Colorad Labor Blog

Gov. Hickenlooper commented last week that President Obama would have a hard time winning in Colorado in 2012. He cited dissatisfaction among voters over the high unemployment rate.

Republicans were so delighted, they almost wet themselves. John Andrews, former Colorado state senate president, was among the giddy.

If a Republican defeats Obama in 2012, Andrews wrote in the Denver Post, “Americans will have decided it’s grab the wheel or crash. The leadership reversal . . . would simply be the culmination of a citizenship resurgence that began a year or two ago,” he said, referring to the emergence of the Tea Party. He believes the Tea Party is a so-called “responsibility movement” that will challenge both political parties to do the right thing.

What a crock.

Andrews’ Tea Party pals believe that castrating the middle class is the road to a successful economy. Actually, it would be a disaster. You simply cannot diminish the consumer buying power of the middle class and have a viable economy. Third World economies don’t work. They make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Moreover, the Tea Party is a small slice of the conservative base of the Republican Party, and its narrow ideology will never allow it to be much more than that.

Fortunately, there is the emergence of a real “responsibility movement,” which could have a great and beneficial effect on our nation: It is the trade union movement and it could save the nation’s middle class.

Largely ignored by the press, the nation’s unions continue to turn out thousands of members at pro-worker demonstrations in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and other states where labor is under attack by Republican governors and legislators.

Union volunteers in Wisconsin collected petitions required to qualify six Democratic state senate candidates to oppose Republican incumbents in a November recall election. Democrats need only win three of these seats to thwart Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-middle class agenda.

In a counter recall move, Republican candidates tried to challenge seven Democratic incumbents. Six failed to make the ballot and one was beaten decisively in July by an incumbent senator who is a longtime Teamster.

Ohio’s John Kasich is another very unpopular governor. Mostly union volunteers recently gathered nearly 1.3 million signatures when only 231,149 were required to place an initiative on the Ohio ballot in November that will repeal Kasich’s anti-collective bargaining law.

Walker and Kasich aren’t the only Republican governors sinking in the polls. GOP governors in Florida, Michigan, Maine and New Hampshire are all becoming victims of their own war on the middle class.

In addition, 14 right-to-work proposals were introduced in state legislatures this year. Only one state (New Hampshire) passed it, but the bill was vetoed by the governor. Apparently, the union busters failed to learn from Colorado where voters overwhelmingly defeated a right-to-work ballot initiative in 2008.

Apathetic union and non-union workers have failed for the past 20 years to realize that stagnant wages, the unfettered use of strikebreakers, an indifferent mainstream press and betrayal by many of their so-called friends in the Democratic Party were recognized as signs of weakness by those who want to destroy labor.

But after the sneak attacks on unions this year in so many states, workers are waking up.

They are finally realizing what is at stake in the War on Workers, and they are volunteering for duty by the thousands.

This is the real “responsibility movement.”

I have been around the political scene for more years than I can remember, and I can’t recall a time when there was more polarization. I also can’t remember a time when the personal wealth—such as it is—of the nation’s middle class was more at risk.

When I began writing this piece, Moody’s had just issued a warning that the United States might lose its Triple A credit rating if Congress doesn’t pass legislation increasing the nation’s debt limit before an Aug. 2 deadline.

You know the story. Republicans, who have voted to raise the debt limit many times in the past (seven times during the George W. Bush presidency), now say they won’t vote to raise it this year without accompanying spending cuts, namely in Social Security and Medicare.

Democrats won’t vote for that. They’d rather raise taxes on the rich or close tax loopholes. President Obama wants some sort of combination of both, which is probably the most responsible way to solve the problem. Shared sacrifice, they call it.

I believe it when most of the nation’s economists tell us that if we default on our debt, everyone in the world—including you and me—will suffer.

In the Great Recession of 2008, I lost most of a piddling SEP retirement account I had been paying into for several years. My wife lost a third of her 401k.

Many of you are probably familiar with the dreadful, nauseous feeling that overcomes a person who wakes up in the morning to find he has lost much of his/her retirement security. You also know of the depression that subsequently sets in after you realize the ramifications of your loss.

I believe those in charge will find a way to solve the debt crisis, but I still don’t trust them. When one side is totally financed by the richest people and most powerful corporations in the world, and the other side is partially financed by the same guys, how can you possibly trust any of them?

If they don’t come to their senses soon, buckle up; it’s going to be a rough ride.

Keep your eye on the Democrats during the ongoing debate over the future of Medicare.

Some of the so-called “blue dog” Democrats have already indicated they might consider certain aspects of the Republican plan advanced by Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Ryan’s plan would replace Medicare with a phony voucher plan that would only benefit the insurance companies while severely limiting health care for seniors.

It ought to be a certainty that Democratic lawmakers who support any semblance of such a plan will face a primary election opposition in the next election cycle. If anti-worker Republicans can convince nominal Democrats to support them on this issue, it will be a major factor in the eventual purge of the nation’s middle class.

It wouldn’t surprise anyone if certain Democrats try to convince constituents that the Ryan plan can be tinkered with enough that it might really work.

That’s BS; don’t let them get away with it

Democratic constituents around the country — including every rank-and-file union member — ought to demand a commitment from their lawmakers that they will not tinker with the basic structure of Medicare.

Here in Colorado, we’ve heard Mark Udall say he will work to preserve Medicare. We can’t give Senator Udall high marks for specificity, but will give him a passing grade for the time being.

Senator Bennet’s recent statement, though, should raise eyebrows. He said we “must redesign our entitlement programs,” whatever that means.

It’s time to find out.

The vicious attack on workers being carried out in states throughout the country is a hard lesson for America’s rank-and-file union members about the dangers of putting anti-worker candidates in control of state governments.

The lesson: Trade unionists flirt with disaster when they fail to vote in their own best interest.

In November, voters in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Indiana, Florida and several smaller states elected an anti-labor gang of governors and like-minded state legislators who now control a majority of states. Many of the new legislators were Tea Party members, some of whom are in the forefront of the attack on labor.

Most of these states have historically been good labor states, with a high density of union members in the workplace. Obviously, many of those workers voted for candidates who promised them everything except the good wages, hours, working conditions, benefits and job security offered by their union jobs. Polls show the workers fell for it.

When they were campaigning, anti-labor gang members didn’t tell the electorate they would wage a campaign to destroy the unions after they were elected. But union leaders knew better; they warned the nation’s workers, but nobody was listening.

And now the Republican governors and legislators are trying to do what union leaders predicted: destroy the labor movement.

Without unions–which set compensation standards for all workers, union and nonunion—wages will plummet, benefits will be nonexistent and job security will be wishful thinking. And–pity the miners and others who work in dangerous fields–there will be no standards for occupational safety and health.

Eventually the U.S. workforce will become a Third World workforce. And that is the goal of the billionaires, millionaires and corporations.

The excuse the union-busters hide behind in their scurrilous attack on workers is that their states face huge budget deficits and they must reduce state expenditures.

Hogwash.

Workers aren’t the villains in the country’s economic mess by any stretch of the imagination. Wall Street money manipulators are the real culprits, and they have been bailed out by the taxpayers, which includes the country’s workforce.

The attack on public sector unions is on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers only because they make the most convenient target for cash-strapped states.

But the anti-labor gang is really after all unions.

Private sector unions are also being targeted throughout the country. Right-to-work and/or paycheck deception proposals are being introduced in several states. Project labor agreements and prevailing wage laws are also under siege.

So the anti-worker campaign is not simply an attack on public sector unions. It covers both public and private sector unions. If they manage to get one, they are likely to get the other.

If they do, they will have completed the most effective assault ever on the standard of living of the nation’s middle class.

The stakes for the American worker is are as high as they’ve ever been. The time is now for America’s workers get off the couch, switch off the television and join the fight for a secure future.

There are attacks on labor now underway nationwide that could effectively impose Third World wages, hours and working conditions on American workers, both union and nonunion.

These attacks are primarily aimed at destroying the nation’s union movement, but all working men and women would be affected because unions set wage standards for all workers.

Conservative and not so conservative politicians are zeroing in on both private and public employee unions. Private sector unions are under extreme attack because of the major election victories by anti worker candidates in the 2010 election. Public employee unions loom as huge targets for many states that are plagued by budget deficits, which are products of the nation’s struggling economy.

The National Right-to-Work Committee is expected to lead a concerted effort to either pass right-to-work laws in state legislatures or to place the issue on various state ballots in the 2012 election. The New York Times has reported that right-to-work will be introduced this year into legislatures in Indiana, Missouri, Maine and possibly seven other states, including Montana.

Historically, right-to-work exerts downward pressure on wages and benefits and diminishes working conditions for workers in states where it is passed. Voters overwhelmingly defeated a right-to-work proposal in Colorado in 2008, but at a cost of $22 million to the unions. The cost would be enormous if unions were forced to fight multiple right-to-work ballot issues in the 2012 election.

In addition to right-to-work, labor will face other onerous issues. Paycheck deception bills, which prohibit rank-and-file members from participating in the political process, will probably be introduced 16 states, including Arizona and New Mexico, Anti-prevailing wage proposals are expected to surface in 19 states and bills banning project labor agreements are expected in 18. Such bills, or variations of them, could be introduced in Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming.

Some public sector unions are being targeted ostensibly to help states reduce budget shortfalls caused by the recession.

In Ohio, where both houses of the legislature and the governor’s office are controlled by Republicans, Governor John Kasich has proposed that certain segments of the government be prohibited from unionizing, and he wants to take the right to strike from others. Elimination of binding arbitration for police and fire fighters has also been suggested in Ohio. Wisconsin’s governor, Scott Walker, has proposed to eliminate the right of state employees to form unions.

Politicians, it seems, want to make working men and women the scapegoats for the country’s wretched economic situation, which provides a great opportunity to attack unions.

Corporate America knows organized labor is in a vulnerable position. After the election in November, labor has much less support, not only in Congress but also in numbers of labor friendly governors and state legislatures. Moreover, union density in the nation’s workforce is only eight percent.

The labor movement is the last barrier that Corporate America faces in its quest for a Third World workforce. Right now, the corporations are at the tiller, steering a course that is ideal for billionaires, but devastating for the working class.