Colorad Labor Blog

If the dialogue doesn’t change soon, the collective campaign being waged by three candidates for governor in Colorado could be the most inept in the state’s history–and we’ve had some pretty bad campaigns.

In a couple of so-called “debates,” these three guys have not offered a single clue about how they would solve the state’s problems.

Unless the fractured economy suddenly heals–which would require some form of divine intervention–state economists say Colorado will likely face critical budgetary problems when a new governor takes office in January 2011. The incoming governor and a newly elected legislature must deal with the 2011-2012 budget, which may have a $1 billion shortfall.

According to the Denver Post, Republican gubernatorial primary election candidates Scott McInnis and Dan Maes both say they would seek to expand the economy to a point where the business community would prosper, thus increasing tax revenues.

But they have given no idea yet on how they would accomplish that. Both told the Post that they want to restore about $100 million in business tax exemptions cut by the legislature this year. Fortunately for the electorate, one of these guys will be out of the race after the primary election in August.

Hickenlooper, the Democratic candidate who has no primary opposition (which is also unfortunate for the electorate), hasn’t said much about how he would solve the budgetary problem. But, he too, favors restoring the tax exemptions for the business community. He said he will do everything he can to stimulate the economy. That’s reassuring.

How restoring $100 million in business tax exemptions will help balance the state budgetis hard to understand. They were eliminated to help balance the budget in the first place.

Somewhat incredibly, Maes promised to reduce the budget by cutting state funds to education—which is already way below the national average. Of course, a highly educated workforce is a top priority for companies seeking to relocate to Colorado or anywhere else. How will continued cuts to K-12 and higher education lure businesses that demand a state with a strong schools and universities? We’ve already lost two key Colorado companies—Frontier and Quest—as we’ve slashed our education budget. Cutting it more will bring in more business? Get real.

If the 2011-2012 budget shortfall is anywhere near $1 billion, the only cure might be to increase income taxes, which– in this era of the gutless politician–would never be proposed by any candidate, let alone these three guys. In addition to balancing the budget, a tax hike would preserve the University of Colorado’s status as a top academic institution while guaranteeing that K-12 students could be educated to the point they can get into CU.
Unfortunately, the state’s budget problems are not the only issues the gubernatorial trio is dancing around. They seem to have a big problem with transparency.

McInnis and Maes have refused to release their tax returns; Hickenlooper won’t itemize the charities to which he contributed money. Rightwing radio talk show blabbermouths say that’s because he has contributed to some goofy leftwing organizations.

An even more interesting response to the question of charitable contributions came from McInnis. When asked to list his contributions, McGinnis said he once shot an elk (Or was it a moose? I don’t remember, but I think it was mostly bull, anyway,) and gave it to a needy family.

There is a lot of need in Colorado these days.

Unemployed workers need jobs; businesses need consumers, which are scarce because consumers need money, which is in short supply because wages are stagnant. The state needs revenues, which have been continually diminishing because workers without jobs and businesses without customers don’t pay taxes.

And neither restoring the business tax breaks nor killing more elk will solve the problems.
We need more from our candidates.

Union officials were steamed at the Obama administration after the Arkansas primary election Tuesday in which blue dog incumbent Democrat Blanche Lincoln won a not-too-surprising victory over Lt. Governor Bill Halter. It was reported that after Lincoln’s victory, administration staffers were saying the $10 million spent by the AFL-CIO on Halter’s campaign was a pointless waste of time and damaging to the Democratic Party.

According to the Huffington Post, a senior Democrat said, “Labor is humiliated. Ten million flushed down the toilet at a time when Democrats across the country are fighting for their lives, they look like absolute idiots.”

On the contrary, I say. For the first time in ages we are doing what Samuel Gompers, the founder of the labor movement, advised our predecessors to do more than 100 years ago: Reward our friends; punish our enemies.

And it’s about time—actually 50 or so years late.

In response to the indignant Democrats, AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale said the unions are not an arm of the Democratic Party. “Is the lesson they are taking out of tonight that they can go after labor and anonymously trash us and we will put our tail between our legs and slink home? That ain’t happening,” Vale promised.

That’s good news to those of us old enough to remember all the promises that have been broken over the years by our so-called friends in the Democratic Party. Former President Bill Clinton, supposedly a “friend,” campaigned vigorously for Blanche Lincoln, who demonized the Arkansas unions in the primary campaign.

It was our friend Clinton who foisted the North American Free Trade on the country in 1992. NAFTA was the catalyst for loss of the country’s manufacturing base, which has cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs. And, lest we forget, Clinton failed to help labor pass an anti-scab bill during his first term as president. The bill would have made it illegal for strikebound employers to permanently replace striking workers. Key votes were cast against the bill by the two U.S. senators from Arkansas, who were friends of Bubba.

It is probably too much to expect that Eddie Vale’s heresy in Arkansas will permeate all of organized labor in the immediate future. Labor has been too timid and too compliant for too long.

That timidity has wrought nothing good–wage losses (real wages for U.S. workers have declined since 2000); fewer benefits, such as health insurance (with higher portions of the cost paid by employees); relaxed enforcement of workplace health and safety laws; less regulation of Wall Street money manipulators, multinational corporations and banking interests and the loss of manufacturing jobs to low-wage countries, among other things.

Meanwhile, because of its repeated refusal to demand anything of real value from the Democratic Party—such as passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would be the first labor-friendly revision of federal labor law since 1935—unions now represent only about 10 percent of our national workforce.

Democrats have offered little opposition to the corporate takeover of American politics in the past 50 years. But what happened in the Arkansas’ primary might stiffen labor’s backbone enough for more unions to stop supporting Democratic candidates who offer nothing more than that they are Democrats. Union leadership should immediately adopt a policy of labor first, Democrats second before the movement can be resuscitated

Labor joined with progressives and disenchanted independents in conservative Arkansas and almost engineered a major upset. In less conservative states, such a strategy might be highly successful.

And in some other states–Colorado among them–there have been encouraging indications that more and more labor leaders are finally becoming disenchanted with the Democratic Party, and that will be good in the long run.

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would have made it easier to organize workers who want to be union members, is fast becoming a dim memory, with little chance of even being considered this year.

If it isn’t passed this year, odds are that EFCA will never become law, and major labor law revisions, which would add some balance to labor-management relations, will not be achieved in your lifetime.

Our federal labor laws have been revised only twice since the Wagner Act, the first comprehensive federal labor law, was passed in 1935, as the Great Depression was winding down.  The two revisions since, the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 and the Landrum-Griffin Act in 1957, gave huge advantages to employers.

Even when Democrats controlled either both the U.S. House and the Senate, or the White House and both houses of Congress, as they do now, they were unable to achieve passage of any major labor law revisions. Defeats always came when key Democrats voted against the best interests of working families.

During the administrations of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson in the 1960s, labor worked diligently to repeal Section 14b of the Taft-Hartley Law.  Section 14b allows states to pass right-to-work laws, onerous measures that prohibit labor and management from negotiating an all-union shop.  Such laws exert downward pressure on workers’ wages and benefits.  Wage earners in right-to-work states earn $5,333 less per year than workers in other states, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The U.S. House of Representatives finally passed a bill in 1965 by a vote of 283 to 221 to repeal 14b.  Unfortunately, supporters in the Senate couldn’t break a Republican-sponsored filibuster, which would not have succeeded without the votes of 22 Democratic senators, and the issue was lost.

In 1976, President Jerry Ford vetoed a “common situs picketing bill” that would have lowered the barriers for unionization of construction workers. The bill was introduced again in 1977, but was voted down in the House 217 to 205 with many Democratic representatives voting against the proposal.

Organized labor was KO’d again during the administration of Jimmy Carter when a labor law reform bill, which would have leveled the playing field between labor and management during union organizing campaigns, was defeated.  It failed to survive another Republican filibuster, which was bolstered when 17 Democrats vote with the Republican against cloture.

During Bill Clinton’s first term, an “anti-scab bill” was introduced that would have made it illegal for strikebound employers to permanently replace striking workers.   It passed in the House but was blocked in the Senate by the usual Republican filibuster, in which six Democrats voted with the GOP to ensure defeat of the bill.

So while Democrats, for the most part, have been passively supportive of labor’s issues, they have refused over the years to provide enough votes to pass legislation that would have been the most meaningful to working families.

Instead, they have provided Republicans with key votes to pass tax breaks for corporations and millionaires. They have helped the GOP give tax incentives and loopholes to all manner of businesses, even those, in some cases, that move manufacturing plants out of the country. Democrats have voted for  huge government contracts with corrupt military contractors, such as Blackwater and Haliburton.  Over the years they have cast many votes that have helped Republicans pass legislation that has hurt working men and women.

Moreover, Democrats have often aided and abetted GOP union busters. Two Democratic votes recently prevented the confirmation of labor lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.  When George Bush was president, he loaded up the NLRB with corporate types who seldom, if ever, sided with labor in disputes before the board.  In addition, political apathy has allowed employers to circumvent out-of-date federal labor laws for at least 30 years.

Meanwhile, the wages and benefits of most workers have not kept pace with the growth of their productivity since 1980. For the first time on record, the real incomes of middle-class families actually declined from 2001 to 2007. More than one-third of all income growth since 1989 has gone to the top one-tenth of one percent of all earners, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Workers are not getting a fair share of the wealth they helped create.

And, they’ll never get a fair share as long as Congress refuses to deal with issues like the Employee Free Choice Act, which would be the first revision ever of our nation’s labor laws to right a longstanding wrong.