Workers Rights

Yesterday on The Eagle's Mike Ferguson radio program, Roy Blunt was asked by a caller to explain his votes against raising the minimum wage.  Blunt responded by saying he's only voted against a wage hike one time while he's been in Washington. 

CALLER: I'd like to know why he has repeatedly voted against minimum wage increases when that's the level people that are hurting the most right now.  And it's been continuous over fourteen years.

BLUNT: Well, I haven't repeatedly voted against minimum wage. In fact, I think it's been before the House three times. I voted for it twice and against it once.  And I thought the last plan was a bad plan at a bad time.  When you raise minimum wage at a time when this minimum wage vote came around, you're gonna, you're gonna stop opportunities at the very time when people need opportunities.

Listen:

Actually, Blunt voted against a minimum wage increase three times in 2007 and at least four times in 2006 (i.e., repeatedly). 

As Rep. Stacey Newman notes today in the Post-Dispatch, April 20 is "Equal Pay Day," which symbolizes "how far into 2010 women must work to earn what men earned in 2009."

The most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that women who were full-time wage and salary workers in Missouri earned just 75% of the median income of their male counterparts.  The national average is about 80%.  The following chart compares the women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s.  

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.