Democrats Join the Raid On Union Bargaining Rights

Unbelievable. 

Howard Ryan

|  May 23, 2011

Rarely have labor-backed Democrats targeted the very right of public employees to collectively bargain. That’s now changing. In several states, Democratic legislators are betting they can cut into public employee bargaining rights and still win union backing.
 

Politicians of both parties have been tough on public employees in this recession, balancing state and city budgets through layoffs, wage freezes, furloughs, and benefit cuts. But rarely have labor-backed Democrats targeted the very right of public employees to collectively bargain.
That’s now changing. In Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut, Democratic legislators, eager to save money, are betting they can cut into public employee bargaining rights and still win union backing at election time.
It’s a tightrope for the pols. Democrats get most of their campaign funding—72 percent nationally—from business, AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka said this month. He added that the union share of the Democrats’ war chest has fallen to half what it was a decade ago.
But union money is still substantial. AFSCME claimed top place in all political spending in 2010, pouring $87.5 million into campaigns.
And union get-out-the-vote efforts can make or break some races. Union-household voters increased both Obama’s percentage and that for House Democrats by 2.4 points in 2008.
Legislators need to keep unions in the fold. How much can they go against core union desires and still win their backing?
Precedent says—a lot. Year after year, union leaders look at the greater-evil Republican alternative and urge members to work for the Democrat, no matter how sorry the candidate.
In New Jersey, the Communications Workers, representing 45,000 state and local government employees, dogged Democratic Governor Jon Corzine’s heels for months in 2009, protesting his plan to cut their wages through furloughs. But CWA endorsed Corzine when he was up against layoff-happy Republican Chris Christie.

Democratic legislators, eager to save money, are betting they can cut into public employee bargaining rights. These New Jersey public workers are not happy about it. Photo: CWA Local 1037.

As Republicans like Christie and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker tilt further to the Tea Party right, the desire to keep them out of office at all costs becomes even stronger. After all, Walker’s ilk wants to do away with public sector unions—and their donations to Democrats—altogether. Democratic politicians are banking on that dime’s worth of difference.

OUTRAGE OVER ‘BETRAYAL’

In Massachusetts, a Democratic stronghold, lawmakers are pressing to strip 175,000 municipal employees of health care bargaining rights. House members passed a measure April 26 that would prevent teachers, police officers, and others from bargaining over deductibles and co-pays.
Two-thirds of House Democrats supported the measure, ignoring protests and a radio ad campaign coordinated by the state AFL-CIO. The Democrats’ action has led to “tremendous outrage and feeling of betrayal” in the labor movement, observes Dan Clawson, a board member of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA). “It’s definitely a break from the past.”
The Democrats’ bill, which purports to save $100 million in health insurance costs, comes in the context of a nearly $2 billion state deficit. The deficit impacts local governments, which rely on state revenue sharing.
Budget-strapped municipalities are eager to shift health care costs to employees, as state government did last year. Municipal employers are supporting the anti-bargaining bill so that they can impose such changes unilaterally.
Most legislators dismiss other options to address the state’s deficit, such as raising taxes or reforming health care to control costs. Labor and community groups, on the other hand, propose to raise $1.2 billion through increased capital gains taxes and income taxes for high earners. Hundreds of labor and community activists converged on the Statehouse May 3 for a day of hearings and lobbying.
But the battle is uphill. Only a handful of legislators back the tax increase, and they’re the brave ones, says Andrei Joseph, a Concord history teacher and MTA board member.
In next-door Connecticut, the governor and top Democrats in the legislature sponsored language to take bargaining rights away from college faculty by reclassifying them as managers.

FRIENDS LIKE THESE

Health care bargaining is the battleground in New Jersey as well. The Communications Workers opened contract negotiations in March with a health care proposal that conceded higher costs for members.
But Christie refused to bargain, and instead proposed employees pay 35 percent of premiums, up from the current 8.5 percent average.
Christie’s proposal was followed by a slightly better one from Democratic Senate President Stephen Sweeney, who is also an organizer for the Iron Workers.
Both proposals strip unions of the right to bargain health care, however.
“We’re shocked that Steve Sweeney, who calls himself a Democrat, would act in this manner,” said a state Firefighters official.
Patrick Kavanaugh, president of CWA Local 1032, says a worker making $35,000 would pay $3,000 under Sweeney’s proposal and $5,700 under the governor’s, compared to $525 now.
In response, CWA and other public employee unions are asking legislators to pledge to oppose the removal of union bargaining rights. Some have signed on, reports Kavanaugh, while six legislators who refused have already been targeted with picket lines in front of their offices. Members are demanding that health care be bargained, not legislated, he said.

HIT THE TEACHER

Illinois’s bargaining rights war has focused on teachers, Chicago teachers in particular. Democratic legislators have joined hands with billionaire-backed lobby groups in an effort to deprive teachers of bargaining rights, job security, and the ability to strike.
A first attempt in January, led by Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan, fizzled in the face of opposition from the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and both statewide teacher unions. The corporate lobbies followed up with a clever spring offensive, however. They engaged the teacher unions in negotiations at the state Capitol, with Democratic State Senator Karen Lightford shepherding the process.
The teacher unions were prepared to make concessions—for example, to accept takeaways on seniority rights—in order to avoid greater losses (including the loss of collective bargaining).
But Lightford and the lobbyists inserted last-minute changes in the bill that union negotiators failed to catch. Chicago teachers would be prevented from filing unfair labor practice charges if an employer refused to bargain over many subjects. The bill also sets up roadblocks that make it virtually impossible for Chicago teachers to strike.
CTU’s president joined the two statewide teacher federations in endorsing the bill, which sailed through the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Two weeks later CTU reversed its stance, but the bill passed the Democratic-controlled House with only one dissenter. The teachers are now fighting for a “trailer” bill to amend the measure’s worst aspects.

CONSEQUENCES

The willingness of state Democrats to turn on labor, coupled with the Obama administration’s lackluster support for union issues, is causing Trumka to make tentative noises about political independence.
Trumka said the federation will spend much more of its political-action money this year and next on educating and mobilizing members “year-round,” instead of handing it over to Democrats and their campaign structures in election season. The activity would still aid Democratic candidates, presumably.
Trumka went further, vowing to “actually make people pay a price” if they don’t keep promises, hinting that unions could challenge unsupportive Democrats in primaries, as they did (unsuccessfully) against ex-Senator Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas last year.
Trumka added that unions will “start running some of our own, in state races.”
Even that degree of independence would require a major shift in union thinking. In Wisconsin, anger at the Republican onslaught enabled unions and supporters to gather signatures to force recall elections of six Republican state senators this summer.
Despite the upsurge of support for unions, only one of the Democrats recruited to run, a teacher, comes out of the labor movement.

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Jane Slaughter contributed to this article.

Men in historic strike enter hall of fame

It's nice to see the rank and file members of this historic public employee strike get some overdue recognition.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) — Labor Secretary Hilda Solis on Friday honored the 1,300 black workers who took part in the Memphis sanitation strike of 1968, taking a swipe at governors who are trying to curtail public union employees’ benefits.
The strike, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. made his final campaign before an assassin’s bullet took his life, played a major role in the civil rights movement and the fight for social and economic justice for black workers. It also is considered a watershed moment in the history of collective bargaining rights for public employees, a point Solis raised as she criticized the move in some states to curb bargaining rights for public workers.
“Today, some governors are using the financial crisis as an excuse to take this country backward, instead of forward,” Solis said in a ceremony at the agency’s headquarters. “But we know American workers still want and need a voice at the table. We know collective bargaining gives them that seat.”
Solis formally inducted all 1,300 of the striking workers into the agency’s Labor Hall of Fame, founded in 1988 to honor the memory of people who have enhanced the quality of life for American workers. The hall of fame typically includes famous union heroes like Cesar Chavez and Mother Jones, but Solis said it was time to recognize a group of rank-and-file workers who helped shape history.
The public sanitation workers in Memphis went on strike after two of their co-workers were accidentally crushed to death on the job. They were seeking higher wages, better working conditions and the right to form a union. After 63 days of striking and peaceful demonstrations, they won many of their demands, including overtime pay, sick leave and improved safety conditions.
Eight of the men who took part in the strike, members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, attended the Labor Department ceremony. The men also met earlier with President Barack Obama at the White House.
The White House says Obama is committed to the cause for which the workers marched “as workers across the country continue to face challenges to their rights.” Both Solis and Obama have made a number of public statements to support union members protesting GOP efforts to curtail union rights

Labor's last stand? Missouri a prototype for Walker's policies

What can you say when a reporter from Wisconsin decides to look at Missouri to see how bad things could get?  Don't miss the comparison chart: http://host.madison.com/app/interactive/union-series/wis_mo.jpg.

The Wisconsin State Journal
DAN SIMMONS | dsimmons@madison.com | 608-252-6136
Thursday, April 21, 2011

Steve McLuckie came to Wisconsin to help out his teacher's union colleagues during the protests against Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to strip most public workers of collective bargaining rights.
"I'd half-jokingly say to them, 'Gov. Walker's trying to make Wisconsin into Missouri,'" said McLuckie, a former Democratic lawmaker who's now organizing director for Missouri's National Education Association.
His Wisconsin union colleagues didn't find the comparison particularly funny, mostly because there may be some truth in the joke.
Missouri, perhaps more than any other Midwestern state, provides a long-term prototype of policies championed by Walker: a state government that's less lucrative for public workers but more friendly to businesses and tax-averse citizens. A look into Missouri's past could provide a glimpse into Wisconsin's future.
Some of the predictions being made by Walker's opponents haven't proved true in Missouri. For example, weaker public-employee unions has not led to Republican domination at the polls that some have predicted for Wisconsin.
But Missouri does lag Wisconsin in many quality-of-life indicators that unions and their Democratic allies claim is the trade-off for lower taxes and lower pay for public workers.
"Over time, it's inexorable that if you choose a low tax value you'll pay for that through a deteriorated education quality," said Chris Kelly, a Missouri Democratic state representative and former budget committee chair.
Walker said in an interview last week that lower taxes doesn't equate to lower quality public services. He said asking public workers to pay more for benefits — effectively cutting their pay — is a better alternative to layoffs, which would harm public services.
Rather than Missouri, Walker compared his union and budgeting approach to Indiana, where Gov. Mitch Daniels abolished state public unions by executive order in 2005. The move led to government consolidation, reorganization and privatization.
"Over time, their government got more efficient, they got more effective, they got more accountable to the public," Walker said. "The best employees, the good employees, ultimately got rewarded."
Pay gap
Wisconsin and Missouri are both Midwestern states with a population on either side of 6 million. They border Illinois from different sides and have a roughly 70-30 urban-rural mix. They have higher-education systems anchored by a behemoth land-grant research university.
But when it comes to public sector workers, the two states have followed widely divergent paths. While Wisconsin public workers won collective-bargaining rights with local governments under state law in 1959 and with the state government in 1967, their Missouri counterparts didn't win those rights until 2007, when Missouri's Supreme Court ordered that unions have a right to collective bargaining. However, implementation has been spotty and a state law that codifies it still doesn't exist.
Wisconsin public-sector workers make as much or more than the national average in most categories of public sector worker, with more experienced workers especially well compensated, according to an annual compensation survey by the American Federation of Teachers. In Missouri, public sector workers are among the lowest paid in the nation.
A public-school teacher in Wisconsin with more than two decades' experience earns an average of $49,630. In Missouri, that same teacher would take home just $39,320. A veteran prison worker here averages $48,198; there, it's $31,395.
Although cost of living is lower in Missouri than Wisconsin, public workers in Missouri also do significantly worse than their private sector counterparts. The public-private pay gap is highest in the nation, according to a recent report from the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
"Public employees generally enjoy better job security, protection, and benefits than their private sector counterparts," wrote Missouri Republican state Sen. Luann Ridgeway in a recent online essay titled, "Missouri is Not Wisconsin." "In return, taxpayers expect them to be faithful to the duties entrusted to their care."
Amid the tales of woe for Missouri public workers, there are bright spots. The 1,200 state troopers rank middle-of-the-road in compensation nationally, said Ken Sears, executive director of the Missouri State Troopers Association, after the Legislature agreed to pay bumps of 15 percent to 20 percent starting five years ago.
Sears acknowledged it's an easier sell to legislators for unions like his, which are widely visible to the public, than to more obscure state workers such as prison guards and mental-health nurses.
Open for business
Conservatives might look at Missouri and point to these benefits: an approach to government that produces balanced budgets and low taxes.
Walker has long argued that the Wisconsin economy is out of balance: overly friendly to public workers and not welcoming enough to businesses and taxpayers.
He might find a lot to love about Missouri. Missouri politicians have, in a bipartisan way, produced balanced budgets for decades, said Kelly, the Democratic state representative.
"We don't spend more than we have, and that's been true through every administration," Kelly said.
The state has the highest bond rating available, AAA, from the three rating agencies, one of just eight states with it. Wisconsin is just behind in all three agencies' rankings.
The state also appears to be more open for business, to borrow a familiar Walker line.
Missouri ranks 19th in small-business friendliness; Wisconsin lags behind in 33rd. Their corporations pay a flat 6.25 percent income tax; ours pay a flat 7.9 percent rate. Despite it, Missouri's unemployment rate, 9.1 percent, is higher than Wisconsin's 7.4 percent.
Missourians also pay lower income, sales and property taxes.
For example, the state taxes gasoline at 17.3 cents a gallon, while Wisconsin collects 32.9 cents a gallon.
At what cost?
Unions and their Democratic allies could use the low pay for public workers in Missouri — and comparatively low funding for education and other social programs — to point out a lower standard of living.
Missouri ranks behind Wisconsin in educational achievement and significantly ahead of it in rate of incarceration. It costs more to go to college there. Missourians live shorter lives than we do. They spend an extra $129 annually in car maintenance because their roads are worse than ours. Their bridges rank seventh-worst in the nation; ours rank 15th-best.
Labor leaders point out that all those indicators rely both on adequate funding and high-quality public workers: teachers, prison guards, nurses and civil engineers.
"If you invest in a good human infrastructure, you generally have better services for the citizens who pay the taxes," said Susan McMurray, a Wisconsin lobbyist for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
She said that people in Wisconsin, as in other Upper Midwestern states, have grown used to a high level of public services over generations and will not accept diminished quality.
The next decade may test that idea in Wisconsin. But if nothing else, the past six decades in Missouri have shown people there have consistently supported their government's approach.
"They're not comfortable with the level of services," McLuckie said, "but the disconnect comes when you try to raise income and taxes to get those services provided."
That's just capitalism at work, said Joseph Haslag, chief economist with the Show-Me Institute, a St. Louis-based advocate for open markets.
"If wages are low, it reflects what the society is valuing," he said.
It's up to each state, he said, to decide what value it attaches to public services and balance the costs associated with providing them.
- State Journal Assistant City Editor Mark Pitsch contributed to this report.

Executive Paywatch

The AFL-CIO has a new web page up called Executive Paywatch.  Check out the Facebook app, where you can compare a CEO's pay to a job similar to yours.  Check it out.

How much did your pay go up in 2010? How about your friends and family? Working people in America are hurting—that’s for sure. They’re lucky to have jobs at all—and if they have jobs, odds are their pay is pretty much flat, or worse.

Now, consider this: In 2010, the average pay of a CEO at a major American company went up by 23 percent—to $11.4 million.

Despite the collapse of the financial markets at the hands of many of these same executives less than three years ago, the disparity between CEO and workers’ pay has continued to grow to levels that are simply stunning.

Take a look at 2011 Executive PayWatch, released this morning, to find out just how outrageous things have gotten - http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/.

Instead of investing to create good middle-class jobs and grow the economy, corporate CEOs are hoarding $2 trillion in cash.

Except, of course, when it comes to their own paychecks.

Endorsed Candidates Win

The Labor Club endorsed two candidates for the Columbia School Board in yesterday's election.  Check out how they did.   Just proves that candidates who respect workers and believe they should be included in workplace decisions can win elections.  Nice.

SCHOOL BOARD DIRECTOR COLUMBIA SCHOOL DISTRICT
          (VOTE FOR )  3
              (WITH 46 OF 46 PRECINCTS COUNTED)
           HELEN WADE .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     8,287   26.81
           JONATHAN SESSIONS.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     8,053   26.05
           DAVE RAITHEL  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     1,381    4.47
           LIZ PETERSON  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     3,021    9.77
           TOM ROSE.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     7,133   23.08
           SARA R. DICKSON  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     3,033    9.81