Workers Rights

The DSCC has released a new web video and online petition challenging the 30 Republican Senators who voted against the Franken amendment to prohibit the Defense Department from contracting with companies that prohibit employees from suing for rape or sexual harassment. They write

Sen. Al Franken offered an amendment to the defense appropriations bill with this simple goal: Make sure employees -- most of them women -- who face sexual assault, battery and discrimination at work get their day in court -- and chance at justice.

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The Economic Freedom Alliance, a right-wing business organization whose members include the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, is currently running billboards and online ads attacking Claire McCaskill, Ike Skelton, Russ Carnahan, Emanuel Cleaver and Lacy Clay. The ads, which some of you may have seen on billboards or online, accuse the Democratic members of Congress of "killing jobs" because they've been supported by labor organizations and support the Employee Free Choice Act.

The ads are based on a "thoroughly discredited study" funded by the "corporate-friendly, anti-union 'Alliance to Save Main Street Jobs" and "based entirely on decades-old data from a handful of Canadian provinces."

Karl Rove, Lt. Governor Peter Kinder and former state Sen. John Loudon are all pounding the pavement luxuriously carpeted hotel ballrooms this week to rally the corporate class against basic workers' rights. Loudon is the head of the Orwellian-named Save Our Secret Ballot organization, which is trying to put a question on the ballot to preempt the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Karl Rove's sins are well known and well documented.  His involvement in Missouri on behalf of corporate interests should be all a person needs to know that the so-called Save Our Secret Ballot effort is bad news.

More locally, John Loudon has kicked off the SOS Ballot campaign with offensive and manifestly false statements about EFCA. Yesterday, for example, Dave Catanese reported via Twitter:

It's more than a little ironic that former GOP Sen. John Loudon invokes George Orwell in a dishonest opinion piece printed in last week's St. Louis Business Journal (via JohnCombest.com).

Let’s save our secret ballot in Missouri

Most of us assume voting by secret ballot in America is a constitutional right, a God-given right. Surprisingly, it isn’t guaranteed either in our federal or state constitution.

And right now, Missourians’ right to a secret ballot is in jeopardy as the U.S. Senate is within a vote or two from passing an Orwellian-named bill called EFCA – the Employee Free Choice Act. This bill would do away with secret ballot elections where employees decide who will represent them. Instead, unions could be formed in companies with as few as 10 employees through what’s known as “card check.” 

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Blue Girl at Show Me Progress has a great batch of photos from yesterday's SEIU rally in Kansas City. Check 'em out!

Who are opponents of health care reform listening to?

This new cable spot from the labor-backed Americans United For Change asks that question, and highlights the considerable gap between too many Congressional leaders and their constituencies.

One of the happier moments of Friday's madness was the legislature's decision to enable more out-of-work Missourians to collect unemployment benefits, and for a longer period. Facing 25-year-high unemployment numbers, the about-face from legislative leaders didn't come a moment too soon. 

Under the legislation passed Friday, unemployed workers can collect additional weeks of benefits when the state unemployment rate exceeds 6.5% through December, and workers can also receive benefits if they lose their jobs due to a "compelling family reason." The state is eligible for $133 million in federal stimulus money to fund the benefits.

The legislature's change of heart is particularly interesting because of the vociferous opposition from Lt. Governor Peter Kinder to any kind of extension or expansion of unemployment benefits with federal recovery dollars. Kinder, you may recall, even described the stimulus money for said benefits as a "bribe."

Could you have a worse spokesman when your organization is trying to convince the public that you're not the side with a demonstrated record of intimidation, strong-armed tactics, smashing folks' basic rights in the Employee Free Choice Act debate?

Rove to address St. Louis business leaders on how to fight Employee Free Choice Act
By Jo Mannies, Beacon Political Reporter

Karl Rove, one of the top advisers to former President George W. Bush, is slated to address St. Louis area business leaders at the St. Louis Club in Clayton on Monday afternoon.

The event is organized by the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and will focus on the proposed federal Employee Free Choice Act.

The act, which has yet to pass Congress, would make it easier for unions to organize by allowing a majority of the employees at a business to agree to form a union by signing cards, and without a vote. (A secret ballot vote would not be required, but could be held if the workers request it.)

I was really hoping that 2009 would mean a lot less Karl and Dick Cheney on the teevee.  But on the upside, their insistence on remaining very public spokesmonsters is making it really easy to identify the Dark Side in a lot of these public policy debates.

This video from CAP's American Worker Project breaks down the existing challenges for workers looking to organize pretty well:

(via Matthew Yglesias)

American Rights at Work is running a new ad highlighting the corporations that have received bailout money but refuse to support the Employee Free Choice Act.

From Hotline On Call:

"The public and lawmakers alike need to know that the special interests opposing the Employee Free Choice Act are the same ones who caused this economic meltdown," said American Rights at Work executive director Mary Beth Maxwell. "This new ad sends a resolute message that now is the time to help workers to bargain for a better life. The Employee Free Choice Act is urgently needed to create fairness in this economy."