The Chamber of Commerce and Right-wing attack machine is in full court press against the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill with bipartisan support which would add penalties for wide-spread violations of the right of employees to join together.

The extreme Right objects to a provision of the EFCA dealing with "card check" procedures, a method of showing majority support for a union that was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1969.  Currently an employer can challenge a "card-check" election for no cause.  The Employee Free Choice Act would require illegal coercion or another cause before an employer could challenge the results of an election.

Chambers of Commerce and GOP'ers like Presidential hopeful John McCain say that card check organizing doesn't resemble American Democracy and insist that secret ballot elections are necessary to ensure workers have a democratic right to vote like in normal U.S. elections.  

Ignoring for a moment that U.S. employees do not have the same rights at work that they have as citizens, lets give the GOP the benefit of the doubt and make union elections more democratic by simply holding secret ballot elections for employee organization on an annual basis.

At the Saddleback Faith Inquisition, err, Forum, both McCain and Obama were asked, "Who are the three wisest people that you know, and that you would rely on heavily in your administration?"

Obama:

His Wife
His Grandmother
Too many valid perspectives to limit to three

McCain:

General Petraeus
John Lewis
Meg Whitman

Fair enough and true to form, Obama was truthful and tactful; McCain was truthful and shooting from the lip.

The contrast in approach and thought process aside . . . Meg Whitman? The General and John Lewis were typical examples of McCain's pandering/bolstering version of straight-talk. No real surprises there – though Mr. Lewis may disagree. But Whitman? Really? OK, I'll play along.

Big hat's off to the folks over at the Change To Win labor federation for linking to our sites (Union Review, Joe's Union Review and Women, Unions and Our Stories) on their new web page called Worse than Bush.org, here's the video that got me smiling

Campaign Receiving Important Endorsements:

As we move into the fall campaign season, the McCracken for Congress campaign is receiving several important endorsements.   Earlier this month we were honored to receive the endorsement from the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.   This is a key endorsement from an organization that is a leader in supporting the rights of the working people, not only in the 5th district, but in Pennsylvania and across the nation.

For Kossacks, it's not news that a John McCain presidency would be a disaster for working people. The McCain agenda -- more tax cuts for the rich, privatization of Social Security, and war without end -- would mean  the next four years would be just as disastrous for the American Dream as the last eight have been.

But McCain -- and the corporate interests that support him -- don't want Americans to know about the real McCain record. They're ready to do whatever it takes to sell Americans on a false image of McCain and bury the real McCain record deep underground.

Well, working people know a line of bull when they see it. And today nine workers set out on a campaign to call out John McCain for who he really is.

(Learn more and hear some hard questions for John McCain -- and learn how to submit your own! -- after the jump...)

I took a look at the RSS feed which I got from the US Chamber Of Congress, this one searches the term "employee free choice" when it's posted on blogs, while the organization is vehemently against The Employee Free Choice Act they have given me a great RSS feed. Thanks US Chamber Of Commerce.

So one of the latest blog entries which used the term was by one of a a pair of labor management experts who run a blog about many issues at hand, The Contended Cows Blog, it's actually a great read. When checking their actual web page, The Contended Cow, I read that they are in the employee relations business, and their aim is to create a great workplace for employees to make better returns for the company. Well I certainly can agree with that, they have a ton of info, and while they might not be favorable to unions, I really don't see much against them.

The story of the Labor Movement is filled with millions of stories, many of which are never reported.

This week, one of those stories was.

Yesterday, two members of Sheet Metal Workers Local 17 in Boston were honored for rescuing a commuter who had fallen onto the train tracks at Boston's North Station.

I have been writing about this story since May.  (after the fold are links for diaries for background).  Yet another farmworker has died from the heat. This is the sixth this summer.

Maria de Jesus Alvarez, 63, mother of nine, died from heat exposure in the fields on August 2.  Her death makes six farm workers who died of heat exposure since May and the 15th farm worker heat death since California Governor Schwarzenegger took office.  Even one is too many.  Six this year is a tragedy.  These deaths show that the state of California is unable to protect farm workers.  

We must act.  We must force action by the state to allow farm workers to protect themselves.  For there are no others to do so.

If you care, join me after the fold.

If it's late summer 2008, then Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels must be running for re-election.

crossposted from unbossed

When the news broke earlier this month that Wal-Mart started organizing its store supervisors against Barack Obama and other pro-worker candidates who support the Employee Free Choice Act, there was widespread outrage - and rightly so. 

According to the Wall Street Journal:

"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.

Yikes! This obviously raises a lot of questions, but let's start with two I want to specifically address: Is this legal? And what is Wal-Mart afraid of?

But before we begin - more than 25,000 people have already signed a citizen petition to the Federal Election Commission asking for an investigation into Wal-Mart's electioneering.  Can you add your name to our letter?

In the case of privatization at the USPS, the latest GAO report reads more like a big April Fool's joke than reality and contains such ludicrous excuses for privatization that any competent person  would be embarrassed to make them.

crossposted from unbossed

Well, it looks like our supposed Friends of the Earth (FOE) are getting a bit to close too the earth for firefighters' comfort.

In an utter act of political "wheeling and dealing", it seems Russell Long, VP of FOE, and State Senator Mark Leno have struck a deal with furniture foam manufacturers to gut AB 706, the environmental community's effort to ban fire retardants.  The new bill which showed up in the California State Senate this week, is based on a standard that would allow the foam manufacturers to escape from protecting all elements of furniture in California.  So is this a move to save money?  Or really save lives?

According to a Consumer Product Safety Commission report the jury is still out as to whether this new standard that is being pushed by the foam manufacturers and now Friends of the Earth really works against candles, matches and other sources of fire.  And this impacts firefighters that are running into a burning house, hoping the couch is just smoldering not bursting into flames.  So here we go again - politics over policy, except this time it's the environmental activists that have gotten too close to the flame – and looks like we are all going to get burned.

They may be party animals when chugging $8,204 worth of booze but, after the hangover is over, the staff at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce goes back to being their ugly anti-worker selves.

Seems that some 100 or so Chamber of Commerce staff recently ran up an $8,204 tab at The Exchange, a sports bar within staggering distance from the Chamber's architecturally ever-so ponderous Washington, D.C., headquarters. The tab included 155 pitchers of beer, 37 bottles of beer, 208 mixed drinks, 111 shots, 43 margaritas and 11 open bottles of liquor.

And when the bosses got the tab, they weren't happy. After all, the image of Chamber staffers soaking in thousands of dollars worth of Red Bull and pitchers of vodka that sources say the party-goers ordered, strays a bit from the pin-striped image the Chamber sells its members. And then there's that problem of justifying such a large, booze-soaked expense to its frugal dues-paying members out in DeKalb, Ill., or Anaheim, Calif.

Imagine that you work in pain everyday.  Your body aches; your muscles throb; you just plain hurt. Something’s not right, and you pray everyday that it doesn’t get worse because you can’t afford to go to the doctor.  

Unfortunately, this is a reality for too many workers in this country and a story we heard on the Painful Truth Tour’s Orlando stop. I’ve been blogging about UNITE HERE’s tour of injured workers from the Cintas Corporation’s industrial laundries and how it points to the need for the Employee Free Choice Act to pass next year.

Clearly, the new EFCA legislation will be a step forward for workers in America but any delusions that workers will be close to a level playing field are misplaced. There are simply too many flaws in our free market system to overcome with a bandage solution while ignoring the real structural problems.

Well I guess the healthcare apolcalypse is upon us:

Infomercial king Billy Mays, known for screaming about the wonders of cleaning solutions Kaboom!, OxiClean, and other household products, is now starring in a commercial for what he calls "the most important product I've ever endorsed:" health insurance.

That’s right.  The man who brought you the Bloomin’ Onion Maker and the Samurai Shark is now selling health insurance.

•    An article titled "Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals" appeared in the magazine section of The New York Times on Sunday.  By telling the story of Luis Alberto Jiménez, it documents the disastrous consequences that are the result of inherent failures in the American immigration and health care systems. Below is an excerpt from the article:

The Governor announced late yesterday that he has exempted a dozen or so State Agencies:  

August 5, 2008
Who's exempt?

The administration told state Controller John Chiang this afternoon which workers are exempt from the minimum wage portion of the executive order.

Here's the list:

California Highway Patrol
Department of Transportation
Agriculture Security and Emergency Response
Veterans Affairs
Department of Developmental Services
Department of Mental Health
Military
Office of Emergency Services
Department of Water Resources
Department of Forestry (CALFIRE)
Department of Parks and Recreation
California Conservation Corps
Office of Spill Prevention
Department of Fish and Game

Thanks to The Sacramento Bee

Me, I work for the Department of Transportation so I'm basically happy, but there is more to consider beyond the fold.