Gov. Scott Walker; Source: Gateway Technical College, Flickr

Starting Tuesday, Wisconsin Democrats and labor groups will start an effort to gather more than 550,000 signatures by mid-January on a petition to recall Gov. Scott Walker.

Walker earned the ire of unions when he pushed a law eliminating collective bargaining rights for public workers earlier this year. Democrats are also planning to recall Republican state legislators, although they haven’t announced their targets, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

The fight is increasingly contentious, with some Democrats fearing that Republicans might gather signatures on Walker petitions only to destroy them, and the Republican Party setting up an online “integrity center,” according to the Journal-Sentinel.

“The site allows Walker backers to submit photos, videos and complaints to the Republican Party. The purpose of the site is to protect voters who “suspect foul play by Wisconsin Democrats or big government union bosses,” said a statement from Stephan Thompson, the party’s executive director.”

The recent labor union defeat of a similar anti-collective bargaining law in Ohio energized labor forces, Bloomberg reports. A number of large rallies are planned across the state in coming weeks.

Recent polls have shown the state split on the recall effort. Walker has been rocked by a corruption investigation involving top staff members.

No Democrat candidates have yet entered the race, although the Daily Mail reports that a number of politicians are jockeying for the slot behind the scenes—possible candidates include former Sen. David Obey and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

Iowa State University politics professor Steffen Schmidt referenced the defeat of an Ohio ballot measure that would have limited labor unions: “Democrats scored and unions and liberals maybe scored some pretty significant victories over conservative policies.”

Another conservative-backed ballot measure in Mississippi, which would have banned all abortions and some forms of birth control, was also defeated.

“Mississippi’s refusing to basically ban all abortions was fairly remarkable because Mississippi is one of the most, and perhaps the most conservative state in the country,” Schmidt said. “And if they don’t want to go that far on some of these social issues like that then that tells you there is a limit to how far voters are willing to go on some of these issues, even when they generally agree on the question of abortion.”

But Republicans had some victories as well, Schmidt said, and that means it wasn’t a clear-cut message from voters. Voters in Ohio rejected the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and another measure pushed by conservatives in Mississippi that requires identification to vote was accepted.

“I think the message was more that they don’t want Republicans and especially conservatives kind of ramming things down the throat of voters,” Schmidt said.

University of Iowa politics professor Tim Hagle agreed that both parties can find some positives to take away from the Nov. 8 elections. Hagle said the rejection of those two incongruous measures in Ohio could be read as voters rejecting extreme issues, especially the collective bargaining measure which he said was “an example of Republicans overreaching a little bit.”

“You had people turn out in Ohio to reject the collective bargaining measure, these were folks that were union folks, that were liberals, and yet a lot of these same people also rejected Obamacare,” Hagle said.

But Hagle said it’s hard to say how much people were paying attention to elections in an off year, which also makes it difficult to reach too many conclusions on which way the political winds are blowing.

“Basically the bottom line is this is a mixed bag and nobody can really say it’s a great trend one way or another,” Hagle said.

Drake University politics professor Dennis Goldford said the election shows Democrats are organizing better as of late than they did in 2010.

“If they work hard and get their base turned out they can win an election,” he said. “They just don’t always do a good job of getting that turnout.”

Bachmann made the comments on the Steve Deace Show in Iowa before the Nov. 9 debate in the Wolverine State. Deace had asked Bachmann about the “pro-active, positive solution that is the alternative to socialism” in Michigan.

“It’s the fruition of all of the policies of the left which really have their origin in socialism,” Bachmann said of Michigan’s struggling economy. “If there’s anything we should have learned by now it’s that socialism doesn’t work and it’s principles don’t work.”

She also attacked other GOP presidential candidates for supporting the auto bailout, calling it the latest example of socialism in the state and saying “you won’t find any surprises with me.”

“You will find in me a core conviction,” she said, providing a nod to the title of her new book. “I’ve been the only consistent conservative in this race.”

The solution to Michigan’s unemployment problem is reducing union influence by making it a right to work state, which would allow companies to cut back on wages and benefits and be more competitive, she said.

She praised Iowa, which has a law prohibiting union membership or payment of union dues as a condition of employment. About half the states in the U.S. have a similar law; Michigan does not.

“When you have a right to work state then you can have companies adjust wages so they can open up shops to more and more hires and more employees,” Bachmann said.

She said then as more companies opened up, shop wages would eventually increase as businesses work to attract the best talent, especially if taxes and regulations are slashed at the same time.

“If we can have the tax burden lower and if we can have the regulatory burden lower then employers can afford to pay more to bid up wages and bid up benefits and then everybody succeeds,” she said.

The actual wage disparities between right to work states and those that aren’t has been a hotly contested topic for decades — or at least since most of the nation’s 22 right to work states passed their laws in the 1940s and 1950s following the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which was enacted as a response to (and amended) the Wagner Act of 1935. The latter lays out the rights of workers to unionize, while the former addressed what was then described as too much power by the unions.

Right to work essentially allows all workers at a business where a union has organized to be represented by the union, bound by the union-negotiated contract and use the union as a bargaining agent without ever having to pay union due or join the union.

In 2001 by Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute found that “the most important aspect of right-to-work law is its effect on wages.”

… On average, men in RTW states earn 7.8 percent less than their counterparts in non-RTW states; women in RTW states earn 6.8 percent less. … [W]e find that, even after controlling for regional costs of living, workers in right-to-work states earn less per hour. Particularly interesting is the affect on workers living in cities that are stretch across state line, placing it in both a right-to-work state and a non-RTW state. Seventeen out of 433 metropolitan areas in our sample (nearly 4 percent) spill over from a right-to-work state to a non-RTW state. Our analysis indicates that, in areas where a pure RTW state effect exists (i.e., no spill-over effect), the right-to-work penalty is larger. In fact, we find that living near a non-RTW state helps raise workers’ wages. …

But instead of focusing on individual wages, those that support right-to-work laws often point to a state’s overall economic situation — a similar argument to the one Bachmann made. For instance, the conservative Public Institute at Iowa Wesleyan College (now known as the Public Interest Institute), in a 2000 paper defending Iowa’s right-to-work law, noted a 1998 study that “Iowa outperformed most of its neighboring closed-shop states.”

… Four closed shop states border Iowa: Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois. From 1947-1992, Iowa’s rate of manufacturing growth was equal to that of Missouri, slightly ahead of Wisconsin, 1.5 times higher than Minnesota, and over 5.5 times higher than Illinois. This is strong evidence that Iowa has done much better economically since enacting its right-to-work law. …

The complaint was filed on Nov. 9, and will be followed by a hearing with an administrative judge if the company, MikLin Enterprises, doesn’t settle with the International Workers of the World.

For more background, see the entire story at the Minnesota Independent.

Jimmy John’s Complaint

“We have to listen carefully to what local governments say they want,” the governor told reporters last night after the election, “because the ability to … bail them out, to somehow come to the rescue with money -– we don’t have the money to do that.”

But it seems obvious that Kasich wouldn’t be “bailing out” local governments, especially after halving the state’s payments to them. The governor’s budget, passed earlier this year, included $1.4 million worth of cuts to the state’s municipalities, monies earned through sales tax revenue.

The budget also included dramatic cuts to health services, including around $360 million in cuts to nursing homes, according to the Associated Press.

“Certainly, no one was expecting a bailout of any kind from the state of Ohio,” said Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman’s spokesperson, Dan Williamson, in an interview with our sister site, The American Independent. “It’s not that we aren’t concerned with it, but it is was it is, and we are dealing with it,” he said of Columbus losing state money.  “No one thought, ‘Well, if Senate Bill 5 loses, the state is going to give us some cash’; that didn’t seem very likely.

“The mayor spoke out and said that cutting the local government fund in half wasn’t ‘shared sacrifice,’ it was disproportionate sacrifice, and he spoke out against the elimination of the estate tax, which doesn’t help the state budget at all, it only hurts cities.”

The new budget does, however, give breaks for business, totaling around $400 million annually, according to an estimate by Progress Ohio.

“The mayor spoke out on those things, and the Legislature passed it (the budget) anyway,” said Williamson. “You’ll see when we introduce our budget on Tuesday that we’re looking ahead to where those cuts are going to hit us.

“It’s passed,” he said of the state budget. “We know what’s coming. We can’t change what’s coming.”

Overcoming challenges

Williamson said that the City of Columbus has worked out many of its greatest challenges through the collective-bargaining process with the city’s workers, including phasing out the practice of pension pick-up and asking employees to pay more for their health care.

“What we’ve done with the city of Columbus is, frankly, a lot of the stuff I think [Kasich] was trying to achieve through SB5, which is getting employee benefits in-line with the market,” he said.  “Before the voters voted for the income tax increase last year, we put out a reform plan and that was to reduce the amount we spent on employee benefits, and already, in just two years, we are projected to save at least $200 million in that ten-year period of time,” he said.  (The city’s original commitment was to save $100 million over the next decade.)

Williamson said that, while the Legislature and the government had passed SB5 on the premise unions were insatiable and third-party dispute arbitrators were favorable to unions, Columbus had not found that to be the case.

“We found the arbitration period works very well,” he said, adding that phasing in cuts gradually mitigated the effect workers felt on their wallets.

“I think if Governor Kasich were to look at what we’re doing in the city of Columbus, he would find that some of what he would like to accomplish can be done by working with the unions,” he said.  “Hopefully, as he looks at what steps to take now, that could be helpful for both the Legislature and the governor.”

Source: A poster distributed as part of the IWW's campaign to win sick days for Jimmy John's workers.

The National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint Wednesday finding that Twin Cities Jimmy John’s owned by MikLin Enterprises unlawfully threatened, disciplined and terminated workers for engaging in union activities.

The complaint about the sandwich shop stems from a March incident where six supporters of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were fired after protesting the company’s lack of paid sick leave.

Among the findings against Jimmy John’s in the complaint: “Disparaging and threatening pro-union employees on Facebook, removing union postings from stores, interrogating employees about their union activities, and threatening mass firings for union organizing.”

Micah Buckley-Farlee of the Twin Cities branch of the IWW is one of the six fired workers.

“We’re looking forward to continue fighting for paid sick days, which is the starting point that led to the whole thing they fired us for,” Buckley-Farlee told the Minnesota Independent. “So I’m looking forward to getting back to my job and organizing around paid sick days.”

Unless there is a settlement between the company and the union, an administrative judge will hear the case in mid-January 2012.

Union supporters said they’re willing to consider a settlement if Jimmy John’s reinstates workers and pays back pay. The Minneapolis franchises, which are owned by MikLin Enterprises and headed by Michael Mulligan, according to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, haven’t returned a request for comment (this post will be updated if we find out more).

This isn’t the company’s first brush with labor law violations. In January 2011, the National Labor Relations Board overturned the previous union election, which the union lost by two votes, due to unfair labor practices by the company. At the time, the company and union reached an agreement that Jimmy John’s would not take action against workers supporting the union.

Buckley-Farlee said the union is keeping the possibility of an election on the table, but that the union is currently more dedicated to grassroots organizing.

Update: The Minnesota Independent has received a copy of the NLRB complaint, you can view it here.

Source: David Shankbone, Flickr

Ohio voters struck down a law pushed by Gov. John Kasich that would have taken away public sector workers’ collective bargaining rights in the state.

Just over 61 percent of people voted against the law, with 82 of 88 counties opposing the measure, according to the Ohio Secretary of State’s office.

The vote came after an intense campaign by Democrats and labor unions. The Washington Post reports that the We Are Ohio group, which opposed the measure, poured $30 million into the repeal effort. Opponents of repeal raised only $7.5 million.

The White House lauded by the vote, the Huffington Post reported.

“The President congratulates the people of Ohio for standing up for workers and defeating efforts to strip away collective bargaining rights, and commends the teachers, firefighters, nurses, police officers and other workers who took a stand to defend those rights.”

Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern told the Columbus Dispatch that politicians shouldn’t use public workers as scapegoats.

“If you overreach, the people will respond. There is no one tonight who could suggest this was about Democrats versus Republicans,” Redfern said, noting the wide margin of defeat. “This is literally about what is right and what is wrong, and what Ohioans feel is important.”

Kasich, who spearheaded the change admitted to the paper that people might have seen it as “too much, too soon.”

Source: Gfpeck, Flickr

Since American Crystal Sugar locked out union workers on Aug. 1, about 420 workers living in North Dakota have been denied unemployment benefits under state law. A proposal to allow the North Dakota residents to receive unemployment was killed in a committee of the North Dakota legislature Monday.

The proposal was being considered for the legislature’s special session but three Republicans on the committee opposed the bill.

State Sen. Terry Wanzek (R-Jamestown) told the Fargo Forum that the legislature needs to keep its focus on other issues: “It almost feels as if I’m being asked to choose sides.”

North Dakota AFL-CIO President Gary Granzotto and Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 167G President John Riskey released a joint statement criticizing the decision to block the bill.

“Workers at the Drayton and Hillsboro American Crystal Sugar plants have been forced off the job by their employer,” Granzotto and Riskey wrote. “These workers did not walk off the job; they have been locked out of their place of work.”

Workers who live in Minnesota are eligible for unemployment benefits if they’re locked out of their jobs.

“It’s time that North Dakota recognize the difference between a strike and a lockout,” they said. “It’s unfortunate that these North Dakotans are being treated differently than others in our state who have lost their jobs.”

About 1,300 workers have been locked out of their jobs at American Crystal Sugar since Aug. 1. They recently rejected the company’s most recent offer by 90 percent.

Members of the Chicago Teachers Union and Stand Up! Chicago performed a “mic check” at the beginning of Walker’s remarks that continued for several minutes, despite attempts by others at the breakfast to stifle the statements.

It’s an outrage and a shame that we sit here at this fancy breakfast to listen to someone who has wreaked havoc on the lives of working families. Governor Walker has vilified unions and insulted the 99 percent who depend on living wages and adequate benefits to support their families while on the payroll of the right-wing billionaire Koch brothers.

It is not so different from our own state where corporations and bought-off politicians clamor to find ways to grant a $100 million tax break to the Mercantile Exchange, one of the most profitable companies in the state, while social services are being slashed, while workers’ pensions are being threatened and homelessness, poverty and joblessness continue to rise. The CME has already taken $15 million of our TIF dollars. That’s our tax money that would have gone to help students in the Chicago Public Schools.

It is ironic that we give Governor Walker free rein to say what he wants while the Mayor has ordered the arrest of over 300 people in Occupy Chicago who have simply tried to express their rights to freedom of assembly. The bottom line is that Governor Walker is out of touch with America, and working people will not honor anyone seeking to undermine our lives for the benefit of the 1 percent.

Demonstrators then repeatedly chanted, “Union busting is disgusting” and “we are the 99 percent.”

Watch:

Only last week, roughly 100 Iowans gathered outside of a West Des Moines hotel to demonstrate against Walker, who was delivering a private message at an event sponsored by The Heritage Foundation. Both Walker and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad have maintained that they are not anti-worker and that they are trying to protect the middle class.

Source: Gfpeck, Flickr

One day after 90 percent of union workers rejected the most recent contract offer by American Crystal Sugar, members of the region’s congressional delegations are calling for both parties to return to the bargaining table.

About 1,300 union workers have been locked out of their jobs by American Crystal Sugar since Aug. 1. Since the lockout started, the union and company have only met twice, both times at the urging of a federal mediator. Following the rejection of Monday’s offer, there are no plans to meet again.

Sen. Al Franken said “it’s imperative that both sides continue to work to come to an agreement that will end this lockout and get workers back on the job,” pointing out that all sides play a role in the sugar industry’s success.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Collin Peterson released a joint statement highlighting the impact of the lockout on communities across the Red River Valley: “We continue to urge both Crystal Sugar management and workers to come together at the negotiating table to work out an agreement that allows workers to return to their jobs as soon as possible. American Crystal and these jobs are very important to the region.”

Locked out workers in Minnesota are receiving unemployment benefits, but those who live in North Dakota are denied them under state law. Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said in a statement that the “lock-out is taking a serious toll on families in North Dakota and Minnesota and the economic and social impact can be felt up and down the Red River Valley.”

In an interview with the Grand Forks Herald, Conrad admitted that the dispute could harm the chances of a farm bill. Franken has warned in the past that American Crystal Sugar’s tactics of locking out workers could alienate pro-worker members of Congress who have previously supported protections for the sugar industry.

Conrad told the Grand Forks Herald that the “company needs to think long and hard about the consequences, about the implications of their strategy.”