Republican lawmakers looking to attack working people again

On this day in 1886

350,000 workers staged a nationwide work stoppage to demand the adoption of a standard eight-hour workday. Forty thousand workers struck in Chicago, Illinois; ten thousand struck in New York; eleven thousand struck in Detroit, Michigan. As many as thirty-two thousand workers struck in Cincinnati, Ohio, although some of these workers had been out on strike for several months before May 1.

The purpose of the May Day Strike was to bring pressure on employers and state governments to create an eight-hour workday. During this period, workers commonly spent twelve or more hours of each day at work. Unions, especially the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada -- the predecessor of the American Federation of Labor, encouraged workers to strike on May 1, 1886, to demonstrate the need for an eight-hour day.

Today, Ohio Republican law makers want to go back to a time that predates 1886, by introducing yet more union busting legislation. State Rep. Ron Maag (R) and State Rep. Kristina Roegner (R) are introducing so called "right to work" bills. These bills (Maag's targets public sector workers, while Roegner's target private sectors workers) come less than 2 years after Ohioans rejected SB5, the previous anti-worker legislation aimed at reducing the ability of workers to negotiate safe and fair working conditions, benefits and pay.

Here's a copy of the letter we obtained announcing the introduction of the bill, and a request for legislators to add their names to it.

The introduction of these bills come suspiciously timed - just a day after Governor Kasich met with the tea party funders, the Koch Brothers - who are big proponents of "right to work" legislation and union busting in general.

Phones and electronic devices were banned from some panels, as Koch strategists detailed next year’s electoral battlegrounds and donors committed contributions to particular states or projects.

At least a half-dozen rising Republican stars were also in attendance. They included Dr. Ben Carson, a Baltimore neurosurgeon who has quickly developed a following among grass-roots conservatives, and several members of the Tea Party wing: Govs. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina and John R. Kasich of Ohio, along with Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

The Tea Party's efforts to push anti-worker legislation has been on-going in Ohio for more than 2 years. Their efforts to collect signatures to place anti-worker legislation on the ballot, by their own accounts has fallen way short

Mr. Littleton said it would be a “long shot” for the group to gather the roughly 380,000 signatures of registered voters needed by July 3, the deadline to qualify for the November ballot.

The effort is a long shot because it has no popular support. The We Are Ohio signature collection effort to repeal the last anti-worker legislation that the Tea Party supported, collected over 1.3 million signatures in just a few months. The current group of people supporting this anti-worker legislation are even more unsympathetic. For just how ugly and bigoted the Tea Party backers of "right to work" are, see here.

In Opposition to this anti-worker effort.

A number of people have come out quickly against this latest anti-worker effort. Ed FitzGerald, candidate for Governor

“I stood against these attacks on our everyday heroes and Ohio’s middle class when I voted against Governor Kasich’s Senate Bill 5,” he said. “As governor, I promise to stand up for the working families in Ohio, and stand behind the middle class that keeps our economy strong.”

David Pepper, candidate for Ohio Attorney General

"I oppose so-called 'right to work' because it hurts families and working people and destroys our middle class. This is a direct attack on our law enforcement officers who keep our communities safe. For these same reasons, I worked with the thousands of volunteers who fought back against Senate Bill 5, the unfair, unsafe attack on us all that voters rejected in 2011.

"But this is also a time when we should be asking all public officials – where do you stand on so-called 'right to work'. Working families and first responders deserve to know, are you with them or against them?"

Rep. Connie Pillich, rumored candidate for Ohio Treasurer

38 people who died on the job last year were remembered Monday at the Cincinnati region Workers Memorial, sponsored by the UAW and AFL-CIO Labor Council. Today, the Ohio GOP introduces legislation that could increase on-the-job deaths by 36%. The So-Called “Right to Work” bills could eliminate workplace safety measures fought for and obtained by labor unions. Dangerous.

Rep. Chris Redfern, Chair of the Ohio Democratic Party

“Here we go again. Apparently Governor Kasich has forgotten what happened the last time he and his Republican allies launched a broadside against the rights of Ohio workers. Ohio was paralyzed and our hard-earned economic recovery, which began a year before Kasich took office, stalled.

Just as SB 5 was soundly rejected by Ohio voters, we expect this unnecessary sideshow – which will do nothing to create more good-paying jobs – to fail, and we intend to hold Governor Kasich accountable for choosing to focus on distractions over Ohio’s middle class. If Kasich doesn’t want this attack on working families to move, he should say so immediately.”

Join the Future opposes these attacks on working people and we call upon our supporters to send a message to their legislators informing them that this legislation is wrong, unfair and unsafe.

Why No Rights At Work Is Wrong

Borrowed totally from OEA.

OUR OPPONENTS ARE ATTACKING WORKING AND MIDDLE CLASS PEOPLE AGAIN

Our out-of-touch opponents are trying to deceive voters again like they did last year. This is worse than SB 5. It doesn’t have to be this way. The so-called, trick-titled “right to work" is WRONG because it is an unsafe and unfair attack on workers' rights, good jobs, families and the middle class. We call it No Rights at Work is Wrong and we don’t need it.

IT'S UNFAIR

If you work hard and play the rules, you should be treated fairly You should be able to earn a fair wage for a hard day’s work RTW is unfair because it degrades the value of hard work and the worker

IT IS AN ATTACK ON WORKERS' RIGHTS

RTW strips workers of their collective bargaining rights Voters have spoken on this issue: they support collective bargaining rights Workers should be able to speak up for themselves, their coworkers and their community on the job

IT HURTS JOBS/COMMUNITY

RTW means lower wages and fewer benefits for you, me, all of us We need good paying jobs for working and middle-class Ohioans Communities thrive and grow when Ohioans have good paying jobs

IT'S UNSAFE

It makes it harder to collectively bargain for life-saving equipment, staffing and other safety issues for the brave men and women that protect us, like police officers and firefighters It takes away the professional voices of those we trust to take care of our children and families, such as teachers and nurses It is wrong because it means less money, lower wages and fewer benefits for you, me and all of us in the middle class. Communities thrive and grow when Ohioans have good paying jobs. Let's stand up together and stick together for a decent standard of living.

We Deserve It.

The Ohio voucher boondoggle

With the passage of the state budget, expansion of Ohio's voucher program is set to explode, sucking dollars from schools that desperately need every penny they have, causing a viscous circle of funding and performance problems.

Ramping from 14,000 vouchers to 30,000 in the coming school year and then skyward to 60,000 the year after, provides the potential to drain up to $300,000,000 (up from over $71.6 million in 2010) from public schools in the state, with much of this money flowing to private schools.

The eligibility was also expanded to encompass schools in the lowest 10 percent of all public school buildings by performance index score for two of the last three school years. The change adds 31 more schools to the list of 197 which current qualify.

As a recent article in the Nation points out, this expansion has less to do with so-called "choice" and more to do with the ideological attack on public education, an attack that features the usual host of antagonists

But lately, the push from the Gates, Broad and Walton Foundations for “accountability,” charters and school choice—and in the case of Walton, for vouchers specifically—has morphed into the broader attack on the public school establishment. On the far right, deep-pockets conservatives like members of the Walton (Walmart) family, Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com and Amway heirs Dick and Betsy DeVos and their American Federation for Children (a name obviously designed as a jab at the AFT) are pouring millions into unionbashing politicians and Astroturf voucher PACs. (Betsy DeVos also happens to be the sister of Blackwater’s Erik Prince, who’s probably done more than anyone to privatize the military.)

Unlike liberals like Coons, the Friedmanites seem to have concerns that are less about children and good education than about privatization, small government and the blessings of the free market. Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s pursuit of charters, test-based teacher accountability and programs to shut down “failing” schools plays powerfully to the distrust in the system.

But these aren't the only problems. As testimony by think tank Policy Matters Ohio pointed out, we lack any knowledge of how well students who attend many of these tax payer funded private schools are being educated

In 2010, nearly 5,000 students had enrolled in Cleveland’s Catholic schools using the voucher and 23 of the Diocese’s 29 schools had more than 50 percent voucher enrollment; 16 of them had voucher enrollment of at least 75 percent. These high levels of dependence by religious schools on taxpayer funding are striking and troubling. This dependence also raises the question – at what level of public funding should a private school be held to accountability standards and tools, such as report cards, restructuring, and even closure, to which district and charter schools are increasingly being required to submit?

For this and other reasons, it is important to examine more closely academic performance at Ohio schools that accept vouchers, and the state’s voucher programs have no conclusive performance data to support them. Last year’s state tests showed mixed results for the EdChoice program – according to data from the Ohio Department of Education, for example, voucher students scored better than district counterparts in Columbus, but not as well in Cincinnati and Toledo. In the Cleveland voucher program, district students outperformed voucher students on most state tests last year. The only thorough review of an Ohio voucher program, the six-year study of the Cleveland program mandated by the state and conducted by Indiana University, found no significant advantage for voucher students.

There is a huge push to instill unprecedented "accountability" upon public schools and their teachers, yet private schools that receive massive amounts of tax payer support continue to go unchecked. Why would policy makers seek to create such a two track system if the intent was not to undermine public education in a quest to privatize as much as possible?

It's time that policy makers created a system that was fair and equal for everyone, so parents and tax payers had a full body of knowledge with which to make their choices.

Is Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson trying to have it both ways

Like many, we were a little surprised to learn that Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson had written a letter to the Governor and state legislators asking them to place the SB5 like provisions back in the state budget.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson is urging Republican legislative leaders to adopt language in the state budget bill creating a teacher merit pay system -- similar to one in Senate Bill 5, a controversial collective bargaining law Jackson has criticized as an attack on public workers.
[...]
Along with a new merit pay system for teachers, Jackson's letter urged lawmakers to include language allowing districts to dump poor-performing teachers, remove seniority as the determining factor in deciding layoffs and bar collective bargaining in charter schools.

Despite some claims from Jackson that he opposes SB5, we were concerned a few weeks ago when we learned that the City of Cleveland was part of the efforts by the Greater Cleveland Partnership (the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce) to attack teachers. We sent an email to the Jackson administration seeking comment on this seeming contradiction

We noted in the plain dealer (http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/06/business_leaders_urge_lawmaker.html) a report that the Greater Cleveland Partnership, which the city if a member of, is advocating for Senate Bill 5 type provisions in the state budget bill.

Does the city support this position, and the $50,000 funding of this "Ohio's Campaign for Jobs" campaign's attack on teachers?
Thanks,

A week ago we got the following response

Thank you for contacting Mayor Jackson’s office regarding SB 5 and the Greater Cleveland Partnership.

I wanted to share with you that while Mayor Jackson believes that collective bargaining reform is needed, he does not support SB 5. In addition, the Jackson Administration has been advocating at the state level for amendments to the proposed budget that would prevent the redistribution of revenue away from cities.

Best wishes,
Maureen R. Harper
Chief of Communications, Office of the Mayor

So the evidence becomes clear that Jackson is seeking to have it both ways on SB5. While claiming to not support SB5, his actions include:

• Asking the legislature to put SB5 provisions back in the budget
• Asking the legislature to bar collective bargaining for teachers at charter schools
• Supporting unspecified collective bargaining reforms for public employees
• Joining with the chamber of Commerce to attack teachers and other public employees right to collectively bargain, and not taking the opportunity when asked to distance himself from these actions

We're seeking further information from the Mayors office to see if we can get a clearer picture of what exactly the MAyor does and does not support.

Big business attacking teachers, advocating for SB5

The Plain Dealer reports on big Cleveland business advocating for SB5 provisions in the budget

A new, merit-based pay system for Ohio teachers should be reinserted into the Ohio budget before it is finalized, a group of Ohio business leaders said today.

The merit-based pay system, which mirrored language in Ohio's controversial new collective bargaining law, was included in the budget proposal previously passed in the House of Representatives. But the Senate has removed the merit system from its version of the budget.

"Without a strong education system, we can't find the knowledgeable workers we need," Greater Cleveland Partnership Senior Vice President Carol Caruso said at a Statehouse news conference.

The Greater Cleveland Partnership is the name the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce hides behind. They recently set aside $50,000 for their worker assault. You can see a list of the businesses that want to attack middle class workers who are their customers, here. Companies like:

• American Greetings Corp. who took tax payer money to stay in the state.
• Alcoa who also took a boatload of tax payer money in the form of tax breaks.
• The Cleveland Clinic, which has been in a tax battle to avoid paying taxes for years.
• The Cleveland Indians Baseball Club with their tax funded stadium.

The lsit goes on and on, and includes banks that received billions in tax payer bailouts, non profits funded by tax dollars, and even local governments.

Rather than attack their own customers, and tax payers who have generously supported their various enterprises, maybe they ought to just say thank you and be on their way.

Wisconsin election bodes ill for anti worker forces

We briefly discussed the ramification of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election a few days ago. We indicated a few things to look for

It would have been a stunning upset for Kloppenburg to win, so that's the first test of how organized and angry pro-middle class voters are. But also keep an eye on the votes cast for each - that will give us a rough indication of the effects these labor busting moves are having on real voters, in real elections.

So how did that turn out ?

As of right now, Kloppenburg has declared victory after finishing a few hundred votes ahead in a huge upset.

Nearly 1.5 million people turned out to vote, representing 33.5 percent of voting-age adults -- 68 percent higher than the 20 percent turnout officials had expected. That ought to scare most anti-worker elected officials, but this map below is the real friegthener

This map shows county after county that Scott Walker won in the recent 2010 election now going against him - and in a lot of cases significantly.

This is the result of real people casting real votes and the message is loud and clear. If you attack the middle class they will fight back and they will defeat you.