E-Messenger 8-16-13 - Florida AFL-CIO

August 16, 2013
E-MESSENGER
The Electronic Newsle0er of the Florida AFL-­‐CIO
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Click on these links to skip to a specific section of the E-Messenger
VIDEO OF THE WEEK!
CALL TO ACTION
FIGHT FOR FLORIDA
AFL-CIO NOW BLOG
HUFFINGTON POST
IN THESE TIMES
THINK PROGRESS
SALON
ALTERNET
TRUTHOUT
FLORIDA STATE NEWS
FEATURED CLIPS
BEST OF THE BLOGS
FLORIDA POLITICS
BALLOT INITIATIVES
ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY
LGBT
EDUCATION
JOBS, BUDGET, AND ECONOMY
HEALTH AND SENIORS
IMMIGRATION, CIVIL RIGHTS
AND SOCIAL ISSUES
JUSTICE AND THE COURTS
LABOR NOTES
PAUL KRUGMAN
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VIDEO OF THE WEEK!
WATCH THIS DAILY SHOW CLIP ON STRIKING FAST FOOD WORKERS
Around the U.S., many fast-food workers are striking for higher wages. But they aren't
finding much sympathy from Fox News pundits and journalists, says John Oliver at The
Daily Show. And it's clear — and predictable — where Oliver's sympathies lie.
Oliver starts out noting economic forecasts that say raising the minimum wage will be
good for both fast food companies and their low-wage workers — while also highlighting
the fat profits companies like McDonald's are booking these days. Then he turns to Fox
News analysts, running a series of tightly edited clips of Fox personalities saying unkind
or demonstrably silly things about fast-food workers.
Neil Cavuto at Fox Business Network, for example, talks about how his stint at a fastfood joint at age 16 — at $2 an hour — was considered good work in 1974. Oliver
points out that the average age of fast-food workers today is 28, and that in 2013
dollars, Cavuto started out earning almost $9.50 an hour, or $2 more than today's
minimum wage.
.COM/FLORIDAAFLCIO
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CALL TO ACTION:
Tell Speaker Boehner "The People Want a Vote."
SIGN THE PETITION: http://bit.ly/15WIoKG
Speaker Boehner, you and the leadership in the House of
Representatives have the power to fix this broken system.
Stop holding 11 million lives hostage -- let the House of
Representatives vote on a roadmap to citizenship now!
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BREAKING PROMISES:
FDOT Reneges on Agreement, Risks Public Safety
(Aug 15, 2013 -Tallahassee) - The Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen and the Florida
AFL-CIO filed suit today against the Florida Department of Transportation for going back
on their contractual agreement to hire federally certified signalmen for the construction
and maintenance of SunRail lines.
President Mike Williams of the Florida AFL-CIO had the following remarks about
FDOT’s failure to honor their agreement, “I come from a strong background that when
someone gives you their word, they follow through with it. FDOT has not followed
through with their commitment to workers and the public on SunRail.”
The SunRail legislative debate in 2008 and 2009 was met with strong opposition until an
agreement was struck between the FDOT, BRS and the Florida AFL-CIO to ensure the
most experienced and skilled workers were contracted to work the commuter line that
will serve millions of Floridians. After a sham bid process, FDOT rejected three requests
for proposal bids including one from United Signal, the only contractor covered by the
federal Railway Labor Act (RLA) and federal Railroad Retirement Act (RRA). In doing so
FDOT has violated their legal agreement with BRS, risking the safety of workers and
future commuters in the process.
SunRail’s first paying customers will start riding May of 2014. Gus Demott General
Chairman of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen urged that “Now is the time to build
safety into the SunRail system, not when the train is barreling down the track carrying
passengers.”
At present, the signal maintenance work on the SunRail line continues to be done by
subcontractor RailWorks, one of the rejected and non-certified bidders.
“Florida can’t afford train wrecks,” stresses David Lavery, Florida Legislative Chairman
of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. “Our engineers who work
on these lines regularly characterize running over SunRail as running the gauntlet.
Railroad employees are at concern for their safety.”
The BRS and the Florida AFL-CIO are asking FDOT to fulfill their agreement by
accepting federally certified United Signal’s bid. “We want FDOT to show leadership and
stand by their word. Florida’s railroad employees and commuters deserve nothing less
than the best trained signalmen maintaining their lines.”
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More from the AFL-­‐CIO Now
From the blog at www.aflcio.org/blog.
The Ominous Future of
Education Debt
08/14/2013
Sean Savett
The bad news on student loans just keeps coming.
Within the past few months, federal student loan
debt has surpassed the $1.2 trillion
mark, Congress raised interest rates for incoming
students and tied them to market swings and the
average graduate from the class of 2013 left college with a record $30,000 of debt.
Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a jarring report on
outstanding student loan debt and its hazardous effects on our economy. The CFPB found that
nearly one-fifth of the millions of Americans with federal student loan debt are unable to pay
back their loans. A total of 3.4 million people in America are in forbearance, accruing interest
while unemployed or suffering financial hardship, while more than 7 million of those former
students are in default.
This is incredibly problematic. Congress has legislated that, like child support, alimony and
criminal fines, student debt is inescapable in bankruptcy. Unlike borrowers with unmanageable
credit card debt, medical debt, mortgage debt or other loan debt, the millions of Americans who
depended on student loans to make an important investment in their future cannot turn to
bankruptcy in tough times. Until these 7 million former students pay back their student loans,
debt collectors and the government can pursue the debtors, garnishing their Social Security
payments, wages, tax credits and refunds, or place liens on their bank accounts and property.
This issue is not going away. Roughly one-third of all debt holders are current students, the cost
of college is rising quickly and a bachelor’s degree remains important in our economy. And
research has found that those young people entering into the “real world” with outstanding
student loans defer major purchases and are less likely to buy a home or a car, depressing overall
economic activity. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both introduced initiatives to ease the burden on
financially overwhelmed individuals through Income-Based Repayment and Pay as You Earn
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plans that cap payments at 15% or 10% of a borrower's income, respectively, and forgive the
remaining balance after 25 or 20 years, respectively. However, only 10.5% of the 15 million
Americans currently repaying their student loans are enrolled in income-based repayment plans,
indicating that many of the borrowers who could be helped by the programs either are not aware
of them or are disqualified for other reasons. America’s fast-growing student debt problem is hurting our families, damaging our economy and
lowering our quality of life. It demands our attention and our solutions. Most Working Families Say Strengthen,
Don’t Cut, Social
Security
08/14/2013
Mike Hall
On today’s 78th anniversary of Social
Security, a new survey (see video) from
the National Academy of Social
Insurance finds that most of America's
workers support increasing be
nefits,
protecting benefits against inflation and lifting the Social Security tax cap so that wealthy people
pay their fair share as working families do now.
You can add your voice to the call to strengthen, not cut, Social Security by signing this petition
from the Alliance for Retired Americans. Social Security, says Alliance President Barbara Easterling, keeps millions of seniors out of
poverty, enabling older people to buy groceries, pay for medical expenses and remain
independent.
We need to strengthen Social Security, not cut it. We want to ensure that our grandchildren have
access to the same benefits or better.
Alliance Executive Director Edward Coyle says that with the reliability of pensions, 401(k)s and
housing values dwindling:
Social Security remains more important than ever for today’s seniors and for future generations.
Americans across the political spectrum strongly believe we need to strengthen this vital
program, not cut it. The average monthly benefit for a retiree is a modest $1,200. It is
unreasonable to cut Social Security benefits, including raising the retirement age or adopting the
chained CPI.
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Protecting Social Security from misguided cuts is important, but it's only the first step, says
Easterling.
In an era when other sources of retirement income are increasingly unreliable, we need to
strengthen Social Security in both the short and long term. Sen. Tom Harkin's (D-Iowa)
Strengthening Social Security Act (S. 567) accomplishes this by gradually lifting the payroll
cap. Click here to support it. The legislation would extend the life of the Trust Fund and increase
Social Security benefits by about $65 a month.
Read more from Easterling, and visit the Alliance’s Social Security anniversary page where you
can:
•
•
•
Sign the petition to “Keep Social Security Strong” and support the Strengthen Social
Security Act.
Learn about anniversary celebrations being held around the country.
View brand-new state-by-state reports detailing exactly what Social Security means for
each state’s people and economy.
Working families are calling on their elected representatives to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from
benefit cuts, repeal the sequester and make sure corporations and the wealthiest 2% pay their fair share through closing
tax loopholes. Stop Honduran Labor Abuses Now
08/12/2013
Stella Kim
On July 16, Kyungshin-Lear, a car parts
manufacturing company with a factory in Honduras,
fired three of nine newly elected union leaders.
Within the following days, we have learned from
our colleagues at the AFL-CIO Solidarity
Center that the remaining six of the nine newly
elected union leaders also were fired. Since January
2012, Kyungshin-Lear has fired 26 union leaders,
with the company's most recent illegal firing of all nine union leaders in April 2013, and then in
July, firing the nine union leaders who had been recently elected to replace the fired leaders from
April. The Honduran Labor Code prohibits reprisals against workers for union activities and
provides that an employer may only lawfully dismiss a union leader after obtaining a court ruling
finding just cause for the dismissal, but Honduras has a history of failing to effectively enforce
these laws.
A union election was held June 29 to elect a new leadership to replace nine union leaders who
were fired in April. As Honduran law requires that union leadership must be comprised of actual
employees, the Ministry of Labor visited the factory on July 16 to attempt to notify the company
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of the new union leadership and verify their employment, only to be barred from entering the
premises. That same day, Kyungshin-Lear began firing the new union leaders.
This is not the first time this has occurred. Kyungshin-Lear has a notorious history of refusing to
allow the Honduran Ministry of Labor to conduct inspections. The Solidarity Center, along
with Honduran union representatives and U.S. government representatives, met with the Ministry
this past May, and the Ministry pledged to impose fines on Kyungshin-Lear for its evasion of
inspections and to promptly act on pending complaints filed over the firings of union leaders in
2012 and April of this year. But so far, there has been no attempt to take action on that promise.
The Honduran government has persistently failed to enforce its domestic labor laws as is
required under the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Recognizing continued
labor abuses and efforts by the government to weaken labor laws, the AFL-CIO and a broad
delegation of Honduran unions filed a petition of complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor
in Washington D.C. in March of 2012. The Labor Department officially accepted the petition of
complaint on May 22, 2012, and should have released an official response by Nov. 22, 2012 (180
days from the acceptance date). Yet eight months later, Honduran workers have yet to see any
action. Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to provide tariff benefits to a country that
blatantly refuses to protect and defend basic labor and human rights. Sign up to receive AFL-CIO Now blog alerts>>
When the government of Honduras allows companies like Kyungshin-Lear to violate labor laws
with impunity, the likelihood of future violations, including future illegal firings of union leaders,
only increases. The U.S. government is in a position to hold the government of Honduras to its
CAFTA commitments. Yet, the U.S. government has stayed silent, allowing months to pass while
the Honduran government continues to violate the labor provisions of CAFTA. If the U.S.
government does not hold the Honduran government to its CAFTA obligations, it encourages
other nations to likewise shirk their responsibilities. More importantly, the failure to act harms
workers everywhere—because it only fuels the race to the bottom in terms of workers' rights,
pay and conditions of work. The U.S. government must move immediately to protect Honduran
workers—and publicly responding to the CAFTA complaint is a necessary first step.
www.huffingtonpost.com
Michigan Right-To-Work Law Applies To
State Workers
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By DAVID EGGERT 08/15/13 06:24 PM ET EDT
LANSING, Mich. -- Michigan's right-to-work law applies to 35,000 state employees, a divided
state appeals court ruled Thursday in the first major legal decision on the much-debated measure
eight months after it passed.
Judges voted 2-1 to reject a lawsuit filed by unionized workers who make up more than twothirds of all state employees. In a state with a heavier presence of organized labor than most,
thousands of protesters came to the Capitol late last year as the Republican-backed measure won
quick approval in a lame-duck session.
The law prohibits forcing public and private workers in Michigan to pay union dues or fees as a
condition of employment, and applies to labor contracts extended or renewed after late March. It
went to court after questions were raised whether it can affect state employees, since the
Michigan Civil Service Commission, which sets compensation for state employees, has separate
powers under the state constitution.
The court's majority said legislators have broad authority to pass laws dealing with conditions of
"all" employment while the panel has narrow power to regulate conditions of civil service
employment.
"In light of the First Amendment rights at stake, the Michigan Legislature has made the policy
decision to settle the matter by giving all employees the right to choose," Judges Henry Saad and
Pat Donofrio wrote, adding that legislators decided to "remove politics from public employment
and to end all inquiry or debate about how public sector union fees are spent."
Dissenting Judge Elizabeth Gleicher said the court's decision strips the civil service panel of its
"regulatory supremacy" clearly laid out in the constitution, which allows the four-member
commission to regulate "all conditions of employment" for civil service workers.
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"It cannot seriously be questioned that imposition of an `agency fee' constitutes a regulation of a
condition of employment," she wrote.
The Civil Service Commission currently has three appointees of former Democratic Gov.
Jennifer Granholm, and some members have battled with Republican Gov. Rick Snyder over
proposals affecting state workers. The commission filed a brief with the appeals court taking the
unions' side on the right-to-work issue.
In January, a month after Michigan became the nation's 24th right-to-work state, Snyder asked
the Michigan Supreme Court to step in early and decide the measure's legality, particularly the
state employee matter. But the high court declined after other state and federal suits were filed
requesting the law be struck down.
Legal challenges in neighboring Indiana, which passed a right-to-work law just before Michigan
did, have been unsuccessful. An appeal to the Michigan's conservative Supreme Court is likely.
"Like so many decisions in our state under Republican control, this decision is purely political
and is not based on our Constitution or the best interests of Michigan's citizens and working
families," United Auto Workers President Bob King said in a statement. The UAW bargains on
behalf of 17,000 state workers.
Contracts for state employees end Dec. 31, and five unions and the Snyder administration
recently began negotiating new contracts. Contracts between unions and Detroit automakers are
effective until September 2015.
Police officers and firefighters are exempted from the law and must pay union fees.
"We've maintained all along that the law is constitutional, and we think it's time to put this issue
behind us and continue focusing on our state's improved and improving economy," Snyder
spokesman Dave Murray said.
Supporters of right-to-work laws say they help with economic development and give employees
a choice on whether their union is worth contributing to. Critics say the laws are more about
union-busting in an attempt to hurt Democrats' political standing.
The ruling came just a day after a different panel on the appeals court struck down legislators'
attempt to make state employees contribute 4 percent of their pay to get full pension benefits in
retirement.
Guitar Center Union Campaign Notches
Second Store Victory
Posted: 08/12/2013 12:45 pm EDT | Updated: 08/13/2013 10:57 am EDT
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Giving a boost to a budding organizing campaign, workers at a Guitar Center store in Chicago
voted to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union on Friday, likely adding another
unionized store for the music retailer under Bain Capital ownership.
The vote at Chicago's flagship store follows one successful union bid and two failed ones in New
York City, where the Manhattan store recently became the music retailer's first union shop.
According to the union, more than three quarters of the Chicago workers who cast ballots Friday
voted in favor of the union, but the federal labor board hasn't officially ratified the results yet.
The union has said it intends to take its campaign to Guitar Centers throughout the country, and
RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum said in a statement Monday that the Chicago vote shows
the campaign has staying power.
"[T]his vote in Chicago proves that retail workers are ready and willing to stand up and demand
change," Appelbaum said. "Retail workers at Guitar Center nationwide are reaching out to the
union because they understand that when they unite and stand together, their voices will be
heard."
Rolling Stone first reported the election results on Sunday.
Christopher Bennett, a Guitar Center spokesman, told HuffPost that the company wouldn't
comment on the Chicago results until they were ratified. He also noted that the union's efforts in
Brooklyn and Queens were unsuccessful.
"Really, there is nothing to report officially until they've [ratified] that," he said. "What we do
know is in Brooklyn the board ratified that the union vote was unsuccessful, and the board
confirmed that in Queens at the 11th hour RWDSU withdrew their petition."
Dennis Haffeman, Guitar Center's vice president of human resources, told HuffPost that the
company is in the process of raising the base pay for its sales force, based on an evaluation that it
had started before the unionization campaign.
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"We're continuing to make improvements and to look at what's happened across the landscape
for our company," Haffeman said.
Guitar Center is the leading retailer of music equipment in the country, hawking guitars,
amplifiers, drums, keyboards and audio equipment at more than 240 stores in 44 states. The
company had sales of $2.1 billion last year, according to SEC filings.
HuffPost reported in April that many Guitar Center workers felt working standards had fallen
since the company's 2007 purchase by Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mitt
Romney. Pay rates had dropped for new hires, and several workers griped about the company's
"fade" system. Salespeople earn commission on top of the minimum wage, but they don't see that
extra money until they've sold a certain amount of product against their base pay.
Ahead of the Chicago vote, Jeff Loehrke, a manager in the store's drum department, told
HuffPost that it was getting more difficult to make a living wage under the company's pay
system.
"Fading against our own hours, it's getting harder and harder to do, as we're asked to do more
and more that's not sales related," Loehrke said. "A lot of us have two or three jobs just to try and
get by and pay rent and buy food."
According to Loehrke, the company had hired consultants to persuade workers to vote against
joining the union.
"Even moreso [than Manhattan] they don't want ours to go union," he said. "If the second
flagship goes union, it's a domino effect."
Many of the company's employees are musicians themselves, and a roster of progressive acts
have signed the union's petition in support of the workers, including Tom Morello, Steve Earle,
Billy Bragg and Ted Leo.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/guitar-center-unionchicago_n_3743664.html?utm_hp_ref=labor
www.inthesetimes.com
Friday Aug 16, 2013 2:56 pm
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New Secretary of Labor To Get Tough; Wage
Theft? ‘Better Call Saul’; Public Workers
Win in Michigan
By Mike Elk
Thomas Perez, the new head of the Labor Department, has business leaders worried about new
regulations. (Ryan J. Reilly / Flickr / Creative Commons).
In July, Thomas Perez was sworn in as a Secretary of Labor, and already he is expected to come
out with a series of new rules and regulations protecting workers and their organizing rights.
From the Associated Press:
Some long-awaited rules would help boost employment for veterans and the disabled,
increase wages for home-health-care workers and set new limits for workplace
exposure to dangerous silica dust.
Other, more controversial rules and actions could help labor unions organizing
campaigns and allow union officials to take part in safety inspections at nonunion
companies.
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Another rule the Obama administration is supposed to pass shortly would extend overtime pay
and other protections to domestic workers. From The Nation:
In 2011, flanked by domestic labor activists including a worker whom he’d shadowed
for a day while running for president, President Obama announced a proposed federal
regulatory change that would extend more federal protections like overtime pay to
more domestic workers. The proposed change, which would broaden coverage by
significantly narrowing a “companionship” exclusion in the amended Fair Labor
Standards Act, has received tens of thousands of public comments.
Eighteen months after Obama’s initial announcement, the proposed change—which
some involved had expected to be completed during his first term—may now be on the
cusp of becoming law. In January, the DOL informed Congress that it had transmitted a
draft final rule to the Office of Management and Budget, which reviews proposed
regulations. Asked about the rule’s status, a DOL spokesperson said Wednesday that it
was “still under review by OMB”; an OMB spokesperson did not respond to a Tuesday
inquiry. Activists from NDWA, the Service Employees International Union and other
labor groups held a July 23 “Countdown to Dignity” rally outside the Department of
Labor to urge swift action.
A new minimum wage law has kicked in for workers in Albuquerque, New Mexico. However,
the city attorney has failed to go after employers engaging in wage theft—leaving many workers
to fend for themselves. From the Huffington Post:
The city raised its minimum wage on Jan. 1 to $8.50 per hour for workers who don't
receive health care or child care benefits. But advocates for low-wage workers say the
law isn't being adequately enforced by the city. Those groups say the city attorney's
office has been instructing workers who claim they've been paid less than mandated to
find private attorneys and legal aid groups to take their cases.
The pay hike, which came courtesy of a successful ballot proposal last November,
guaranteed workers at least a dollar more than the state minimum wage of $7.50. But
the ordinance allows the city attorney to decide whether or not to pursue a case in
which a worker is paid less than the legal minimum, and city leaders have made it clear
that they view such disputes as a private matter between employers and employees.
Patrick Davis, director of the progressive nonprofit ProgressNow New Mexico, said
wage theft victims were essentially being told that they "better call Saul“—a reference
to the bottom-feeding attorney Saul Goodman, played by actor Bob Odenkirk, in the
AMC show "Breaking Bad," which is set in Albuquerque.
"They can't afford to hire an attorney," Davis, whose nonprofit backs policies meant to
benefit low-wage workers, said of those denied their legal pay.
A Labor Day Blood Drive in Oregon has been cancelled due to a contract dispute with the Red
Cross. From nwLaborPress.org:
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According to ONA, American Red Cross has brought in a union-busting attorney from
Alabama to negotiate the new agreement. The contract expired June 30.
American Red Cross initially sought to replace registered nurses with unlicensed
personnel at various stages of the blood donation process, including patient
assessments. It also proposed limiting nurses’ access to their sick leave bank until the
third consecutive day they were out of work. Both of those proposals were withdrawn,
said Tresa Cavanaugh, lead negotiator for ONA.
The remaining hurdle is wages. American Red Cross is pushing to lower the wage rate
for new-hires, eliminate step/ longevity increases, and cut differential pay.
The Michigan Supreme Court ruled in favor of public employees on Wednesday, saying the
Republican legislature didn't have the authority to pass a law deducting from workers' pay in
order to cover pensions. From the AP: Nearly 18,000 state employees don't have to contribute 4 percent of their pay to get full
pension benefits in retirement because a Republican-backed law requiring the
paycheck deductions is unconstitutional, the Michigan appeals court ruled.
In a 3-0 decision released Wednesday, the court said only the state Civil Service
Commission can change state workers' compensation, not lawmakers. The judges
rejected arguments that at the time of the panel's creation in 1940, "compensation"
wasn't understood to include fringe benefits such as pensions.
On July 1 in Las Vegas, Miguel Martinez wears an American flag at an immigration reform event
hosted by Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) at the offices of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226.
(Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
The Devil’s in the Details
If the Senate’s bill is so good, why are immigrant rights groups so unhappy?
BY Rebecca Burns
'The bill represents the outcome of many compromises made by progressives in order to keep
Republicans on board.'
After months of backroom negotiations and public debates, on June 27 the Senate passed the
most extensive overhaul of U.S. immigration policy in decades. The Border Security, Economic
Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act (S. 744) passed with the support of all Senate
Democrats and 14 Republicans. President Obama said of the bill, “Nobody got everything they
wanted. Not Democrats. Not Republicans. Not me. But the Senate bill is consistent with the key
principles for commonsense reform that I—and many others—have repeatedly laid out.” The
legislation then headed to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
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Labor unions and immigrant rights groups have been strong proponents of reform, but they’ve
expressed mixed feelings about the legislation. While the bill offers a much sought path to
citizenship for many of the 11 million undocumented, provisions that provoke concern include
the length of the path (13 years on average), the requirement that those on it be continuously
employed, the terms of a new guest-worker program and the increased militarization of the U.S.Mexico border. The AFL-CIO, which worked closely with Democrats to advance the legislation,
offered only a tepid endorsement of the final version.
In These Times discussed the bill with Ana Avendaño, the AFL-CIO’s director of immigration
and community action; Rosalinda Guillen, a farm worker advocate and member of the Dignity
Campaign; and Immanuel Ness, a political science professor at CUNY.
What new labor protections does the version of the bill passed by the Senate offer immigrant
workers?
ANA: S. 744 has a number of labor protections. Threats related to workers’ immigration status
have become the best way for employers to defeat workers’ attempts to organize for fair pay and
dignity on the job, so the path to citizenship is the biggest and most important worker protection.
There are new protections for temporary workers who expose violations of law. The bill also
regulates labor recruiters for the first time, which is important.
ROSALINDA: These are good protections. But the protections that exist now don’t make much
difference because there’s no enforcement. Exploitation is going to continue, especially given
what’s required of workers to maintain a good status while they’re waiting to apply for legal
permanent residency.
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The “continuous employment” provision of the bill requires immigrants on the path to
citizenship to not be unemployed for more than 60 consecutive days. What would this mean for
workers?
ROSALINDA: This is a question that workers have been asking us because this provision is
devastating to low-income workers. Many undocumented people work two or three low-wage
jobs, and they have to hustle just to keep those. So when they look at the reality of trying to stay
employed, coupled with the uncertainty of what this provision means—60 total days or 60
continuous days—and the requirement that workers earn a certain wage per year, they know
these legalization provisions are unlikely to help them. In fact, workers say to us, “They want us
out, and this is another way to get us out.”
They’re disappointed with the compromises that have been made—the legalization provisions,
the militarization of the border—and they ask, “Who negotiated this for us? Who is doing this
and why?”
IMMANUEL: The legislation is largely an extension of corporate and business demands.
Republicans—and Democrats who support the primacy of capital—favor this legislation as it
forces workers to find work at minimum wage if they seek citizenship. Many cohesive immigrant
ethnic families and communities will be thrown into disarray as workers are forced to travel long
distances to find employment. By forcing more workers into the labor market, the reserve army
of low-wage workers will grow, and wage standards will diminish and labor unions’ capacity to
organize will decline. One would only hope that if passed, this legislation is not enforced by
local and state authorities.
So how did we end up with this bill?
ANA: The bill represents the outcome of many compromises made by progressives in order to
keep Republicans on board. Things have changed a lot since the mass immigrants rights marches
of 2006. We have a community organizer as a president, and progressive forces control the
Beltway. But it’s still a toxic environment for immigrants and immigrant workers. There was a
real desire to pass a bill, and Democratic senators identified the baseline requirements it would
take for Republicans to get on board and worked off of that. Whether that was right or wrong,
that was the reality.
ROSALINDA: Early on in the process, members of the Dignity Campaign for Real Immigration
Reform came out and publicly opposed the bill in the hopes of moving progressives towards a
discussion where some of these compromises could be reversed. When we spoke to our base
about what they thought would be included in truly comprehensive reform, something that came
up again and again is the trade agreements that force them to migrate. This has been missing
completely from the discussion.
Immanuel, you’ve been critical of the AFL-CIO’s compromise with the Chamber of
Commerce on the guest-worker provisions of the bill. Why?
IMMANUEL: The guest-work program is an extension of the Chamber of Commerce’s efforts
to replace low-wage workers—from agriculture to hospitality—with foreign-born guest workers
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who will not have equivalent rights and will be denied the right to become U.S. citizens. This bill
appears to be written by the business lobby to expand the labor market for low-wage workers.
What would a genuinely pro-labor immigration platform look like, and why has this been so
difficult to discuss in the context of “immigration reform”?
ANA: Immigration is not an easy question for many union members. But the labor movement’s
position has evolved dramatically, and the key has been finding ways to talk about this issue as
one of worker rights. When the AFL-CIO changed our policy formally in 2001, we called for
amnesty because we realized that a two-tiered society is not sustainable, fair or just.
ROSALINDA: The majority of the undocumented workforce is not organized under collective
bargaining agreements, and the labor movement recognizes that this is a weakness. The
expansion of guest-worker programs in this bill will make labor organizing more difficult. But
we can’t just look at getting immigrant workers into collective bargaining agreements. We need
to model new ways of empowering people so that we can have better policy and prevent
restrictive and harsh policy being passed in the Congress.
What comes next?
ANA: We don’t know what’s going to happen in the House. The question is how do we build up
the power to actually impact the legislative process.
Organizing is what happens when people say “no.” We’ll need the progressive community to
come together on this issue, and take the fight back to the streets. We’re getting ready to do that
in Republican districts, to show the Republican Party that the face of America is changing, and
that they’ll have to accept that.
ROSALINDA: I agree with those statements. But supporting this bill does not back them up.
Opposing the bad parts of this bill—the criminalization of families, a long, harsh, provisionary
status—is the way to take a stand.
IMMANUEL: A progressive plan should allow all immigrants the right to stay in the United
States without monetary penalties, which will further drive low-wage workers underground. And
crucially, immigrant workers should also have a right to stay home. That means progressives
must demand trade policy that ends the dumping of agricultural products into Mexico and
Central America. A short-term interim measure is granting citizenship for millions who have
lived in the U.S. for decades and passage of the Dream Act, which is possible. Immigration
reform is necessary, but not under the conditions passed by the Senate. Comprehensive
immigration reform is preferable to immigration reform that penalizes migrant workers.
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www.thinkprogress.org
One Year Out Of The Shadows: How Legal
Status Changed The Lives Of Seven
Immigrants
By Esther Yu-Hsi Lee on August 15, 2013 at 9:42 am
August 15 marks the one-year anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA) program, a presidential initiative that grants temporary legal presence to non-criminal
undocumented immigrants who were brought into the country as youths by their parents. The
two-year program allows DACA recipients to apply for a social security number, to legally work
in the United States, and to pay taxes (although some select immigrants already had social
security numbers and were paying taxes). It also protects them from deportation. The program
has attracted more than half a million applicants. As of August, 430,236 undocumented youths
have been approved.
Before DACA, these individuals were largely excluded from pursuing permanent, professional
employment in the United States. But since receiving their employment authorization cards,
many recipients are able to match their skills and qualifications with careers that they never
could have had without legal presence. They are able to travel more freely, with many states
issuing driver’s licenses, ID cards, and other fundamental privileges previously denied. And they
have increasingly become contributing members of society. These are the stories of seven
DACA recipients who are already changing their lives, even as they live with the fear that the
change may be temporary.
C.P., 28, was nine-years-old when her parents brought her from Mexico. When she was 12 years
old, her mother was detained during a raid. “The trauma of having a family member sent away
stays with you,” she says. Before DACA, she was worried that she would be separated from her
two-year-old son and “felt so stuck.” But after becoming a DACA beneficiary, C.P. was excited
to start working as a medical genetics technician. Her temporary legal presence has given her the
ability to “pay more taxes” than she did as a low-wage “overworked, underpaid” worker who
worked “nights, weekends, [and] holidays.” She now pays for private health insurance coverage
for her family and she has been able to buy a car– two luxuries afforded by legalization that
directly boost the economy.
Rafael Lopez, 24, was one year old when he was brought from Mexico. Until he was approved
for DACA, Rafael did not have a paying job. Now he works as a paralegal at a law firm. “It just
feels really good because now I have some money in my pockets…,” Rafael said. “For a short
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PAGE 21
little while, I forgot how much I wanted some sort
of a state ID. I just wanted to be able to drive and
not worry about getting stopped.” He plans to
become an immigration lawyer and looks to his
boss who takes on pro-bono work, as his role
model. Before DACA, “my dreams were never set
in stone,” Rafael said. “It was always an ‘if’… but
now I’m not afraid anymore. I feel confident.
[DACA] makes me feel empowered. Things are
not as bad and I have something to lean on and
that’s my DACA.’”
Thelma Monarrez, 25, was brought to the United
States from Mexico when she was two-years-old. She
works as a legal assistant where “having my own
office was a dream come true.” Her legal presence
provides her with the opportunity to volunteer at a
battered woman’s program, which she previously
could not do because she would not have passed a
background check. “I can now drive without fear…
and take family vacations which I’ve always wanted,”
Thelma says. “Basically, my life is a little more
‘normal’…I feel like I do belong somewhere.” DACA
has also provided Thelma with a chance to rent in apartment complexes without “having to put a
huge deposit down because I have no social security number.” It also gives her a kind of stability
that if she lost her job “I can easily look for another [one], which was not so easy before.”
Oscar [last name withheld], 23, was brought to the United States from China at the age of 13.
He works at a Detroit-area restaurant and is looking forward to applying for an internship. He
dreams of becoming an engineer and being able to “use my skill to help build America, legally.”
Oscar says that the most positive thing that has come out of receiving DACA is an improvement
in his mental health and an ability to pay taxes. With DACA, Oscar finds that “it’s a [relief]
driving my car knowing that I have my [driver's license] in my pocket.”
Blanca Gamez
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PAGE 22
Blanca Gamez, 24, was brought to the country from Mexico when she was seven months old.
Before DACA, she was volunteering as an immigration advocate. But after DACA, Blanca was
able to become a tax-paying, salaried employee at a non-profit immigration advocacy
organization. She hopes to become a lawyer one day. Blanca said that prior to becoming a
DACA beneficiary, she was “in limbo over nine silly numbers.” But now that she can legally
drive and pay taxes, Blanca feels thrilled to be “a contributing member of society.” Although
Blanca has never been pulled over, she is happy that she will no longer have to drive “in fear.
Maria Sotomayor, 21, was nine-years-old when her
parents brought her from Ecuador. Before she became a
DACA beneficiary, Maria worked at a pizza shop. But
now she works as a DACA coordinator, helping others
file their DACA paperwork within the greater
Philadelphia area. Like Blanca, Maria finds that DACA
has opened “a lot of doors for me” and even though she
had an international license before, she no longer fears “being pulled over while driving” and no
longer has to explain to her friends why she used to carry around a passport in lieu of a state ID.
Yesenia Alaniz, 24, was one year old when her parents brought her from Mexico. She currently
holds a bachelor’s degree in Social Studies, which inspired her passion to become a teacher.
Because of DACA, she is now able to work at a retail store in the greater Las Vegas area to save
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PAGE 23
up for a master’s degree in Education so that she can pursue that dream. She says that having the
legal ability to drive has allowed her children to “participate in extracurricular activities,” but
that being able to work has given her the freedom to “help my parents out financially.”
C.P., Oscar, Maria, and the rest of these DACA recipients have roots deeply embedded in society,
and the impermanence of DACA’s two-year protected legal presence never strays far from their
minds. Rafael and his family, for example, have a standing deportation order. While the Obama
administration has stated that the DACA program was put into place as a way to shift its
deportation focus on criminal immigrants, any one of these recipients are still at risk of
deportation if the DACA program ends.
Beneficiaries can pay the $465 fee to re-apply for DACA before their employment authorization
cards expire every two years, but the program is simply a stop-gap measure that provides an
unsustainable long-term solution. What’s more, beneficiaries can only plan their futures in
American in two-year chunks.
All of those interviewed believe a long-term, immigration reform solution is necessary, but none
would accept a solution that only provides legalization for undocumented youths, such as the
KIDs Act, proposed by House Republicans to grants legalization to a small subset of the
undocumented population. That proposal would not provide a resolution for nine to ten million
undocumented immigrants who do not qualify for the initiative.
The DACA program could very well be cut by the next president, relegating the nearly half a
million undocumented immigrants back to living in a shadow economy. “I don’t want to lose the
ability to work,” said Blanca. “That would be the scariest thought and one of the most horrific
things that anyone can take away from me.”
Americans Get Fewer Paid Sick Days Than
Two Decades Ago
By Bryce Covert on August 16, 2013 at 8:35 am
Compared to 1993, Americans now get fewer
paid sick days from their employers on average,
dropping from 10 days a year to eight for a
worker who has been with a company for a year.
The decrease becomes bigger the longer an
employee stays on: after five years a worker now
gets eight days compared to 13 previously, nine
after 10 years compared to 15 before, and 10
after 20 years compared to 17 in 1993.
While workers get more vacation time today than in the past, that increase is more than offset by
the decrease in paid sick leave. And the average number of holidays has also gone down from 10
to eight.
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Meanwhile, many workers still don’t have any access to paid sick leave at all: About 40 percent
of private sector workers can’t take a paid day off to care for themselves or a family member
when illness strikes, including 80 percent of low-income workers.
Some state and local communities have recently sought to expand that pool by guaranteeing all
workers access to paid sick leave. New York City recently passed a bill, becoming the largest
city in the country with such a law, joining four other cities — Seattle, Washington; San
Francisco, California; Washington, DC; and Portland, Oregon — and the state of Connecticut. A
push for similar legislation is now being made in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
Yet at the same time, a wave of so-called “preemption bills” that block local communities from
enacting paid sick leave legislation have cropped up across the country, with the latest passed in
Florida.
But while many businesses oppose these bills, arguing that they will drive up costs, research
shows just the opposite. An audit of Washington, DC’s law found no negative impact on
businesses, while a study of San Francisco’s policy found little negative effect and strong
business support, and the law was even found to have spurred job growth. In Connecticut, there
has been little cost and big potential upsides.
Missouri ‘Right-To-Work’ Bill May Be Put In
The Hands Of Voters
By Bryce Covert on August 16, 2013 at 3:01
pm
At a Chicago conference of the American
Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC),
Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder (R) predicted
that Republicans in the state legislature will
refer a so-called right-to-work measure to the
ballot next year, giving voters the chance to
decide whether to make their state the 25th to
enact such a law.
It wouldn’t be the first time that the state’s
lawmakers have pushed anti-labor right-towork legislation, which prohibits unions from requiring workers to join. They introduced the
same legislation earlier this year, emboldened by the passage of such laws in Michigan and
Indiana, after having done the same in 2011.
It’s no coincidence that Kinder made his comments at an ALEC convention. The various rightto-work bills proposed across the country closely mirror draft legislation from the conservative,
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PAGE 25
business-backed group. When it cropped up in Missouri, it was nearly identical to bills in a
handful of other states, including Maine, New Hampshire, and others.
Despite the innocuous sounding name, right-to-work legislation is devastating for a state’s
workers. They cost all workers, union members and otherwise, $1,500 a year in wage losses.
They are also linked to less access to health and retirement benefits. Weakening unions through
such laws hollows out the middle class. And they can decrease worker safety.
Meanwhile, the promised benefits aren’t likely to appear. There is scant evidence backing up the
claim that they boost jobs or economic growth. They can hurt small businesses. Researchers
found these laws haven’t boosted employment growth in the states that have passed them.
www.salon.com
Cash and Congress: The tie that binds
"Yeas and nays of Congress yield not
to the voice of the people but to the
urgent, seductive whisper of the
dollar"
By Michael Winship
“I miss Congress like an abscessed tooth.”
That’s what former Rep. Steven LaTourette toldNational
Journal the other day. He was quoted in an article that asked
the question, “Is Congress Simply No Fun Anymore?”
No, it isn’t.
Not that it was ever a vacation trip to Busch Gardens (on his honeymoon, an ex-in-law of mine
spent a day at that European-themed park in Virginia and came home convinced he’d actually
been to six countries). And certainly no one truly misses the 19th century days when members of
Congress thrashed other members with canes (although I can imagine the reality show any day
now on The Learning Channel).
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But seriously. “Although partisanship is an enduring part of American politics, the type of hyperpartisanship we see now – I can’t find a precedent for it in the past 100 years.” So sayeth Bill
Galston, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and co-founder of No Labels, which has herded 82
Democratic and Republican lawmakers into a “Problem Solvers Coalition.” Boy, is that ever the
triumph of hope over experience.
“If your desire is to get something done, then you’re going to be very frustrated,” Galston
explained to National Journal. Those members “who came to Washington to wage ideological
war on what they see as a bipartisan status quo, if you ask them, they will say that gumming up
the works is not part of the problem, it’s part of the solution. They’re actually happy when
legislation doesn’t pass, unless it’s the kind of legislation that they approve of.”
Like passing umpteen useless resolutions to kill Obamacare while Detroit dies, bridges crumble
and starving kids can’t get food assistance. Uselessness to the point where even former House
Speaker Newt “Let’s Build a Moonbase” Gingrich says most Republican lawmakers have “zero
answer” for what they’d do instead of Obamacare: “If we’re going to take on the fight with
Obamacare, we have to be able to explain to people what we would do to make your life better.”
He was speaking at the Republican National Committee meeting in Boston. “We are caught up
right now in a culture — and you see it every single day,” he said, “where as long as we are
negative and as long as we are vicious and as long as we can tear down our opponent, we don’t
have to learn anything.”
Okay, GOP, what have you done with the real Newt?
But despite what you’ve heard, the spirit of bipartisanship in Washington is not dead. Simply
look past the vitriol, bombast and gridlock, then listen for the ka-ching of the nearest cash
register, made flesh by friendly lobbyists and special interests. Their fat wallets and deep pockets
bring together Democrats and Republicans like no one else in a collegial spirit of kumbaya as
they dive for dollars in exchange for their votes and influence.
Just the other day, The New York Times reported that one of the plushest places at the table in the
capitol is a seat on the House Financial Services Committee, the one that allegedly regulates the
banks and Wall Street. In the first half of this year, political action committees – “set up by
lobbying firms, unions, corporations and other groups trying to push their agenda in Congress” –
have given more money to its members – nearly nine and a half million dollars – than any other
committee.
So many members are clamoring for a seat at the trough that extra chairs had to be installed in
the committee room. Freshmen members from both parties, wide-eyed and ripe for the picking,
are particular targets for the money machine. One lobbyist told Times reporter Eric Lipton, “It is
almost like investing in a first-round draft pick for the N.B.A. or N.F.L. There is potential there.
So we make an investment, and we are hopeful that investment produces a return.”
As Washington journalist Mark Leibovich (an upcoming Moyers & Company guest) writes in his
bestseller, This Town, “Getting rich has become the great bipartisan ideal: ‘No Democrats and
Republicans in Washington anymore,’ goes the maxim, ‘only millionaires.’ The ultimate Green
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PAGE 27
party. You still hear the term ‘public service’ thrown around, but often with irony and full
knowledge that self-service is now the real insider play.”
Having fun yet? Retiring lawmakers may rightfully be fed up with the institution of Congress but
that hasn’t stopped many of them from using their experience there as a stepping stone to the
home version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” Many reporters have cited last year’s article
inThe Atlantic, noting that in 1974, “3 percent of retiring Congressmen became lobbyists. Now
it’s 50 percent of Senators, 42 percent of House members.” An August 11USA Today article by
Fredreka Schouten references a recent analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive
Politics: “30 House members and senators who left office during the last Congress now work for
lobbying firms or for interests that lobby the federal government. They account for nearly twothirds of the former lawmakers from the 112th Congress that the center has identified as having
new jobs.”
Ronald Reagan’s image of Washington as a shining city on a hill, rarely seen these days except at
moments of pomp and pageantry, has succumbed to the reality of down and dirty, lucrative deal
making. The yeas and nays of Congress yield not to the voice of the people but to the urgent,
seductive whisper of the dollar.
www.alternet.org
McDuped: Why Fast Food Chains Are
Inhumane
Human beings in major cities simply can't survive and raise families on $7.25 an hour.
August 14, 2013 | GO BACK
PAGE 28
Around the United States, fast food
workers have been striking and
picketing, demanding a raise from
$7.25 to $15 an hour, and the right to
organise a union.
Many people are asking whether the
companies can afford to do this. But
the more urgent question is, can the
workers afford the status quo?
No.
Human beings in major cities simply
can't survive and raise families on
$7.25 an hour, especially when
employers can - and do - reduce
workers' hours whenever they choose,
to save payroll costs or health insurance. Babies must have formula, children must have shoes,
everyone must pay rent, buy food, and take medicine when they get sick. Many fast food
workers families find that none of that is possible on their current wages.
Inside Story Americas - Fast food: High profits and low wages
By every measure, low wage workers are paid less nowthan they were from the 1950s-1970s. As
economists at Center for Economic and Policy Research have shown, if the minimum wage had,
since 1968, increased to keep pace with to the Consumer Price Index - the best measure of
purchasing power - it would now be be $10.57, $3.50 higher than it is. The minumum wage is
also disgracefully low compared to productivity levels; that means that workers are making
money, they just aren't being allowed to keep much of it.
So the question of whether fast food companies can afford to pay workers more is like asking
whether slaveholders could afford to give up slavery - yes, it's a pain to go from paying workers
less to paying them a living wage. Bosses don't like making that change. Some will go out of
business, just as some plantations did after the Civil War. The same can be said of factories at the
end of last century who were forced to give up child labor and observe safety laws: those were
sometime expensive changes. But for the rest of society, such changes are good.
Some people have argued about where a raise to $15 could come from. Judging
from McDonald's annual report, a raise would minimally affect the company's massive
profits. Some commentators worry about struggling franchises, but the raise could also come out
of the considerable (and fixed) royalty they pay to McDonald's headquarters - not out of
franchise owners' take-home pay.
And some of the raise for the workers could come out of increases in the price of fast food.
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PAGE 29
Much has been made of the downside of raising prices on fast food meals, and it's an obvious
one: many fast food consumers are poor, and would feel even a small increase acutely.
But in the long run, increasing the pay of fast food workers raises the floor of the low-wage
labour market. Other employers might have to pay more in order to compete with fast food
companies and attract better workers, but in any case, the raise for fast food workers should be
accompanied by policy measures to increase pay in all currently low-wage industries. This would
givethe poorest workers in our economy more purchasing power, allowing them to pay more for
a Big Mac - or for anything else.
That's what happens in high-wage countries, where fast food workers earn much more. Rather
than go out of business, McDonald's finds ways to pay the workers. But also, patterns of
consumption change when all workers are prospering. As The Atlantic reports , customers who
make more expect more, so in Australia, where fast food workers do make $15/hour, consumers
got espresso and McCafe way back in 1993.
A large body of economic research - from economists at the Economic Policy Institute, for
example -shows that raising wages for poor workers benefits the whole economy by stimulating
demand for goods and services. And why wouldn't it? When people make more money, they are
able to spend more - and that includes being able to pay a bit more for a Happy Meal.
For too long, we've accepted the idea that low prices are necessary so that poor consumers can
enjoy some basic necessities and indulgences. We accept that low wages for some are simply an
unfortunate but inevitable consequence. In this uninspiring vision - a reality for much of America
- poor workers endure substandard living conditions to subsidize other poor workers'
consumption. But here's a better idea: pay all workers enough to live decently and to buy the
stuff they want and need.
And sometimes, they might even be able to eat a better restaurant than McDonald's. But let's not
get ahead of ourselves.
Liza Featherstone is a public school parent in Brooklyn, New York. She's also a contributing
writer to The Nation, and writes on education for Newsday, the Brooklyn Rail and many other
publications.
5 Ways States Are Screwing the Poor By
Making Welfare Almost Impossible to Get
TANF doesn’t recognize the real world people live in.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
August 14, 2013 | GO BACK
PAGE 30
When President Clinton signed
welfare reform into law 17 years ago
this month, he said, “[W]e are ending
welfare as we know it, but I hope this
day will be remembered not for what
it ended but for what it began.”
One of the most critical “beginnings”
welfare reform ignited was an
increase in power among states in
allocating welfare cash assistance.
Welfare cash assistance -- also known
as Temporary Assistance to Needy
Families (TANF) -- has beenheavily
criticized by progressives in part
because it is structured as a block
grant, allowing states broad freedom
to allocate the federal funds they
receive as they see fit. (By contrast, the welfare cash assistance program that came before TANF
was a federal-state partnership.)
As a result, conservative state leaders have long tried to place stringent guidelines on TANF
recipients or to divert TANF dollars to programs wholly unrelated to poverty alleviation. This
has continued even after the Great Recession, and even while those who qualify for TANF
generally do not have more than a maximum of $2,000 in totalassets. As Elizabeth Lower-Basch,
policy coordinator for CLASP (Center For Law and Social Policy) told AlterNet, “Some states'
TANF policies are driven by this ideology that people are poor because they’re making bad
choices, that they’re bad people, and thus we need to force them to shape up. It doesn’t recognize
the real world people live in.”
This 17th year of TANF has brought in a wave of states bills hoping to establish tougher
guidelines for welfare recipients as well as plans to divert welfare funds to agencies that do not
help struggling families -- as well as a handful of states that are trying to do better.
1. Tennessee: Welfare Checks Contingent on Poor Students’ Grades
In April, Tennessee state Sen. Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) proposed “reducing TANF
payments for parents or caretakers of TANF recipients whose children fail to maintain
satisfactory progress in school.” Currently Sen. Campfield’s bill, HB 261, is still making its
waythrough Tennessee’s legislature, having recently been assigned to the Ways and Means
Subcommittee on July 11. Even though Tennessee's legislative session ended April 19, Sen.
Campfield told AlterNet the Tennessee legislature would have a special committee to review his
proposal this summer.
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The problem with a bill like this is that it is only concerned with academically struggling
children whose parents are poor. As Melissa Harris-Perry noted in April, “How about a $1,500
tax penalty for middle- and upper-income parents who shirk their responsibilities? Little Billy
brings home a C and Daddy the Doctor has to pay more on his tax bill?” Campfield’s legislation
could subject poor parents on welfare -- many of whom are mothers -- to the added scrutiny and
shame already heaped on the poor. Meanwhile, the state’s welfare benefit is $186 per month, and
has remained at this level since 1996.
2. Texas and Kansas: Drug Testing
This year, Kansas and Texas enacted suspicion-based drug testing for welfare recipients.
Texas’ bill, SB11, requires adults applying for financial assistance benefits for themself or their
child to submit to a controlled substance use screening assessment to establish the applicant’s or
the child’s eligibility for the benefits”
Kansas’s bill is similar. These bills persist despite evidence that such testing is ineffective and
stigmatizes the poor. CLASP has found that such policy assumes that applicants for public
benefits are poor because of their bad choices, such as substance abuse. CLASP also notes that
such testing can cost states more money than they would save by denying people benefits.
3. Ohio: Diverting TANF Dollars to Anti-Choice Groups
Nobody likely anticipated that the cash assistance program would ever support anti-abortion
groups, but that is exactly what is happening in Ohio. The Buckeye state, which received $777
million in TANF funding for this fiscal year, is directing some of those funds to crisis pregnancy
centers.
This provision was added to the house version of the state budget and was sustained in the final
version. According to NARAL Pro Choice Ohio and Innovation Ohio, CPCs have a history of
giving women misinformation. “Rather than spending TANF dollars to help families,
Republicans are diverting money to their ideological agenda and misinformation,” said Jenny
Brodie, head of Innovation Ohio’s Women’s Watch program.
While it is unknown exactly how much of Ohio’s $777 million TANF allocation will go to CPCs,
Brodie says that Ohio authorizes the director of the state Department of Job and Family Services
to devote TANF dollars to CPCs. “He could channel a lot into CPCs if he wanted,” Brodie said.
4. North Carolina, Texas: Cuts and Restrictions on Long-term Unemployment Benefits
Assistance programs like TANF work best when the economy is also doing well, according to
the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. However, attacks on welfare are coming alongside
attacks on long term unemployment benefits. Texas, mentioned above as requiring drug testing
for welfare recipients, also enacted drug testing as a condition for unemployment insurance
benefits.
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PAGE 32
And North Carolina cut its long-term unemployment benefits completely. When states like North
Carolina cut their long-term unemployment benefits, it's a double whammy. North Carolina
currently has a 8.8 percent employment rate but recently removed itself from eligibility for $700
million in federal long-term unemployment assistance for its states’ poor.
As Paul Krugman pointed out in the New York Times earlier this summer, “In general, modern
conservatives believe that our national character is being sapped by social programs that, in
thememorable words of Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, “turn the
safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.
More specifically, they believe that unemployment insurance encourages jobless workers to stay
unemployed, rather than taking available jobs.”
5. All states: Spending on Cash Assistance Insufficient
Per the block grant structure, the amount of TANF dollars states receive is fixed and does not
increase even during economic downturns. In addition, many states actually cut TANF benefits
after the Great Recession. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has pointed out, TANF
recipients are provided very modest cash assistance 2011, a family of three received $428 per
month in the median TANF state; in 14 states, such a family received less than $300. Children
are impacted most by the decline in TANF spending as well as other programs, as one study by
the US Department of Agriculture found, “That average total inflation-adjusted household
benefits from all programs examined declined. The decline was largest among children in the
poorest households.”
A Few States That Are Getting it Right: Nebraska, California, Minnesota, Illinois
Having said all of this, there are a handful of states that are making changes to TANF this year
that can aid the poor -- even some traditionally “red” states. For example, in light of current
challenges of finding and keeping jobs, Nebraska passed legislation enabling TANF recipients to
meet their work requirements by pursuing a GED or high school diploma. California and
Minnesota voted to slightly increase welfare recipients’ monthly cash allowance. And the Illinois
state legislature passed a bill that removes the $3,000 asset limit eligibility requirements for
TANF applicants and recipients, broadening the number of poor people who may qualify.
As we head into the 18th year of welfare reform, the power of states in allocating welfare dollars
will remain steadfast. What they choose to do with that power will continue to depend solely
upon the commitments and philosophy of state leadership.
5 Reasons Congress Should Be Deeply
Ashamed About Jobs
Congress has not only made the job search more difficult for average Americans, but has also
impeded the process.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/Luna Vandoorne
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PAGE 33
August 11, 2013 | U.S. Representative Marlin
Stutzman said, "Most people will
agree that if you are an ablebodied adult without any kids you
should find your way off food
stamps."
That depends on whether those
ways can be found. If Stutzman
and other members of Congress
believe it's that easy to find a job
with a living wage, they're either
ignorant of middle-class life or
they are victims of free-market delusion. In either case, Congress, with its shameful response to
the people who elected them, has not only made the job search more difficult for average
Americans, but has also impeded the process.
Senate Republicans killed a proposed $447 billion jobs bill in 2011 that would have added about
2 million jobs to the economy. They filibustered Nancy Pelosi's Prevention of Outsourcing Act,
and temporarily blocked the "Small Business Jobs Act." Most recently, only one member of
Congress bothered to show up for a hearing on unemployment.
Congress' unwavering support of big business donors shows a callous disregard for the needs of
the millions of Americans they're supposed to be representing. Here are five of the paralyzing
consequences.
1. They've stifled the growth of millions of young adults.
In the U.S., more than half of college graduates were jobless or underemployed in 2011. Over the
last 12 years, according to a New York Times report, the United States has gone from having the
highest share of employed 25- to 34-year-olds among large, wealthy economies to having among
the lowest. The Wall Street Journal recently noted that nearly 300,000 people with at least a
bachelor's degree were making the minimum wage in 2012, double the number in 2007. Not
since the 1960s have so many young adults been living with their parents.
2. They've mocked the concept of a "living wage."
At the very least, one would think, workers should be able to sustain their lifestyles over the
years, to keep from falling backward in earnings. But they've lost 30 percent of their purchasing
power since 1968. This happened during a time of steady American productivity. It has
been estimated that a minimum wage tied to productivity should now be $16.54 per hour, but the
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current $7.25 is less than half of that, and below poverty level. It's been getting worse in the last
five years.
While 21 percent of post-recession job losses were considered low-wage positions, 58 percent of
jobs added during the recovery were considered low-wage. Congress fiddles while more and
more American families lose their earning power.
3. They've allowed nearly half of America to go into debt.
Our young adults are not only underemployed, but the college graduates among them are dealing
with an average of $26,600 in debt, which translates, according to Demos, into $100,000 of
lifetime wealth loss. Total student debt has quadrupled in just 10 years.
It goes beyond students to the population at large, many of whom survived the boom years by
borrowing heavily on homes and credit cards. In 1983 the poorest 47 percent of America owned
an average of $15,000 per family, 2.5 percent of the nation's wealth. By 2009 the poorest 47
percent of America, as a group, owned zero percent of the nation's wealth. Their debt exceeds
their assets. Yet Congress caters to too-big-to-fail financial institutions while too-little-to-matter
American homeowners don't earn enough to stay out of debt.
4. They've persisted with the trickle-down "job creator" myth.
The "low tax = job creation" argument is absurd. Congress need only look at four of its pet
projects: Bank of America, Citigroup, Pfizer, and Apple. Each of the first three made much of
their revenue in the U.S. over the last two years, but claimed billions of dollars of U.S. losses
(big foreign gains, though). Yet with almost zeroU.S. taxes among them, all three companies are
among the top 10 job cutters.
Apple is a special case. Rand Paul fumed, "What we need to do is apologize to Apple and
compliment them for the job creation they're doing." But Apple only has 50,000 U.S. employees,
and despite earning about $400,000 per employee, they were the biggest U.S. tax avoider in
2012.
As America waits in vain for corporate job growth, Congress might look in its own backyard for
the very worst job cutter, the federal government itself, which has begun to slice up a longtime
model of public service, the Post Office.
5. They've aligned against the one area that would ensure jobs and a safer future.
A study at the University of Massachusetts concluded that at least 1.7 million jobs could be
generated by a commitment to clean energy, about three times as many as in the fossil fuel
industry. Half of them would be labor-intensive jobs requiring at most a high school education.
And all these new employees would help to reduce their own home heating costs. A
recent report by a Kansas energy group, which analyzed data from 19 wind
projects, concluded that wind energy generation "is equivalent to, or in some cases significantly
cheaper than, new natural gas peaking generation."
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If Congress were really concerned about job creation, and about the cost and environmental
impact of energy choices, and about the implications of falling behind China and Germany in
clean technologies, they would see that a transition to wind and solar power is necessary. But oil,
gas and coal received over twice the level of subsidies provided for renewable fuels from 2002 to
2008. Globally it's six times more, with U.S. post-tax fossil fuel subsidies of $502 billion leading
the world. Even with their subsidy advantage, right-wing groups, funded by Koch Industries, are
seeking to repeal renewable energy initiatives in individual states. Their deceitfully named
"Electricity Freedom Act" will keep the money flowing to dirty energy. But not the jobs.
Shame, Shame
How can we explain the job-defeating behavior of congressional Republicans? I suggested
earlier that they're either ignorant of middle-class life or victims of free-market delusion. Perhaps
it's more insidious. Thom Hartmann reports on a dinner meeting the night of Jan. 20, 2009, when
"Republican conspirators vowed to bring Congress to a standstill, regardless of how badly
congressional inaction would hurt the already hurting American economy and people." In short,
they don't want President Obama to look good. If that's true, it goes beyond shame. It's a
disgrace.
ruthOut
www.truth-out.org
Money and the Corporate Media Are
Gagging Democracy
Friday, 16 August 2013 00:00 By Robert McChesney and John Nichols, Nation Books | Book
Excerpt
(Photo: Nation Books)
"This the truth of [election] 2012: money beat money," John Nichols and Robert McChesney
conclude in their new book "Dollarocracy: How the Money and the Media Election Complex Is
Destroying America."
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PAGE 36
Can a system in which democracy has been placed by a betting parlor of financial backers be
returned to an informed citizenry of voters? It's a particularly daunting challenge considering
that the mainstream corporate media, which the vast majority of
Americans rely on for their political and public policy
"information," benefits quite profitably from "dollarocracy."
Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and
Democracy writes of the book, "The billionaires are buying our
media and our elections. They're spinning our democracy into
a dollarocracy. John Nichols and Bob McChesney expose the
culprits who steered America into the quagmire of big money
and provide us with the tools to free ourselves and our republic
from the corporate kleptocrats." Please help sustain progressive media. Obtain "Dollarocracy:
How the Media and Media Election Complex Is Destroying
America" with a minimum contribution to Truthout. Click here
now.
Excerpt from Introduction: "Privilege Resurgent"
At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than
they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of
progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of selfgovernment as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into
machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the
essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and
citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the
commonwealth. That is nothing new.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 1910
It is, of course, nothing new.
America has from its founding struggled along a narrow arc of history toward an end never quite
reached: that of sincere and meaningful democracy. We have made massive progress, evolving
from a nation of privileged elites that espoused lofty ideals about all men being created equal and
then enslaved men, women, and children into a nation where the descendants of those
slaves have taken their places as governors, senators, and Supreme Court justices. Yet as the
great champion of American advancement, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., reminded us in
a time of historic change, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable.”
What was gained in the Progressive Era when Teddy Roosevelt championed radical reform and
across the years of unsteady but genuine democratic progress that followed was written into the
Constitution and the statutes of the land. Witness amendments eliminating poll taxes and
extending the franchise to women and eighteen- to twenty-year-olds, the Civil Rights and
Voting Rights acts, and, finally, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
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But this progress never quite assured that the great mass of people would gain and hold the right
of self-government as against the special interests. The U.S. Constitution contains no guarantee
of a right to vote, and this lack of definition is constantly exploited by political hucksters who
would make America a democracy for the few, and a plutocracy in essence. The malefactors of
great wealth continue to twist the methods of free government into the machinery for defeating
the popular will. And scarcely one hundred years after Roosevelt identified his central condition
of progress, they have reversed it, with court rulings and practices that are contributing to the
destruction of the American electoral system as a tool for realizing the democratic dreams
that have animated American progress across two centuries. U.S. elections have never been
perfect—far from it—but the United States is now rapidly approaching a point where the
electoral process itself ceases to function as a means for citizens to effectively control leaders
and guide government policies. It pains us, as political writers and citizens who have spent a
combined eighty years working on and/or covering electoral campaigns, to write these
words. But there can no longer be any question that free and fair elections—what we were raised
to believe was an American democratic birthright—are effectively being taken away from the
people.
In this book we examine the forces—billionaires, corporations, the politicians who do their
bidding, and the media conglomerates that facilitate the abuse—that have sapped elections of
their meaning and of their democratic potential. “The Money Power,” as Roosevelt and his
contemporaries termed the collaboration that imposed the will of wealth on our politics, achieves
its ends by flooding the electoral system with an unprecedented tidal wave of unaccountable
money. The money makes a mockery of political equality in the voting booth, and the
determination of media companies to cash in on that mockery—when they should instead be
exposing and opposing it—completes a vicious circle.
This is not an entirely new phenomenon, as we note in the historical chapters of this book. But it
is an accelerating phenomenon. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United allowing
unlimited corporate campaign spending confirmed the court-ordered diminution of democratic
processes that over four decades has renewed the political privileges of the elites. “The day
before Citizens United decided,” Lawrence Lessig wrote, “our democracy was already broken.
Citizens United have shot the body, but the body was already cold.”
Economic elites are now exercising those privileges with an abandon not seen since the era of the
robber barons that Roosevelt decried. To enhance the influence of their money, billionaires,
corporations, and their political pawns began in the run-up to the 2012 election to aggressively
advance policies designed to limit the voting rights of those Americans who are most
disinclined to sanction these elites’ continued dominance of the political process. They are
grasping for total power, and if they did not succeed in choking off the avenues of dissent in
2012, they will surely return—with increased determination and more insidious tactics—in 2014
and 2016 and beyond.
“There’s been almost a shameless quality to it,” says former U.S. senator Russ Feingold of the
pressure on politicians to raise and spend exponentially more money since the Citizens United .
“It has grossly altered our system of government. We don’t have the kind of elections that most
of us grew up seeing.”
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PAGE 38
The moneyed interests are confident, even in the face of temporary setbacks, that they will be
able to continue their initiative because they are well served by the rapid decline of the news
media as a checking and balancing force on our politics. Our dominant media institutions do an
absolutely dreadful job of drawing citizens into public life, especially elections. The owners of
media corporations have made their pact with the new order. For the most part, they do not
challenge it, as the crusading editors and publishers of another age did.
Rather, advertising departments position media outlets to reap windfall profits through the
broadcasting of invariably inane and crudely negative political campaign advertising, which is
the lingua franca of American electioneering in the twenty-first century. The corporate media are
the immediate financial beneficiaries of our increasingly absurd election system—and the
primary barriers to its reform. To talk about the crisis of money in politics without addressing the
mess that the media have made of things is the equivalent of talking about the deliberate fire
without discussing the arsonist.
We term the combine that has emerged the “money-and-media election complex.” It has become
so vast and so powerful that it can best be understood as an entity unto itself. This complex is
built on a set of commercial and institutional relationships involving wealthy donors, giant
corporations, lobbyists, consultants, politicians, spinmeisters, corporate media, coinoperated “think tanks,” inside-the-beltway pundits, and now super-PACs. These relationships are
eviscerating democratic elections and benefit by that evisceration. The complex has tremendous gravitational power, which increases the degree of difficulty for
those wishing to participate in elections outside its paradigm. The complex embraces and
encourages a politics defined by wealthy funders, corporate media, and the preservation of a new
status quo; it is the modernday reflection of the arrangements that served the robber barons of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
WWW.LABORNOTES.ORG
Don’t 'Lean' on Me, Hospital Workers Say
August 15, 2013 / Alexandra Bradbury
Nurses and other hospital staff are already moving at breakneck speed, and then come the
consultants. Some hospitals have decided nurses shouldn't be talking to one another. Photo: Jim
West/jimwestphoto.com.
A sign in the newborn intensive care unit invited nurses to suggest changes that would speed up
their work.
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PAGE 39
One popular suggestion: replace a sticky combination lock with swipe-card entry. But that would
cost too much.
Instead, on a consultant’s recommendation,
supplies were rearranged. Blue masking tape
outlines now show where each item is
supposed to go. A sign lists the “five S’s” of
workplace organization (sorting,
straightening, cleaning (shine), standardizing,
and service). Each shift, one nurse is supposed
to check them off.
“I don’t know how much they paid for this
outfit to come and do this, but it hasn’t really
helped my ‘workflow,’” said Eileen
Prendiville, a nurse at the California Pacific
Medical Center.
Too bad they didn’t spend the money to rehire the full-time medical assistant who used to restock
supplies, Prendiville said. After they laid her off, “you’d have a sick baby and no supplies there.
That would help the workflow much more, to have a real person come in.”
HERE COME THE CONSULTANTS
Prendiville isn’t alone with the consultants. “Factory Efficiency Comes to the Hospital,” glowed
a New York Times headline in 2010. The story showcased how Seattle Children’s Hospital was
using Toyota’s “continuous performance improvement” system.
Another Seattle hospital has actually branded its version of the Toyota method. Its spin-off
institute offers $3,000-a-pop trainings in the “Virginia Mason Production System,” to help
hospital administrators across the country “eliminate waste and increase value.”
Today’s hospitals are as committed to running lean as any factory. Highly paid consultants
scrutinize hospital processes, measuring “metrics” such as staff-hours-per-patient-day.
Who could oppose improving quality or eliminating waste? “But they’re not talking about
efficiency in how we provide care,” said DeAnn McEwen, a nursing practice specialist with the
California Nurses Association. “It’s really about profits.”
In health care, 50 to 60 percent of operating expense is labor. So there is constant pressure to
reduce staff.
“What it boils down to,” said John Borsos, secretary-treasurer of the National Union of
Healthcare Workers, “is coming up with a way of dumping more work on people.”
NO DOWNTIME
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Nurses and other hospital staff are already moving at breakneck speed. Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez,
a nurse at Montefiore Medical Center and president of the New York State Nurses Association,
saw a consultant’s time-and-motion study backfire.
They found “what we’ve been saying all along: we have no downtime,” she said.
In the ER triage area, even the 15 seconds while a chart prints out cannot be wasted. “You start
taking vital signs, putting the armband on,” she said. “You’ll never see a triage nurse sit there.
You never stop.”
But consultants get creative.
For instance, at each change of shift, the departing nurse traditionally gives “report,” explaining
each patient’s situation to the incoming nurse who will take over. Nurses take this very seriously,
McEwen said. After all, they have legal responsibility for the patient’s care.
“Often nurses would spend 15 minutes, to half an hour, to an hour of overtime, going over a
detailed report,” she said. The practice makes patients safer—but to a time-motion consultant, it
looks like “a bunch of nurses sitting around a desk.”
MEDICAL WASTE
If staff aren’t the problem, why are health prices skyrocketing?
•
•
•
•
•
consultants’ fees
insurance industry paperwork and bureaucracy
too many administrators
high salaries for executives and doctors
advertising, branding, and fancy new buildings—to compete with other hospitals for the
most profitable slice of business
•
changing vendors and replacing high-tech systems every few years
•
poverty and inequality worsening our health
•
too much emergency care—because people don’t have access to good primary/preventive
care
•
profits—for hospitals corporations, insurance companies, and Big Pharma.
So some hospitals have switched to group “rounding” report, where the manager, secretary, and
all the nurses troop around to each room together. This allows the manager more control—to
limit discussion, move things along, and avoid overtime.
Other hospitals “decided nurses shouldn’t be talking to each other at all, and implemented taped
report,” McEwen said, where “you leave a phone message for the incoming nurse.”
VIDEO CARE
Technology underpins many management schemes for speeding up work.
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PAGE 41
Her emergency room switched to electronic blood pressure monitors, Sheridan-Gonzalez said,
because they’re quicker than the manual kind. Trouble is, they’re more often wrong.
“Patients say, ‘Oh my God, it’s that high?’” she said. “I say, 'Try not to worry—these digital
machines are not always accurate.'"
Another cost-saver is moving cardiac monitors off-site.
When a nurse on the floor watched heart monitor screens, McEwen said, she could easily
discover a false alarm. And if the patient really took a turn for the worse, that nurse was one
more person to help respond. Now, hospitals are consolidating heart monitors in another ward,
where a lower-paid tech watches them.
In some cases, even doctor consultations are happening over video screens, Borsos said, and
medical transcription work is being moved off-shore.
“Technology can be useful, but it should not be designed in a way that replaces the judgment of
skilled workers,” McEwen said.
She believes a patient interviewed over phone or video is more likely to tell the provider what
she wants to hear—especially if the patient is ashamed he didn’t refill a prescription or couldn’t
afford the recommended diet.
Over video, the nurse can’t see swollen ankles, lay a hand on clammy skin, or smell an infection,
she said. “If I had them in front of me, I could tell.”
EYES ALL AROUND YOU
Many hospitals have stepped up surveillance—with cameras everywhere, swipe-entry doors, and
electronic tracking chips in the badges workers wear.
At one hospital, nurses stopped those chips with a single provocative flyer, comparing their
treatment to zoo animals and convicts. They left the flyer in a nursing office by “accident.”
Management panicked and called off the plan.
Another method of surveillance: the celebrated electronic medical record.
The electronic paperwork to discharge a patient is “eight pages of clicks,” said Betsy Prescott, a
leader in the Massachusetts Nurses Association. “You get spoken to if you miss one thing.”
“Some of these floors can have 15-19 discharges a day,” she said. “You’re not taking care of the
patient, you’re documenting.”
All this documentation helps the hospital track every item it wants to charge the insurance
company for—and pin the blame for any problems on nurses.
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PAGE 42
Employers can track “when you log on, keystrokes, how long you are on a page, which pages
you’re on, which pages you’ve never been to,” McEwen said.
STANDARDIZE
Standardization is a watchword of lean management.
Nurses at St. Charles Medical Center in central Oregon were justly proud of their Rapid
Response Team—it had saved lives. But that didn’t stop the administration from announcing
plans to end the team. The rationale? Other hospitals don’t have one.
Most hospitals now use computers to set staffing. You enter the number of patients on the unit
today, and the software spits out how many nurses and nursing assistants are needed. Employers
claim they factor in the severity of patients’ conditions—but “virtually none of them do,” Borsos
said.
Of course, the employer sets up the software—and decides whether to “staff like you’re the
Waldorf Astoria” or “like you’re a Motel 6,” as Borsos put it. Guess which most hospitals
choose.
Standardization goes beyond staffing formulas, as hospitals try to script the conversations staff
have with patients. The script goes something like, “I’m very glad you’ve come here for care. Do
you have any questions? I have time to answer them. Put a number on your pain,” McEwen said.
“It’s a form of time management that is insulting to professionals, and actually increases the risk
of harm.”
JUST-IN-TIME STAFFING
Like employers in other industries, hospitals are pushing for schedules that maximize
“flexibility”—theirs, not yours.
“They can’t bear for people to have downtime,” Sheridan-Gonzalez said.
Some float staff from one unit to another, especially at night. Others send workers home midshift.
Lean restructures may include staggered schedules where one person starts at 6 a.m., the next at
6:30, and so on. Borsos called it “pseudoscience, to try to fit everything into a nice, neat, easily
measured box.”
The Holy Grail of flexibility, of course, is keeping staff on call, with no set schedule and no
guaranteed hours. A growing share of cafeteria workers at St. Charles in Oregon are “float,”
meaning they could work as a day-shift cook one day and a swing-shift room service attendant
the next—and be paid less than either.
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“Traditionally in hospitals the number of on-call or per diem staff is somewhere between, say, 10
and 15 percent,” Borsos said. “The newest trend is allowing hospitals to take more and more
benefited positions and make them flexible and contingent.”
JOIN THE TEAM?
Part of the lean ethos is getting workers to participate in their own exploitation. Some hospitals
offer nurses a boost of pay and status for championing a lean project.
“Hospitals are very often successful at co-opting natural leaders,” McEwen said.
What can the union do? First is to educate members to see through management’s hype—what
labor educator Charley Richardson called the “tricks and traps” designed to lull you into
believing you and management have the same concerns at heart. These include joint
brainstorming, win-win rhetoric, and trust exercises.
One strategy is to try to get your people onto the lean team—but they probably won’t be picked,
and it’s a “slippery slope,” Sheridan-Gonzalez said. Union members on joint committees should
treat every meeting as if it were a bargaining session, with two opposing sides.
They can say, “We don’t accept your framing. We see this as a potential for harm,” McEwen
recommends.
And the usual union tactics can be used against lean, too: petitions, forms that document unsafe
staffing, button/sticker days, and marches on the boss to resist speed-up.
- See more at: http://www.labornotes.org/2013/06/dont-lean-me-hospital-workerssay#sthash.yqg1U4Cx.dpuf
Paul Krugman
Noble Laureate, Working Family Advocate and
America’s Smartest Economist
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PAGE 44
Moment of Truthiness
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 15, 2013
We all know how democracy is supposed to work. Politicians are supposed to campaign on the
issues, and an informed public is supposed to cast its votes based on those issues, with some
allowance for the politicians’ perceived character and competence
We also all know that the reality falls far short of the ideal. Voters are often misinformed, and
politicians aren’t reliably truthful. Still, we like to imagine that voters generally get it right in the
end, and that politicians are eventually held accountable for what they do.
But is even this modified, more realistic vision of democracy in action still relevant? Or has our
political system been so degraded by misinformation and disinformation that it can no longer
function?
Well, consider the case of the budget deficit — an issue that dominated Washington discussion
for almost three years, although it has recently receded.
You probably won’t be surprised to hear that voters are poorly informed about the deficit. But
you may be surprised by just how misinformed.
In a well-known paper with the discouraging title, “It Feels Like We’re Thinking,” the political
scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels reported on a 1996 survey that asked voters
whether the budget deficit had increased or decreased under President Clinton. In fact, the deficit
was down sharply, but a plurality of voters — and a majority of Republicans — believed that it
had gone up.
I wondered on my blog what a similar survey would show today, with the deficit falling even
faster than it did in the 1990s. Ask and ye shall receive: Hal Varian, the chief economist of
Google, offered to run a Google Consumer Survey — a service the company normally sells to
market researchers — on the question. So we asked whether the deficit has gone up or down
since January 2010. And the results were even worse than in 1996: A majority of those who
replied said the deficit has gone up, with more than 40 percent saying that it has gone up a lot.
Only 12 percent answered correctly that it has gone down a lot.
Am I saying that voters are stupid? Not at all. People have lives, jobs, children to raise. They’re
not going to sit down with Congressional Budget Office reports. Instead, they rely on what they
hear from authority figures. The problem is that much of what they hear is misleading if not
outright false.
The outright falsehoods, you won’t be surprised to learn, tend to be politically motivated. In
those 1996 data, Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to hold false views about
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PAGE 45
the deficit, and the same must surely be true today. After all, Republicans made a lot of political
hay over a supposedly runaway deficit early in the Obama administration, and they have
maintained the same rhetoric even as the deficit has plunged. Thus Eric Cantor, the third-ranking
Republican in the House, declared on Fox News that we have a “growing deficit,” while Senator
Rand Paul told Bloomberg Businessweek that we’re running “a trillion-dollar deficit every year.”
Do people like Mr. Cantor or Mr. Paul know that what they’re saying isn’t true? Do they care?
Probably not. In Stephen Colbert’s famous formulation, claims about runaway deficits may not
be true, but they have truthiness, and that’s all that matters.
Still, aren’t there umpires for this sort of thing — trusted, nonpartisan authorities who can and
will call out purveyors of falsehood? Once upon a time, I think, there were. But these days the
partisan divide runs very deep, and even those who try to play umpire seem afraid to call out
falsehood. Incredibly, the fact-checking site PolitiFact rated Mr. Cantor’s flatly false statement as
“half true.”
Now, Washington still does have some “wise men,” people who are treated with special
deference by the news media. But when it comes to the issue of the deficit, the supposed wise
men turn out to be part of the problem. People like Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the cochairmen of President Obama’s deficit commission, did a lot to feed public anxiety about the
deficit when it was high. Their report was ominously titled “The Moment of Truth.” So have they
changed their tune as the deficit has come down? No — so it’s no surprise that the narrative of
runaway deficits remains even though the budget reality has completely changed.
Put it all together, and it’s a discouraging picture. We have an ill-informed or misinformed
electorate, politicians who gleefully add to the misinformation and watchdogs who are afraid to
bark. And to the extent that there are widely respected, not-too-partisan players, they seem to be
fostering, not fixing, the public’s false impressions.
So what should we be doing? Keep pounding away at the truth, I guess, and hope it breaks
through. But it’s hard not to wonder how this system is supposed to work.
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PAGE 46
STATE NEWS
BROUGHT TO YOU BY OUR ALLIES AT:
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FEATURED CLIPS
What changed? Gov. Rick Scott toasts rowing center he once vetoed
By Katie Sanders and Michael Van Sickler
Tampa Bay Times
Gov. Rick Scott initially said "no."
Fla. protesters upset with verdict leave Capitol
By Gary Fineout
Tampa Tribune
A small but determined group upset by the acquittal of George Zimmerman in Trayvon
Martin's killing ended a 31-day long protest Thursday at the Florida Capitol.
Former state Rep. Mitch Needelman arrested on bribery charges for incentives deal
By Mary Ellen Klas
Miami Herald
Another economic incentive deal has run into legal trouble as former State. Rep. Mitch
Needelman, R-Melbourne, was arrested Thursday on bribery and bid tampering
charges relating to a contract he signed with Blueware.
Florida gets $7.8 million for healthcare navigators
By Patricia Borns
Miami Herald
Related: $67 Million Awarded to Groups Helping With Health Law
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Florida lawmakers’
decision to suspend the state’s power over health insurance rates leaves consumers at
the mercy of the market.
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PAGE 48
BEST OF THE BLOGS
Lake Okeechobee - Scott's Waterloo?
By Sandspur
SWFWMD Matters
Seems our highest-ranking elected official in Florida is about to get a real-world snoot
full of what it really takes to get Florida’s water “right.”
SYG Protests Grow In Florida And Chicago, At ALEC Conference Upon Group's 40th
Anniversary
By Martha Jackovics
Beach Peanuts
The Florida Capitol isn't the only locale currently hosting Stand Your Ground protests.
Florida Will Kill Severely Mentally Ill Man Unless Supreme Court Intervenes
By Anna Arceneauz
Blog Of Rights
Unless the United States Supreme Court intervenes in the next few days, Florida will
execute John Ferguson on August 5, despite a well-documented history of his
psychosis spanning over 40 years.
Danger on solid ground: go to Disney World, but watch where you put your step
By Gimleteye
Eye On Miami
Apocalyptic news from yesterday: a condo near Disney World in Orlando slipped into a
sinkhole, sending residents fleeing in terror.
Even Seniors Are Starting to Dislike Republicans
By Trish Ponder
Pensito Review
Remember when Republicans held their noses and voted for Mitt Romney in 2012?
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PAGE 49
FLORIDA POLITICS
On SYG, Clelland and Zimmermann explain why they broke with Dems
By Michael Van Sickler
Tampa Bay Times
It’s already been decided -- there will be no special session on stand your ground. Still,
votes by lawmakers keep trickling in.
Six months after he left office, Dean Cannon's lobbying firm banks $1.5 million
By Aaron Deslatte
Orlando Sentinel
Six months after he left office as state House speaker, Winter Park Republican Dean
Cannon's lobbying firm has reported being paid more than $1.5 million on behalf of
major Florida power players.
Tale of Two Conferences
By Mike Vasilinda
Capitol News Service
Two national legislative organizations may be on a collision course.
Capitol Hill Rocketing Towards Economic Showdown
CBSMiami
As the annual August recess continues in Washington, the outcry from some of the most
conservative members of the Republican caucus continue to call for either a
government shutdown or a debt limit default to halt the implementation of the Affordable
Care Act.
BALLOT INITIATIVES
Medical marijuana group collects +100k petitions, slows drive until Florida Supreme
Court rules
By Marc A. Caputo
Miami Herald
A medical marijuana group says it has cleared its first major hurdle to get a proposed
constitutional amendment on the 2014 ballot: Collecting enough voter signatures to
trigger Florida Supreme Court review of the initiative's language.
ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY
DEP removes 33 purchase areas from work plan after group objects
By Bruce Ritchie
Florida Current
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection on Thursday revised again its
proposed conservation land-buying work plan in the face of opposition from The Nature
Conservancy and concerns raised by members of a state council.
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PAGE 50
LGBT
EDUCATION
Florida House education leaders listed for 2014 session
By Jeffrey S. Solochek
Tampa Bay Times
Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford has announced committee membership for the
coming legislative session, and the education committees are filled with familiar faces.
State higher education job requires political savvy, soft touch
By Tia Mitchell
Tampa Bay Times
The pay's good, and the title of the job sounds nice enough — chancellor of the state
university system.
FAMU band's first performance will be Sept. 1
By Tia Mitchell
Tampa Bay Times
Florida A&M University's band will perform in Orlando on Sept. 1, making its first
appearance after a 19-month suspension at the same place where it performed last.
JOBS, BUDGET, AND ECONOMY
Work force boards: Less money to do the job
By Jane Meinhardt
Tampa Bay Business Journal
When state and federal investigators stormed Universal Health Group’s downtown St.
Petersburg headquarters on March 28, WorkNet Pinellas was holding a job fair inside,
trying to help some of the 800 employees of the bankrupt company find other work.
Citizens internal watchdog list narrows to four candidates
By Jim Turner
Miami Herald
Background checks will be undertaken throughout the next week on four finalists for the
new internal watchdog job at Citizens Property Insurance Corp.
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PAGE 51
HEALTH AND SENIORS
How the Affordable Care Act is making hospitals better
Editorial
Palm Beach Post
Make sure that patients understand their condition, take their medicine and see their
primary care doctors, so they don’t wind up back in the hospital.
Confused about Affordable Care Act? Library can help
By Diane C. Lade
South Florida Sun Sentinel
Confused about the Affordable Care Act? Worried you won't know which health-care
plan to choose?
Stress of school leads some students to try 'academic doping'
By Colleen Wright
Orlando Sentinel
As classes start across the region and the promise of academic stress builds, more
students are looking for something stronger than caffeine to keep them alert and
focused. They are turning to stimulants intended to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity
disorder, or ADHD.
IMMIGRATION CIVIL RIGHTS SOCIAL ISSUES
Overlooked benefits of fixing our broken immigration system
Editorial
Tampa Tribune
The debate over the immigration bill the Senate passed in June is often framed around
fairness, or the potential impact the newly recognized 11 million immigrants might have
on the job market, wages and the nation’s social services.
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PAGE 52
JUSTICE AND THE COURT
Unions sue to block SunRail contractor
By Aaron Deslatte
Orlando Sentinel
Two unions filed a lawsuit Thursday objecting to the state's attempt to side-step an
agreement from 2009 to use federally certified union workers in construction of the
signal system that will guide trains on the $1.6 billion SunRail commuter line.
Miccosukee tribe sues IRS, rather than settle, over its tax debt
By Jay H. Weaver
Miami Herald
On the hook for $170 million in income taxes and related bills, the Miccosukee Tribe of
Indians is suing rather than settling with the Internal Revenue Service over the tribe’s
failure to report and withhold income from its gambling distributions to members.
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