Walker's War On Workers Has A Very Bad, No Good Week

The poor dim-witted corporate tool Scott Walker and his War on Workers is have a very bad week.

Last Friday, a judge ruled that Walker's Right to Exploit Workers was struck down by a Dane County judge. The corporate controlled Attorney General, Brad Schimel, asked that the judge order a stay while he appealed this ruling. This past Friday, the judge denied the motion and issued a final order calling this malevolent law what it was - unconstitutional - with some strong, straight to the point language:

Foust also emphasized that he believes barring the state from enforcing the law is the right decision, noting that the law creates a misdemeanor crime for anyone who violates it.

“The right of the union to be paid for work it performs is not trivial,” Foust wrote. “Act 1 makes it a crime for the union to require someone to pay for the services he or she receives from the union. Enjoining the attorney general and the state from pursuing criminal prosecutions is appropriate relief.”

In another blow to Walker's attack on Wisconsinites, Walker's scheme to make it harder for people to get unemployment compensation took a major hit.

Walker and the other corporate controlled tools known as Republicans had passed a law in 2013 saying that a person could be denied unemployment if they had been fired for "substantial fault." This means that if the person had made even just one mistake, had one minor infraction or wasn't able to do the job, they could be denied unemployment.

This law failed to stand up to scrutiny in the 4th District Court of Appeals.

The case involved a woman who had worked for Walgreens, but was let go after making eight mistakes in 20 months, or one mistake in every 10,000 transactions. Walgreens denied the woman unemployment benefits and this was held up by Walker's Department of Workforce Development and Labor and Industry Review Commission.

Thankfully, the appellate court saw it differently, probably because they actually care about the law and justice:

Reilly discounted Walgreens’ and LIRC’s argument that the cumulative effect of Oberton’s errors “cross over the line” to disqualify her for benefits.

“Walgreens’ and LIRC’s argument does not have statutory merit,” Reilly wrote. “Repeated inadvertent errors do not statutorily morph into ‘infractions’ if warnings have been given. Inadvertent errors, warnings or no warnings, never meet the statutory definition of substantial fault.

The court also noted Walker's reasoning for this horrible law and the true level of its impact:

Reilly noted that the law was expected to reduce benefit payments from the unemployment insurance trust fund by $19.2 million, the same amount of the fund’s deficit.

Operton’s attorney, Marilyn Townsend, said Operton’s benefits would have amounted to $159 a week for 26 weeks. She said the amount the state had expected to save by creating a new obstacle to receiving benefits indicates that the law would affect “thousands” of people.

“Just think about how many people have to be impacted to come up to $19.2 million,” she said.

Sadly, both of these cases will most likely be appealed to the corporate controlled Wisconsin Supreme Kangaroo Court. The results are all too predictable since this court has shown all too frequently that the only law they follow is the ones their corporate masters give them.

Poverty Spikes In Wisconsin

Governing is reporting the depressing news that West Virginia became the 26th state to pass the so-called Right to Work law. It also reports that Republican gubernatorial candidates are stumping on the promise to also attack the workers in their respective states.

Let Wisconsin serve as a warning to these states on the real effects of these Wage Theft laws.

Five years ago, Scott Walker and the other Republican meatpuppets passed Act 10, which is nothing more than RTW for public sector workers. Last year, they attacked the private sector by passing RTW for them as well. Each time, they promised that it would bring more high paying jobs to the state and Wisconsin would be the land of plenty.

So how's that working out?

Not so well, actually:

Poverty in Wisconsin hit its highest level in 30 years during the five-year period ending in 2014, even as the nation's economy was recovering from the Great Recession, according to a trend analysis of U.S. census data just released by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.

The number of Wisconsin residents living in poverty averaged 13% across that post-recession time frame — the highest since 1984, according to the analysis by UW-Madison's Applied Population Laboratory. In 1984, the poverty rate peaked at 15.5% as the nation was recovering from a double-dip recession.

The UW-Madison analysis dovetails with an unrelated study that identified pockets of the country faring worse as the economic recovery gains some traction, released Thursday by a national nonprofit research group in Washington, D.C.

That study, by the Economic Innovation Group, found the gap between the richest and poorest American communities widening, and ranked Milwaukee the seventh most distressed city in America, with 52% of the population considered economically distressed.

Poverty increased more dramatically across Wisconsin than in many other states, though 46 of the 50 states saw a significant increase in total population living in poverty between the five-year periods ending in 2009 and 2014, according to the UW-Madison analysis.

[...]

Using the five-year measure, poverty went up in both urban and rural parts of Wisconsin. It went up at every level of educational achievement, and across the employment spectrum.

Perhaps most significant, the poverty gap between blacks and whites grew here as the average gap was flat across the nation. The state's child poverty rate also went up significantly, fueling concerns about the future for many of the state's youngest residents.

"There is some good evidence that living in poverty and experiencing issues like food and housing insecurity can cause changes in the brain that can lead to behavioral issues and low performance in school, as well as chronic disease later in life," said Malia Jones, an assistant scientist and social epidemiologist at UW-Madison's Applied Population Laboratory.

It's no coincidence that two-thirds of students who cannot read above a fourth-grade level end up either in prison or on welfare, several literacy studies have shown.

So now we can see why RTW is so popular with Republicans.

If people are so busy trying to survive because of their diminished income, they don't have time to be politically involved. Furthermore, if people aren't getting a decent education, it's easier to con them into continuing to vote for Republicans. And the ability to stick it to those uppity blacks is just the cherry on top.

Walker To Propose War On American Workers

Scott Walker, in an act of desperation in trying to keep himself in the presidential bid, is taking things to an unprecedented extreme by declaring war on the American worker.

Per Scott Bauer of the AP:

Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker on Monday will call for sweeping restrictions on organized labor in the U.S., seeking to replicate nationwide his successful effort as Wisconsin's governor to curb the power of unions.

At a town hall meeting in Las Vegas, Walker will propose eliminating unions for employees of the federal government, making all workplaces right-to-work unless individual states vote otherwise, scrapping the federal agency that oversees unfair labor practices and making it more difficult for unions to organize.

Many of Walker's proposals are focused on unions for workers at all levels of government, while others would also affect private-sector unions. Labor law experts said such an effort, if successful, would substantially reduce the power of organized labor in America.

While Walker could enact some of the proposals via presidential executive order, others would require an act of Congress or changes in federal regulations. The goal, Walker said, is "to achieve fairness and opportunity for American workers."

"This will not be easy," Walker said in a statement to The Associated Press. "Many — including the union bosses and the politicians they puppet — have long benefited from Washington rules that put the needs of special interests before needs of middle-class families."

It's ironic that Walker would say that he is worried about the middle class since his plantation economic agenda has led Wisconsin to see the biggest drop in middle class families in the nation.

Experts in labor laws are aghast by Walker's agenda:

Experts were taken aback by the scope of Walker's proposals, which seek to undo decades of law and would gut the landmark National Relations Labor Act — adopted in 1935 and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the height of the Great Depression.

"I've never seen anything like this," said Ann Hodges, a professor at the University of Richmond who has studied labor law for more than 40 years. "This will take the breath away from anyone who's worked in labor relations for any length of time. ... It's pretty draconian."

Walker's plan also calls for prohibiting automatic withdrawal of union dues to be used for political purposes and forbidding union organizers to access employees' personal information, such as their phone numbers.

Lee Adler, a labor law expert at Cornell University, said Walker's proposals would eliminate workers' rights and make it more difficult for people to join the middle class.

"Mr. Walker could only be making these type of proposals to satisfy his most backward-looking, wealthy contributors, just as he pursued, as governor, policies advanced by these people that sought to destroy school teachers and other public employees' rights in Wisconsin," he said.

To be perfectly clear, Walker's proposal is to bring full-fledged fascism to the United States.

His agenda, given straight to him from the dark money special interests via ALEC, is not to help workers or give them freedom.His agenda is all about usurping control of the country for his corporate masters and to silence the voice of the people, especially those who would oppose them.

Scott Walker's Plantation Economic Agenda Explained

For over a year, labor leaders and progressive bloggers (like me) in Wisconsin have been sounding the alarm about Scott Walker and his fellow Teapublicans ramming through Right to Exploit Workers - also known as Right to Work - and other policies of a plantation economic agenda.

We talked about how this plantation economic agenda stemmed from the Deep South and were based on a racist agenda.

In March of this year, an article by Roger Bybee restated these facts. Bybee, who used the term "Southern Strategies," points out five signs that Walker is using these same policies in a more subtle manner to get the same results.

The five points that Bybee outlines are:

1. Anti-union laws like the Wage Theft Law are rooted in racism
2. The Wage Theft Law fits in with Walker's other racialized politics
3. Walker used Milwaukee - and its high black/brown majority - his fall guy
4. Walker restoring Jim Crow laws in the form of voter suppression and gerrymandering
5. Walker's long history of race-baiting

While the whole article is well worth the read, Bybee sums it all up very nicely:

But Walker’s turn to “dog-whistle“ politics, or the manipulation of whites’ racial resentments, is as noteworthy as it is notorious. It begins with an agenda that is hostile to government programs benefitting the poor and big government programs of any kind—except for those providing subsidies to corporations and the rich. However, there is a not-so-subtle subtext of pro-white racism.

There are many dots that connect this ugly picture: Walker’s war against labor and support for “right-to-work” laws despite their racist legacy and present-day impacts; his willingness to use Willie Horton-style ads which stoke white fears of blacks; his support for restricting the right of blacks and Latinos; his institutional ties to long-standing institution like the Bradley which are tacitly approving of white supremacy; his links to media personalities who thrive on feeding racism; and his policies punishing urban citizens, especially people of color.

Essentially, Walker embodies the lessons outlined by the late Lee Atwater, the ruthless Republican strategist. In a remarkably frank interview, Atwater once described the evolution of conservative politics and the “Southern strategy”: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say nigger—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites… .’We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘nigger, nigger.’”

Walker, in governing Wisconsin and running for president, is showing himself to be a consummate practitioner of the Southern strategy long advocated by Atwater and warned about by the liberal Thomas Edsall. The overt racism is scrapped on the surface, but the core of the ever-congenial Walker’s policies is profoundly hostile to people of color and to social justice.

I would only add that if the gentle reader had any doubts about Walker's inherent racism one does not have to look hard or long to find more examples

As Milwaukee County Executive, he treated the county's parks with obvious disparity, favoring the parks in the white and more affluent areas. As governor, it became even more apparent with his cuts to social safety nets such as BadgerCare and food stamps.

The results make things even more obvious, with such shameful things as Wisconsin having the highest incarceration rates for black men and Milwaukee being the most racially segregated area in the nation.

And don't even get me going on the racism that runs rampant with both Walker's campaign and government staff.

Missouri Now Better Than Wisconsin

It saddens me to see stories like this and to think where we might have been if we had an intelligent, responsible governor:

See? Gov. Nixon may not be the most progressive Democrat in the county, but he's Democrat enough to veto this bill. Elections do matter!

Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed a measure Thursday that would have made Missouri the 26th right-to-work state, and it's unclear whether proponents will be able to muster enough support in the Republican-led Legislature to override the veto.

The governor, a longtime opponent of the effort, traveled to the Kansas City area to announce the veto among local United Auto Workers union members near a Ford assembly plant. The bill would have barred workplace contracts that require all employees- even those who aren't union members - to pay union fees.

Most of the Missouri's eight neighboring states already have right-to-work laws; the only two that don't are Illinois and Kentucky. Republican legislators and governors in the Midwestern states Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin all enacted right-to-work laws in the past three years.

Randy Bryce - International Man of Solidarity

The Independent, from across the ocean, did a story on Scott Walker's latest attack on Wisconsin working families.  Featured in the story is none other than our own Randy Bryce, Ironworkers Local 8:

Randy Bryce, 50, was high above a muddy construction site welding together steel beams when Mr Walker signed the law. He is among the Wisconsin angry. Just ask his family. It was last week when he was in a book shop in Caledonia, where he lives, when from the corner of his eye he caught his son, Ben, eight, letting fly at a book he’d seen on a table. It was a memoir by Mr Walker, the governor’s face on the front.

A member of Ironworkers Local 8, Mr Bryce called the Right to Work law a “blatant political attack” against him and other working men and women. Last week when hearings on the law were scheduled in the legislature in Madison, the state capitol, he took a day off to testify to senators. But the Republican leadership cut them short and he didn’t get the chance. The next day he took to the public gallery and gave them a piece of his mind. “You’re turning Wisconsin into a banana republic,” he yelled.

Mr Bryce, an Army veteran, was ejected by police that day, a symbol of the helplessness of the unions and the once mighty progressive left in Wisconsin to resist the conservative juggernaut that began rolling here in 2010 when Mr Walker won the governor’s mansion and Republicans took control of both sides of the legislature. “If someone had told me in 2010 all this could happen in Wisconsin, I’d have laughed in their face,” Mr Bryce mused this week. “And now it’s a reality.”

[...]

“States that have enacted this legislation have a 52 percent higher fatality rate among workers,” Mr Bryce asserted. His ironworking job is one of the more dangerous out there.  “One of thing the union stands up for is workplace safety and safety will be one of the first things to go, because it costs money.”

An option, of course, is to move to a different state. But that would never cross Mr Bryce’s mind. “I’m going to stick around for as long as it takes to get all those sons of bitches voted out of office.”

I was always proud to call Randy my friend and my union brother. Now, I am just more proud.

Wisconsin Loses Jobs To Minnesota Due To RTW

While Scott Walker and the other Teapublicans were busy pandering to their corporate overlords by rushing through so-called "Right to Work" legislation, Minnesota Republicans were leveraging this to their advantage by trying to get companies to relocate to their state.

It didn't take long for Walker's folly to work to their advantage:

A Wisconsin business owner upset over enactment of a right-to-work law and other policies says he is expanding in Minnesota because the economic policies there are more conducive for his operation.

James Hoffman, president of Hoffman Construction in Black River Falls, said Monday that he was accelerating plans to expand an office in Lakeville, Minnesota, that currently has two full-time employees.

Hoffman testified against the right-to-work bill that passed the Wisconsin Legislature last week and that Gov. Scott Walker signed on Monday.

Hoffman says he worries that the law will cost his business money and he believes Minnesota's proposal to increase spending on transportation projects that his highway construction business could bid on would be good for his operation.

Minnesota has been beating Wisconsin in almost every economic measure for the past few years. It's easy to understand when one considers that they have two governors - their own and Walker - working to help them out.

Walker Gives Jim Crow The Freedom To Work In Wisconsin

As I had warned, Scott Walker did a lot of grandstanding in the signing of the utterly misnamed Right to Work bill today. On the surface, it looks like a well polished and popular event.

The truth of the matter is a little different.

Look at this picture and see what you notice (and I don't mean that things were so tightly orchestrated that Walker's handler's put tape on the floor so people knew where they were supposed to stand}:

What you should notice is what is missing from the picture - workers. If Right to Work is all about freedom, shouldn't there be workers to celebrate their new found freedom?

Reporter Dee J. Hall of the Wisconsin State Journal noticed this and did committed a flagrant act of journalism by asking about it:

Asked why few if any of his employees were at the signing ceremony, Meeusen said, “This is a Monday. It’s a work day. And most of them are working. I didn’t shut down the whole plant to bring them over here.”

But two employees taking a break outside the building said workers had been told not to attend the ceremony to avoid “embarrassing” the company. The two asked not to be identified for fear of retribution.

Interestingly, Hall also noted that Walker refused to take any questions, which appears to be his new form of punting.

Also not mentioned by Walker is the history of these RTW laws, which originated in the Deep South as part of the Jim Crow movement:

Back in the early 1940s, Vance Muse was an oil lobbyist and ardent segregationist with a history of supporting anti-worker causes. He opposed the 8-hour workday and child labor laws, as well as women’s rights. And he detested unions largely because, aside from believing them to be communist fronts, he was certain their growth would lead to mixing of the races.

Here’s a quote from Muse:

“From now on, white women and white men will be forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will have to call ‘brother’ or lose their jobs.”

Muse was the founder of the Christian American Association, an organization that pushed the right-to-work scam in Texas and other states. He was successful in getting a bill passed in Texas in 1947. Within two years, such laws were on the books in 14 Southern states, which were particularly susceptible to Muse’s race-baiting arguments.

But Muse wasn’t content with the state-by-state approach. At the time of his death in 1950, he was working on a right-to-work amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

And despite Walker's attempts to tightly control the messaging, good old Joe Biden called it out for its other aspect - fascism:

Vice President Joe Biden hit opponents of organized labor in remarks to a firefighters union on Monday, invoking a term closely associated with interwar European fascism in describing those who are “intent on breaking” unions.

Biden denounced those blocking the National Labor Relations Board’s attempts “to enforce the basic rules of the road,” saying, “They’re not looking for striped shirts, guys. They’re looking for blackshirts, not referees.”

The blackshirts were paramilitary forces loyal to the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Labor unions were among their targets.

[...]

“Republican governors and others around the country are saying you’re the problem,” said Biden.

“There is a concentrated, well-organized, well-paid, well-funded effort to undermine organized labor in the United States of America, and they’ve been remarkably successful,” he added. “Because they know without you, it’s a clear shot for whatever they want. That’s why they’re so intent on breaking you and diminishing your voice.”

I don't know if it's just me, but when I saw Walker's little sign saying "Freedom to Work," I kept reading it as "Arbeit Macht Frei."

Cutting through the #RTW BS

Over the weekend, Faux News' Cavuto On Business were singing paeans to Scott Walker for ramming through the utterly misnamed Right to Work (RTW) legislation. The panel, which consisted of Neil Cavuto hosting along with Adam Lashinsky, Ben Stein, Charles Payne, Charlie Gasparino and Dagen McDowell, said that it was un-American to force people to pay union dues and compared unions to the Mafia. In the same breath though, they praised their own unions. Go figure.

Oddly enough, they made no mention that Walker said that he didn't want RTW in Wisconsin, calling it "a distraction."

What their little propaganda session was was nothing more than just the regurgitation of the same discredited talking points for RTW. They claimed it was all about choice and freedom and 'Murica and how it would create more jobs and increase wages.

It does sound grand, doesn't it? Too bad it it's more full of shit than a industrial dairy farm.

First of all, workers already have the choice not to belong in a union. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 outlawed closed shops.

What RTW legislation actually does is have government interfere with the contracts between private businesses and their employees by stating that workers don't have to pay their fair share. In other words, it means that the worker can get all the benefits of union representation without paying for it. This is why many people call RTW the Right to Freeload.

It would be like having the right to live in a community where there are police and firefighters to protect you, where your garbage gets picked up and your roads get plowed, but you don't have to pay for it. Your neighbors can pay for it, if they so choose. Naturally, these services will decline and/or disappear since not enough people are paying for them.

It's the same with the unions. If not enough people support, they lose the ability to fight for adequate pay, decent benefits and job safety.This is why RTW states have lower wages, higher levels of poverty, lesser benefits, poorer schools (no money to pay for them), and higher rates of death and injuries on the job sites.

As for the supposed economic benefits of this draconian legislation, I would refer the gentle reader to Abdur Chowdhury, an economics professor at Marquette University, who cleanly cuts through the RTW lies:

Proponents of right-to-work laws advance two major arguments. First, they claim right-to-work laws make a state more attractive to business investment. Second, that passage of a right-to-work law will lead to job growth.

Most evidence, however, suggests that right-to-work legislation, by itself, is not much of a factor in where firms locate. Studies have consistently found there are several key factors that business decision-makers consider and compare when deciding among alternative investment sites. In annual surveys of small manufacturers conducted by Area Development magazine, including the most recent last month, right-to-work never ranked in the top 10 factors influencing location decisions. Issues such as transportation infrastructure, ease of permitting, existing workforce, state and local tax policy and several others were considered more important to site selectors.

Another argument for right-to-work is the claim that it creates more jobs. But numerous studies have shown it is not right-to-work laws that matter, but rather the "pro-business package" offered by right-to-work states that seems to matter. The 24 states with right-to-work laws have very different economies, and their economic fortunes are mostly explained by the unique features of their economies and state economic development policies.

The facts also show that right-to-work legislation puts downward pressure on wages. According to U.S. Department of Labor statistics from 2013, the average wage for all occupations in right-to-work states was nearly $4 an hour lower than in the remaining states. At the same time, right-to-work legislation erodes the quality of a state's labor force by encouraging the best and the brightest to migrate to states where wages are higher.

Another finding relates to income and spending. Right-to-work laws reduce wages, which negatively impacts income and spending, causing both to decline. Reduction in income also negatively affects the amount local government collects in tax revenue, resulting in lower sales tax receipts. Thus, right-to-work laws undermine the ability of state and local governments to raise adequate tax revenues to pay for public services.

Right-to-work also makes for less-safe workplaces, including increases in on-site injuries and even fatalities for construction workers, according to Roland Zullo, a Michigan economist. In Wisconsin, unions spend significant resources on occupational safety and negotiate job safety procedures beyond those contained in OSHA regulations.

The Economic Policy Institute also did a study, with similar findings. One thing about the EPI report does stand out - RTW is intended to lower wages:

The goal of RTW—according to its supporters—is to cut wages and benefits in the hopes of encouraging out-of-state manufacturers to move in. If it didn’t lower wages, there would be no incentive for companies to move into the state. As the Indiana Chamber of Commerce explained, “Unionization increases labor costs … [and thus] makes a given location a less attractive place to invest.” RTW is supposed to solve this problem. Similarly, a Missouri state representative championed RTW by projecting it would cut wages by “2 to 3 dollars an hour” as part of the process of attracting more companies to hire cheaper labor

If RTW was so popular, states like Wisconsin wouldn't be trying to ram it through as fast as they can before more people catch on to what they are trying to do. Even with their rush job, 1,776 people signed up to testify about RTW with the Wisconsin State Senate last week. Out of that 1,776, 1,751 were opposed to the legislation. Of the 25 that supported it, all but none were paid to be their to lobby for it.

The question that begs to be asked is why these dark money special interest groups willing to spend billions of dollars to try to destroy unions?

Thomas Donahue already gave us that answer: "The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor"

Will Williams Testimony

By Jeff Simpson

American Hero and Wisconsin Treasure, Will Williams spoke up against the RTW bill yesterday:

Thank you Mr. Williams for your service when you were active duty and beyond!  It is unfortunate none of the Republicans on the panel cared what you had to say.  

Scottholm Syndrome

By Jeff Simpson

Rebeccaforreal posted this on her facebook page:

Rebecca Kleefisch

41 mins · 

It's a small wonder the Governor's message is resonating across the country: what a study in contrasts...as our president vetoes the Keystone XL Pipeline, killing the creation of thousands of new jobs, here in Wisconsin our State Senate votes "Right to Work" legislation out of committee, moving our state into position to create thousands of new jobs. What a difference 852 miles can make.

To which someone left this comment:

Shari Pes----------wski: God has blessed us with a governor who cares about the citizens and not big businesses.

In case you think your eyes have deceived you let me post that again:

Shari Pes----------wski: God has blessed us with a governor who cares about the citizens and not big businesses.

There really are no words and there really is no hope for WI.  

WI Republicans Start The Fast Track To RTW Ruin

Image courtesy of Citizens Action of Wisconsin

The ongoing downward spiral for Wisconsin continues this week as Scott Walker and his Republican allies continue to ramrod through so-called "Right to Work" legislation in an extraordinary session of the state legislature.

On Monday, labor leaders, community leaders and business owners converged on the Capitol to speak with state senators but were denied access.

On Tuesday, thousands of Wisconsinites went to Madison, some driving five and a half hours, to attend the sham of a public hearing. Scores of Wisconsinites did not get to testify but the Republican clowns made sure that out of state special interests got to say their piece:

It's a rare citizen who would rush to testify that the higher wages, benefits, and training that unions bring are a bad idea. Fortunately, the Wisconsin GOP had the full support of the Koch-funded "think tanks" that are a critical part of the right-wing infrastructure.

James Sherk, an attorney for the D.C.-based Heritage Foundation, flew out to pile on. Sherk's innovative legal effort to devise a local right to work strategy and peddle it though the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was featured on the front page of the New York Times recently in an article entitled "Foes of Unions Try Their Luck at the County Level." The Heritage Foundation received $650,000 in 2012 from the Claude R. Lambe Foundation, which was one of the Koch Family Foundations before it closed in 2013. The Lambe Foundation contributed at least $4.8 million to the Heritage Foundation between 1998 and 2012. See our SourceWatch profile here.

Sherk waxed lyrical over the fact that right to work legislation would "drive down labor costs." Sen. Larson translated for the audience: "You say labor costs. You know, I would call that wages."

Greg Mourad from the National Right to Work Committee, which received $1 million from the Koch brothers' secret bank Freedom Partners in 2012, was not keen to discuss where his paycheck comes from.

"Have you never asked yourself why some of the richest people in the country are spending so much money on your group -- people pushing an extreme anti-worker and anti-environment agenda?" Sen. Larson asked Mourad. He had not. The National Right to Work Committee has been a national leader in the effort to destroy public and private sector unions by pushing anti-union legislation at the state and federal level and by bringing lawsuits, such as the 2014 Harris v. Quinn case in the U.S. Supreme Court attacking unions in Illinois. The three groups associated with the Committee reported over $25 million in revenue in 2012. CMD's Sourcewatch profile of the group can be found here.

F. Vincent Vernuccio flew in all the way from Michigan, where workers were "freed" to make lower wages in 2013. Vernuccio works for Michigan's Mackinac Center, one of the largest state-based think tanks in the nation, and part of the $84 million dollar State Policy Network, a sister organization to ALEC. The Mackinac Center received $1,494,000 from the Koch conduits DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund between 2010 and 2012. See CMD's ;SourceWatch profile here.

Last year, Vernuccio masterminded a coordinated campaign attacking teachers in Michigan. Together with the Koch-founded group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and the National Right to Work Committee, Mackinac released targeted Facebook and Google ads, built webpages, published op-eds in local and state newspapers, and flooded Michiganders with mass mailings and robo-calls -- all with the aim of destroying the teachers' union by creating a mass exodus of members.

There was one Wisconsinite ready to testify. Scott Manley, representing Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), bemoaned the fact that Wisconsin is lagging in new job creation compared to right to work states (the Bureau of Labor Statistics ranks Wisconsin 32 out of 50 states in new job creation). But just a few months ago, during Walker's campaign for reelection, WMC aired TV ad after TV adpraising Governor Walker for the state's blockbuster economic performance.

It should be noted that Manley was also forced to admit that only 7% of the companies he is supposed to be representing actually support this. The vast majority of companies in Wisconsin resent this intrusion into how they conduct their business.

The Republicans and their corporate bosses weren't done making a mockery of democacy.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a quick story saying that the unions were planning a protest for the end of the hearing. State Senator Steve Nass, who was the day's ring master, conflated that to a threat to their safety and called an end to the meeting more than a half hour before it was scheduled to end.

Even though this Nass-clown supposedly felt in fear for his life, he did make sure to take the time to take a roll call vote, passing this piece of ALEC written legislation for Wednesday's session. It should be noted that it passed on a 3-1 vote. The other Democrat, Senator Chris Larson, was not given the opportunity to vote.

And as far as that threat goes, there was none, unless one considers dissent to be a threat:

During the meeting, the source for the Journal Sentinel report, Bruce Colburn of the Service Employees International Union state council, stood up in the middle of the committee hearing and told Nass that there was no threat or need for concern. Colburn and AFSCME Council 48 Executive Director Boyd McCamish later told the Journal Sentinel that the newspaper's report was accurate but that they disagreed with Nass' contention that their plans constituted a "threat," calling that argument a "sham."

"There was no threat," Colburn said. "We wanted to ensure that people had a right to speak."

"They used it as a straw man to get out of a very uncomfortable position," McCamish added. "It's an act of political cowardice."

Union supporters reacted with disbelief and anger to the sudden vote, shouting, "Shame! Shame! Shame!" as police escorted Republican lawmakers from the hearing room. A spokesman for the Walker administration and Capitol Police said there was one arrest before the Capitol closed.

It is expected that Wednesday will present with a continuation of this farce as the corporate-controlled Republicans do their masters' bidding in ramming this through. It can also be expected that the Republicans will squelch the speech of the Democrats as much as possible.

The Republicans really, really don't want the people to know what they are about to do to them.

Right to Work is Wrong For Wisconsin

 

By Jeff Simpson

 Mayor Paul Soglin tells how wrong the Republicans are in trying to rush through Right to Work in Wisconsin.  

MADISON (WKOW)-- Saturday Madison Mayor Paul Soglin blasted plans to pass right-to-work legislation in the senate next week.
The Senate is set to hold a public hearing on the bill Tuesday and take a vote Wednesday. The bill would make it illegal to require a person to join an union or pay union dues as a requirement of their employment.
Mayor Soglin says it will hurt workers and credits unions with boosting the local economy.
“In Madison and Dane County where we have one of the most robust economies in the nation, where we are going contrary to the trend in the rest of the state, which is what really needs to be presented in a legislative hearing process, we have strong unions,” Mayor Soglin said.

The Wisconsin Business Alliance, a business group that actually cares about Wisconsin and has some actual business sense, has found out that Right to work isn't popular in Wisconsin.   

I spent this morning calling local chambers of commerce in Republican state senate districts in an effort to get their take on the so-called “right to work” legislation that is scheduled to be introduced at the State Capitol this week.
Since the State Chamber of Commerce, or WMC, is strongly supporting the legislation, I was curious to learn where local business associations stand on the issue.
Specifically, I wanted to learn the answer to this question: Is WMC really representing Wisconsin’s broad and diverse business community when it claims that businesses want legislators to enact “right to work” laws?The answer was astonishing: I could not find a single Chamber in the districts of senators Fitzgerald, Cowles, Moulton, Petrowski, Nass, Lasee, or Harsdorf that supports “right to work.”In fact, I heard statements like these again and again: “We’re not taking a position on that.” “We don’t take a stand on political issues.” “We only advocate for political issues when there’s a strong consensus among our members — and we don’t have consensus on this.”

Let's see, the Mayor of one of the best cities in the country to live is against it, the Chambers of Commerce in every Republican Senators district will not speak in favor of it, so who is for it.  

O yeah ALEC. 

There is of course a full daily dose of Irony, that the party that was abhorred, by one of Mary Burke's consultants copying his earlier work while writing policy, then introducing as their first bill, one plagiarized word for word from their masters at ALEC.

Of course it would take a media that cared about objective facts and the search for truth to actually bring that up.   It even took one of the Republicans long time donor's and cheerleaders to point out that not a single Republican campaigned on this issue that they are now fast tracking.   

What does a campaign mean when almost none of the major policy departures contained in the budget were proposed or debated during the year-long exchange of policy ideas by Democrat Mary Burke and Republican Scott Walker?
The major issue in that hard-fought and money-drenched contest was job creation. That priority has almost disappeared from the Republican dialogue now coming out of the governor’s office and Republican-controlled capitol. As if to declare victory, the current focus is now about workforce development and filling jobs.
Lest we celebrate prematurely, there are still about a half million unemployed or underemployed adults in the state, many in the central city of Milwaukee; we still have a brain drain of more than 10,000 college graduates; and our wage levels are still in the bottom third of states.

A little digging though and we see exactly where this bill is coming from:

WISCONSIN RIGHT TO WORK COMMITTEE, INC.

MICHELLE LITJENS

3765 MAXWELL RD
PO BOX 296
OSHKOSH , WI 54904 

Hmmmm I wonder if Robin Vos will recuse himself?   

Tom Barrett - Soothsayer

Scott Walker gets owned by Mayor Barrett here, on the right -to- work question.  #intimidated

Walker Arms Another "Bomb"

In 2009, while Scott Walker was still Milwaukee County Executive, he created an artificial financial crisis.  In order to address the supposed crisis, Walker wanted to impose an indefinite work hour reduction for AFSCME-represented employees, cutting the workers' hours - and pay - until the alleged deficit was resolved.

However, this was when unions were still at full strength and workers still had rights.  AFSCME filed for arbitration and won it, mostly because Walker had overstepped his authority and because there really wasn't a financial crisis:

The arbitrator also found other flaws with Walker's actions. These include the fact that Walker had failed to show that the County's projected deficit was severe enough to warrant such drastic actions. In fact, it was in the testimony that Walker's chief number cruncher, Steve Kreklow, admitted that the deficit was only one third the number of what Walker has been reporting. And even the new lower number of $4.5 million is almost seven times the number that the award-winning County Auditor found it to be.

Another error that Walker made was that he left the furlough open-ended which was contradictory to a previous arbitration hearing.

In 2010, Walker went after the workers again. This time, he created a deficit in his budget by factoring in concessions from the unions, even though he refused to come to the bargaining table to even ask for them. When the unions didn't make those concessions - again because Walker refused to negotiate - he imposed up to 26 furlough days on AFSCME workers.

As with his first attack on his own employees, this one eventually was found to be illegal and the workers received their back pay a few years later.

Unfortunately, these stunts were only precursors for things to come.

After becoming governor, Walker immediately set about creating yet another "financial crisis" by giving away hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to his cronies and campaign donors. Before Walker was done handing over the last fistful of cash, he declared the state to be in a financial crisis and introduced the misnamed "budget repair bill" which became Act 10.

As the gentle reader is all too aware, Act 10 was a failure of epic proportion.  It took $3 billion out of the state economy, making it go stagnant.  It cost tens of thousands of people their jobs and caused even more people to take big cuts in their take home pay, worsening the economy even further.

With the economic devastation of Act 10, Walker also gave massive tax breaks and giveaways to the rich.  This led up to the predictable deficit of $1.8 billion - you read that right, billions with a "b" - that the state is currently facing.

Even before that deficit was announced, when we learned that the state was facing a revenue shortfall of  $115 million, there were already calls for another budget repair bill.

Now that the deficit is so large, it gives Walker and his Teapublican allies in the legislature more than enough excuse to arm another bomb for Walker to drop on the state.  Because of the size of the deficit, Walker doesn't even have to settle for just rolling public safety personnel - cops and firefighters - into Act 10.  He can go for the whole thing and push for the Right to Work legislation, which has already been written and is just waiting to be introduced.

It's no longer a question of whether Walker will drop another bomb on the state but a matter of when.

Are You Ready For Right To Work?

Regardless of the outcome of November's election for governor, Wisconsin Teapublicans are prepared to introduce so-called "Right to Work" legislation.  If Scott Walker wins, the Teapublicans will intrduce this legislation at their leisure.  If Mary Burke wins, look for Walker to call for a special lame duck session of the state legislature, as they did in Michigan.

Walker has denied that there are any plans to for Right to Work to be introduced, but he's also denied that he was a target in the Walkergate investigations or that his agenda is failing.

Coming off of a very successful Laborfest celebration, the Milwaukee Area Labor Council is holding a townhall meeting to discuss the issue of Right to Work laws.

AFSCME District Council 48's executive director, Boyd McCamish, will be speaking about the origins of this piece of offal and its dark history in southern states.  The discussion will also include a review of some of the tactics and ideas the national RTW committee use to distort and lie to workers and how to respond to them.

This meeting is open to the public.  It will be held on Wednesday, September 3rd, at 6:30 pm at the Juneau Complex (formerly Juneau High School), located at 6415 W. Mt. Vernon Avenue.

Please help spread the word about this meeting.

See you there!

It's Hard To Keep A Good Union Down

In 2012, the state of Indiana passed Right to Work legislation in an effort to bust the unions.  Things didn't work out quite the way they had planned:

Two years after Indiana became a right-to-work state, the membership decline unions feared hasn‘t happened.

Unionization slipped from one in nine Hoosier workers in 2011 to one out of 11 in 2012, when right-to-work took effect. But union membership had been sliding for years before that, and in the first full year of right-to-work, membership actually rebounded by two-tenths of a percent.

During debate over the law, unions predicted their membership would decline while the number of “free riders” — workers enjoying the benefits of collective bargaining without paying dues — would rise.

Indiana AFLCIO president Brett Voorhies credits unions’ efforts to serve their members with averting those outcomes.

“In certain areas maybe right-to-work has affected some of our facilities but definitely not in a way that was predicted,” says Voorhies.

The US Department of Labor says about 10-percent of Hoosier workers represented by unions are nonmembers. That‘s the highest figure in three years.

The department says Indiana unions added about 3,000 members in 2013, and the same number of nonmembers working in union shops.

Voorhies says the organization hasn‘t changed its view that the law was a bad one.

On Wednesday, a Lake County judge became the second to rule the law unconstitutional. The Indiana Supreme Court will hear arguments in September.

Likewise, here in Wisconsin, when Scott Walker and his Teapublican cronies dropped their Act 10 bomb on the state, it was meant to bust our unions. Again, things didn't happen quite the way they planned:

In 2012, Wisconsin had the third largest decrease in union membership.  In 2013, Wisconsin baffled many of the "experts" by having the seventh largest increase in membership:

There was a surprise in the Bureau of Labor Statistics report Friday on union membership: Trade unions appear to have gained ground in Wisconsin last year.

Wisconsin’s union membership rate -- the percentage of wage and salary workers who belong to unions -- rose from 11.25 percent to 12.34 percent, the seventh biggest gain in the nation. This after 2012, when Wisconsin had the third largest decrease in the nation.

But as the gentle reader knows, when it comes to all things Walker, there is more. There is always more:

The report shows Wisconsin had an increase of about 24,000 union members in 2013, while the overall number of wage and salaried workers dipped by about 36,000.

So while Walker's agenda was costing the state tens of thousands of jobs, those managing to hang on to their jobs or get new ones were even more eager to join or rejoin the unions. 

This was also exemplified when most unions were able to recertify at the end of last year despite they way Walker tried to manipulate the voting by putting insane obstacles in the way.

I've got to hand it to Walker.  That is some mighty impressive union organizing.

Now that the highly politicized Supreme Court upheld Act 10, despite all legal and common sense, there has been talk about the unions being done. Furthermore, the fact is regardless of November's gubernatorial election results, the Teapublicans will try to push through Right to Work here.

But as they have been proven wrong so many times before, they are in for a big surprise.

It really is hard to keep a good union down.

Speaking of Right to Work, keep the evening of September 3 open. The Milwaukee Area Labor Council will be holding a town hall meeting, open to the public, to discuss that very topic.

Dem of the Day - Joel Gratz

By Jeff Simpson

The Democrat of the day today is Joel Gratz!

Joel Gratz is head of the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee.  Gratz was charged with recruiting candidates and turning the assembly blue!  Gratz also runs a polling & campaign services company(how convenient).  Even though I do not own a polling and campaign service company, I am pretty sure when you let 25 of 99 seats go unchallenged, that's 25 seats you can not win.  

The son of a lobbyist, who has been in this position since 2011 has a passion for

My passion throughout my career has always been most focused on the importance of democratic majorities in the legislature.

You do the math.  

Meanwhile, here is a snapshot of his work.

In the 47th Assembly district, Gratz successfully challenged and was able to get a Green party candidate kicked off the ballot to allow Robb Kahl to run unopposed!  

In the 33rd Assembly district, Steve nASS's old seat, Gratz left that seat completely unchallenged.  The candidate there sure has some great ideas:

Describe one area in which you differ from your party leadership.
Bill Lurvey:  I differ with leadership on right to work. I would be interested in passing a bill to make Wisconsin a right-to-work state.

Good job Joel, keep up the great work, Robin Vos appreciates it!

D-Day For Unions?

There is a case that is currently in front of the U.S. Supreme Court that has not been getting anywhere nearly the attention it should be getting.  The case is called Harris vs Quinn and it stems from a case in Illinois.

To put the case in a nutshell, in 2003, the State of Illinois passed a law stating that people receiving government funding to take caring of loved ones should be considered to be public employees.  This automatically made them union members.

An anti-union front group that supports the misnamed Right to Work laws and which is sponsored by Big Business has fought this all the way to the Supreme Court, which is expected to release their decision as soon as Monday.

Depending on which way the Supreme Court rules, and how general or specific their decision is, it could mean very bad news for unions all across the nations.  If the decision goes against the unions, as is expected, it would set up a national scenario much like we've seen here in Wisconsin after Scott Walker dropped his Act 10 bomb on the state.  It would greatly weaken the unions and open the door to more exploitation of workers, lower wages, higher levels of poverty and the same stagnant economy we have here in Wisconsin.

Ironically, the bright ray of hope for the unions is the usually anti-union Justice Antonin Scalia:

Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia could prove to be the swing vote, experts say.

In a 1991 Supreme Court case, Scalia argued it is reasonable for unions to collect fees from non-union members to cover their negotiating costs. Then, during oral arguments for Harris vs. Quinn in January, Scalia's questions led some believe he is leaning in this direction once again.

Eisenbrey called Scalia “the hope.”

“In this case, Scalia may actually end up being a swing vote who actually sides with the more liberal members of the court and, of course, workers,” said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP).

Even if the Supreme Court does rule against the unions, don't for a minute consider it a kill shot, as some are hyping it to be.

Sure, it will make things more difficult for the unions, but just ask Scott Walker or Chris Abele about how crippled the unions are. Just brace yourself for the outburst of profanities that comes out of their weaselly mouths when you do.

Republican Thugs - Fox News (update)

By Jeff Simpson

A  few months ago, we brought you the story in Michigan, where breitbardt wanna-be Steven Crowder was assaulted by union supporters.   We pointed out that while, Mr. Crowder was just trying to play the innocent victim, he was just a journalist who was trying to get a story, thats not quote how it happened. 

A Michigan County prosecutor, agreed with us!  

Crowder soon filed a police report following the December 11 incident. But the county prosecutor, Stuart Dunnings III, has now said that he will refuse to prosecute. Dunning explained that he viewed an unedited clip of the same situation — captured by The Young Turks — and that it clearly shows that the protester who threw the punch was first pushed down, and that it appears that he was simply acting in self defense against a larger crowd that first attacked him.

 “I’m not holding that against him, but why would they provide the edited video? The longer video clearly shows the guy got pushed down and came up swinging,” said Billings.

Why Indeed? 

Waiting for Fox News to end their relationship with Mr. Crowder, do not hold your breath!