The bills in the House and Senate are ALEC model bills, inspired by none other than Wisconsin union-buster Gov. Scott Walker. Quick story: In early 2011, Walker pushed and passed a preemption law in Wisconsin, completely invalidating the will of Milwaukee voters who had just passed a sick days ordinance.
And, as if by magic, preemption bills have been introduced in Michigan, Mississippi, Washington, Arizona, Indiana, and Oklahoma. Such laws are already on the books in Wisconsin and Louisiana. Just this week, a preemption bill passed both houses of the Florida legislature. Textbook ALEC.
In Michigan, along with statewide mothers’ organization Mothering Justice, Working America delivered petitions signed by over 2,500 Michiganders to the Michigan Restaurant Association and the state legislature.
All workers deserve the opportunity to earn paid sick days, so that not another person has to make their choice between going to work sick and not making rent, or not being able to eat, or not being able to care for their child.
But even the threat of workers in a few cities and towns having this basic right has the restaurant lobby and ALEC running scared, using their politician pawns to introduce ridiculously undemocratic preemption bills that won’t create a single job. Since when did these “small-government” obsessives get into the business of telling cities and towns how to conduct their business?
When someone tries to raise the minimum wage, improve our health care system, or generally try to fix anything, a chorus of conservative anti-worker bigwigs cries foul about big government intruding in their lives.
But when a state passes a law to preempt cities and towns from making their own decisions about allowing workers to earn sick days, those same voices are silent.
Legislation recently approved by committees in the Republican-controlled House and Senate would prohibit counties, townships and cities from adopting policies that requires employers to provide paid or unpaid leave not required under federal or state law.
The bill is HB 4249 in the House, sponsored by Rep. Earl Poleski (R-Jackson), and SB 173 in the Senate, sponsored by Sen. Mark Jansen (R-Grand Rapids). Both bills have been passed by their respective committees.
If you look closely at the bills, you’ll notice they are startlingly similar to bills introduced in Florida, Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Washington.
70 percent of Milwaukee voters want the policy? “Who cares?” says the preemption bill. It’s the very definition of big government intruding on local control that so many conservatives claim to hate.
Meeting attendees were given complete copies of Wisconsin’s 2011 Senate Bill 23 (now Wisconsin Act 16) as a model for state override. ALEC’s Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee at the time was co-chaired by YUM! Brands, Inc., which owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
As one Republican operative put it, these bills “deliver the kills shot” to efforts to allow workers to earn sick days. In addition to Wisconsin, such laws are already on the books in Louisiana and Mississippi.
We live in a crazy, ever-changing world, but some things don’t change.
It may be 2013, but Scott Walker is still a terrible governor, and Wisconsin is still suffering under his policies.
Even as new numbers showed the national unemployment rate slipping in February 2013, those same numbers showed Wisconsin heading in the completely wrong direction. Wisconsin is now ranked 44 out of 50 in job growth, and is being outpaced by all of its neighbors:
The new numbers, based on the most accurate current measures available, show Wisconsin with an estimated 2,790,000 non-farm positions as of January 2013 — up 44,600 jobs or 1.6 percent since January 2011 when Gov. Scott Walker took office.
By comparison, Indiana ranked No. 9 with a 3.8 percent job growth rate over the past two years; Minnesota was No. 10 with 3.7 percent growth; Michigan was No. 12 at 3.6 percent; Iowa was No. 24 at 2.9 percent and Illinois No. 30 at 2.3 percent job growth.
Overall unemployment in Wisconsin also rose in January 2013 from 6.7 to 7 percent (February data has not yet been released). The state gained 12,400 private-sector jobs by lost about 10,600 public sector jobs, with a net gain of only 1,800.
Did you think voter suppression would end on Election Day? Think again. The corporate-backed Republican-led war on our voting rights is still chugging.
None other than Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker announced on Monday that he would like to end the state’s same-day registration law:
Wisconsin is one of nine states that allow voters to register at their polling place on the day of the election, and that’s often credited with helping make Wisconsin’s voting rate one of the highest in the country. Since the Nov. 6 election, both Walker and incoming Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) have said they’re considering ending the practice, which goes back to 1976 in the state.
And what reason would Gov. Walker, who also pushed through a voter suppression ID law in 2010, have for ending the successful practice of same-day registration?
“States across the country that have same-day registration have real problems because the vast majority of their states have poll workers who are wonderful volunteers, who work 13-hour days and who in most cases are retirees,” Walker said at the library, responding to a question from an audience member about election safeguards. “It’s difficult for them to handle the volume of people who come at the last minute. It’d be much better if registration was done in advance of election day. It’d be easier for our clerks to handle that. All that needs to be done.”
So. Gov. Walker is saying that because he feels bad for the overworked poll workers many of whom are retirees, no one should be able to register to vote at the polls.
Excuse us for our disbelief that Gov. Walker supports this policy because he’s interested in helping workers. No state executive in the country, or even in recent memory, has been more committed to attacking workers’ rights and collective bargaining, not to mention the wages, benefits, and pensions of public employees.
Here’s the real reason Walker is seeking to end the 36-year practice: it helps people vote. Wisconsin has the third-highest turnout rate in the country: in part because of the state’s strong civic tradition, but also because same-day registration helps transient Wisconsinites (like students, young people, minorities, and low-income workers) exercise their rights. Two weeks ago, 48,000 voters took advantage of same-day registration in Milwaukee, helping boost turnout in that city to 87 percent.
If the 2012 election proved anything, pro-worker candidates succeed when more people turn out to vote. Walker knows this, so he has a consistent standard operating procedure when it comes to voting rights: restrict at all costs. Act 23, Walker’s voter ID law that was found unconstitutional in April, would have cost the state’s DMV an extra $6 million, despite his frequent protestations that the state is “broke.”
We have a better idea. Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Chris Coons (D-DE) have introduced the FAST Voting Act in the Senate, which would provide states resources to address election reform. In the House, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) has introduced the SIMPLE Voting Act, which would require all states to institute 15 days of early voting, and ensure that each precinct sufficient poll workers.
Those policies would benefit the overworked poll workers Walker is pretending to care about. But his true agenda is and has always been restricting voting rights. He also doesn’t have a history of listening to ideas that are not his.
Working America has endorsed the following candidates and ballot initiatives in the 2012 election. These endorsements do not cover all the candidates and ballot issues in which we have a stake, but they all reflect the passion of our members and the values of our organization.
On November 6, please consider the following as you go to vote:
We’re proud to support President Barack Obama for re-election on Tuesday.
Four years ago, the nation was in crisis. We’d seen nearly a decade of stagnating wages, growing corporate power and steady erosion of the middle class. We were squandering time and resources we could have been using to rebuild America and create a fairer economy. In the fall, an under-regulated, irresponsible and out-of-control financial system detonated, which led to a massive recession and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs every month. We nearly lost a major American industry as the recession crippled auto companies.
Today, we’ve seen nearly three straight years of jobs being added in the private sector. Though things are still tough, we stopped the nosedive of our economy avoided the catastrophic depression that seemed imminent in 2008. We saved nearly a million jobs or more by rescuing the auto industry. And what’s more, we passed much-needed reforms to our health care system and our financial system that will help protect working people and rein in corporate power. None of this was inevitable, none of it was easy, and none of it would have happened if our hard work hadn’t elected Barack Obama as our president.
President Obama also signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and an important credit card reform bill. He passed the Recovery Act that halted the economic collapse, cut taxes for working-class and middle class families and invested in our schools, our infrastructure and new kinds of energy. And he appointed champions for working people to the U.S. Supreme Court, the National Labor Relations Board and the new Consumer Financial Protection Board.
We haven’t agreed with the president on everything, but when it comes down to it, he’s shown that he wants to make America work better for middle class and working-class families. His values and his priorities are the same ones we hear from ordinary people at their doors thousands of times a week: building prosperity by strengthening the middle class, ensuring a great education for our kids, keeping the promise of Social Security and Medicare for today’s retirees and tomorrow’s.
Obama’s opponent, Mitt Romney, has been hard to pin down on a lot of issues, but on the basic economic issues that matter most, his views are remarkably clear: he thinks corporations and the very wealthy are the most important actors in the economy, and so in order to make the economy work we have to tilt it ever-further in favor of those rich and powerful actors. He said we should “let Detroit go bankrupt” rather than investing in the auto industry. He named Paul Ryan as his running mate—endorsing a radical plan to demolish Medicare and leave seniors at the mercy of private insurance companies. As a finance-industry CEO, he exemplified the worst trends in our economy, stripping companies of value for himself and his shareholders and leaving the people who worked for those companies stranded. In his business career, he was referred to as a “pioneer” of outsourcing, and his proposals would give companies further incentives to ship He’s maddeningly unspecific about much of his tax plan, but every serious analysis shows that he would give bigger tax breaks to millionaires (like him) than even George W. Bush did. And he has declared time and time again that his top priority is repealing the health care reform and Wall Street reform that President Obama worked so hard to pass.
This isn’t a close call. President Obama’s skill and leadership in stopping the economic collapse and putting in place health care reform and Wall Street reform would be enough to earn him a second term—but the case for a vote for Obama is even clearer when you compare it to what a Romney administration would look like.
On Tuesday, we recommend a vote for President Obama—and we hope you’ll get your friends and family to the polls, too.
In Wisconsin, the choice for U.S. Senate is stark. There’s really no contest—we think Tammy Baldwin is the clear choice over Tommy Thompson.
Tammy Baldwin, who represents central Wisconsin in the U.S. House, has a solid record of supporting working- and middle-class families. Her record shows that she believes in protecting a secure retirement, expanding access to health care, and creating good jobs that people can live on.
Thompson is a veteran politician who served as the state’s governor from 1986 to 2001. Since then, however, he’s moved away from Wisconsin—serving in George W. Bush’s cabinet before starting a career at a Washington lobbying firm. He went straight from pushing Bush’s drug-industry-friendly Medicare changes to a high-paid job advocating and advising drug companies and health insurance companies. His clients included corporations that profited from outsourcing jobs to other countries.
Thompson’s campaign promises show how much he’s embraced a corporate-friendly agenda. He supports even deeper tax cuts for millionaires like him, at the expense of programs, like student loans and Social Security, the rest of us need. He has wrapped himself enthusiastically around Paul Ryan and the Ryan budget, which would privatize Medicare and shift costs to seniors, who would be left on their own to contend with insurance companies. In a video recorded at a Tea Party gathering this spring, Thompson even asked, “who better than me” to “do away with Medicare and Medicaid.”
Tommy Thompson has spent the last few years advocating on behalf of powerful corporations in his lobbying-firm job. There’s no reason to think he won’t have exactly the same priorities in the U.S. Senate. We know where Baldwin would stand, because we’ve seen how she’s voted as a member of the U.S. House. She’s always looked out for working people in Wisconsin with drive and determination.
Tammy Baldwin is, to be sure, a better choice than Tommy Thompson. But the real pleasure for Wisconsin voters is that they don’t just have a chance to vote against a bad option—they have a chance to vote for someone. By voting for Baldwin, they’ll elect someone who will stand out in the Senate for her commitment to her principles. Baldwin won’t just vote the right way; she’ll be a leader and a voice for working people.
Tammy Baldwin is looking to move Wisconsin forward. She has the values and the energy to be a great Senator.
Working America activists in Wisconsin have been diligently putting pen to paper (well, postcard) for the last few weeks in an effort to urge voters to get out on Election Day and vote.
Women (and a few men) from across the state have been getting together for our Woman-to-Woman Pizza and Postcard parties. Our members realize that the stakes are high this election and are enjoying the chance to reach out to others about the candidates that support our issues.
One of the messages our members felt needed to be spread was President Barack Obama’s willingness to represent the entire country as president. They reminded folks of Mitt Romney’s now infamous “47 percent” comments, which disregard almost half of voters as “dependent on the government” and unwilling to “take personal responsibility […] for their lives.”
Activists wrote postcard after postcard reminding folks that Romney’s tax plan benefits the wealthy and harms the middle class and the poor. The Romney-Ryan agenda cuts taxes for the wealthy at the expense those who are already struggling to get by.
Our members want to spread the word that it’s just not right to take more from a family who can barely put food on the table so that the super wealthy can get tax breaks they don’t need.
Rosemarie from Oak Creek talked about how squeezed the middle class already is and how we need people who represent more than just the wealthy in office. “Most of our senators and congressmen are millionaires,” she said, “it doesn’t matter to them if their electric or tax bills go up but the rest of us struggle with that.”
Rosemarie’s sentiments closely align with most of the people in Wisconsin: they want to be truly represented. They want someone in office who is going to worry about the things they worry about.
Beyond tax fairness, Wisconsinites are worried about jobs – for themselves, for their family, for their friends and for their neighbors. While they’re worried about keeping their job or finding a good job, politicians like Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) keep voting against any bill that would help the middle class while attacking the social safety net. Republican Senate candidate Tommy Thompson’s latest promise to “do away with Medicare” proves he’s just another Ron Johnson.
Our members know that’s not what Wisconsin needs, so they are making sure to spread the word on candidates that support our issues. The postcards urge folks to vote for Tammy Baldwin for U.S. Senate who will listen to their concerns and fight on their behalf for good jobs and tax fairness.
These postcard parties are important to our members and important for voters. Our Working America activists want to make sure that the issues are known. Jerry from Racine said she came to a Pizza and Postcard Party because “our voices need to be heard, they have been trying to silence us and I won’t let them. Voting is our right and we are going to keep it that way.”
If you were building a bridge, would you hire a work crew with a few hours of metal shop on their résumés, or trained and certified Ironworkers? Would you go into surgery with someone who only has a CPR certificate, or a real doctor with a medical degree?
If you’re NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, or one of the 32 NFL team owners, you’d go with the newbie—at least it seems that way, given their decision to lock out professional NFL officials and instead use untrained, unprepared and in-over-their-heads replacement referees.
Just look at last night’s disaster in Seattle where, according to 99.9 percent of the football world and the videotape, the refs absolutely blew a last-second call that cost the Green Bay Packers a win over the Seahawks. The replacement refs threw 24 flags—some for nonexistent penalties—while missing obvious calls in a game they had no control over.
Of course, we all know that’s all about their love for the Packers rather than any respect for the workers or opposition to the NFL’s greedy attempt to eliminate the referees’ pensions by a league that makes $3 billion a year in television rights. AFT President Randi Weingarten tweets:
Glad the ref lockout showed @GovWalker the importance of unions. Too bad teachers, nurses and public workers aren’t as important to him
The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) has called for an end to the lockout because it “continues to jeopardize player health and safety and the integrity of the game that has taken decades to build.”
Grantland’s Bill Barnwell writes that last night’s debacle is “only the second-worst thing that could happen under the replacement refs, though we’re seemingly on our way to the first.”
As bad as a would-be win becoming a loss is, the worst thing would be if a…player suffered a serious injury by virtue of referee incompetence. That’s already been broached a few times this year.
After more than three months on strike, workers at Palermo’s Pizza and their supporters continue to put pressure on Costco, the largest retailer of Palermo’s products. Because of mounting public pressure and more than 50 actions at various Costco locations all over the country, Palermo’s CEO Giacomo Fallucca met with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka last Friday, to begin a discussion to resolve this issue for workers and Palermo’s customers.
But Fallucca is still refusing to meet with the organizing committee of the Palermo Workers Union, reinstate fired workers or recognize the union.
Workers from Palermo’s Pizza have been on strike since June 1, protesting unfair labor practices. The workers are seeking union recognition and reinstatement after Palermo’s fired more than 75 workers. Many workers at Palermo’s face serious health hazards, have no sick days and make little more than the minimum wage. After more than three months of striking, Palermo’s workers are more energized than ever.
