During that long legislative session, the legislature sent on a number of notable bills to consider. However, none will get the attention of SB202, which will push initiatives put on the ballot by signature back where they should have been in the first place: the general election.
When the idea came up a few weeks ago, CalBuzz did a nice look at the history of initiative timing. Long story short, signature based initiatives were always on either a special election called by the governor or the general election. The constitution did not envision a raft of them on various primary elections.
Of course, what Jerry Brown will do with this measure is never an easy question. You would think that he would support this measure, but there are several measures that looked set for approval that met Brown's veto stamp. But, if it does go through, the two measures that have already qualified will stay on the June ballot. However, I'm sure the measures in question, a term limits reform that switches all terms to 12 years and the tobacco tax for cancer, would rather be on a November ballot.
by California Labor Federation Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski
There’s a threat to America’s economic future that’s so overlooked it’s gone almost unnoticed amid the endless debate over the debt ceiling and federal spending: massive income inequality.
This Labor Day, the gap that separates the very wealthy from the rest of us is as wide as it was in the Great Depression. Since the economic collapse of 2008, workers have suffered through joblessness, home foreclosures, reduced wages and benefits and a sustained assault on our right to collectively bargain. Did you notice that corporate profits are soaring and Wall Street bankers are receiving fatter bonuses than ever? And we wonder why our middle class is disappearing before our eyes.
When FDR gave workers the right to bargain collectively amidst the Great Depression, he did so because he believed strong unions would create a strong middle class. History proved him right. It’s a fact that when union membership increases, so do wages and benefits for ALL workers, not just union members. Unions raise the bar for everyone – which means even non-union employers offer better wages and benefits in order to stay competitive.
In other words, the corporate assault on unions is dragging down the entire economy.
For more than 100 years, unions have been the primary counter-force to corporate greed and excess, pushing for common-sense labor standards like the minimum wage, weekends, health care and retirement security. But without strong unions, corporations have no counterbalance. It’s not a surprise that as union membership has declined, corporations have grown more and more powerful, and workers’ share of the pie has been reduced to crumbs.
Reform would force Secretary of State to hew to state Constitutional requirements
California Constitution, Art. II, Sec 8(c)
(c) The Secretary of State shall then submit the measure at the next general election held at least 131 days after it qualifies or at any special statewide election held prior to that general election. The Governor may call a special statewide election for the measure.
That would be the founding document of our state government, with a requirement that initiatives gathering sufficient signatures to qualify for the ballot be placed on the next general election. However, over the years, as the Legislature has put measure after measure on primary ballots for expediency, or whatever reason, and the various secretaries of state over the past 40 years just put the signature-based initiatives on the primary ballot. Ho-Hum.
Except that really isn't what the Constitution states, and there is a good reason for that. Primary elections have wildly shifting electorates, in good ways and bad. Of course, the June primary this year is just one such example. The Republican base is going to be motivated, or at least somewhat motivated, while Democrats don't have a presidential primary, as of yet, to get excited.
And, as you may know, "paycheck deception" is now headed to the ballot. And given that they have now pulled the measure off the streets, it seems likely that they have the signatures. Paycheck deceptions not only threatens the power of labor, but also of the Democratic party. So, you know, the Legislature is getting some pleas from labor to help pull the initiative system back to 1971:
Democratic legislators are considering an 11th hour bill that would shift all initiative ballot measures to the November ballot -- a move that, if enacted, would help their union allies stave off some measures they oppose.(SacBee)
Thing is, we probably never should have strayed from the Constitution, and now that we've let it go for this long, we look very kind of strange making the big change now. But, the Constitution is the Constitution, and getting the SoS to act like Art. II exists seems like a reasonable goal no matter how the winds of a particular election are blowing at our backs or into our face.
UPDATE: CalBuzz ran a story with a bunch of background on the legal definitions.
When last we met, it was to discuss a Big Idea that the Obama Administration might apply to get some job creation going, despite a difficult Congress; the Big Idea was to look at the "Buy American" provisions that exist in our laws, regulations, and Executive Orders and see if we could practice a bit of "jobs arbitrage" by not just meeting the "Made in USA" requirements when governments across this country make purchases, but exceeding them.
(As it stands today, pretty much any "good or service" with more than 50% Made in USA content qualifies as a Made in USA purchase, even if 49% of the "good or service" comes from somewhere else).
At the time, I told you that if all went well we could look forward to comments from both Labor and the Administration as to the practicality of the Big Idea, and as it turns out I have comments for you that hit close to that mark - and a bit more besides:
On Saturday I just happened to bump into Congressman Adam Smith (WA-09); in the course of that conversation I told him what we're doing here, and he wanted to offer a few thoughts of his own...and when you put all that together, I think we're going to have a lot to talk about.
As safety violations continue, card check still has many opponents
by Brian Leubitz
Despite the deaths and very public injuries of farm workers over the past few years, farm labor is still very difficult to organize. There are many reasons for this, as you can imagine. Great distances, language barriers, and immigration issues are just some of those. In addition, because of these issues, management has great sway over labor. Management essentially has a thumb on the scale of an election process.
Card check wouldn't end these issues, but it could go a long way towards making labor relevant in farm work. Despite Jerry's veto of card check legislation, the issue won't go away quickly. However, the numbers from the recent LA Times/USC poll show that the unions may need to do a bit more work on messaging.
The poll shows that 42% support card check for farm workers, and 45% oppose. Now, those numbers should probably considered somewhat squishy, but not necessarily in the good way. After being read pro and con statements, support for card check fell to 39%.
Farm work is one of the more obvious positive cases for card check. It makes an unmanageable task possible, but hardly easy. Farm workers need the right to organize, and card check just levels the playing field somewhat.
The thing about the initiative process is that there is a lot of smoke without fire. If you were to really monitor each initiative that comes into the hands of the offices of the Secretary of State you would keep yourself in a perpetual state of manic depression. First, initiatives that seem great (like repealing Prop 8) or initiatives that seem awful (like repeating the restrictions on choice that Californians have rejected many times). It is just a bag full of crazy, and most of the crazy has nowhere near the money to get close to the ballot.
He said he filed the three initiatives Tuesday with the state attorney general's office.
The first measure would ban recognition of all public-sector labor unions and prevent government authorities from collectively bargaining with them.
The second would impose a higher tax burden on pensions paid through CalPERS or CalSTRS. Someone who earns an annual pension of $100,000 to $150,000 would pay 15 percent above the regular state income tax on the pension. The rate would jump to 25 percent for any pensions above $150,000. Health benefits would not be considered in the calculation. Ebenstein said the tax would eventually raise $1 billion a year for the state.
The third would raise the retirement age for state employees to 65. Public safety workers would see their retirement age rise to 58.
As we speak, the Legislature is working on its own pension reform measure that might be on the ballot sometime next year, and who knows what other private organizations might decide that the time is ripe for them to get some publicity through this stuff. But Larry Eberstein, the head of the fair and balanced California Center thinks the time is now. So he's groping around for some cash from some of the big funders of initiative campaigns to get some money. (Not, you know, those dirty grassroots people...)
In the end, I would be pretty surprised if this got any momentum. The reaction from Wisconsin from milder "reforms" has been outrage, and in California, a bluer state, the reaction to the end of all teacher, firefighter, police, etc unions, yeah, that will not be taken lightly. Frankly, it's one thing to pay $200 to get some attention for your rather anonymous organization. But he does have former Assemblyman Brooks Firestone on board, and he is the father of Andrew Firestone, one of the first "Bachelors" on the TV reality show. So, that's awesome.
But, hey, why not let Eberstein play in the crazy box. It looks like fun. Perhaps next week I will round up some friends to file an initiave calling for a save the unicorn program.
I posted a diary not long ago about the vandalism at one costa mesa councilman's house, that possibly was done by an associate of the republican councilman to cast blame on unions.
Here's the latest in Costa Mesa, via the LA Times..
Costa Mesa's police chief resigned abruptly Monday, leaving behind a blistering four-page memo that calls the City Council majority "unethical and immoral" and accuses them of manufacturing a fiscal crisis in order to slash the city's workforce by nearly half.
By day's end, Costa Mesa City Manager Tom Hatch announced he had already hired a replacement for Chief Steve Staveley and angrily condemned the departing chief's memo as "unprofessional" and "potentially libelous."
A Costa Mesa councilman said on his Facebook page that he believes union supporters vandalized his home.
But a city spokesman later said Steve Mensinger does not plan to file a police report on the incident, which comes as the councilman and other city officials are making controversial cutbacks and layoffs at City Hall, according to the Daily Pilot.
"On a sad note of story that will not appear in the L.A. Times, our family was visited by a group of union supporters sometime last night," Mensinger wrote in a status update.
In Claremont, a college professor spray-painted anti-semitic slurs on her own car to attract attention. Might we have another example right here?
Jennifer Muir, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Employees Assn., responded to Mensinger's Facebook post by denying that the OCEA had anything to do with the vandalism of Mensinger's property "These accusations are ludicrous," Muir wrote in an e-mail to the Daily Pilot. "We would never do such a thing, and we would never condone it."
Since 2005, more than half the trade unionists murdered in the world have been killed in Colombia. That's more in Colombia alone than in the other 190+ countries combined. Just last year, 51 more trade unionists were murdered bringing the total since 1986 to over 2700. Unfortunately, President Obama is ignoring these facts to push for the long-stalled Colombia Free Trade Agreement, a relic of the Bush Administration, in a move that can only be seen as an affront to his union base.
Not only is Colombia the most dangerous place in the world for union activity, an implied complicity with Colombia's government, in particular the Department of Administrative Security (DAS), has led to an approximate 96% impunity rating. Could you imagine the U.S. response if over the course of 2010, there were one CEO murder per week in Colombia with little investigation and few convictions or punishments? It certainly wouldn't be to liberalize trade rules.
Sadly, the President knows and understands the plight of unionists, peasant leaders, Afro-Colobians, and other organizers in Colombia. He even campaigned against the FTA because of such violence.
Since then, nothing has changed in Colombia, with 47 union assassinations in 2009 in addition to the 51 from 2010, more than even in 2007 when the FTA was initially negotiated (ironically, some view FTAs as incentives for good behavior). The President shouldn’t support a corporate-first FTA with Colombia, while glossing over the violence he lamented during the election.
That's why the AFL-CIO, the California Labor Federation, the California Democratic Party, and most major unions are calling on their members to stand up and fight to stop the President's free trade expansion plans. Along with FTAs with South Korea and Panama, the Colombia FTA constitute the President's extension of the Bush-era trade agenda which is poised to cost more American jobs, and endanger the lives and livelihoods of our brothers and sisters around the world.
California, with its 53 Members of Congress, is key to stopping these FTAs and protecting worker power both in the U.S. and abroad. Unfortunately, they will easily pass if our representatives don't hear from us, which is why the California Fair Trade Coalition is hosting two organizational calls this Tuesday, May 24, and distributing info and lobbying guides to arm activists to stop the corporate takeover of trade.
Joining the call will be Sacramento Central Labor Council Secretary-Treasurer Bill Camp, to discuss his personal experiences with union violence in Colombia. Other speakers include a brief guide to lobbying and organizing on trade issues by the California Fair Trade Coalition.
All three FTAs could be introduced to the House within weeks. If we're going to stop them, now is the time.
Doroteo Jimenez, a Lodi farm worker, remains outraged over the death of his niece Maria Isavel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17-year-old farm laborer.
When Maria Isavel fainted from heat exhaustion on a farm east of Stockton on May 14, 2008, "no one made any effort to help her," least of all her supervisors, who failed to dial 911, Jimenez said this week.
The delay in getting her to a hospital led to her death two days later, he said.
This May 16, the third anniversary of Maria Isavel's tragic passing, the Assembly will vote on SB 104, the Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act. Jimenez will join hundreds of other farm workers at the Capitol, to advocate for the bill, amid a sea of colorful United Farm Worker signs.
Jimenez has picked crops for more than 20 years, but never at a union farm.
Yet he supports SB 104, stating, "I hope the governor signs this new law...so that farm workers will take advantage of it ..."
Previously approved by the Senate, SB 104 would allow farm laborers to select unions through traditional polling place elections in the workplace, or through a new procedure away from the fields. The new process, involving confidential state-issued ballots, would help workers avoid intimidation from anti-union bosses.
The race between Anthony Cannella (R) and Anna Caballero(D) was one of the closer races last year. Ideally, Democrats would have taken that seat, which runs from Salinas near the coast to a big swath of the Central Vally, and been a bit closer to the 2/3 vote in the Senate. However, a bunch of IEs made the difference in that race, ultimately giving Cannella the 3 point victory. The interesting one was from CCPOA, who dumped a big pile of cash against Caballero a few weeks before the election.
From a story back in October of last year:
The CCPOA's independent expenditure for a "media buy" to oppose Caballero was reported today. The race has attracted nearly $1.75 million in independent expenditures, including nearly $1 million from business-backed groups on behalf of Cannella and about $400,000 from organized labor for Caballero.(SacBee)
So, CCPOA ended up putting a few slices in their nose to spite that mischievous face. And you know what happens when you do that? Well, the ungrateful nose always gets its revenge.
The contracts were the subject of a pretty tense debate and seemed all but dead, until a late afternoon switch by Sen. Anthony Cannella (R-Ceres) sent them to the Assembly for consideration.
While the legislation, SB 151, contains the new contracts for six bargaining units and modifications of contracts for others, the marquee deal was a new contract for members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.
Cannella was the final vote, and didn't go easily, that ungrateful bastard. The funny part of these contracts, of course, is that they are virtually the same as contracts passed last year. But you know, that was Schwarzenegger, or something. This is the season for grandstanding, so especially when labor contracts are involved, there must be Republican grandstanding. Heaven forbid Republicans agree with a union!
But CCPOA plays both sides of the aisle, and sometimes you get burned on that. But with CCPOA, and their game playing on sentencing reform (we're for it, we're against it, give us more money!). It is hard to really keep track of what they are doing, and occasionally how you feel about the organization.
Don't cry for CCPOA, I'm sure they'll recover from their hurt feelings over Cannella.
by California Labor Federation Communications Organizer Rebecca Greenberg
Most of us are familiar with the popular bumper sticker, “Labor Unions – The folks who brought you the weekend.” And yes, unions did play a pivotal role in the creation of the five-day work week. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Over the last 170 years, labor unions have done a whole lot more than just establishing the weekend. We’ve effectively served as the first line of defense against the corporations and politicians that seek to exploit working class families. We’ve fought tirelessly for better treatment for workers from all walks of life. And we’ve won some major victories along the way on issues that affect working families every day.
From improved wages to safer working conditions to fairness and equality in the workplace, the policies championed by labor unions benefit all working families, regardless as to whether they themselves belong to a union.
Most of Labor’s major accomplishments have become so engrained in our daily lives that it’s hard to imagine a time without them. In honor of May Day, which is celebrated around the world as International Workers’ Day, here are just a few of the hard-fought victories of the labor movement that we often take for granted:
Child labor laws. Nowadays, the idea of young children working in dangerous and hazardous conditions is uniformly appalling, but as recently as the early 20th century, child labor was all too commonplace. In 1881, the very first American Federation of Labor (AFL) national convention passed a resolution calling on states to ban children under 14 from all gainful employment, which motivated states to take action and pass child labor policies, and that led up to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act – the first federal law in the nation to prohibit child labor.
Occupational health and safety. Prior to 1970, firefighters, mineworkers, those who work around dangerous chemicals and just about everyone else had absolutely no health and safety protections at work. But all that changed when labor unions successfully urged President Nixon — a conservative Republican — to sign the Occupational Health and Safety Act, the first comprehensive federal legislation that regulates safety in the workplace. OSHA has provided the basis for more reforms in occupational health, including mine safety laws and standards for workers who are exposed to toxic chemicals. Unions continue to work daily to enforce OSHA’s regulations, and also to expand and refine safe protections for all workers.
The eight-hour day. During the industrial revolution of the late 1800’s, workers often toiled for 14 or 16 hours at a stretch with no overtime pay. In May of 1886, a labor strike for the eight-hour day led to the now infamous Haymarket Square riot, where striking workers lost their lives standing up for the core labor ideal of “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will.” Workers and unions fought for decades for this basic right, and the eight-hour day finally became reality for all workers in 1938 with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Here in California, we succeeded in securing a strong daily overtime law, and we continue every day to fight to protect this basic right.
Rather than ask you to sign a pledge, I thought I would simply request your assistance in the ILWU struggle for union recognition at Rite Aid. I've written a letter to the corporate headquarters, explaining why I support the union's boycott and urging the company to respect collective bargaining rights.
Please join me and rank and file ILWU members at the harbor in boycotting this store and urging your supporters to do likewise. Together, we can condemn all anti-union rhetoric and lend our support to workers living in fear of employer retribution. As my ILWU brothers and sisters remind us, "An injury to one is an injury to all," so let us be staunch advocates of self-determination at the workplace.
by California Labor Federation Legislative Advocate Caitlin Vega
The Napa I grew up in is probably not the place you'd come to spend a long weekend winetasting. Real Napa, as we call it, is not glamorous or exclusive. In the old days, my dad says, "it used to be a place where poor kids could grow up in the country." Today, even with the fancy restaurants and expensive tourist shops, Napa is still an agricultural town at heart, which means it is a farmworker community.
The wineries that have made Napa famous are also workplaces. The workers in the vineyards work long hours in freezing cold and sweltering heat. Most have no health care and no pension. Wages are low and workers are often paid piece rate.
Farmworkers are routinely exposed to dangerous pesticides. The cancer rate is very high, as are birth defects among the children whose mothers work in the fields. Heat stress has caused not only serious illness, but also deaths.
But it hasn't always been this way. My mother-in-law, Emma, started working as a farmworker at the age of 19. The daughter of a bracero, she joined her father in Napa to work beside him in the fields.
A few years in, everything changed. A young organizer named Cesar Chavez came to town. At first workers were scared but they were soon inspired to make a better life by joining the farmworkers union. As longtime worker advocate Aurelio Hurtado recalls, “He had a simple message: we're people and are not afraid of anything when it comes to our future. We're here to work, not to beg."
When Emma tells me the stories, her face lights up and she says, "me encanta con la union." She loves the union. Throughout her 35 years working in the vineyards, my mother-in-law and her compañeras rode buses up and down the state to wave their union flags in support of labor organizing and union boycotts.
In an earlier post called Wisconsin Comes to Costa Mesa, I wrote that "Costa Mesa is at the bloody tip of the spear in California Republicans' war against public employees."
I meant that metaphorically.
Today it became literal as one of the 213 laid-off employees leaped to his death from the 5th floor roof of Costa Mesa City Hall.
Employees are stunned, yet nobody is surprised.
Costa Mesa's pension crisis was phony. Its budget crisis was vastly overblown.
But Jim Righeimer, a ruthless Republican ideologue trying to position himself for higher office, was trying to show that he was the real OC anti-employee, anti-pension, anti-union crusader. Riggy took advantage of a vacant seat to name one of his cronies, Steve Mensinger, to the City Council, and the two of them have pushed to outsource employees in 18 city departments. Two other weak-minded Republican Council members followed along.
They didn't do any studies about cost effectiveness. They didn't show their work. They just appointed a two-person committee that arbitrarily came up with a list of departments that might benefit from outsourcing, then rammed it through in a single Council meeting.
And because they were required to give six months' notice to any employee they were to lay off, they arbitrarily issued pink slips to 213 employees on Thursday, March 17th.
It wasn't just the fact of the pink slips.
Riggy is an arrogant bully, as is Mensinger. Instead of serving as part-time Council members, they have taken up residence in City Hally, threatening and bullying workers on a daily basis, arrogating power to themselves, and justifying their pompous pronouncements with a relentless series of lies and half-truths.
They're not very different from some of the Assembly members from the OC. Don Wagner and Allan Mansoor are cut from the same cloth. Righeimer was a one-time roommate of Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, as well as his campaign manager. He shares an office suite with lobbyist and former Assembly leader Scott Baugh.
Councilmen Jim Righeimer and Stephen Mensinger were threatened by a city employee at the scene, who ran toward the councilmen before being restrained by three coworkers. Another city employee said "You're not welcome here," referring to the councilmen.
Peter Naghavi, director of public works, was seen crying and consoling other city employees.
Nick Berardino, general manager of the Orange County Employees Association, was seen cursing out city CEO Tom Hatch in the lobby of City Hall.
"You cannot give out notices wholesale like that in this economy," Berardino said. "That's what's going to happen."
An LA Times article continues to try to provide coverage with false balance, quoting Stewart Drown and Joe Nation, two of the apologists for the anti-pension jihad. Curiously, the LA Times continues to restate the discredited claim that Costa Mesa's pension costs will rise from 15 million to 25 million in a few years.
It's not a new model. It's the same model that the Republican party is trying across the country of attempting to destroy organized labor and roll back the safety network.
I recall vividly my first union job. At the age of 16, I joined the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union as a supermarket clerk. I remember the good wages in my first paycheck and the sense of pride I felt when I received my first union card.
Back then, about a quarter of all private sector workers were union members. Collective bargaining allowed us a path to a better life. The standard of living rose, not just for those of us in a union, but even for those who weren’t.
But today, too few workers have the right to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions. Years of assaults by corporations on the freedom to join unions have taken a terrible toll.
As the protests rage on over Gov. Scott Walker’s politically motivated attempt to strip Wisconsin’s public workers of collective bargaining, there’s too little discussion in the media about the decline in bargaining rights for private sector workers. Instead, opportunistic politicians like Walker have used the current economic crisis to help further their agenda to divide the middle class.
As private sector unionization declined from 25 percent to about 7 percent today, a gargantuan share of our nation’s wealth has left the middle class and gone to the very wealthy. Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans receives 25 percent of our nation’s total share of income, up from 8.9 percent in the 1970s. CEOs, who once made 40 times what rank and file workers made, now rake in 350 times that of the average worker.
Meanwhile, wages for most of us have stagnated or declined over the last decade. Big corporations and Wall Street are profiting off an economic meltdown they largely created while middle-class families suffer. Corporations made record profits in 2010, while doing nothing to create jobs or boost workers. Wall Street bonuses and compensation are up too. Last year, Wall Street firms – including those bailed out by taxpayers -- gave out more than $20 billion in executive bonuses.
The attack on unions has a direct correlation to the massive income inequality we face today. Big corporations have turned their back on their workers by reducing wages, cutting benefits and union busting. It used to be that CEOs had a stake in their workers’ economic security. Now it’s all about corporate profit, which the vast majority of workers never benefit from.
What with all the attacks on Labor in states like Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, and Wisconsin, there has been just so much misunderstanding out there these past couple weeks about what things are actually like for State workers.
Are the conditions decent?
Is there excessive pay?
Is there even a need for State workers?
Well, I can't answer every question, but I can sure tell you what it's like in our house...and the reason my words carry the "voice of authority" is because The Girlfriend has been working for the State of Washington for the past 16 years.
Bona fides established, let's get to telling the story:
The wealthy right wing have always liked to pick on the working class. And now Wall Street wants to blame Main Street for the financial crisis our country is in. Big bankers taking home large bonuses are blaming the childcare workers and parking-meter collectors in this country, saying that their jobs are the reason we're in a recession.
If you stop to actually look at the people and jobs Wall Street is attacking, you realize that we need to stop the lies. Public-service workers make little money and do the hard jobs necessary to keep our country running.
In 2009, public service worker Joe Wisniowski made $40,000 as an Airport Equipment Operator for an Ohio airport. Meanwhile Wall Street raked in $20.3 BILLION in bonuses during the same year.
As Robert Bonds, a parking meter collections assistant in Detroit, puts it: "What is this teaching my son? You can work hard, go to college to get your degree, and it's all out of your hands; your success is based on somebody sitting in an office somewhere on Wall Street... that's not what I want him to believe."
Public-service workers are coming under attack like never before. Wall Street has the money, the power and the media mouthpiece to spread lies about those who serve our country in necessary jobs. We can't let Wall Street destroy the backbone of America. Join with us to defend public service workers.
This Labor Day, California is at a crossroads. We can either continue the economic race to the bottom - exacerbated by corporate policies and Gov. Schwarzenegger's slash-and-burn budgets - or we can chart a new course to rebuild California from the bottom up. The heart of California's economy, our workers, are struggling with near record unemployment, stagnating wages and devastating budget cuts that are eroding the California Dream.
This November, Californians have a critical choice to make about which direction our state should take to deal with the enormous challenges we face. This election is simply a battle for the soul of California.
In the race for Governor, the choices couldn't be starker.
Meg Whitman epitomizes the disastrous corporate policies that fueled the collapse of our economy. Her proposals to give the rich tax breaks at the expense of middle class programs and public safety would choke off any hope of economic recovery. Her promise to eliminate 40,000 state jobs would spike unemployment and force businesses to shutter. Her long record of outsourcing and eliminating jobs in the private sector to boost CEO profits shows how dangerously misplaced her priorities are.
Jerry Brown has spent his entire career fighting for working families. As Governor, he created 1.9 million jobs. He proposes to create a half million new clean energy jobs, positioning California to be the national leader in the new green economy. He supports investment in infrastructure and education, the two most critical areas in driving job growth. He respects the contributions workers make to the economy and would prioritize an expansion of the middle class.
California voters face a similar choice in the race for US Senate. Barbara Boxer is a champion for California's workers. She's led the fight to rein in Wall Street, prioritize good jobs and pass national health care reform. Failed CEO Carly Fiorina , on the other hand, thinks our economy should be more like China's. She calls outsourcing of American jobs "right sourcing."
Labor Day marks the beginning of the final push by California's workers to elect Brown, Boxer and other leaders who will create jobs and restore hope of broadly shared economic prosperity. In the coming weeks, more than 25,000 union volunteers will lead the largest grassroots voter mobilization in California history. Workers will be out in force every week between now and the election to combat Whitman's avalanche of campaign spending by doing what we do best - talking one-on-one with friends, neighbors, co-workers and members of our communities about the stakes in this election.
Every generation has a defining moment. This election is ours. And California's workers stand ready to take a leading role in rebuilding our economy and restoring our once vibrant middle class.
Sometimes stories happen because of planning; other times serendipity intervenes, which is how we got to the conversation we'll be having today.
In an exchange of comments on the Blue Hampshire site, I proposed an idea that could be of real value to unions, workers...and surprisingly, employers.
If things worked out correctly, not only would lots of people feel a real desire to have unions represent them, but employers would potentially be coming to unions looking to forge relationships, and, just to make it better, this plan bypasses virtually all of the tools and techniques employers use to shut out union organizers.
Since I just thought this up myself, I'm really not sure exactly how practical the whole thing is, and the last part of the discussion today will be provided by you, as I ask you to sound off on whether this plan could work, and if so, how it could be made better.
It's a new week...so let's all put our heads together and rebuild the labor movement, shall we?
