from supporters throughout the country, from Napa, California, to Nashua, New Hampshire. The group’s director of grassroots outreach, Donald La Combe, wrote in an email to supporters that funds would go toward TV and radio ad campaigns as well as “war rooms” throughout Wisconsin to bolster Walker’s support among voters. “We’re going to win this fight, we’re going to DEFEAT the RECALL, and we’re going to stop Barack Obama from getting Wisconsin’s 10 Electoral Votes,” La Combe wrote. (Neither of the above groups responded to requests for comment.)
Two Wisconsin tea party groups, We the People of the Republic and the Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty, claim to have signed up 11,000 volunteers and trained 4,000 of them to scrutinize the estimated 1 million signatures gathered by Walker foes. That signature total was nearly two times the 540,208 needed to launch the recall process; nonetheless, the two groups’ vetting operation, VerifyTheRecall.com, was created to root out duplicate signatures and “downright fraud” found in recall petitions for Walker and Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, their website says. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin branch of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded group that helped train and grow the tea party, held a town hall earlier this month touting the budget reforms enacted by Walker and state Republicans.
It’s not hard to see why the tea partiers would go all-in to defend Walker. There is no clear tea party favorite left to rally behind in the 2012 GOP presidential nomination fight with Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain all out of the race. Walker, on the other hand, is right in the tea party’s sweet spot: He battles unions, axes state spending, rejects federal funding, and is rigidly pro-life and pro-gun rights.
The tea party also has a lot of political capital invested in Walker. When intense anger over Walker’s anti-union “budget repair” bill spilled into the streets of the state capital of Madison last February, Americans for Prosperity swooped in to hold a counter-protest defending Walker. Other tea party groups also rushed to the aid of Walker and ripped his critics.
“Walker is a central figure to them, their Sir Galahad battling the evil unions,” says Theda Skocpol, a Harvard sociology professor and coauthor of The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. Walker ultimately signed the bill into law in March, and it later survived multiple legal challenges.
Last summer, Tea Party Express and Tea Party Nation, two national groups, launched a four-day bus tour across Wisconsin defending six Republicans facing recall elections for their roles in the battle over Walker’s anti-union bill. (Republicans lost two recall races, but clung to a narrow, one-seat majority in the state Senate—a “victory” the tea party claimed credit for.) Tea Party Express also ran TV ads defending Walker’s agenda on the economy.
How much influence does the tea party have at this point? An analysis last July by the liberal blog Think Progress found that the number of events held each month by the Tea Party Patriots, a national group, had dropped by half in the first seven months of 2011 compared with the same period in 2010. Harvard’s Skocpol affirms that tea party events “are falling off some, but there is not a collapse.”
A Pew Research Center analysis published in November found that 23 percent of people in the 60 districts represented nationwide by House Tea Party Caucus members disagreed with the tea party, up from 18 percent a year earlier. Meanwhile, 25 percent of respondents in those districts agreed with the tea party, an 8 percent drop. And a Rasmussen poll this month reported that dislike of the tea party was at an all-time high—and that 46 percent of respondents said the tea party would hurt the GOP in the 2012 elections.
A recent Marquette University poll (PDF) found similarly lackluster support for the tea party in Wisconsin. Forty one percent of respondents thought poorly of the tea party while 33 percent viewed it favorably.
Still, even if the tea party suffers a major defeat with Walker’s recall, their influence will be felt for years to come given the hardline agendas promoted by state and federal lawmakers swept into office in 2010. And Skocpol says the recall election could be a galvanizing event for the movement. “Because all of the tea party forces have not been able to unite on a GOP candidate for president, they’re going to redouble on things like the Wisconsin crusade,” she says. “Grassroots tea partiers everywhere will be be following and contributing to the Walker campaign.”
February 1, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Election 2012 | Anti-Union, Conservatives, GOP, Politics, Republicans, Scott Walker, Teaparty, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Recall |
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