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House GOP leadership rammed through bill that would have effectively put National Labor Relations Board out of business

Posted by GottaLaff

· Saturday, April 13th, 2013 at 12:09 pm

Yesterday I posted this: “Reince Priebus confirms GOP’s not really serious about reinventing itself; Paul Ryan aids and abets.”

One of our astute readers brought one more thing to my attention, something I missed, one more thing that proves that Republicans are all show and no go. While they’re busy screaming about freedom and democracy, House Republicans made it clear that they don’t want working Americans to have a voice.

Via the AFL-CIO:

House Republican leadership rammed through a bill (H.R. 1120) earlier today that would effectively put the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) out of business.

The NLRB enforces rules established under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which protects the rights of workers to form unions, bargain collectively and have a voice on the job.

All Democrats, along with 10 Republicans—Reps. Rodney Davis (Ill.), Mike Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Chris Gibson (N.Y.), Michael Grimm (N.Y.), David Joyce (Ohio), Peter King (N.Y.), David McKinley (W.Va.), Pat Meehan (Pa.), Tom Reed (N.Y.) and Don Young (Alaska)—voted to stop this blatant attack on workers’ rights. In the end, after much arm-twisting by Republican leadership, the measure squeaked by on a vote of 219-209. [...]

Fortunately, this bill will not be taken up by the Senate, but it is symbolic of the right-wing’s anti-worker agenda.

You can read the AFL-CIO letter opposing H.R. 1120 here.

1 Comment

Categories : Uncategorized

Tags : collective bargaining, future of the republican party, gop fail, GOP hypocrisy, gop outreach, implosion, National Labor Relations Board, organized labor, outreach my ass, reinvention, republican makeover, Republicans can't help themselves, unions, workers rights

Sen. Rand Paul submits national “right to work” (for less) bill

Posted by GottaLaff

· Sunday, February 3rd, 2013 at 3:26 pm

· 2 Comments

Via Paul’s web site, this lovely press release:

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Sen. Rand Paul this week introduced the National Right to Work Act, S. 204, which seeks to preserve and protect the free choice of individual employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, or to refrain from such activities.

“Every American worker deserves the right to freedom of association – and I am concerned that the 26 states that allow forced union membership and dues infringes on these workers’ rights,” Sen. Paul said. “Right to work laws ensure that all Americans are given the choice to refrain from joining or paying dues to a union as a condition for employment. Nearly 80 percent of all Americans support the principles and so I have introduced a national Right to Work Act that will require all states to give their workers the freedom to choose.”

Sen. Paul’s Right to Work Act does not add a single word to existing federal law, it simply deletes forced unionism provisions in federal law.

Due to six infringing and freedom-crushing provisions in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Railway Labor Act (RLA), there are currently 8 million working Americans who are required by law to pay union dues. These workers are not required to join a workers union but they are required to pay the dues; and if workers refuse to pay these union fees, they risk losing their jobs to Big Labor.

As you can see, Rand Paul is all about FREEDOM! What happened to being all about jobs? And fairness? And equality? And freedom to, you know, bargain? And having decent working conditions? And pay?

But see, as he introduces the idea of a new national “right to work” (right to work for less) bill, his emphasis is on FREEDOM! Did I mention FREEDOM?

And don’t get me started on “choice.”

As NH Labor News reminds us:

They already have the freedom to pay the representation fee instead of joining.

This is exactly the opposite to everything we are taught to believe in the democratic process. We can have all the debate we want but in the end, the majority rules. Now they are taking the minority and placing them ahead of the majority.

This is an ideological and blatantly anti-union piece of legislation.

It’s worth repeating that it is already illegal to force someone to join a union.

But if FREEDOM of choice is so important to Rand Paul, why isn’t he a proponent of women’s reproductive rights?

The text of the legislation is at Paul’s site.

2 Comments

Categories : Uncategorized

Tags : bad bill, collective bargaining, freedom my ass, gop fail, press release, Rand Paul, right to work, union busting, unions

“Those injured by ignorance and corporate crimes lie unattended”

Posted by GottaLaff

· Sunday, June 17th, 2012 at 9:50 am

· No Comments

Today’s L.A. Times letter to the editor, because our voices matter:

Re “Corporations win as workers battle,” Column, June 13

Hiltzik is right: In our current form of social interaction, we’ve become like animals biting at our own afflictions.

We’re a nation proud of military prowess, and yet we leave our wounded behind. Those injured by ignorance and corporate crimes lie unattended, even despised, in our cities and elsewhere. We delude ourselves with proclamations of American exceptionalism while letting our national infrastructure and institutions of education and health decay.

We’ve become a nation of “cannot-do” under the banners of anti-government anarchists and industrialists, whereas our history has shown us to be a people capable of building infrastructure worthy of emulation.

Will we still be a United States of America for another 200 years? Not if we destroy unions and the bargaining power of the middle class.

Eugene Strantz

Altadena

No Comments

Categories : Uncategorized

Tags : collective bargaining, corporate power, death of the middle class, L.A. Times, letters to the editor, middle class squeeze, unions

VIDEO- Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: Teachers and firefighters aren’t “big government.” Mitt Romney thinks so.

Posted by GottaLaff

· Sunday, June 10th, 2012 at 1:57 pm

· 1 Comment

June 8:

Willard M. Romney:

President Obama “says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”

June 10:

Scott Walker:

“I know in my state our reform allowed us to protect firefighters, police officers and teachers; that’s not what I think when I think of big government.“

Scotty, Scotty, Scotty, you just contradicted your own presidential candidate. And the reason behind what you now say you did to “protect” firefighters, police officers and teachers was actually to divide and conquer as a strategy against unions.

1 Comment

Categories : Uncategorized

Never-before-seen VIDEO bombshell: WI Gov. Walker tells big donor/Koch strategist he’d use “divide and conquer” as strategy against unions

Posted by GottaLaff

· Friday, May 11th, 2012 at 1:43 pm

· No Comments

jsonline:

Documentary filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein videotaped this conversation in which Gov. Scott Walker says he would use “divide and conquer” as a strategy against unions. Video courtesy of Brad Lichtenstein.

Billionaire Diane Hendricks, who you see in the video, has given $510,000 to Scotty’s campaign, which makes her his single-largest donor and the largest known donor to a candidate in state history.

The video is from January 2011.

JSOnline fills us where the video left off:

“So for us,” the governor continues, “the base we get for that is the fact that we’ve got – budgetarily we can’t afford not to. If we have collective bargaining agreements in place, there’s no way not only the state but local governments can balance things out. . . . That opens the door once we do that. That’s your bigger problem right there.”

He goes on to talk about curbing liability lawsuits and government regulations. [...]

“This is another colossal bait and switch that goes directly to his honesty,” [Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Walker's challenger in the June 5 recall election] said. “What he claims he is not in favor of publicly, to the person who has made the largest contribution in state history, he says exactly the opposite. You can’t trust him.”

Barrett has been hammering Walker on right-to-work legislation for weeks, frequently using the phrase “divide and conquer.” Barrett said he used that term because he believed that was Walker’s strategy, but did not know until Thursday that Walker himself had used it.

As Russ Feingold says in an email I just received:

This is the work of a dishonest governor and a national corporate agenda….

We all know Scott Walker didn’t tell the truth to the people of Wisconsin about his private plans for an ideological civil war.

But now there is never-before-seen footage of Walker talking to a Koch Brothers strategist that proves it.

Please contribute here and here to help beat Scott Walker.

No Comments

Categories : Uncategorized

Tags : 2012 elections, bait and switch, billionaires, busted, collective bargaining, divide and conquer, Koch brothers, lies, political donations, recall, republican lies, Scott Walker, Tom Barrett, unions, video, wisconsin

Gov. Scott Walker financial disclosure: $55,000 to defense attorneys

Posted by GottaLaff

· Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 at 3:13 pm

· No Comments

About 2,000 protesters, most of them upset at Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to curtail public employee unions’ collective bargaining rights, gathered outside of the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel and Conference Center in Springfield on Tuesday, April 17, 2012, as Walker was speaking to business-related groups inside.

Isn’t there a way to recall this guy based solely on his sleaze factor? Via WisPolitics.com:

Gov. Scott Walker owed at least $55,000 at the end of 2011 to the law firms of the two defense attorneys he hired to represent him in the ongoing John Doe investigation, according to his financial disclosure statement. [...]

Walker announced in February that he had hired the pair to assist him with the John Doe probe being conducted by the Milwaukee County DA’s office. But the ethics statement shows the pair had gone to work for Walker at least two months earlier. [...]

Walker also listed debts of at least $50,000 to Bank of America and Green Tree, and between $5,000 and $50,000 to Think Bank, Sears Master Card and Frontier Master Card…. He also listed the bet he collected from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for a Packers-Saints game…

There are more details about his disclosures at the link.

No Comments

Categories : Uncategorized

Tags : attorneys, collective bargaining, disclosure, ethics? what ethics?, protest, scandal, Scott Walker, unions, video, wisconsin

PhotOH! Scott Walker duzn’t spel tu gud. Oh, and he’s also a hypocrite.

Posted by GottaLaff

· Monday, March 5th, 2012 at 11:36 am

· 1 Comment

source: Nick Nice

Via PR Watch:

The error was discovered by Madison disc jockey Nick Nice, who wrote in a Facebook message: “Actual screen shot from Walker’s latest email.

Follow the link for another stupid error by Team Walker.

Irony is not dead: Scott Walker’s budget slashed nearly $1.6 billion from public education.

And then there’s this little nugget of a video via JSOnline in which Scottie sits at a table with Oshkosh Northwestern’s Editorial Board back in October 2010, looks at the camera one week before the election, and says he would negotiate pay and pension changes with public employees using collective bargaining:

Editorial Board Member: Before, we were talking about state employees contributing to their plan, paying their share of the pension plan. Collective bargaining come into that?

Walker: Yep (nodding yes).

Editorial Board Member: How do you get that negotiated and accepted by the state employee unions?

Walker: You still have to negotiate it. I did that at the county as well.

Scott Walker: Hypocridiot O’ The Day.

All of our Scott Walker posts, including those about his recall, here.

H/t: Kelly Steele

1 Comment

Categories : Uncategorized

Tags : collective bargaining, email, gop fail, GOP governors, GOPutzes, hypocridiot, lies, misspellings, photo, Scott Walker, union busting, unions, video, wisconsin

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