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.

Firefighters union backs Obama

(CNN) – A major firefighters union will throw its support behind Barack Obama during its annual convention in Las Vegas on Thursday.

Obama, who is on vacation with his family in Hawaii, taped a message that will be played in front of the 3,500 members of the International Association of Fire Fighters at around 2pm E.T.

The union chose to back Obama over John McCain because of the presumptive Democratic nominee’s support of collective bargaining, which gives workers the right to jointly work with their employers to negotiate hours, salaries, benefits and overall working conditions, IAFF spokesman Scott Treibitz said.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...

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.

Cross-posted at MotherTalkers.

Traveling across the country this summer, I have come across people who say they will not vote for Sen. Barack Obama for all kinds of bizarre reasons, including the false premise that he is a Muslim.

But I paused when a dear family member, who is a manager at Walmart, said he has warned his employees that if they vote for Obama, who will "force" them to join a union, they will be out of a job. Apparently, Walmart has urged all its managers to issue this dire warning to their employees.

Remember those bad tomatoes? Remember those vile little red demons, just waiting to make you sick with salmonella?

Well, wait no longer, they weren’t the culprit.  Nope, it was peppers from Mexico.

A strain of the salmonella bacteria that sickened more than 1,300 people has been found in a serrano pepper and a sample of irrigation water at a farm in Mexico, U.S. health officials said Wednesday.They called the discovery a "breakthrough" but cautioned that tomatoes may still be a culprit in the nearly four-month outbreak that has alarmed consumers and cost the domestic produce industry hundreds of millions of dollars

Crossposted from Uniongal

DELL, notorious for using labor all over the world (exploitation shipped from country to country) has contracted with UNICOR to recycle their computers (only after they came under fire from environmental advocates for dumping toxic waste).

CBS News posted a story on this (but since it’s from AP, I won’t be linking to those rat bastards at AP).  The most important aspect of this piece is that UNICOR pays their inmates who do recycling as much as $1.26 per hour.  Okay, they also pay as little as about a quarter of a dollar, but, whatever.

More after the bump (hey, anyone able to find a youtube on the 60 minutes piece?  I cam up empty).

Years ago, 60 minutes did this amazing piece on how UNICOR (Federal Prison Industries) doesn’t have to worry about trademarks and patents and has actually put textile mills in the states out of business.

In my previous dairy, I previewed California Governor's Arnold Schwarzenegger bizare tactics.  Here it is:  Working for Anold

It's a week and a half later and 'Ahnold' has gone ahead and cut most all full time worker to Federal minimum wage ($6.55), expects us to show up and work normally and attempted to lay of 22,000 non-full time workers.  Here's the executive order and his claims:  Governor Schwarzenegger Issues Executive Order to Address State’s Looming Cash Crisis

I will dissect the lies and misrepresentations below the fold.  Yes, I'm a State Worker (and I'm pissed.)

The largest retailer in the world is playing the fear card. WAL*MART is holding meetings with its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.

Jason Furman, a key economic adviser on Barack's campaign, wrote a paper in 2005 that argued "Wal-Mart's low prices and other policies benefit low-income consumers."  

The paper, "Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story" [PDF] celebrates the Bentonville behemoth as boldly "blazing paths" and "indisputably [making] a tremendous contribution to productivity."

Nothing about how Wal-Mart destroys local economies, drives down wages, forces American jobs to go to communist China or destroys the environment.

But, Furman did say that he'd like to see Wal-Mart provide universal health care, according to the Weekly Standard.

In the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight, arch-villain The Joker blows up the Gotham City Hospital which disappears into a fireball of smoke and flames. Most film goers probably didn't realize that this was not a model or a computer generated image. The film crew actually exploded part of an abandoned factory only a few blocks from where I live. It was the old Brach's Candy plant on Chicago's West Side, a major landmark to anyone who travels on the CTA Green Line out to the Austin neighborhood or on to Oak Park and Forest Park.

What is left of the Brachs' Candy factory lies crumbling along Cicero Avenue, frequented only by the homeless, the professional junk scavengers, the graffiti artists and the urban adventurers who love to risk life and limb clambering around abandoned buildings. Brachs is only one example. Today most of Chicago's former industrial glory is a Machu Picchu of weedy rusting ruins or has been plowed under to grow a crop of yuppie condo buildings.

­Twas not always thus.­­

My grandmother was a "Rosy the Rivetter"--not because she wanted it, but because she had to do it. She was working for Ford when the "Battle of the Overpass" occurred. She was a union member for decades in Michigan.

Ever since that we've been a union family. Even during the "period of insanity" when I was an administrator, I found negotiating a useful (albeit dissonant) activity. My respect for unions was affirmed when after I stopped being "on the other side" I was asked to negotiate for the union. Mutual respect helps. So it's with pain and angst that I read that there is a serious effort to convert Michigan, the cradle of America's union movement, to a right to work state.

Never happen? Think again. Jump with me.

Imagine a world in which SCHOOLS have all the resources they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.

I remember seeing this as a poster and bumper stickers when I was growing up.

My Mom often baked for these bake sales, as all moms seem to do. We'd raise a couple hundred, maybe, but never enough to rehab the playground or buy books for an entire grade, not in my rural Ohio school district. However, today, I'm encouraged that if anyone can make sure that schools can get the resources they need, we're looking at the leadership that can get this done.

UPDATE

This diary is NOT about NCLB, it is about a major change in leadership and the promise that change holds for the future.  

The media IS paying attention to labor. Well at least this key AP story is being picked up. So let’s give credit where it’s due for "Cintas workers criticize company's safety record". The A.P. story is about a group of current and former Cintas laundry workers who were injured on the job and are going across the country, speaking out about their working conditions (I blogged about this Tuesday).

Their strategy may not work, but it's fun to watch. The British Labour party is in massive trouble: it is on the verge of bankruptcy. Traditionally, it was, um, a "Labour" party--financed by and supposedly working for working people, as represented by the unions. Blair's project was to gradually cut this tie, repositioning "New Labour" as something more like the US Democratic Party, moderate and funded primarily by big business.
But now Labour's fair-weather friends in business are defecting to their true home, the Conservative Party. Labour is left at risk of literally having to sell off its HQ and let go staff, having lost hundreds of thousands of members since Blair's rise to power, the Iraq war, and many, many policy decisions that have hurt working people. They are very likely to lose the next  national election.
This has put the unions in an interesting position. More about what they want below the fold.

I’m A VERY Bad Girl!

No, seriously, I am

You see, last night, I forgot what it means to advocate without wanting to be the crap out of someone.  Wait, let me tell you what happened and I’ll get to the moment when I let myself be lead right over that cliff.  

Hmm, let’s do it after the bump...come on, follow me over the cliff.

Today's diary is part II in a series. "Part I", posted the other day, is here:

Bush Dynasty is the Visible Legacy of the "Merchants of Death" of Jupiter Island

The son of Remington Arms principle, Samuel F. Pryor, founder of the colony of elite living on Jupiter Island, Fl, business partner of both Bush grandfathers, founding director of Harriman/Bush's Hamburg-Amerika Shipping Line and of Thyssen's Union Bank (UBC), connected with the Du Pont sponsored fascist coup that Gen. Smedley Butler testified to the Dickstein McCormack committee about in 1934 (Pryor died in 1934), Sam F. Pryor Jr., was the 1940 Wendell Wilkie republican campaign official who facilitated the funding of that campaign by Hermann Goering's American representative, William Rhodes Davis.

One of the google.books links in this post documents British spymaster in America, Stephenson's admission that he "removed" Rhodes Davis, who died suddenly in Mexico in August, 1942.

The most startling things, besides the continuation of Nazi ties of Harriman/Bush/Pryor, to Pryor's son, in 1940, is that Wendell Wilkie apparantly knew that Nazi money was financing his campaign,

The people who cook lunches, clean classrooms, and provide medical care at the University of California live in poverty.  96% of the people who do these important, necessary jobs are eligible to receive public poverty assistance.  Many people working at the UC -- one of the world's most prestigious universities -- have to work two or even three jobs just to pay rent and put food on the table for their families.

I just got back from the picket line here at UC Santa Barbara, where I'm a teacher and graduate student.  The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 3299 (AFSCME), which represents the 8,500 people who cook, clean, and work in health clinics across the University, today began a five-day strike after more than a full year of demanding a better contract with fair wages .  There are about 100 or so workers and supporters at the main entrance to UCSB right now, demonstrating for a fair contract.  Spirits are high, because everyone knows that the University simply cannot work without them -- so they're going to win a fair contract.  It's just a matter of time.

Today, I had a very odd search.  Now, you do know that site meter does tell me what you are searching for when you find my Uniongal blog site.

You see a company in New York search for

can I fire someone who threatens to kill himself

So, you must be wondering how in the hell anyone found uniongal from this search, well, it’s because I blogged about Wesley N. Higdon, 25.

Who’s Wesley N Higdon? He’s the reason there are 6 dead in Kentucky