Tag: Worker Rights

GOP And The Workers

It always amazes me just how strong Repubs can be with the workers….and yet the GOP goes out of its way to screw the worker as often as possible.

Since about 1960 the GOP has been on a vendetta against the working class….and it just keeps getting worse.

It is 2024 and yet the workers have to put up with policies from the 1920s…..

But not to worry the GOP has plans for the working class….

Recently, you may have noticed that the hot weather is getting ever hotter. Every year the United States swelters under warmer temperatures and longer periods of sustained heat. In fact, each of the last nine months — May 2023 through February 2024 — set a world record for heat. As I’m writing this, March still has a couple of days to go, but likely as not, it, too, will set a record.

Such heat poses increasing health hazards for many groups: the old, the very young, those of us who don’t have access to air conditioning. One group, however, is at particular risk: people whose jobs require lengthy exposure to heat. Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that about 40 workers died of heat exposure between 2011 and 2021, although, as CNN reports, that’s probably a significant undercount. In February 2024, responding to this growing threat, a coalition of 10 state attorneys general petitioned the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to implement “a nationwide extreme heat emergency standard” to protect workers from the kinds of dangers that last year killed, among others, construction workers, farm workers, factory workers, and at least one employee who was laboring in an unairconditioned area of a warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee.

Facing the threat of overweening government interference from OSHA or state regulators, two brave Republican-run state governments have stepped in to protect employers from just such dangerous oversight. Florida and Texas have both passed laws prohibiting localities from mandating protections like rest breaks for, or even having to provide drinking water to, workers in extreme heat situations. Seriously, Florida and Texas have made it illegal for local cities to protect their workers from the direct effects of climate change. Apparently, being “woke” includes an absurd desire not to see workers die of heat exhaustion.

And those state laws are very much in keeping with the plans that the national right-wing has for workers, should the wholly-owned Trump subsidiary that is today’s Republican Party take control of the federal government this November.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/11/republicans-have-plans-for-working-people/

This is only a couple of states but I look for it to appear in most Red States in the next 4 years or so.

If you work hard for a living why on earth would you vote for this band of thugs?

Just wondering.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

One Big Union, Now!

The union leader Trumka has died……

The president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, has died. He was 72, and the cause of death was not immediately revealed. Trumka headed the powerful labor organization since 2009, when he moved up to the post from the next level down, secretary-treasurer, a job he’d had since 1995. Before that he’d been the president of the United Mine Workers of America, the New York Times reports. Trumka started his career as a coal miner, the third generation in his family to work that job, the Hill reports. When he was elected president of the United Mine Workers of America in 1982, he was only 33, and the youngest leader that organization had ever had, NPR reports.

His death got me to thinking about the labor movement in this country….in a word…SAD.

As a past organizer for the IWW I have always thought that there should be one union that represents the workers…instead of the willy nilly representation they have today.

And then there is the conserv Supreme Court that has NO use for labor or unions…..

Since 1956, the Supreme Court has applied a well-established framework to businesses that wished to exclude union organizers from their property. On Wednesday, however, the Court effectively scrapped that framework — one that was already fairly restrictive of union organizing — and replaced it with something far more restrictive.

In the process of deciding Wednesday’s case, Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, the Court also rewrites much of its existing Fifth Amendment law. Then it adds caveats to its new rule that resemble the reasoning behind an infamous anti-labor decision from more than a century ago. The Court’s decision is rooted in value judgments about what sort of regulations are desirable and what should be forbidden — namely, those protecting workers’ rights. And it was handed down on a party-line, 6-3 vote.

https://www.vox.com/2021/6/23/22547182/supreme-court-union-busting-cedar-point-hassid-john-roberts-takings-clause

Biden has tried to stem off the anti-worker attacks with Executive Order….

Among the 72 initiatives packed into the far-reaching executive order President Joe Biden signed Friday are steps that labor advocates welcomed as important victories for U.S. workers, including a provision calling for the limitation of noncompete clauses that drive down wages by preventing employees from quitting for better-paying jobs.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/07/09/biden-applauded-executive-order-targeting-insidious-anti-worker-practices

Among some of the portions of the EO…..

  • Make it easier to change jobs and help raise wages by banning or limiting non-compete agreements and unnecessary, cumbersome occupational licensing requirements that impede economic mobility.
  • Lower prescription drug prices by supporting state and tribal programs that will import safe and cheaper drugs from Canada.
  • Save Americans with hearing loss thousands of dollars by allowing hearing aids to be sold over the counter at drug stores.
  • Save Americans money on their internet bills by banning excessive early termination fees, requiring clear disclosure of plan costs to facilitate comparison shopping, and ending landlord exclusivity arrangements that stick tenants with only a single internet option.
  • Make it easier for people to get refunds from airlines and to comparison shop for flights by requiring clear upfront disclosure of add-on fees.
  • Make it easier and cheaper to repair items you own by limiting manufacturers from barring self-repairs or third-party repairs of their products.
  • Make it easier and cheaper to switch banks by requiring banks to allow customers to take their financial transaction data with them to a competitor.
  • Empower family farmers and increase their incomes by strengthening the Department of Agriculture’s tools to stop the abusive practices of some meat processors.
  • Increase opportunities for small businesses by directing all federal agencies to promote greater competition through their procurement and spending decisions.

All this is good but does not go far enough….workers need to have political power not just some economic things…..power is only way to insure the worker is protected from all the conserv attacks on their livelihood.

And what happened to these pledges?

Basically typical political rhetoric…..”I got your vote so now you can go f*ck yourself”.

Time for the workers to stop thinking small potatoes and work for the political power they deserve.

What they have now is NOT working for their benefit….too many compromises and little political clout.

We need that One Big Union and not what is representing the worker now…..the IWW is the answer….the only answer.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–01Jul20

But first….the most useless info available…..

01Jul1963…..zip codes were used for the very first time.

We are told by so many that the workers in this country have it made compared to workers in other countries….but just how true is this claim?

Actually…it is a lame ass claim ……

The U.S. has the worst record among major developed countries when it comes to workers’ rights, according to a survey of labor unions.

The world’s largest economy (US) is ranked a 4 in a scale by the International Trade Union Congress, meaning there are “systematic violations of rights.” Every other Group of Seven country ranks 3 or better.

Globally, the ITUC said the situation has worsened for workers, with violations of rights at a seven-year high. The worst region is the Middle East and North Africa, and the organization noted a number of countries have impeded the registration of unions, as well as banned strikes and collective bargaining.

Excluding countries where there are no rights due to a breakdown of the rule of law, the 10 worst in the survey are Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Honduras, India, Kazakhstan, Philippines, Turkey, and Zimbabwe. All are rated 5, for “no guarantee of rights.”

Europe dominates the top-ranked countries for workers, with the list including Sweden, Italy, Netherlands, Ireland and Germany. Uruguay is the only non-European nation in the group.

(Bloomberg)

I have been working to give workers a better life for 40 years….and my work is never been more important than it is today.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

May Day–2019

Closing Thought–01May19

Today is the International Day of the Worker……he world with the exception of the US will celebrate the worker and his/her contribution to society….the US has to be different and ours is in September….

Knowing me as you do…I must offer some clarification and some history….(it is in my nature)…….

To help my readers with the history of this day I will post a couple of short videos……

As a closing question……who was the first person to use the term….”workers of the world unite”  (oh Hell use Google if you must)…………

I hope that my reader has learned something…..

Learn Stuff!

Class Dismissed!

SCOTUS Humps Workers

While you were pissing and moaning about the SCOTUS ruling on voters rights or celebrating their ruling on DOMA, they were screwing the American worker……

In the first case, Vance v. Ball State University, the court ruled workers only are protected against a supervisor who has the power to make “significant change in [your] employment status, such as hiring, firing, failing to promote, reassignment with significantly different responsibilities, or a decision causing a significant change in benefits” or if the company ignores the fact a supervisor without this power is engaging in harassment. This very narrow definition of “supervisor” makes remedying harassment more difficult and ignores the reality that many supervisors without hiring and firing power have the ability to make an employee’s life much more difficult.

The second case, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, eliminated so called “mixed motive” retaliation claims under existing anti-discrimination law. Employees who pursue discrimination claims now will have to prove that discrimination was the sole thing on their boss’s mind when they were fired or demoted. Previously, discrimination only had to be one factor involved in punishing an employee and bosses were required to reveal what they were thinking at the time of the punishment. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out in her dissent, that standard is almost impossible to meet, since few people in the real world are motivated by a single cause.

Not much to celebrate there now is there?

The Righties are winning their war on labor and the workers….and we seem to be blind to all these efforts while we stroke out over background checks or voters rights  or we pee all over ourselves with a minor victory in same sex marriage……all these worker hostile issues that the GOP is winning is doing what it intended…making of a low paid worker that has no rights and has only the ‘mercy’ of the employers whims….this benefits no one but corporations and it does not create jobs that would give the worker a liveable wage……

Expand your issues beyond the single issue that excites your passion…..

Why The Hate?

I am sure that if you watch or read news reports you have been subject to the attacks on labor unions…..they have been blamed for every bad economic trend in this country……from expensive cars to problems in the schools to voter fraud to….well pick an issue and some mental midget will blame it on unions……..and all the misinformation has been used by red states to want to make their states right-to-work states (anyone who thinks that is a good idea then Google Mississippi stats)…….

If you work for a living then unions have help get you should horrible things as…….8 hour day, overtime, 40 hour week…..workmen’s comp……on and on……..

Union membership is at a 97-year low in America, with just 11.3% of workers belonging to one. Because you’re probably not one of them, you probably don’t care about this low point—but you should, writes Eric Liu in Time. Not only do unions lift wages for their members, they also lift wages for the rest of us “by creating a higher prevailing wage,” Liu writes. “The presence of unions sets off a wage race to the top. Their absence sets off a race to the bottom.” But most Americans don’t see it that way—rather, many see unions “as special interests seeking special privileges, often on the taxpayer’s dime.” But consider this: Workers in unions are making a better wage, and are thus less likely to rely on government assistance. “The weakness of labor is everyone’s problem—and its revival everyone’s opportunity.” Click for Liu’s full column.

Before someone thinks they have me pegged….let me say….while I believe that unions have done more good than harm….I do not like the bureaucratic structure….to my thinking the head of a union should make only 20% more than its highest paid member….but as long as we have this sort of set up….unions will be nothing more than expensive lobbyists…..

I realize that most Americans will buy into the BS spread about unions….all I can say is all that wanted to be a right-to-work state…….welcome to low ages and crap jobs……and then it may be too late to remedy the situation…….what’s the old saying, “crap in, crap out”……

A New Domino Theory

College of Political Knowledge

If you are an old fart as I am the term “domino theory” brings back the good old days of the ‘war on communism’….but it has a different meaning today……at least to my way of thinking…..

Just what is the ‘domino theory’?  Thanx to encyclopedia.com for the breakdown……..

The domino theory was articulated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in an April 7, 1954, news conference in which he worried that if communism remained unchecked, the free world might endure “the ‘falling domino’ principle. [In that case] you have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you have the beginning of a disintegration [of democratic countries] that would have profound influences”. According to that principle, a change in one country will “spill over,” setting in motion the political transformation of an entire region.

Of particular concern to American leaders at that time was the ongoing crisis in southeastern Asia, where the loss of Vietnam could be expected to lead to eventual Communist domination of Thailand, Indonesia, and perhaps New Zealand and Australia (Gaddis 1982). The application of the domino theory, however, was not limited to southeastern Asia. The growing momentum of communism and the falling of dominoes animated national security debates over American policies toward Western Europe and Latin America as well. After the Eisenhower administration, the Democratic administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson continued to believe that setbacks in southeastern Asia in general and Vietnam in particular would have dire consequences.

Fears of dominoes falling were based primarily on two mutually reinforcing concerns. The first was that if the United States failed to support an ally against Communist agitation, Communist movements in neighboring countries and their Soviet and Chinese sponsors would be emboldened. Communist success would breed success, and failure to stem the tide early would push countries out of the American orbit, with disastrous long term consequences. Second, that perception of threat was amplified by concerns that the inability of an American-sponsored government to suppress domestic insurgents or outside provocateurs would signal that the United States could not be counted on as a reliable alliance partner. In that case the insecurities of allied countries and the demonstrated inability or unwillingness of the United States to help overcome them would lead countries to pull away from the United States. On both counts American decision makers feared that seemingly small reverses in peripheral countries ultimately would lead to a massive redistribution of cold war power as country after country fell to Communist pressure.

Although the rhetoric of falling dominoes most often was used to articulate the dangers from the unchecked spread of Soviet expansion, some noted that dominoes might be induced to fall the other way as well. Soon after the end of the World War II (1939–1945) conservatives in the Truman administration advocated “rolling back” Soviet advances in Europe. Although the lexicon of falling dominoes had not been coined yet, the basic logic was the same: It was hoped that American successes would demonstrate the power of the West and the poverty of the Soviet alternative. If that policy was successful, it was hoped that it might set into motion a counterdomino effect in which European Soviet-styled authoritarian regimes were felled by a mix of domestic and Western pressure. The Soviets’ continued de facto and then de jure domination of Central and Eastern Europe frustrated those early reactionary impulses to roll back the postwar status quo. Thereafter, the world’s dominoes were seen as leaning against the United States from the 1950s through the 1970s.

Sorry about the long dissertation on the subject but it was necessary…..

Now that the stage has been set……the idea of the domino theory is rearing its ugly face….yet again….this time it is the whole right to work thing…….and now that Repubs have control of most of the states the attacks on labor is beginning its final push before it is too late……

Most Southern states have been right to work for decades and the Repubs have seen that it has worked well for the elimination of unions nd organized labor…..and now the states in the rust belt that have changed government to the GOP the attacks have begun…..Indiana is the most visible for now but it will continue…..when one falls the next one will be in the sights of the GOP…..watch Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois…..and so on…..and now Utah is joining the war on the workers…..

Utah’s measure was introduced by Republican Rep. Keith Grover, who did not return a call seeking comment. However, he denied during an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune last week that he was influenced by what was happening in other states.

And all the rhetoric will be that it will create jobs….and it does….but they are low wage jobs with little to no benefits……The truth, however, is that the misnamed “right-to-work” legislation–better known to its opponents as the “right-to-work-for-less”–will have a devastating financial hit on working-class Hoosiers if it becomes law.

Right To Work–Redux

In the last couple of months I have seen an up take on a post I had from several years ago on the subject of “right to work”….I am guessing that the renewed interest in this subject is because of so many Repub controlled states are trying to introduce this concept into their states……

First, a horrible idea for working people…..I say this because I live in a right to work state…..and this does nothing to help the worker….it brings low wage jobs, less benefits if any,  in my state unemployment is 10.5%, so it is not a job creator, no matter what lies your politicians tell you….all it does is make businesses more profitable and less responsible…….the one that comes to mind most readily is Indiana and its attempts to kill labor.

A website, Right To Work Is Bad, has an excellent breakdown……

So-called “Right-to-Work” legislation is a slick slogan designed to trick people into believing that it protects a worker’s right to a job. Nothing could be further from the truth. So-called “Right-to-Work” legislation assures no worker a job, protects no worker against employer bias or retaliation, and undermines living wages and fair benefits.

A “Right-to-Work” law is redundant, lowers wages and benefits for all workers, and destroys the tax base for local communities. When real facts are taken into account, it is not economic development strategy driving this issue.  Rather, it is an extreme, outdated, partisan agenda.

The real problem with a “Right-to-Work” law and its special-interest supporters is that in their zest and zeal to hurt unions, they hurt non-union workers as well.

“Right-to-Work” laws represent destructive economic development policy guided by extreme partisan politics. The goal should be to raise the standard of living for working families, not lower it.

Working families deserve better than an antiquated law designed to raise corporate profits and lower worker wages and benefits.

My state has been one of the poorest states since the beginning…..right to work has done NOTHING to change that…..it is a cute and slick slogan but it will not make a workers life any easier….if anything it will assist them further into poverty…….if you want low paying jobs then by all means support the lie of “right to work”.

To ALL WORKERS……fight any attempt to impose the “right to work” lie on the workers of your state….DO NOT let your state become another Mississippi!

Unions Go After Wal-Mart On Elections

Prominent labor groups are seeking an investigation into whether Wal-Mart Stores Inc. violated federal election laws by telling employees that electing Democrats would lead to passage of legislation making it easier to unionize companies.

In a letter to be delivered as early as Thursday, the labor groups are asking the Federal Election Commission to determine whether the company “made prohibited corporate expenditures” by organizing meetings across the country to warn employees that a Democratic president would back legislation known as the Employee Free Choice Act, which the company opposes. The groups say such statements amount to advocating the defeat of Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in the November election.

Companies aren’t permitted under federal election law to expressly advocate to hourly employees the election or defeat of specific candidates. The complaint cites as its source an Aug. 1 front-page article in The Wall Street Journal that reported the Bentonville, Ark., retailer held meetings with thousands of store managers and department supervisors across the country to discuss the legislation.