Despite the cold weather, Austin progressives gave a warm welcome to worker-hating Wisconsin governor Scott Walker today in front of the Austin Hilton. Walker was in Austin to speak to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing group that advances an extremely conservative agenda.
A large crowd of people from labor organizations, progressive groups, and allied organizations showed up at 11:30 to send a message: Scott Walker's anti-worker policies won't be tolerated in Texas! We know what Walker is doing in Wisconsin to teachers, police officers, firefighters, and public employees. We know Walker is slashing funding from higher education and trying to balance the budget on the backs of working people. We don't like it when Republicans do that here in Texas, and we sure don't like it when folks like Scott Walker do it in Wisconsin.
Despite the low temperatures (Wisconsinites, how do you stand it? It was in the 30's here today!!) the crowd was fired up, chanting anti-Walker rhymes across the street from the hotel. At one point, a group of TPPF guests peered from the window. Perhaps they were surprised to see that the 99% actually cares when the 1% tries to stomp out the worker protections and regulations that created the American middle class. Some of the TPPF folks even came down to talk to a few of the protesters.
To the right is TPPF Vice President of Communications Josh Trevino taking in a sign that reads "Unions: the folks who brought you the weekend. Scott Walker: that guy that makes you work the weekend!" If you like having weekends, fair wages, relative income equality, no more child labor, employer-based health coverage, and the family and medical leave act, you have labor unions to thank.
Labor unions work hard to help all workers retain basic protections, and have set standards for workers in the public sector and several unionized industries that in turn have helped all other working folks do better. Labor organizations provide a way for workers to band together and demand fair treatment: living wages, safe working conditions, basic benefits, and a way to seek redress against employers who exploit their workers. I wish every worker, public and private sector alike, had the protections that labor union members receive. Sure, a few CEO's may make a few million dollars less a year, but isn't it worth it for the rest of the 99% to do just a little bit better?
During the rally, organizers, including Becky Moeller, President of the Texas AFL-CIO, at right, reminded the crowd of Scott Walker's close relationship with the Koch brothers, conservative billionaires who fund right-wing and conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, and organizations linked to the Tea Party. The crowd chanted back, "Show me what plutocracy looks like!" "This is what plutocracy looks like!" Scott Walker's administration is certainly what the plutocracy looks like: he serves the leaders of massive corporations that care more about executive profits than their workers. Rather than helping to grow the middle class and give more Americans a chance to these folks push for policies that widen our income inequality and force working families struggle to get by with less and less.
It's no surprise to see many of the current GOP presidential candidates standing up for Walker -- they all want to perpetuate his anti-worker policies on a national level. Walker's denunciation of workers' rights has become a rallying cry for the entire Republican Party.
Here in Texas, progressives watched as Wisconsinites stormed their state capitol last spring to stand up for worker's rights. We cheered as Democrats won two special recall elections to the Senate last fall. Now we're excited to see the citizen-driven effort collect hundreds of thousands of signatures to force a recall election. Walker has been forced to raise over $7 million dollars to combat the effort, half of it coming from people outside of Wisconsin. There's no doubt that the 1% will fight tooth and nail to keep Walker in office.
Wisconsin organizers, what y'all are doing to kick out your failed Governor is inspiring to all of us here in Texas, who wish we had the ability to recall our own disastrous Republican, Rick Perry. We're happy to stand with you in your fight against policies that hurt working folks, and we're inspired by your effort to send a real message to Republicans who pursue rabid union-busting efforts.
Keep up the good work. As far as many of us at the rally today are concerned, the only person in Wisconsin who needs to lose his current job is Scott Walker!
As if we didn't have enough of our own failed Republicans to deal with in Texas, embattled Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is coming to Austin this week to speak to the ultra-conservative, right-wing Texas Public Policy Foundation's annual policy orientation. And by "policy orientation" we mean "ways to screw over teachers, students, the elderly, the poor, women, minorities, and anyone who isn't a card-carrying member of the 1%."
Walker is facing a recall back home in Wisconsin, where his conservative policies have alienated a vast swath of Badger State residents. Walker has cut almost $300 million from University of Wisconsin system funding. He passed a restrictive Voter ID bill like ours in Texas, which will prevent legal, registered voters from casting a ballot. He's virulently anti-union, anti-firefighter, anti-public worker and anti-teacher, as demonstrated by his efforts to ram through a bill that slashed their benefits and destroyed collective bargaining in the state.
Basically he's like Rick Perry in one of those Packers Cheesehead hats.
(By the way, a bunch of present and former Packers players have even spoken out against Walker's all-out assault on working Wisconsinites.)
So it's no surprise he's coming to Austin to visit with the painfully anti-humanist folks at TPPF, who've never met a social safety net they didn't want to shred. Well here in Texas we know a thing or two about failed Governors. So it's no surprise to see the Texas AFL-CIO organizing people to protest Walker's attack on working Wisconsinites. Join the AFL-CIO and give Scott Walker a fitting welcome to Austin this Thursday, January 12, 11:30 a.m. at Brush Square, 4th and Neches. Let's show Scott Walker that we've heard about his terrible anti-workin' folks policies up in Wisconsin and that we don't like him coming here and telling conservative Texans how to do even more harm to the people in our state.
A release from the Wisconsin AFL-CIO about the event is below, emphasis mine:
Working Families to Protest Gov. Walker in Texas In a show of solidarity union and community members set to protest Wisconsin Governor's fundraising trip to Austin
(MILWAUKEE, WI) - The Texas AFL-CIO and the Austin labor movement are encouraging union and community members to stand up for worker rights and to come together to support the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall effort when Governor Scott Walker visits Austin, Texas on Thursday. There will be a Texas-style protest, at noon on Thursday, January 12 at the Hilton Austin downtown at 500 E. 4th Street.
Gov. Walker will be speaking at the right-wing Texas Public Policy Foundation's annual policy orientation for Texas legislators.
"Wherever Scott Walker goes, working people will stand together to hold him accountable for his union-busting, middle-class destroying agenda which not only hurts people in Wisconsin but hurts working people throughout the country," said Phil Neuenfeldt, President of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO. "We stand together as one movement to fight for economic equality and social justice in the global economy."
"We applaud the Texas AFL-CIO for their efforts to expose Scott Walker and his extreme agenda," said Stephanie Bloomingdale, Secretary-Treasurer of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO. "Gov. Walker's attacks on public employees, education, health care, child labor laws, and voting rights threaten the very fabric of our nation. Fortunately, hard-working men and women are standing up in Texas and in every corner of the United States to say enough is enough."
Join the Texas AFL-CIO this Thursday, January 12 at 11:30 a.m. at 4th and Neches. They're meeting at Brush Square, that patch of grass between the Convention Center, the train station, and the Hilton.
To get your protesting juices a-flowing, here's a charming video of some folks in Wisconsin protesting Scott Walker. Read their story here.
Campaign season is underway! Even though we don't know for sure when our primary will be or what races will make it on to the ballot, that hasn't stopped the wheels from turning in several contested Democratic races here in Travis County. There are 10 contested primary elections within Travis County, for four countywide positions (District Attorney, Sheriff, Tax Assessor Collector, 167th District Judge) and several Constable and County Commissioner seats.
Today, the Austin Central Labor Council held their endorsement meeting, deciding on contested races on the ballot here in Travis County. Rick Cofer, Austin CLC COPE Chair, forwarded BOR their endorsements from today's meeting. I have added an (i) to indicate incumbents.
2012 CLC ENDORSEMENTS
Greg Hamilton (i) for Sheriff
Bruce Elfant for Tax Assessor-Collector*
Ron Davis (i) for County Commissioner, Precinct 1
Karen Huber (i) for County Commissioner, Precinct 3*
Danny Thomas (i) for Constable, Precinct 1*
Adan Ballesteros (i) for Constable, Precinct 2*
Sally Hernandez for Constable, Precinct 3*
Maria Canchola (i) for Constable, Precinct 4*
*Unanimous Endorsement
The CLC voted to make a Dual Endorsement of David Wahlberg and Efrain De La Fuente in the race for 167th District Judge.
The CLC voted to make No Endorsement in the race for Travis County District Attorney.
The CLC voted unanimously to endorse ALL unopposed Travis County Democratic Primary candidates.
The CLC voted to recommend to the State AFL-CIO COPE that the State COPE endorse Lloyd Doggett, Ciro Rodriguez and Dan Grant in their respective congressional districts under the current interim map ordered by the San Antonio three judge panel.
Thank you to all of the labor union members, candidates and staff that participated in today's candidate screening.
And as we've seen through the early stages of the primary, the District Attorney race had some action in the endorsement forum. To earn the CLC endorsement, a candidate must have two thirds of the votes present in favor of endorsing. Cofer said that initially the Amalgamated Transportation workers moved for a dual endorsement. Cofer made a substitute motion to endorse Rosemary Lehmberg. There was a 18-12 vote in favor of Lehmberg, not enough to meet the 2/3rds threshold. A vote on the original motion of a dual endorsement also failed. As a result, Jack Kirfman made a substitute motion for no endorsement in the DA's race, which passed.
Congratulations to all of the endorsed candidates!
Labor unions and working Americans scored a big victory this week when President Barack Obama used recess appointments to fill three vacancies on the National Labor Review Board. The NLRB is the independent governmental agency that conducts elections for labor union representation and addresses unfair labor situations. The three vacancies filled by Obama enable the board to resume issuing decisions on labor-related issues. The positions had been vacant since the Bush administration, as Republicans threatened to filibuster Obama's nominees. In the meantime, the Supreme Court ruled that decisions by the remaining two members were invalid due to lack of a quorum.
Well, not anymore! In addition to his recess appointment of Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Obama has filled the three NLRB vacancies. To give more context on this situation, BOR invited René Lara & Ed Sills from the Texas AFL-CIO to explain the significance of these appointments.
Obama's Recess Appointments Send Some Bullies a Message
By René Lara & Ed Sills, Texas AFL-CIO
President Obama's aggressive decision this week to make recess appointments after Republicans signaled they would confirm no one, no matter how qualified, to important posts, follows through on his warning in 2008 that his opponents should not bring a knife to a gunfight.
The president's recess-appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three labor law experts to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to re-establish a quorum at that agency acknowledged that the White House had no option but to take on forces that seek to stifle the act of governing.
Seen in full context, the election of Obama in 2008 was followed by a level of partisan behavior by Republicans that is unprecedented in our lifetimes. We would readily concede that no minority party gives any president a free ride, but it has been a very long time since a minority party behaved with the utter lack of nuance we have witnessed in the last three years.
The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, baldly declared that the major goal for his party, rather than accomplish any intrinsic good for Americans, was to defeat Obama in 2012. And Republicans have validated McConnell's view time and again. Even after the 2008 election had provided the clearest mandate a Democratic president had received since the days of President Johnson, Republican senators systematically used the filibuster to stop legislation and appointments that had clear majority support. The shut-down strategy paid off, at least temporarily, in the 2010 elections, when the economy swooned in the aftermath of the Bush-era recession and Republicans were able to elevate normal minority party gains to historic proportions.
Democrats are no innocents in the partisan wars. But the GOP emphasis on "voter ID" laws and partisan attacks on labor unions are in large part about partisanship. "Voter ID" laws, enacted with virtually no Democratic support, have become a national GOP strategy aimed at doing what poll taxes and literacy tests used to accomplish for white majorities - knocking away percentages of the opposition vote.
The raw partisanship at work in the nation's capital permeates assaults on the NLRB. Attempts to enact union-bashing legislation in New Hampshire, Indiana and other venues seek to tamp down the opposition vote from union quarters. Obama's appointments to the NLRB send a strong signal to Republicans and their business constituency. After all, this is the government agency that is supposed to protect workers who want to form a union to negotiate a contract with their employer. For years that agency has been rendered toothless by laws that allow employers to scare employees into voting against forming a union.
The dismay displayed by Republicans this week over Obama's recess appointments may have more to do with his decision to take on bullies than with the substance of the appointment. But if Obama has to punch a bully, he chose a good place to hit him. The office of the presidency is not without power even against the most recalcitrant Congress or the "trusts" that Teddy Roosevelt busted a century ago.
Obama's patience has finally worn thin, and that's a good thing.
Lara is the Director of Legislation/Politics at the Texas AFL-CIO. Sills is Communications Director at the Texas AFL-CIO.
About a week ago, Democratic candidate for Lt. Gov, Linda Chavez-Thompson spoke to a very friendly room at the Texas AFL-CIO convention. A friendly room to say the least. Chavez-Thompson has a rich history within the labor movement.
In December 1967, she was hired as a Secretary at the Constitution Laborer's Union in Lubbock, Texas. Over the next forty years, Chavez-Thompson kept working to build a long and impressive career working on behalf of working people, fighting to bring fairness and opportunity to Texans in communities across the state. Her work with unions culminated in 1995, when she was elected Executive Vice-President of the National AFL-CIO, the first woman and the first person of color to hold that position.
Having seen her on the campaign trail a few times, Chavez-Thompson always gives a good, fiery speech. This however, is a particularly comfortable and exciting one.
My favorite line is, "it's easier to secede than admit that you rank #48, 49, or 50 in almost every state ranking." (a line first reported on twitter). It is easy to see her comfort with the room and her eagerness to campaign. Most importantly, her passion for her life's work is evident. Chavez-Thompson will have a tough few weeks ahead of her, especially in Austin, but with such a low information campaign being waged for one of the most important job in Texas, every vote, video, new article, etc. will matter.
Chavez-Thompson is running along with former Austin District Attorney Ronnie Earle, and Marc Katz an Austin Deli guru.
(disclosure: GNI Strategies did LCT's quick, temporary website for the primary)
Seven months ago I moved to Texas from the upper-Midwest, where I worked for 7 years in the labor movement. After two "purple" electoral cycles in 2000 and 2004, I witnessed the central role that labor played in re-establishing the upper-Midwest as a reliable democratic stronghold. Now I find myself in Texas, eager to help repaint this state blue--a challenge made unnecessarily difficult due to the relative low density of organized labor in the state.
The candidacy of national labor leader Linda Chavez-Thompson for Lieutenant Governor needs to be seized upon by Democrats as the first fortuitous opportunity of the new decade. At the core of this candidacy lie the seeds of powerful possibilities for both Texas workers and Texas Democrats. To paraphrase Georg Simmel, sometimes we need a stranger to point out something new about ourselves--I hope that my perspective as a new Texan may shed a novel light on this subject.
One observation I have made since arriving in Austin is that unions are sometimes held in contempt or discounted by otherwise loyal Texas Democrats. To understand why I find this startling, consider this: of the top 15 states in terms of high union member density, Obama won 14 (not Alaska). Of the bottom 15 states, Obama only won 4 (New Mexico, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida). If Texas had over 15% union density like Wisconsin, opposed to the reality of less than 5%, not only would it be easier to elect Linda Chavez-Thompson, but it would be easier to elect other democrats to statewide office. In short, there is an electoral argument that the Democratic Party can't afford to ignore: labor brings money and volunteers.
Democrats need to understand that a primary victory by Linda Chavez-Thompson would bring a keen interest from the national labor movement that will guarantee their serious involvement at the top of the ticket. Nationally, Chavez-Thompson continues to be revered in the labor movement and that means that both dollars and volunteers will flow to Texas to support her campaign. Labor will understand that her fate is tied to the bigger picture of Democratic favorability and I think that there will be a positive spillover effect to the other campaigns.
Electing Linda Chavez-Thompson would also be a boon to Texas workers. Organizing campaigns would benefit from having a major public official who would stand up to defend workers' rights to organize. I don't have to have lived in Texas to know that many Texas employers have waged shameful and illegal campaigns of harassment and intimidation to prevent their workforce from joining a union. Nascent unions would have a public ally to shine a light on these practices and ultimately that would mean more successful campaigns and more union members.
What would be the impact of greater union density in Texas? There are many reasons to believe that greater union density would help the state economically, not least those most in need. More union members also would lead to more local resources (i.e. money and volunteers) to fight politically. Moreover, unions are one of the rare institutions that have the power to counteract and deconstruct conservative ideology amongst its membership. Communication from unions to their membership via newsletters, direct mail, and general exposure to progressive ideals has the power to transform people, so it is no wonder that the fear-mongers on the right have always been afraid of the labor movement. In short, more density means more Democrats.
To conclude, many people seem to think that the labor movement can be reduced to a handful of major accomplishments in the first half of the 20th century and that it is no longer relevant to the modern American worker. The reality is that the labor movement still exists and is meaningful for millions of American workers across most sectors of the economy. The successful campaign to organize 5000 janitors in Houston in 2005, combined with the fact that 2007 marked the first year of overall growth of the US labor movement in 25 years signals that labor history is very much up for grabs. Electing Linda Chavez-Thompson, a major figure in the US Labor Movement, has the potential to reshape Texas popular opinion of organized labor and would have broad implications for the Texas Democratic Party.
This Labor Day, Wake Up Walmart, along with a large coalition of labor, environmental and community groups, are challenging Walmart to live up to their PR promises and join us in supporting the American Values Agenda for Change at Walmart.
To help with the effort, Wake Up Wal-Mart is airing two TV ads in major cities. Check out the first here and the second below the fold:
My family have lived in Texas for a century, I went to college there, and I'm not sure any of us would have predicted that the Lone Star State would become one of our nation's real unionizing hotspots.
But it has.
Over the last few years, a genuine national nurses movement has coalesced, giving RNs a collective voice at long last. 150,000 nurses have come together in a new form of patient advocacy.
And now Texas nurses are building their own nurses movement, from the ground up, with NNOC-Texas, the National Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas. Texas has become one of the real hotspots for the national nurses movement, and so far over 10,000 RNs (!!) have participated in some form of activism, whether that's organizing their facility, marching on the state Capitol, or phonebanking legislators.
I watched the great movie Wall-E last night. If you haven't seen it yet, fire up your Netflix or jot down a note to hit Blockbuster after work.
If you have seen it, you probably recognized the corporate behemoth of Buy-N-Large. We have a similar, sinister company down here on Earth called Wal-Mart.
In the movie, Buy-N-Large has gotten so gargantuan and out-of-control that it has taken on every aspect of society: It peddles every possible product at its Supercenters, it sells gas, it controls the banks -- and it has even taken on the role of a quasi-government.
Wal-Mart would love to be Buy-N-Large if it could. Indeed, the Bentonville behemoth has recently attempted to grow beyond its traditional Supercenter model. It has introduced gas stations and has even tried to create a bank!
Wake Up Walmart has released its first video of 2008. Walmart is a key issue for progressives to focus on -- because of their awful health care benefits, Texas citizens are estimated to be paying $134,161,466 a year in taxes to cover poor Walmart employees and their families with health care -- while Walmart is making huge profits.
Please check out this video, and let your friends know why we need to "Wake Up Walmart".
During the rally, organizers, including Becky Moeller, President of the Texas AFL-CIO, at right, reminded the crowd of Scott Walker's close relationship with the Koch brothers, conservative billionaires who fund right-wing and conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, and organizations linked to the Tea Party. The crowd chanted back, "Show me what plutocracy looks like!" "This is what plutocracy looks like!" Scott Walker's administration is certainly what the plutocracy looks like: he serves the leaders of massive corporations that care more about executive profits than their workers. Rather than helping to grow the middle class and give more Americans a chance to these folks push for policies that widen our income inequality and force working families struggle to get by with less and less.
