Prop 30 Taxes Rich, Prop 32 Breaks Unions

Dueling California Measures 

Set to Tax Rich, Gut Unions

Californians will vote November 6 whether to approve the largest tax hike on the wealthy in that state since 1978.
Unions say Proposition 30 is necessary to forestall further deep cuts to education and other public services. The state is already 47th in the nation in expenditures per pupil, and without Prop 30 conditions in the schools will get worse.
So campaigning hard for Prop 30—TV ads, mailings, door-knocking, phonebanking—would seem to be a no-brainer for unions.
But this fall's election season is complicated by the presence of another initiative on the ballot. Prop 32 would make it virtually impossible for unions to play a major role in California politics, by disallowing the use of any money garnered through payroll deductions.
Why is such money tainted? Well, because that's how unions do it. The aim of Prop 32 is simply to keep unions out of politics. Almost no corporations collect political funds from employees through payroll withholding.
Fred Glass of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) calls the Yes on 32 campaign "astonishingly deceptive." Its website trumpets, "The politicians are not listening to us. We need to start taking back California by reducing the influence of Special Interests across the board"—including corporate money.
With language like that, no wonder a mid-July online poll by conservative groups showed Prop 32 with 60 percent in favor and only 29 percent opposed.
Steve Gilbert, a retired Service Employees Local 1021 activist, says that early on, his local showed pro-32 commercials to members who weren't familiar with the measure. They liked what they saw.
Mike Parker, active in local politics in Richmond in the East Bay, says conservatives are cynically "trying to ride the Occupy sentiment to take big money out of politics."
Although it would ban direct contributions to candidates, Prop 32 would still allow corporations and unions to support candidates through independent committees—like the Super PACS the Citizens United decision let loose.
Corporations have proven themselves adept at this game. A preliminary report on 2012 elections in California from the National Institute on Money in State Politics shows business interests spending $127 million and unions $29 million.
"What they're counting on is obfuscation," Glass said. "And they're counting on the general public's anti-politician mood," noting that state legislators poll just 20 percent support.
Six states in the West and Midwest have passed "paycheck protection" laws, which forbid public employee unions to use dues for political ends without a member's written consent. Prop 32 goes much further.
HISTORY REPEATS
California unions have faced such anti-union initiatives before, defeating "paycheck protection" in 1998 and 2005. Unions vastly outspent their opponents to win by 53 percent both times. Prop 32 would make such spending impossible.
Glass said labor's opponents learned from those losses, crafting a new message that would appeal to anyone in the 99%.
"We start off behind because the other side has figured out a way to make this sound good," he said. "We have an uphill climb—but this gets the labor movement engaged because it threatens its ability to function."
"It would be nice if the labor movement got as engaged on proactive issues," Glass said.

TAX THE WEALTHY
Which leads us to Proposition 30, which in its first year would bring $6.8 to $9 billion to state coffers, and $6 billion per year after that. The proposal is designed to fend off a projected $6 billion in cuts to schools and colleges.
The measure squarely targets the 1%, beginning the increase with families that make more than a half million dollars per year. Their income tax rate would jump from 9.3 percent to 10.3 percent, and families making a million would pay 12.3 percent.
Controversially, the measure would also add a quarter of a percent to the state sales tax, raising it to 7.5 percent. That part of the measure would cost "a penny on a $4 cheeseburger," as CFT puts it. State sales tax in California is already the highest in the country.
Some union backers of the tax measure have been less enthusiastic about it since an earlier proposal initiated by the CFT was scuttled.
The union was promoting a permanent "millionaires tax," and a grassroots campaign gathered thousands of signatures early this year. When Governor Jerry Brown put forward his own proposal—backed by the state's largest unions—CFT leaders worked out a compromise rather than have two similar measures on the ballot.
The compromise, which became Prop 30, limited the income tax hike to seven years and added the four-year sales tax hike, but it also raised taxes on a bigger swath of the wealthy. The threshold was lowered from $1 million to $250,000 for individuals.
Now Brown is seen as Prop 30's main proponent, not the unions, and he is decidedly not running a "tax the rich" campaign. He leads with the dire consequences to education if Prop 30 fails, and speaks of the need for government to stay within its means and pay down debt through "shared sacrifice."
TAX MILLIONAIRES
Unlike Brown, the CFT is making "tax the rich" the centerpiece of its campaign. Along with the California Nurses, they've led creative actions to bring a spotlight on the tax. They put on a skit in front of a yacht club mocking billionaires for worrying about their toys instead of on the state of education in California.
The tax measure was polling at 55 percent in late August, with 36 percent opposed, possibly fostering complacency. Most private sector unions are focused on defeating Prop 32.
Michael Sasson, a clerical worker at UC Berkeley and a Teamster, says his union's Labor Day picnic featured many "No on 32" signs but almost nothing on Prop 30. A memo from the local asked for volunteers against the anti-union measure, but didn't mention anything else on the ballot.
"I'm on board against 32," Sasson said, "but when I talk to my co-workers or to other parents at my daughters' schools, if we don't also talk about saving the UC budget and keeping teachers from being laid off, people won't want to listen."
The state AFL-CIO and the 700,000-member SEIU state council are shying away from emphasizing the threat to union rights. Instead, they call Prop 32 the "Special Exemptions Act" and decry its "loopholes" for "corporations, billionaires, and SuperPACs"—not an entirely accurate claim, since unions get the same loophole.
The state fed's Steve Smith says the organization is planning the "largest voter mobilization effort we've ever had in California," with up to 40,000 volunteers. Spending will be in the tens of millions of dollars, depending on how much TV the other side buys. Opponents of the last such bill, mostly unions, spent $54 million in 2005.
Unions enjoy 18 percent density in the state, with 2.7 million members, and the state fed believes it has identified 2.5 million more voters with similar values.
Smith says high turnout of union and likeminded voters will have a spillover effect favoring the tax measure, whether or not they've been talked with about it directly.
The biggest donors to both the anti-32 and pro-30 campaigns are unions. The California Teachers Association (the NEA affiliate) has given $16 million to fight the paycheck-deduction measure and $1.6 million for the tax fight.
For the SEIU state council, which has spent $8.2 million on both measures, the disparity runs 3:1.
Josh Pechthalt, president of the much smaller CFT, predicts that national unions will jump in against Prop 32.
"California is seen as an exception against the Republican right-wing juggernaut," he said. "So if this were to pass it would deflate the Democrats and labor and it would have national implications."
Martha Kuhl, a nurse and delegate to an East Bay labor council, says the council's phonebanking has focused on 32. "It would completely flop the entire system on its head and give the big money interests even more power than they currently have," she said. "Who else speaks up for working people besides unions?"

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. 

Jane Slaughter

Jane Slaughter is a journalist who writes frequently on labor affairs. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, The Progressive, Monthly Review, and In These Times. She is based in Detroit.
Slaughter is on the staff of the labor magazine Labor Notes. Before that, she worked for several years as a UAW activist.
Slaughter is the author of Concessions and How To Beat Them and co-author, with Mike Parker, of Choosing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept and Working Smart: A Union Guide to Participation Programs and Reengineering. She is also the editor of Troublemaker's Handbook 2.

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Can Rove Steal Election?

Will 9 GOP Governors (with Karl Rove) Electronically Flip Romney into the White House?
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman 9/25/12 Free Press.org [edited for length]

Nine Republican Governors have the power to put Mitt Romney in the White House, even if Barack Obama wins the popular vote.

With their Secretaries of State, they control the electronic vote count in nine key swing states: Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Arizona, and New Mexico. Wisconsin elections are under the control of the state's Government Accountability Board, appointed by Gov. (Walker).

With the GOP's massive nation-wide disenfranchisement campaign, they could---in the dead of night---flip their states' electronic votes to Romney and give him a victory in the Electoral College.



Electronic voting machines with ties to Republican-connected companies have proliferated throughout Ohio. Federal money from the Help America Vote Act has helped move electronic voting machines into other key swing states in substantial numbers that are not easy to track.

The machines can quickly tabulate a winner. But their dark side is simple: there is no way to monitor or double-check the final tally. These partisan Republican vote counting companies have written contracts to avoid transparency and open records laws.



In Ohio 2004, at 12:20 election night, the initial vote tabulation showed John Kerry defeating Bush by more than 4%. This 200,000-plus margin appeared to guarantee Kerry's presidency.

But mysteriously, the Ohio vote count suddenly shifted to Smartech in Chattanooga, Tennessee. With private Republican-connected contractors processing the vote, Bush jumped ahead with a 2% lead, eventually winning with an official margin of more than 118,000 votes. Such a shift of more than 6%, involving more than 300,000 votes, is a virtual statistical impossibility, as documented in our WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA'S 2012 ELECTION (www.freepress.org).

That night, Ohio's vote count was being compiled in the basement of the old Pioneer Bank building in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The building also housed the servers for the Republican National Committee and thus the e-mail of Bush advisor Karl Rove. Secretary of State Blackwell was co-chair of the Ohio Committee to Re-Elect Bush and Cheney. He met earlier that day in Columbus with George W. Bush and Karl Rove. That night, he sent the state's chief IT worker home early. The official Ohio vote count tabulation system was designed by IT specialist Michael Connell, whose computer company New Media was long associated with the Bush family. In 2008 Connell died in a mysterious single-engine plane crash after being subpoenaed to testify in the federal King-Lincoln-Bronzeville voter rights lawsuit (by way of disclosure: Bob is an attorney and Harvey a plaintiff in this lawsuit). The King-Lincoln suit eventually resulted in a federal injunction ordering Ohio's 88 counties to turn over their ballots and election records.

But 56 of Ohio's 88 counties violated the injunction and destroyed their election records. Thus no complete recount of Ohio 2004 has ever been done. More than 90,000 "spoiled" ballots, like those in Toledo, went entirely uncounted, and have since been destroyed.

No way was found to verify the 2004 electronic vote count. There are no safeguards in place today.
Progressive Democratic Workers - Union Election Protection - Unions United - William Floyd

Judge Activist Cancels NLRB Ruling

GOP Court Activist Strikes Down NLRB Ruling


Lawsuits have successfully shut down the only two regulations put forward by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) during the Obama administration.
The NLRB has proposed two controversial rules since President Obama took office — one that would require employers to post notices explaining collective bargaining rights to workers, and another that would speed up union elections.

In a court ruling against the union election rule this week, federal judges have now come down against both regulations, forcing the NLRB to halt implementation of each.

Business groups have supported efforts by Republicans in Congress to challenge the NLRB rules through legislation, but have had more success thwarting the regulations on their own in the courts.

“It does raise the question of agency overreach,” said Robin Conrad, executive vice president of the National Chamber Litigation Center, the litigation affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“After issuing two rules and seeing them struck down because [of a] lack of authority, I wonder if that doesn’t give the board pause and [cause it to] question what rulemaking authority it does have,” Conrad said. “If agencies are going to engage in rulemaking, they are going to have to know how to dot the I’s and cross the T’s.”

The Chamber and the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace sued the NLRB over the union election rule. On Monday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg struck the rule down, saying the NLRB lacked a quorum when it voted on the final rule in December.

It followed a decision last month by U.S. District Judge David Norton, who ruled that Congress didn’t give the labor board the authority to issue the notice rule in response to a challenge from the Chamber and the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce.

The NLRB’s notice rule had survived an earlier legal challenge to the notice rule from the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Right to Work Foundation and others. That decision has since been appealed.

In response to the court rulings, the NLRB suspended implementation of the rules until the appeals process is resolved. It’s unclear when, or if, the rules will ever be reinstated.

Congress couldn’t achieve the same result. Legislation passed in the House last year to void the union election rule has gone nowhere in the Senate.

“Those bills have been sent over. They have been passed pretty overwhelmingly,” said Geoff Burr, vice president of federal affairs for the Associated Builders & Contractors. “But they are just gathering dust on [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid’s [D-Nev.] desk.”

It is chairman of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which includes several business groups. The coalition has grown to more than 600 members and has spent well over $1 million on legal costs in 2011 and 2012 for various legal challenges to the NLRB, according to Burr’s estimates.

“I continue to get people wanting to join the coalition every week,” Burr said. “We know we need to raise between now and the middle of next year another million dollars, at least.”

There is a possibility that the labor board could reissue the union election rule, which worries business groups.

Boasberg said his decision didn’t reflect the merits of the regulation, but rather the fact that only two members voted on its final passage — not the three needed for a quorum, since Brian Hayes, a Republican NLRB member, didn’t participate in that vote. The judge said the NLRB could vote again on the rule if it had a quorum of three members.

The NLRB now has a full allotment of five members, following three recess appointments by President Obama in January. The Chamber, the Coalition and others are challenging those recess appointments in separate cases.

“It would be a vote by the board, and it becomes a question whether it’s a legitimate quorum, whether it’s a legitimate board,” Conrad said.

In the meantime, worker advocates have been left frustrated by the court rulings against the NLRB rules.

“Ultimately, unless these rules are reinstated, workers are left with an unfair process,” said Erin Johansson, research director for American Rights at Work. “It may be a few months more before they get the medicine of these rules.”

Johansson said unions were ready and willing to organize under the new union election rule, but that’s not possible at the moment. She called the challenge to the notice rule “laughable.”

“It’s helping someone learn a right they already have,” Johansson said.
Unions want the election rule in place, and some say they would support the NLRB voting again on the regulation if necessary.

"We want the rule back in place as soon as possible. If that means a revote, we would be supportive of that,” said Tim Schlittner, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

Schlittner added the union believed the rule “was technically sound when it was first voted upon.”

Others in labor have decried the ruling against the union election rule, including the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union.

An AFL-CIO official said the nation’s largest labor federation supports whatever action the board needs to take to ensure the rules get implemented as soon as possible.

Nancy Cleeland, an NLRB spokeswoman, said the agency has not decided on its next step regarding the ruling against the union election rule. The agency has already said it will appeal the decision against the notice rule.

By Kevin Bogardus

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/228213-judges-halt-union-regulations

Prop 32 a Massive Fraud on Unions

CA Proposition 32:
A fraud to end all frauds against Unions

It was Lyndon Johnson who best understood that the key to political empowerment for the disenfranchised was to give them access to the electoral process. That's why he made passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 his top priority.

But it's doubtful he would think too kindly of a measure we might call the Rich Persons and Corporations Empowerment Act of 2012. During this election season, Californians undoubtedly will be hearing about it on TV and radio until their eardrums bleed. That's because it will be on the November ballot as Proposition 32, a wolf in sheep's clothing dressed up as the "Stop Special Interest Money Now Act."

In this state, we've come to expect ballot initiatives sponsored by business interests to be, essentially, frauds. But it's hard to conceive how one could be more fraudulent than Proposition 32. If there was any doubt left that the initiative process has been totally corrupted by big business and the wealthy, this should put it to rest for all time.

We'll start by examining what Proposition 32 purports to do.

On the grounds that "special interests have too much power over government," the measure bans direct contributions to California candidates by corporations and labor unions. It prohibits the collection of "political funds" from corporate employees and union members via payroll deduction, even if the employee or member voluntarily approves. (That's more stringent than the previous versions, which merely required that union members give written permission for political expenditures once a year.) Political funds include money spent for or against a candidate or ballot measure or for a party or political action committee, or PAC.

Sounds pretty good so far, doesn't it? "It looks temptingly like reform," says Trudy Schafer, program director for the League of Women Voters of California. "But it's not."

That's because Proposition 32 bristles with enormous loopholes tailor-made for businesses and their wealthy backers. To begin with, it exempts such common business structures as LLCs, partnerships and real estate trusts. If you're a venture investor, land developer or law firm, Proposition 32 doesn't lay a finger on you.

The drafters, who include conservative attorneys Thomas Hiltachk and Michael Capaldi, know full well that payroll deductions are how unions get almost all of their funds, and businesses get almost none of theirs.

The infusion of big money into politics has become a more important issue since the Supreme Court's infamous 2010 Citizens United decision awarding free speech rights to corporations, as though they are people. The decision liberated corporations to contribute to electoral campaigns virtually without limitation. That has turbocharged fundraising by so-called super PACs such as Karl Rove's conservative American Crossroads, the Mitt Romney-supporting Restore Our Future, and thePresident Obama-supporting Priorities USA.

The Proposition 32 campaign says the measure is carefully crafted to comply with Citizens United, but if that's so, it's just another sign of how flawed and deplorable the Supreme Court ruling was. At the moment, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, business outspends organized labor 15 to 1.

Today, no big business needs to mulct its employees for piddling weekly deductions for its PAC, when it can shovel out by the trainload any money it has collected via the sale of goods and services. Some corporations do take PAC contributions from employees by payroll deductions, but it's typically a tiny proportion, mostly concentrated among careerist midlevel executives and above.

"When corporations can just write a check from their general treasury, the idea that this is a meaningful restriction is ridiculous," says Richard L. Hasen, an election and campaign law expert at UC Irvine. The share of corporate political spending coming from employee payroll deductions "has got to be a drop in the bucket, and putting it in there is just a fig leaf."

What about the Proposition 32 campaign's claim that the measure is all about, and only about, reducing the power of "special interests"? In the interest of being fair and objective, we should be very careful about the word we select to describe this assertion. So let's keep things simple: It's a lie.

How can we know? We can start by examining the campaign's contributors. As it turns out, the claim that you need a big-money ballot campaign to wipe out the influence of special interests carries its own contradiction, in the same way a skunk packs its own stench.

Among the very top contributors to the campaign, according to public filings, are A. Jerrold Perenchio ($250,000), Thomas Siebel ($500,000), B. Wayne Hughes ($200,000) and Charles Munger Jr. ($992,000).

Perenchio, a billionaire Hollywood mogul, was the second-largest individual political donor in California from 2001 to 2011, with $16.9 million in contributions mostly to Republican and conservative interests, according to a compilation by the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting. He's contributed $2 million to American Crossroads and $500,000 to Restore Our Future.

Siebel is a Silicon Valley billionaire perhaps best known in California political circles for his introduction of Sarah Palin, then the newly minted GOP vice presidential candidate, at a 2008 rally as "the embodiment of pure, unadulterated good," the San Francisco Chronicle reported. In 2010 he donated $250,000 to American Crossroads.

The Kentucky-based Hughes is the patriarch of the Public Storage empire. His donations to American Crossroads: $3.5 million, making him one of its top donors in 2010. He's given nearly $2.3 million to California political entities in the 2001-11 period, exclusively Republican.

Munger is a physicist who was the third-largest individual political contributor in California in 2001-11, with $14.1 million in contributions, mostly to GOP interests. His father, Charles Sr., has long beenWarren Buffett's investment partner.

Whatever you might think about these individuals' political viewpoints, some things are crystal-clear:They're the special interests. They're the fount of the cash that, according to the Prop. 32 pitch, constitutes "the most corrupting influence in politics."

And most important of all: They're conveniently exempt from Proposition 32.

It doesn't matter that their wealth comes from corporations that would be barred from funneling money directly to candidates — Hughes from Public Storage, Siebel from Siebel Systems and Oracle, Perenchio from Univision. Their individual bank accounts remain unfettered.

If you've been wondering why people whose fortunes come from business would invest so much money to enact a measure that purports to limit the political influence of business, now you know.

Proposition 32 isn't designed to stop the flow of cash into California politics; it's designed to cede California politics totally to characters like this. Any of them could get anything he wants from Sacramento. Could you?

Another fact the Prop. 32 cabal doesn't want you to know is that donations to candidates and parties — the contributions most directly covered by the measure — constitute a tiny portion of corporate political spending in California. Power really resides in the initiative process, and that's where businesses put the big bucks.

Over the last two years, for example, the tobacco company Altria (formerly Philip Morris) has donated $33.5 million to California political campaigns. Less than $700,000 went to candidates or parties. Much of the spending went to defeat Proposition 29, this spring's tobacco tax initiative.

Then there's Pacific Gas & Electric Co. In 2009-10, PG&E spent $53.5 million on politics in California. Less than $600,000 went to candidates. Most of the rest financed the utility's majestically dishonest ballot initiative to kill public power programs.

Because under Proposition 32 such spending could be financed out of money that business and wealthy individuals — but not unions — can access, the measure would tilt the initiative playground even further in business' favor.

The treatment of unions and corporations as though they're equivalent political players is an ideological fantasy. Unions are organizations whose members have democratic rights to vote on their leaders and their policies, political or otherwise. (Nonmembers represented by unions in collective bargaining already have the right to withhold dues attributable to strictly political activities.) Corporation owners, or shareholders, don't have democratic rights unless they hold controlling stakes.

When a union engages in politics, you know it's generally reflecting the interest of its members. When a corporation does, whose interest is it reflecting? Could be a few dozen people, one huge shareholder, or a CEO and his cronies on the board.

Moreover, as the labor expert Joseph Rauh observed decades ago, giving a political voice to an increasingly disenfranchised working class is fundamental to the role of organized labor. The fate of bills "affecting working men and their unions," he wrote, "may be of as great importance to union members as the collective bargaining process itself."

The message the perpetrators of Proposition 32 are sending to you, the California voter, is that they think you're stupid. Really, really stupid.

When you go to the voting booth or fill out your mail ballot this November, stop for a moment and ponder this question: Should I hand over my vote to people who think of me that way?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120819,0,5536069,full.column
Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik

SF Council Votes for New Postal Bank Idea

Resolution to Investigate the Establishment of a new

Postal Banking System

http://sflaborcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/08-06-12Res2InvestigateEstbOfPostalBankingSystem.pdf

Whereas, expanding postal services and developing new sources of revenue are important
components of any effort to save the public Post Office and preserve living-wage jobs; and

Whereas, many countries, including Germany, France, Italy and Japan, have a long and
successful history of postal banking, where customers do their basic banking at their
neighborhood post office; and

Whereas, in the U.S. a Postal Savings system operated successfully from 1911 to 1967,
providing a safe and efficient place for customers to save and transfer funds – until it was
killed under pressure from the banking industry. Postal Savings was set up to attract the
savings of immigrants accustomed to saving at post offices in their native countries, provide
safe depositories for people who had lost confidence in private banks, and make it more convenient for working people than private banks (since post offices were open substantially longer than bankers’ hours); and

Whereas, postal banks, called Kiwibanks, are now thriving in New Zealand, with bank branches called PostShops in local post offices – “putting us in more locations than any other bank in New Zealand literally overnight (without wasting millions on new premises!)” [Kiwibank website] In an early “move your money” campaign, New Zealanders voted with their feet. In an island nation of only 4 million, Kiwibank attracted 500,000 customers away from the Australian big banks in just four years; and

Whereas, the giant banks that dominate the U.S. financial and political system are corrupt institutions that defrauded homeowners in the mortgage scandal, and engaged in  complex multi-Billion dollar hijinks that brought on the 2007-09 financial crisis. The American working people have lost faith in these banks as a trustworthy place to put their hard-earned money; and

Whereas, a USPS bank would offer a “public option” for banking, providing basic checking and savings – and no complex financial wheeling and dealing. Postal banks could serve the 9 million people who don’t have a bank account and 21 million who use usurious check cashers, giving low-income people access to a safe banking system; and

Whereas, the Post Office is uniquely positioned, with a lot of branches around the country and an already successful business in money orders. It is a trusted and venerable institution older than the Constitution, at a time when people do not have much trust in banks. It is funded not with taxes but with postage stamps, which buy the labor and machines to transport your letter 3000 miles. It is the only U.S. agency that serves all its customers six days a week. And it is perhaps the last form of communication that protects privacy, since tampering with the mail is against federal law; and

Whereas, the Post Office should be saved and it can be saved. A Postal Bank, combining teller services with postal services, could help achieve this, while at the same time offering a competitive alternative to a runaway Wall Street banking monopoly that Congress seems unable to control; and

Whereas, the 2012 National Convention of the National Association of Letter Carriers unanimously adopted an almost identical resolution, calling for the postal unions to investigate the establishment of a Postal Banking System in the U.S.

Therefore be it resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council urges Congress and the Executive Branch to investigate the possibility of the establishment of a public Postal Banking System in the U.S. – drawing on the rich experience of successful postal banking in Germany, France, Italy, Japan and New Zealand – and using our unprecedented network of post offices to provide safe basic checking and savings to our hundreds of millions of postal customers; and

Be it finally resolved, that we forward this resolution to affiliate unions, area labor councils,
Calif. Labor Federation, AFL-CIO and Change to Win Federation, for concurrence and action. 

Submitted by Lili Beaumont, NALC 214, and adopted by the Executive Committee of the San
Francisco Labor Council on August 6, 2012.

Respectfully,
Tim Paulson
Executive Director      

OPEIU3 AFL

Farm Workers Need Help

ACE TOMATO WORKERS NEAR CONTRACT

After two decades, Ace Tomato workers are so close to getting their contract.

Tell the ALRB to implement the contract now by joining the virtual picket line.

Workers at Ace Tomato are tired of waiting. They are tired of dirty bathrooms, the lack of fresh water and decades of low pay. You might ask, why don't they vote for a union? They did--back in 1989! But, more than two decades later they still are waiting for their contract. And the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB), California's legal agency charged with protecting the workers, did nothing but shuffle paperwork.

The UFW fought for and passed a law in California requiring employers to negotiate in good faith or face mandatory mediation. The way this works is a mediator speaks to both sides and neutrally sifts through both sides' documents and recommendations and at the end submits a report of terms to the ALRB which is essentially a contract. Both sides have the right to review this report and object. Then the ALRB either agrees with the objections to the report or rejects them. If they reject the objections, the report becomes a contract that both sides must legally abide by.

After several months of discussion, the mediator submitted his report to the ALRB on June 28. As expected, the company objected, but on July 25 the ALRB ruled against the company and ordered Ace Tomato to implement the final mediator's report as the contract.

It appears the company instead decided to follow their normal delaying tactics that have worked so well. They ignored the Board order!

When we heard the wage increases and other improvements were not happening, we asked the ALRB to go to court to force the company to follow the law and implement the contract the workers have been waiting more than 20 years for.

The ALRB could have and should have immediately gone to court when the company thumbed their nose at the law. Instead they sent the company a letter saying they would give them until 5 pm today, Tuesday, August 7th, to respond to the UFW’s request.

The workers are furious that the ALRB is again opening the door to the company's delaying tactics. Workers know from experience that given an inch, this company can keep up the delaying tactics for years.

Ace Tomato workers will travel to Sacramento tomorrow and hold a picket line in front of the ALRB's office demanding that the ALRB get a court order to tell the company to immediately comply with the law. Won't you join Ace Tomato workers and picket virtually by taking action and e-mailing the ALRB today?

http://action.ufw.org/ace
After you take action please share this campaign with your friends and family. You can send them an e-mail, post this campaign on your Facebook and/or Twitter page by clicking here or going to http://action.ufw.org/page/share/ace



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United Farm Workers,  P.O. Box 62, Keene, CA 93531, http://www.ufw.org

Phone and Mail Unions Unite in Action

CWA Stands Up to Verizon on August 11

Rally in Philadelphia.

Tens of thousands of workers will unite next week in Philadelphia -- the birthplace of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights -- to demand economic freedom and opportunity for all.
CWA and IBEW workers will be kicking off the activities with a rally at Verizon’s office. Meet promptly at 9:45 a.m. at 900 Race Street.

We will then march to Eakins Oval, in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where we will join more than 30,000 people from all over the country to stand up for the middle class and urge all Americans -- especially elected officials -- to stand with us.

It's time for everyone to stand up and be counted.

Photo of CWA President Larry Cohen:

CWA Supports a Public Postal Service

CWA stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the National Association of Letter Carriers in its battle to save the US Postal Service, CWA President Larry Cohen said last week at the biennial NALC convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Photo of CWA President Larry Cohen addressing the biennial NALC convention in Minneapolis.

“We will fight back, and we will be there together with you in that fight to save a public Postal Service as if it’s our own fight—because it is our own fight,” he said, according to the convention newspaper.

Addressing more than 8,000 Union members, Cohen said CWA’s fight against corporate greed at Verizon is not unlike letter carriers’ struggle against the Postal Service. “We get management, whether the Postal Service or Verizon, that wants to shrink us, to keep us in a box, until they can shut us down and throw us out,” he said.
He encouraged delegates to continue advocating for workers’ rights.

“When you cut our pay, we say no. When you cut our health care, we say no. When you destroy our retirement, we say no,” he said. “We stand up, we fight back.”
Over 1,000 Letter Carriers Protest Verizon Greedy in Show of Unity

Photo of Letter carriers (mail men and women) protest VeriGreedy in Minneapolis.

More than 1,000 members of the National Association of Letter Carriers last Thursday demonstrated outside a Verizon Wireless store in downtown Minneapolis in support of CWA’s yearlong fight for a fair contract. (Solidarity-ed)

CWA President Larry Cohen had addressed the delegates to the biennial convention earlier in the day, pledging CWA’s support in the battle to save the Postal Service. And in return, letter carriers poured in the street to rally against Verizon’s corporate greed.

“His remarks got the troops fired up,” said Pam Donato, who leads the NALC’s coalition-building and community services work. “We thought that maybe 200 people would show up, but when it came time to rally, I think we topped 1,000. It was massive.”

She added, “It was like breaking bread with family. It’s really a special occasion to rally with another group of workers, to support each other physically, putting to life what you do a lot of times with paper, pen and keyboard.”