Public sector unions are playing defense. They need a plan to convince employees to join (or stay in) the union. But they're operating in a difficult terrain, after years of cuts and concessions.
Amid all that’s clearly wrong with Indiana’s current direction under right wing Republican rule, Quigley ( If We Can Win Here: The New Front Lines of the Labor Movement, Cornell University Press, 2015) finds cause for optimism. “Despite a state political climate that proved inhospitable to labor in the right-to-work debate, private sector workers are launching union organizing campaigns across the state’s capital,” and in smaller towns as well.
0 yes votes, 72 no votes and 37 voting present, offering a blistering rebuke to Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner's anti-union agenda.
"Right to Work" laws are all about removing unions as a political check on the power of corporations. But that will have real costs for working families in Illinois. And the costs will be highest for blacks and Latinos.
Hoosiers must also understand that this latest transgression of workers' rights - the Restoration of Freedom of Religion Act - is just the latest round in a sustained Indiana effort to undermine the entire working class. It shifts further wealth and power from the vast majority to the minority, while deepening the human misery that more and more Hoosiers experience; whether they are straight, gay, white, Black, Asian, Latino, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or atheist.
Wisconsin has joined a host of other states whose right-to-work laws emulate "model legislation" produced by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) describes ALEC as a "bill mill" supported by several conservative foundations and dozens of high-profile corporations, like Koch Industries and ExxonMobil. So-called 'Right-to-Work" favors corporations at workers' expense.
Here's one approach that would put labor on the offensive: an initiative for a new law providing all workers with due process rights to challenge unjust discipline and discharge, "Just Cause for All."
UPDATE, March 6: The "right to work" bill passed Wisconsin's Assembly at 9 a.m. in a party-line vote, 62-35. It's headed for Governor Scott Walker's promised signature March 9.
The vote followed 20 hours of testimony, begun at 1 p.m. yesterday. But just minutes in, after a "People's Mic" action by labor supporters, officials had police clear the Assembly gallery. The hearing continued without public observers, just media. -Editor.
It’s been a harsh several weeks in Madison, Wisconsin for demonstrators against the governor and legislature, worse for the Progressive Era reforms being swiftly eliminated, one after the other. For those who aren’t following life in the Flyover regions, Right To Work passed the state Senate and is moving on to the Assembly, this coming week. With Republicans in charge, passage is all but certain.
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