Capitol Hill measure could help unions

Bill Knight column for 9-16, 17 or 18, 2019

With Mitch McConnell’s ongoing Senate blockade of legislation, one may think, “Why bother to try to improve labor law?”

Two answers: Americans WANT unions, and reform is desperately NEEDED.

The public’s approval of unions is at a 50-year high, according to an August Gallup poll, which showed 64 percent of Americans back unions (including 45 percent of Republicans).

“Union membership is on the rise among young people,” said Hannah Finne of Generation Progress, part of the Center for American Progress, and in 2017, there were 262,000 NEW union members in the country, adds the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

“Seventy-five percent of this increase came from young people,” Finne added. “Young people also hold the most favorable attitudes towards labor of any generation, and their support for political parties skews heavily towards those that support pro-worker policies.”

Last year’s wave of teacher strikes and this year’s work stoppage by 30,000 workers at the Stop & Shop grocery chain in the Northeast point to chronic issues: flat wages and resources, threatened pensions, and employer proposals to eliminate overtime and other benefits.

“While organized labor has seen strikes and work stoppages increase, unions have also endured over two years of pro-employer policies from the Trump administration,” said Michael Arria, author of “Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC.”

The most recent was the National Labor Relations Board’s July decision essentially eliminating protections for workers – union or not – engaged in concerted activities. Stemming from action by the OUR Walmart group’s short-term strikes, the NLRB ruled that workers weren’t protected because their work stoppages were “intermittent.”

However, the lack of labor-law enforcement or even government support goes back years.

“In March, the Labor Department rolled back an Obama-era overtime policy which would have raised wages for more than 8 million workers,” Arria continued. “In addition, organized labor also had to endure eight years of being frequently snubbed by moderate Democrats and the Obama administration. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was a landmark piece of legislation developed a decade ago that also aimed to make organizing workplaces easier. The EFCA was pushed vociferously by labor leaders and progressives, but moderate Democrats ended up killing the bill’s most important provision, and Obama ultimately abandoned the bill over fears that it was too politically risky.”

In response, organized labor worked with lawmakers to draft the Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2019 (or PRO Act, S.1306 in the Senate and H.R.2474 in the House). Introduced by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the bill states that it “restores fairness to the economy by strengthening the federal law that protect workers’ right to organize a union and bargaining for higher wages and better benefits.”

The measure would:

* include penalties for employers that illegally fire employees or speed up union-recognition elections,

* strengthen financial penalties for employers that violate workers’ rights, including letting workers sue their bosses if their right to organize is violated,

* offer new safeguards for workers that go on strike such as prohibiting employers from permanently replacing striking workers with scabs,

* restore aspects of traditional labor law to the time before the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, such as repealing the ban on boycotting “secondary” companies,

* provide card-check union recognition in certain situations,

* add support for workers retaliated against for exercising their rights,

* prohibit employers from forcing workers to attend anti-union meetings,

* guarantee unions’ ability to collect non-political “fair-share” fees from workers who decline to become members in order to cover costs of required representation,

* facilitate initial contracts, and

* close loopholes such as employers misclassifying workers as managers or independent contractors.

“The PRO Act is an important effort to bring U.S. labor law into the 21st century – giving working people more power at a time when it is desperately needed,” said EPI’s Director of Government Affairs Celine McNicholas. “Congress should pass the PRO Act immediately and give working people what they need most: fairness and a voice on the job.”

Already with 190 co-sponsors in the House and 40 in the Senate, plus support from Democratic presidential candidates Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the Pro Act has been referred to the House Committee on Education and Labor and the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

 “It’s time for our laws to catch up,” commented AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka.

Illinois lawmakers aren’t really spendthrifts

Bill Knight column for 9-12, 13 or 14, 2019

It’s easy to find fault with government, whether it’s warmongers in Washington or a township that didn’t plow your road fast enough. But the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) – a group with anti-government, libertarian leanings – would seemingly criticize Illinois if the state balanced its budget, improved roads, cared for the needy and sought to make income taxes fairer.

Which it seems to be doing.

Government is a convenient target – unless you value schools, bridges, help for the jobless or sick or elderly, etc. Then, it’s far more efficient than relying on individuals without the resources to construct airports, pay teachers, feed the hungry and so on.

The IPI’s Adam Schuster last week blasted Illinois again, focusing on one statistic in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) released Aug. 29, a document that also shows considerable progress in a financially challenged state: Illinois’ “net worth.” The bookkeeping number dropped by 35 percent in a year, Schuster wrote, an accurate but misleading note skewed by an accounting change that now includes state employee health-care liabilities. He also adds that lawmakers should enact “necessary spending reforms,” and he undoubtedly means cuts. It’s an apparent effort to gear up to defeat the Fair Tax question on the November 2020 ballot, a change from a flat tax to a graduated income tax, where rates increase as taxable income rises.

Cutting taxes and also slashing spending isn’t logical, of course. That’d be like reducing household spending AND dropping your income.

Most state spending in Illinois is made up of health and social services ($28 billion) and education ($20 billion), together totaling about 70 percent of expenditures, according to the 397-page CAFR.

The lengthy report shows that state finances are actually improving. For example, its $7.7 billion deficit is almost half what it was last year.

A second report, the much shorter (83-page) “2018 Illinois National Rankings” released by the legislature’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, also offers positive perspectives.

In the last decade, Illinois’ net discretionary spending is down 20 percent, health care is down 23 percent, public safety and human services are down 26 percent, and higher education funding is down 52 percent, according to Chicago’s Center for Tax and Budget Accountability.

Compared to other states, Illinois ranks 34th in the country in public-welfare spending, 15th in spending on elementary and secondary education and 13th in spending on highways, adjusted for population size, according to this report. Illinois ranks higher in police (6^th) and on prisons and jails (12th), but as ex-Gov. Bruce Rauner found out as he tried to cut spending, it had already been done.

Lawmakers may spend billions, but they’re hardly spendthrifts.

Fiscal challenges remain, of course, from $133 billion in unfunded pension obligations (full disclosure: I earned a pension after working 21 years at a state university); general-revenue deficit spending over 20 years of Republican and Democratic administrations; a credit rating that’s the nation’s worst (although Moody’s Investors Service this summer raised it from “negative” to “stable”); and a “net position” (comparing all assets and liabilities) $136 billion in the red – but even that is a $48 billion improvement.

In other anti-government activities, the IPI’s lawsuit challenging the state issuing general obligation bonds was tossed out last month by Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge Jack D. Davis II. State Treasurer Michael Frerichs also dismissed it as “another political stunt by the extremists at the Illinois Policy Institute,” and Moody’s said the decision was positive news for Illinois.

Other good news would be critical reports that are not just accurate, but complete and fair.

Like a graduated tax would be.

New Mainstream vs. old Middle (of nowhere)

Bill Knight column for 9-9, 10 or 11, 2019

At a Springfield appearance last month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have hoped to inspire unity when she remarked, “A moderate agenda can also be a progressive agenda,” but the comment was not just nearly nonsensical comment (“rough can be smooth?” one wonders), but surely caused FDR to cry from the grave.

If mainstream means what most people want, it’s not common sense to dismiss those campaigning on popular issues: progressives.

When 10 remaining candidates for Democrats’ presidential nominee speak in Houston on Thursday, Biden, Booker, Buttigieg, Castro, Harris, Klobuchar, O’Rourke, Sanders, Warren and Yang are expected, appropriately, to address ideas and issues more than personalities and purse strings.

No longer “insurgents,” criticized by those Democrats more concerned with campaign treasuries and the next election than reform or the future of the nation, many are actually mainstream.

A Gallup poll last month showed Americans’ approval of unions is at 64 percent, one of the highest rankings in 50 years – and that even includes 45 percent of Republicans.

People want action on prescription-drug prices, the climate emergency, guns, and much more.

A University of North Carolina study found support for progressive ideas is at its highest point in 60 years.

“Initiatives such as imposing heavier taxes on the nation’s wealthiest citizens and corporations, establishing a universal health care system, and forging ahead with the proposed Green New Deal actually have bipartisan support,” said Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Polls also say 75 percent of Americans say immigration is a “good thing for the U.S.,” 58 percent support increasing the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, and 60 percent support free college tuition “for those who meet income levels.”

            Such bold ideas spark enthusiasm because they’d benefit most people, and after Clinton’s 2016 loss to Trump, the base is wary of safe, cautious and middle-of-the-road approaches.

Few Americans are consistently in the middle on issues, according to research from the Voter Study Group. Maybe more telling, a Quinnipiac poll last month found that former Vice President Joe Biden is winning just 19 percent of Democrats who said they’re “very liberal” and 28 percent who say they’re “somewhat liberal.” Among those who consider themselves moderate or conservative, Biden’s favored by 43 percent.

“The Old Guard still insists that everything revolves around ‘the center,’ but the data keep saying otherwise,” says New York magazine writer Eric Levitz.

A “Young Guard” has arisen, says author Sophia McClennan, a Penn State professor. She writes that young voters prioritize policies over “electability,” Millennials and Gen-Z adults make up 37 percent of the electorate, and in the 2018 election, they set turnout records, outvoting seniors.

Political economist David Broockman of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business says, “When we say moderate what we really mean is what corporations want.” And Ernest Canning – a retired attorney, author, Vietnam veteran and adviser to Veterans for Bernie – writes that we should “stop referring to corporate-money-compromised Democrats as ‘centrists’ or ‘moderates.’ It’s more about their relationship with corporate interests.”

But they are powerful. In fact, establishment Democrats now have a “dark money” group (House Majority Forward), which is funneling secret donations to select centrists. It can keep finances hidden from the public, the IRS says, but it also prohibits such 501(c)(4) groups – supposedly formed to promote “social welfare” – from having politics as their main purpose.

“A general rule of thumb is that 501(c)(4) nonprofits are not allowed to devote more than half of their activities to political purposes, [and] ad buys account for more than 94 percent of the fledgling dark-money group’s planned spending, according to documents uncovered by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Sadly, too many politicians feel a need for big money, but the alternative (shown by Sanders) is to appeal to many small contributors from a broad base of supporters.

“Sanders and Warren,” writes British author, political journalist and broadcaster Mehdi Hasan, “are much closer in their views to the vast majority of ordinary Americans than the [Michael] Bloombergs or the Bidens. They represent the actual political middle.”

Indeed, electoral success – and the improvements it promises – is no longer about leaning left or right but about going to the grassroots reality of regular people.

The Democratic Party may be returning to the heritage of FDR.

Or coming to its senses.