Illinois has led in banning employer ‘no-poaching’ pacts

Bill Knight column for Thurs., Fri. or Sat., Aug. 16, 17 or 18, 2018

Employer deals for years have kept workers from leaving one company to work for another in hopes of achieving better pay and advancement. But states are starting to crack down on the practice – Illinois has been a leader in the effort – and now Congress is paying attention.

Last month, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced that he’d secured agreements with seven fast-food chains, including McDonald’s and Arby’s, not to use “no-poach” agreements. Elsewhere, 10 states and the District of Columbia are stepping up their investigations into such agreements, as attorneys general from those areas said they’d sent letters to Burger King, Domino’s and other fast-food companies, seeking information about whether those companies use “no-poaching” pacts.

In such arrangements, franchisees promise to not hire applicants who are current or recent employees of the company or any of its franchisees, without the approval of previous employers.

About 80 percent of fast-food businesses have such covenants, as do many temp agencies and other businesses, according to a 2017 study by Princeton economists Alan Krueger and Orley Ashenfelter.

In Illinois, the legislature over the last several years has addressed similar abuses.

The consequences for everyday workers are serious, wrote Terri Gerstein and Sharon Block of Harvard’s Labor and Worklife Program.

“If workers can’t leave their jobs to get a better position that they’re qualified for, their bargaining power is diminished,” they said in the New York Times. “This situation, along with the decline of unions and other trends, helps explain why wages have not kept up with the greatly increased productivity of the last few decades.”

Further, such agreements may already break laws.

“These agreements may well be illegal under antitrust laws, which protect not only a competitive market in products but also a competitive labor market,” Gerstein and Block said.

In Illinois, the “Broadcast Industry Free Market Act” was introduced Feb. 21, 2001, sponsored by Chicago Republican Sen. Walter Dudycz. It passed the Senate that March by a 46-8 vote and passed the House that April 110-3, but then-Gov. George Ryan vetoed the measure that July.

However, the Senate overrode the veto 48-10 that November, followed by the House 94-22 override two weeks later. It was approved that December and became law Feb. 1, 2002.

That law provides that “no television, radio, or cable station may require any employee or prospective employee, other than one in sales or management, to agree as a condition of an employment contract to refrain from obtaining employment in a specific geographic area for a specific period of time after termination of employment with the hiring broadcasting industry employer.”

Likewise, the “Illinois Freedom to Work Act,” whose chief sponsor was Sen. Patricia Van Pelt (D-Chicago), went into effect Jan. 1, 2017, prohibiting non-compete covenants for low-wage workers.

It passed both houses of the General Assembly unanimously in May 2016, and Gov. Bruce Rauner signed it Aug. 19, 2016.

That law “provides that no employer shall enter into a covenant not to compete with any low-wage employee of the employer …”

As to the “Broadcast Industry Free Market Act,” Peoria disc jockey Gary Olson testified after having tried to fight a restriction barring him from performing at a competing station any “services which are the same or of similar kind or are of similar or greater responsibility as those he performed,” according to the 1998 lawsuit involving Midwest Television, then-owner of KZ-93, WMBD-AM, and WMBD-TV.

“He wanted to leave an oldies format station and become the main disc jockey for a soft jazz station,” wrote Marlo Brawer in the Oklahoma City University Law Review. “Even though the [radio] formats would attract different listeners, the court in Illinois didn’t see the restriction as too broad, [so] the court issued an injunction to keep him off-air, which Olson believes ruined his career.”

“A year is a long time,” Olson said in 2001. “When I finally got on the air, some people said they remembered me but they didn’t come flocking to listen to me. They didn’t know me anymore.”

Contacted this summer, Olson remembered when he testified in Springfield.

“The Illinois Broadcasters Association [employer group] did not want to talk about the non-competes with Dudycz,” Olson said. “It kind of [ticked] him off and he just said he would write a new law or get the old one thrown out, and that is when they asked me to testify.”

Meanwhile, progressives in Congress have introduced bills to clarify such agreements are illegal.

Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, plus Congressman Keith Ellison (DFL-Minn.) introduced legislation this year to prohibit “no-poaching” agreements, give the Federal Trade Commission enforcement powers, and make it easier for workers to sue.

Extremists mount new attack on health care

Bill Knight column for Mon., Tues. or Wed., August 13, 14 or 15, 2018

At a time when U.S. health care faces a “reckoning,” according to an insurance executive, conservative extremists are threatening to make things worse in another attempt to roll back the Affordable Care Act.

Chester Burwell, president and CEO of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, shared his concerns at the 2018 conference of the National Hispanic Medical Association, and said physicians and patients alike face an obesity epidemic, disappointing new models on payment procedures, and three bad consequences of government policies:

* The “congealing” of the U.S. health-care system. “You’ll see large integrated delivery systems built around academic medical centers – good quality care [but] 50 to 100 percent more expensive than the community average.” 

* The erosion of the private health-care market. “Just recently, we have gotten rid of the individual mandate, and the [cost-sharing reduction] subsidies that were in the omnibus bill ... were taken out of the bill,” he said. States are now trying to develop alternatives like short-term insurance policies, but they don’t have to provide Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage requirements, Burrell said.

* Results from the tax reform passed 51-48 in the Senate in December. “If the full effect of this tax cut is experienced, then the federal debt will go above 100 percent of GDP [Gross Domestic Product] and will become the highest it’s been since World War II,” said Burrell. “We’ve got a huge problem if [the economy] ever goes back into recession,” he said. “This will stimulate higher interest rates, and higher interest rates will crowd out funding in the federal government for initiatives that are needed,” including health care.

Burrell noted that 74 million people are covered by Medicaid, 60 million by Medicare, and 10 million by the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and another 10 million people are getting federally subsidized health insurance through the ACA’s insurance exchanges. “What happens when interest’s demand on federal revenue starts to crowd out future investment in these government programs that provide health care for tens of millions of Americans?”

Despite such concerns, a seven-page report titled “The Health Care Choices Proposal,” released June 20 by the Health Policy Consensus Group, including the Hoover Institution, Heritage Foundation and other right-wing think tanks, proposes changes that would dump many of the ACA’s insurance protections and shift hundreds of billions of dollars provided by the ACA to states in the form of block grants, an idea that Congress defeated last year.

Under the conservative proposal, states could come up with their own systems, as Burrell said, with different standards and requirements from state to state. However, the report omits how the proposal would function.

Like last year’s doomed effort to repeal the ACA outright, the new proposal may face considerable opposition from citizens and Congress alike. But its existence shows how some Republicans still want to scrap the ACA, and even if it fails in the short term, the proposal could be a blueprint for GOP lawmakers next year if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate after November’s elections.

The AFL-CIO issued a statement that said, “Last year, Democratic legislators and a few principled Republican lawmakers beat back repeated efforts to repeal health-care reform, which would have thrown more than 20 million people off health insurance.

“The new proposal would gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions; impose an age-tax on older adults by allowing insurance companies to charge them much higher premiums and eliminate guarantees that health insurance must cover maternity care, prescription drugs or other essential health benefits,” the federation added. “More than 27 million working people gained health coverage through the insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion because of the Affordable Care Act.”

Meanwhile, Burrell alluded to the possibility that progressives have pushed for years: Medicare For All.

“Does that [all] mean we move to single-payer, some major repositioning?” he said. “I don't know, but in 35 years in this field, I've never experienced a time quite like this.”

Jazz fest benefits from impresario/organizer

Bill Knight column for Thurs., Fri. or Sat., Aug. 9, 10 or 11, 2018

Nate Lawrence blends the best of a dreamy philosopher and a pragmatic organizer. An impresario who presents often-ethereal music that seems to reach for infinity, he’s also a practical producer who makes tangible inroads toward the culture’s roots.

His upcoming effort, the free 2018 Bill Bell Jazz & Heritage Festival, is August 17-18-19 mostly at Rock Island’s Martin Luther King Park blocks from the Mississippi River. It will feature jazz acts plus poets, dancers, inspirational speakers, Christian rappers, and even Miss Iowa, Mikhayla Hughes-Shaw. Renamed to honor the late Bill Bell, the East Moline jazz keyboardist and educator who toured with Carmen MacRae and Duke Ellington, the festival attracts an audience that’s about two-thirds area residents and the rest transplanted natives and Midwest jazz fans.

It grew out of Lawrence’s monthly Third Sunday Jazz Series at the not-for-profit River Music Experience in Davenport, which in its 13-year history has missed just two shows, once for a surgery Lawrence needed, and once when a headliner needed an operation.

“We had been looking at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, held annually since 1970, as a model which would allow us to create a sustainable event that celebrated the historically industrial and agrarian nature of the Quad Cities,” Lawrence says. “Just as important, we want to celebrate the legacy of our grandparents who worked in those plants or fields and took pride in their contribution to the success, health and history of our portion of the Mississippi River.”

Lawrence’s appreciation of, and devotion to, jazz stems from family.

“My uncle was a jazz historian and business partner to Ed Thigpen of the Oscar Peterson Trio, which allowed me to hang out with many legendary musicians and appreciate their passion, craftsmanship and cultural responsibility,” says Lawrence, director of Polyrhythms, the Third Sunday promotion outfit that reminds people that it’s “a grass roots, non-profit group of community and cultural-arts advocates dedicated to making our community better.” Its mission statement is “to provide exposure to the arts, and the opportunity to build on the imagination, inner-strength and cultural residues, history and resources of the community by fostering understanding and pride through observing, learning and performing music, dance, creative writing, storytelling and visual arts.”

Supported by contributors including the Regional Development Authority, Quad City Arts, Wells Fargo, the Austin Family Charitable Fund, and the Goldstein Family Foundation, Polyrhythms’ fest in 2005 merged with the Quad Cities Jazz Festival (which started as the Louis Bellson Festival, named for the acclaimed drummer who grew up in Moline and Peoria).

The schedule: Friday opens at 5 p.m. with the Metropolitan Youth Program’s drill team and features Galesburg’s Curtis Hawkins Band’s mix of jazz, R&B and Latin music at 7:15 and Moline’s eight-piece George Rankin and the Cats at 8:45 with their rock ‘n’ soul. Saturday’s activities start at noon with the Teranga House African Drum Circle and continues with music from a septet assembled by Quad City native and veteran trumpet player Manny Lopez (who’s performed with the Temptations, Ray Charles and Manhattan Transfer, among others) at 5, the women vocalists BEEs at 5:30, Quad Cities “all-stars” Funktastic Five at 6:45, and sultry vocalist Alysha Monique at 8:45. Moving to RME’s Redstone Room in Davenport at 3 Sunday afternoon, the fest concludes with the Songbird Jazz Quartet playing “vocal standards meet back-alley jazz” at 3:30, James Culver Kuching Jazz and its combination of Caribbean-style energy and African American R&B at 4:30, and recording artist Frank Russell (who just finished his third CD, “Influences”) at 6.

“We began with a five-year plan to build a festival that allowed us to celebrate the contribution of our grandparents (not the captains of industry, but the workers) who helped this area succeed and become an agricultural and manufacturing giant regionally, nationally and internationally,” Lawrence says. “We have grown as organizers and, like the musicians we bring in, we look for younger ones to take part and take our place. This summer we have an intern from Rock Island who recently graduated from Western Illinois University, and we are all more optimistic for the future of our mission. Participation and optimism are two of our strong suits.”

He sounds assured and also wistful in the days before the fest.

“Here we are at year five, humble yet confident that we have invested a lot of time and more money than we anticipated in an event we consider more than worth the investment,” says Lawrence, who launched WIU’s Black Students Association while a student there in the ’60s. “Self-worth, pride, families and participation are powerful motivators for growth and absolutely necessary for healthy communities to exist.”

For details, go to Polyrhythms Bill Bell Jazz & Heritage Festival Facebook page or phone (309) 373-0790.