AlterNet.org

AlterNet / By Dan DiMaggio

Union-Busting: Six Fired After Demanding Sick Days for Fast-Food Workers

After publicly demanding paid sick days, organized workers at the fast-food sandwich chain were fired.

March 25, 2011 |

The poster which led to the firings.

Photo Credit: Dan DiMaggio

Six key organizers with the Jimmy John’s Workers’ Union in Minneapolis were fired on Tuesday, March 22, after putting up posters around the city demanding paid sick days from the sandwich chain. According to David Boehnke, one of the discharged workers, the six workers received notices that they were fired for “defaming the brand and disloyalty to the company.”

The Jimmy John’s Workers’ Union, which is affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), garnered national media attention last year, as it would have been the first union in the American fast food industry. These workers' struggles could have implications for the entire service sector.

The firings come in the wake of a National Labor Relations Board settlement which threw out the results from an October 22 union election that the Jimmy John’s Workers’ Union narrowly lost, 87-85. In filings with the NLRB after the elections, the union alleged that the Mulligans, owners of the Minneapolis franchises, had threatened to freeze wages, falsely accused union supporters of sabotage, and engaged in other illegal actions prior to the election. The settlement allowed the union to call for a new election anytime in the next 18 months.

Over the past two months, union supporters had been campaigning to get the Mulligans to negotiate over their “10-Point Program for Justice at Jimmy John’s,” which includes wage increases, guaranteed hours, and better job security. Recently, they had begun to emphasize their demand for paid sick days, wearing buttons that said “Sick of Working Sick” and beginning to put up posters around the city.

The posters show two identical sandwiches, asking, “Can you tell which sandwich was made by a sick worker?” According to Boehnke, the union’s goal is to “make clear that workers are being forced to work sick” thanks to the lack of paid sick days, which endangers the health of customers.

The union says that workers have trouble calling in sick both because they fear being disciplined and cannot afford to miss out on a day’s work, since many workers earn the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

In a press release from the union, Micah Buckley-Farlee, another one of the fired workers, said, “It just isn't safe - customers are getting their sandwiches made by people with the flu, and they have no idea, and now we're getting fired for blowing the whistle on this disgusting practice.”

The National Labor Relations Act expressly forbids employers from firing workers for attempting to organizing a union. As part of the NLRB settlement agreed to in January, the Mulligans agreed to put up notices in all their franchises explaining workers’ right to form a union. Among other things, the notice stated, “WE WILL NOT discipline employees in retaliation for their union or other concerted, protected activities.”

According to a study by Kate Bronfenbrenner, Director of Labor Education Research at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, employers fire workers in 34 percent of all union organizing campaigns.

She notes that this trend has gotten worse in recent years. In a 2009 Washington Post editorial titled “A War Against Organizing,” Bronfenbrenner writes, “Employers are more than twice as likely as they were in the 1990s to use 10 or more tactics - including threats and firings - to thwart workers' organizing efforts, and they are more likely to use more punitive and aggressive tactics such as interrogations, discharges and threats of plant closings.”

Jimmy John’s is a national sandwich chain based in Champaign, Illinois. Its founder, Jimmy John Liautaud, recently sparked controversy when he announced he was considering moving the company to Florida or Indiana after Illinois raised its income and corporate tax rates.

In an interview earlier this month with National Restaurant News, Mike Mulligan explained that the company’s opposition to paid sick days and the other demands of the union “are consistent with the industry in which we operate … When I say, ‘The things for which you’re asking are not done in the industry in which we’re competing,’ the [union says], ‘Yeah, that’s the problem. We’re going to start with you and revolutionize the industry.’”

In many countries, paid sick days are a constitutional right. According to an Institute for Health & Social Policy study, 127 countries guarantee at least a week of paid sick days per year. 98 of these guarantee a month or more. In the U.S., however, 39 percent of private sector workers have no paid sick days, including 78 percent of those in the bottom 10 percent of wage earners (where most fast food workers are concentrated).

The Jimmy John’s Workers’ Union has announced that it will file unfair labor practices charges with the NLRB over the firings. Supporters organized a call-in day on Wednesday, March 23 to the Mulligans to demand both reinstatement of the six workers and paid sick days. Pickets at Jimmy John’s locations are being planned throughout the week.

The Mulligans did not respond to texts or phone calls for this article.

Dan DiMaggio is a freelance writer, temp worker and activist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His writings have appeared in Monthly Review, Truthout, and Dollars & Sense.

In Michigan, We’re Facing More Than Just a Class War

Published on Thursday, March 24, 2011 by RH Reality Check

In Michigan, We’re Facing More Than Just a Class War

by Angi Becker Stevens

The state of Michigan has been receiving a fair bit of national attention lately, as newly-elected Governor Rick Snyder pushes forward shockingly anti-union, anti-working class legislation, some of which makes Governor Scott Walker’s bill in Wisconsin look tame by comparison. I’ve been on the front lines of the burgeoning movement here--particularly focused on building a more united left-- while also working to organize this month’s upcoming Walk For Choice in Detroit. So it was surprising to me to learn that in spite of the degree to which I’ve been scrutinizing these issues, Michigan’s recent proposed anti-choice legislation almost flew completely under my radar.

In the Lansing State Journal, Louise Knott Ahern offers descriptions of several of the anti-choice bills that have recently been introduced in Michigan. Among other bills not mentioned by Ahern, Senate Bill 13 would alter statutory law such that “The word ‘individual’ shall be construed to mean a natural person and to include a fetus.” House Bill 4433 would provide stricter guidelines for pre-abortion ultrasounds, mandating that an ultrasound be performed no fewer than two hours prior to the beginning of an abortion procedure, and requiring specifically that “The physician or qualified person assisting the physician shall ensure that the ultrasound screen is turned toward the patient to allow her to easily view the active ultrasound image of the fetus” (while still insisting that this constitutes giving women “an option” to view the ultrasound), as well as mandating that the most high-tech and visually accurate ultrasound possible be used. Particularly frightening when considering these proposals is the high level of support for anti-abortion measures in Michigan’s current state government: 76 percent of the Senate is anti-choice or mixed, and 71 percent of the House is anti-choice, mixed, or unknown. In Ahern’s words, “Michigan anti-abortion activists are taking advantage of what they consider the friendliest state government in decades,” proposing legislation with the potential to render Michigan one of the most restrictive states in the nation with regard to abortion rights.

I care deeply about the issues facing the working class both here in Michigan and around the country, and it is my hope that the people of Wisconsin inspire others to build strong movements to protest injustices across the nation. But as we mobilize to speak out in the name of social justice, we cannot become so singularly focused that we forget to include the basic rights and freedoms of women. Now is perhaps the perfect time to inject a more holistic analysis into working-class struggle—for those of us who are passionately defensive of reproductive rights to send the message that issues of class and reproductive politics in America are intricately interwoven. Working-class women are disproportionately likely to need access to abortion; the conservative leadership in Michigan is at once proposing to make working-class motherhood more financially challenging—by removing our Earned Income Credit for working families, placing limits on eligibility for cash assistance programs for families, and mandating paycuts and privitizations that will harm all public workers—while at the same time placing further restrictions on whether one is to become a mother in the first place. It is a perfect reflection of a right-wing agenda that calls itself “pro-life” while constantly slashing funding for any programs that strive to improve the lives of those most in need.

The hundreds of thousands of protesters in Madison have it right: we need to get angry, to stand up and unite and fight back. But in doing so, let’s not allow reproductive rights to fall by the wayside. Let’s take this opportunity—a climate of reinvigorated energy for protest and struggle—to fight for all of our rights.

© 2011 RH Reality Check

Angi Becker Stevens is a fiction writer whose work has appeared in many print and online literary magazines, in addition to being anthologized in Best of the Web 2010 and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. As a member of The Organization For a Free Society, she organizes around all varieties of social justice, and is particularly involved in feminist and polyamorous activism.

TPMDC

The Real Death Panel: If 'Obamacare' Repealed, Some Patients Can't Go Back

If the health care reform law were to disappear tomorrow, Dallas Wiens would be in trouble.

Earlier this week, in a 15-hour procedure, Boston surgeons grafted a donor's face onto Wiens' skull. Weins is a 25-year-old boom lift operator from Texas who came into contact with a live electrical wire, costing him his lips, nose, and eyes and leaving him severely disfigured.

The Department of Defense covered the cost of the surgery through a grant to Brigham and Women's Hospital, where the surgery was performed -- an investment the military hopes will pay off in new surgical techniques that will benefit wounded soldiers. But all the Pentagon's largesse would have been for naught without the new health care law.

At 25, Wiens was too old to be a beneficiary on his parent's health insurance policy, until the health care reform law raised the maximum age to 26. Without that coverage, Weins wouldn't have been able to afford the expensive immunosuppressant drugs that he must take for the rest of his life to prevent his body from rejecting his new face. Patients have to demonstrate that they will be able to afford the anti-rejection drugs to qualify for a transplant.

If the health care reform law were to be wiped off the books before Wiens turns 26, he'd have to figure out, quickly, how to get those drugs by other means. Wiens almost certainly won't run into trouble. According to the Associated Press he'll turn 26 in a few weeks, and transfer off his father's insurance on to Medicare, which covers seniors 65 and older, people with disabilities, and those suffering from a handful of specific life-threatening illnesses.

But if the Republican Party's crusade against the health care reform law is successful -- if they somehow manage to repeal it, or if the Supreme Court voids it entirely -- other transplant patients will find themselves in a similarly perilous situation: with a new organ but unable to afford the critical life-saving drugs that make transplants viable.

In the year since the law passed, patients and their doctors have been making treatment decisions based on current benefits, according to health care experts and providers interviewed by TPM, including the prohibition on discrimination against children with pre-existing health conditions, a "Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan" for adults, and the "Young Invincibles" provision that allowed Wiens to get his transplant.

Like Wiens, other patients will get transplants and life-saving treatments, thanks to these new benefits. But, also like Wiens, these same patients will require lifetimes of expensive care and medication, without which they'll reject their new organs and die, according to the experts and providers we talked to. The consequences of the care they received thanks to the health care reform law, will leave them holding the bag, if Congress or the Court abolishes it. That means bankrupting out of pocket costs, a scramble for care and medication, and possibly death.

Interviews with doctors, patients, and advocates, suggest this is a very real potential consequence of an abrupt, and complete, repeal or voiding of the law.

"Then you've got a life and death issue because without those drugs, your organ will be rejected, and when that organ is rejected, unfortunately you will die," said LaVarne Burton, president of the American Kidney Fund.

Patients with these sorts of life-threatening health conditions wouldn't necessarily face automatic death sentences if they become ensnared in the politics of health care reform. But their options would be meager, and when they proved inadequate, or didn't materialize, it could cost them their lives.

"We don't know how many people will be in that particular situation, and that will depend partially on when patients start getting transplanted under the health care reform regulations, and if it does get repealed, will it happen in one or two years, and how big will the pool of patients be in that time frame," said Dr. Javed Butler, an Emory University cardiologist, health policy expert, and spokesman for the American Heart Association. "The size of the pool of such individuals will surely grow over time."

The percentage of all transplant patients who fall into this hole would be small. But, Butler noted, the problem would extend far beyond transplant patients to patients requiring other forms of advanced care. "The numbers will not be minor or minuscule," he said.

Butler points to the plight of people with end-stage heart failure. In the past, and in the absence of a donor organ, that diagnosis would have been fatal. Today, doctors can implant what's known as a Left Ventricular Assist Device into the chest cavity, to mechanically pump blood and ease the strain on the sick heart. (This is the device that former Vice President Dick Cheney, who suffers from congestive heart failure, received last year.) Patients can now survive long term with those devices but require specialized ongoing long-term care.

This is much different than being an organ recipient, Butler said, and "[because] there is no particular limitation in terms of availability, the pool of such individuals could be potentially large."

The consequences of a change in benefits would exceed the obvious human toll, and include the waste of economic resources, and, in the case of transplant patients, the loss of a viable organ.

Once the benefits were rescinded, patients would have unenviable choices. A transplant patient could apply for Medicaid in his or her state. Some of those between the ages of 18 and 26 could apply for temporary and expensive COBRA benefits. If those options were exhausted, he or she could beg pharmaceutical companies to provide free medication as part of their patient assistance programs. But that's about it, advocates, experts, and providers say.

To be clear, the phenomenon of people in need of chronic care suddenly finding themselves hobbled and without adequate insurance coverage isn't new. But it's typically the result of an unforeseen change in individual circumstances -- a layoff, say, or an insurance company rescission -- not a wholesale change in the law.

Phil Green is 58 years old, and used to run projects for a private contractor called Continental RPV (Remotely Piloted Vehicles). He would manage and build aerial targets for the military and other countries -- target drones used for training gunners.

"I had a real good career and everything else, and one thing led to another where I couldn't do the job anymore, I lost my insurance, they took me off the transplant list -- was on it since 2002," he told me this week, just after undergoing dialysis.

Green survives on Medicare, which has a special carveout for people under 65 with end-stage renal disease. Medicare covers his dialysis, but if he gets a kidney transplant, Medicare will only cover his anti-rejection drugs for 36 months, after which he's on his own. Because Green would be unable to afford those drugs, and Medicare only covers some of the transplant costs, he got booted from the transplant list.

"They took me off because I'm not financially able to afford the transplant, and the followup medications," he said. "I've kind of given up -- I always thought once I get a transplant I can go back to work, doing what I was doing before, everyone in the industry knew me. I'll go as long as the dialysis works, and then I don't know because each year gets worse and worse. I always had really good energy ... but now I can see that things are going down, down, down."

When the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan became ground based, Green's industry contracted. So his employment options are limited. "How do you even begin to look for work in this kind of economy in my condition?" Green wonders aloud.

There are no shortage of stories like Green's. But they're caused by fundamental failures of the health care system that the aims to fix. If the law were to disappear in one fell swoop, it would sweep a whole new category of patients into this circumstance, not because of a market failure, but because of politics.

This worst-case scenario would happen only if the law were repealed or thrown out in its entirety by the Supreme Court. Wholesale repeal is unlikely to make it through the Democratic-controlled Senate and would be vetoed by President Obama. The Supreme Court could uphold the law, or strike the insurance mandate provision alone, leaving intact the benefits critical to transplant patients. But according to experts, this is a very real scenario if Republican lawmakers who support immediate repeal of the law were to prevail.

The political and medical fallout, if they got their way, would resemble the unfolding chaos in Arizona, where Republican Gov. Jan Brewer's Medicaid cuts are leaving patients who'd come to rely on its bare-bones insurance on their death beds -- or sticking hospitals, and therefore taxpayers, with the bill.

"That's a horrible situation and I can't imagine a single medical center that would let that patient go," Butler said. "You can't transplant a patient and let them be without medication."

AlterNet.org

ECONOMY

AlterNet / By Joshua Holland

8 Unemployed for Every Job Opening: What Are They Supposed to Do Once Their Benefits Run Out?

Is there any hope of help arriving for the "99ers"?

March 23, 2011 |

There are now approximately 14 million Americans who want a job and can't find one. According to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), if they stood side by side, they'd stretch from Bangor, Maine to Los Angeles, California and back.

While plenty of ink has been dedicated to distant crises in the Middle East and Japan, and a wholly trumped up “deficit crisis” that haunts the sleep of the Beltway media, this disaster occurring right here at home has received far less attention than it should.

Those who have been out of work for an extended period of time face not only extreme economic suffering, but also unique barriers to getting back into the workforce. Yet the political establishment has all but ignored the pain being felt by this broad swath of working America. Economist Paul Krugman called them the “forgotten millions,” and warned that “we’re well on the way to creating a permanent underclass of the jobless.”

That disconnect has left a gap that some individuals and grassroots organizations have attempted to fill. Their efforts are commendable, and at times innovative, but a number of activists interviewed by AlterNet said that absent a serious effort by the federal government, they are merely tinkering around the edges of a deep and avoidable catastrophe.

36 Weeks

In February, the average length of joblessness for all unemployed workers was a record 36 weeks. Many of those people relied on their unemployment insurance to get by until it ran out and still haven't found work -- they've come to be known as "99ers," as extended unemployment benefits in many states last a maximum of 99 weeks. NELP researchers estimate there were 3.9 million 99ers out of work last year, and project a similar number for 2011.

“It's pretty tragic out there for a lot of people,” says Mike Thornton, a writer and activist who runs a Web site dedicated to providing information and resources for the jobless called the LayoffList. “The long-term unemployed are discriminated against for being long-term unemployed,” he said. Employers are hesitant to hire those who have been out of work for a lengthy period of time because they think there must be something wrong with workers who haven't been picked up by another firm by now, but the reality is that there are now five unemployed people for each job opening. According to NELP, when you include people who are working part-time while looking for a full-time gig, that ratio jumps to eight to one.

Making matters worse, extended periods of unemployment crush people's sense of self-worth. “There are a lot of self-esteem issues there,” says John Dodds, director of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project. “There are obviously issues of maintaining the basic necessities – people are losing their homes. It's a very depressing situation for the long-term unemployed – they have to worry about their benefits running out, and many of them have.”

“It's not easy on anyone,” says Mitchell Hirsch, who was out of work for more than six months after being laid off from his retail job of over 20 years and has since become an organizer with NELP. “The first thing that hit me,” Hirsch said, “is just the loss of the place to go. Whether people have worked in an office or a factory or a store or a restaurant, most working people go to work at a place, and when that place no longer exists, it's like a part of your soul is removed,” he said, adding, “You find yourself very much alone.” Despite the number of Americans who don't have a job, “people unemployed these days feel virtually invisible.”

“Age is another factor,” Thornton told AlterNet. “You know, people over 45 years old seem to have a more difficult time finding positions the longer they've been out of work." That claim is born out by the numbers – the average length of unemployment is 44.1 weeks for those between 55 and 64 years of age, compared with 29.2 weeks for those 20 to 24.

Many people who have been out of work for a lengthy period of time – especially those whose unemployment benefits have expired – have had to max out their credit cards to keep afloat, or have missed mortgage payments or other bills. “I can speak for myself here,” said Nicole Sandler, a talk-radio host who started the Web site HelpThe99ers.com and who has herself been “underemployed” for over a year. “I've basically lost my house. I stopped paying my mortgage and moved in with my boyfriend six months ago.” Sandler says she's found a buyer and will do a "short sale" – getting less than she paid for the property – but, she adds, “my credit is shot, and we know that potential employers can check your credit, and if you have bad credit that's another reason for employers not to hire you. And once you're in this vicious cycle, it's very hard to get out of it.”

The unemployment crisis also has an impact on those who are able find work after being laid off. In an employers' market, over half of all full-time workers laid off after three years at the same job return to the workforce with lower wages. According to the Wall Street Journal, more than a third of them lose 20 percent or more of their previous income.

What many don't understand about the grim reality of the American labor market is that its impact on workers who have faced extended unemployment can reverberate for decades – long after the economy has recovered. Columbia University labor economist Till von Wachter studied the fortunes of workers who faced sudden lay-offs during the 1981-1982 recession in the period since that time. He found that even after 15 to 20 years, those workers' wages were still 20 percent lower than comparable workers who had held onto their jobs in the early 1980s downturn.

According to the Journal, the impact of this kind of joblessness can span generations:

Research shows that children of workers who lose jobs and go back to work at lower wages appear to suffer from lower wages, too. In a 2008 study, a group of economists tracked the wages of 60,000 father-child pairs from 1978 to 1999. Children whose fathers went through mass layoffs in the 1982 recession ended up with 9% lower earnings than similar children whose fathers didn't experience the job cuts.

Into the Chasm

Joe Carbone heads Workplace Inc., a non-profit that does research on the labor market and provides services to struggling workers in Connecticut. He told AlterNet the organization judges success “not just by people getting a job, but really getting empowered through credentials and knowledge so that they can traverse the system and make their way into the middle class.”

Carbone says that since the recession began he's seen a surge in demand for his organization's services. “What it's done is completely stressed out the capacity of our system,” he said. The stimulus package helped, but, says Carbone, “we had that funding for two years, but now that's gone. So, we've got the same numbers in terms of the people who have a need for our system, but we've gone back to the 2009 funding levels that we had before the worst of the recession.”

Carbone's organization is launching a project, in tandem with the private sector, to ease 99ers back into the grind of the workplace and overcome the discrimination they face among employers. “We're developing an instrument whereby for $6,000 per person, these 99ers would be given an opportunity to work for a business for eight weeks while they were officially employed by Workplace, Inc.,” he said. “There would be no liability, no risk on the part of business – it would be an eight-week trial period to see if we could establish a good comfort level between that person and whatever company we assign them to.”

Carbone says he “doesn't expect a federal response to this,” and is going to foundations and various family trusts in order to launch a pilot program for the first 100 workers this summer.

Radio host Sandler says she was inspired to start Helpthe99ers.com after getting an email from a listener whose benefits had just expired begging her to report on their plight. “It was right around the time that Obama negotiated with the GOP to extend the Bush tax cuts, and yet so little was being done for the 99ers,” she says. “And here was this group, growing in numbers and being ignored.”

Sandler describes Helpthe99ers.com as a “message board to put people who have needs – who are out of work, have exhausted their benefits and have nowhere else to turn – to put out their stories, and a place where people who have the means and compassion to help can get in touch with them directly. There's no middle-man involved, no foundation that people have to go through.” She says the project has been slow to take off, but some connections have been made, including a man who sent a space heater to a woman in upstate New York who was unable to pay her heating bill. “I know that some people have gotten help with rent – a couple of people got their rent paid for a month or more – at least a handful of people have gotten help.”

Like Workplace, Inc., the Philadelphia Unemployment Project (PUP) has been around for a while – since 1975 – but has seen a surge in its clientele. “We do have a lot more people around,” says John Dodd. “We have a computer lab for job searches that is always packed. We have about a dozen computers that are always taken by people looking for work.”

Dodd says his organization offers “housing counselors, a job developer, a jobs club, a health-care navigator – helps people access health care – and we help people with unemployment appeals.” PUP has also organized to help people threatened with foreclosure stay in their homes.

“The fact that people are organized and working together is something that makes people feel better,” Dodd told AlterNet. “We have regular committees that meet on the unemployment issue, on the foreclosure issue, so in a way we provide some support so people don't feel all alone.”

According to Mitchell Hirsch of NELP, 40 percent of eligible workers don't file for benefits. NELP, in addition to its political advocacy on behalf of working America, runs UnemployedWorkers.org, which Hirsch describes as a place “to get information about benefits availability, a resource that allows you to speak out and tell your story and a resource of news and information” for the jobless, “all of which is ultimately a way for us to organize unemployed workers and their supporters on behalf of things that matter for working people.” The site gathered over 100,000 signatures for a petition urging Congress to re-authorize the extended unemployment benefits program.

These efforts, and others that have popped up across the country, provide valuable assistance to the relatively small number of jobless workers who take advantage of them, but all of those interviewed by AlterNet agreed that the depth of the jobs crisis plaguing the U.S. merits a massive response from policy-makers. They lamented the fact that a second stimulus package, direct, WPA-style job programs like those established during the Great Depression and much more help transitioning the long-term unemployed back into the workforce had never been on the table in any serious way.

Some members of Congress have taken a few small steps. Reps. Barbara Lee, D-California, and Bobby Scott, D-Virginia, introduced legislation that would extend benefits for 14 more weeks, and Rep Hank Johnson, D-Georgia, has a (difficult to enforce) bill that would make it illegal to discriminate against workers for being unemployed.

But both bills face a steep hill in the GOP-controlled legislature. A previous effort to get an additional extension of benefits was killed when it faced opposition from Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats last year. Meanwhile, Missouri lawmakers are filibustering an extension in federal benefits that wouldn't cost the state a dime – they're willing to sacrifice the well-being of 23,000 Missourians in order to “send a message to Washington” about the deficit. And in Michigan, conservatives are opposing a technical fix to the extended benefits program that, if defeated, would leave 150,000 state residents without eligibility for federal benefits.

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy (and Everything else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America). Drop him an email or follow him on Twitter.

War On The Poor: Minnesota Republicans Want To Bust Poor People Who Carry Cash

War On The Poor: Minnesota Republicans Want To Bust Poor People Who Carry Cash

By Susie Madrak

They're not just crazy, they're evil -- and un-Christian, should they have the audacity to claim otherwise. If only we could force them to live like this, they wouldn't last a week:

St. Paul, MN – Minnesota Republicans are pushing legislation that would make it a crime for people on public assistance to have more $20 in cash in their pockets any given month. This represents a change from their initial proposal, which banned them from having any money at all.

On March 15, Angel Buechner of the Welfare Rights Committee testified in front of the House Health and Human Services Reform Committee on House File 171. Buechner told committee members, “We would like to address the provision that makes it illegal for MFIP [one of Minnesota’s welfare programs] families to withdraw cash from the cash portion of the MFIP grant - and in fact, appears to make it illegal for MFIP families to have any type of money at all in their pockets. How do you expect people to take care of business like paying bills such as lights, gas, water, trash and phone?”

House File 171 would make it so that families on MFIP - and disabled single adults on General Assistance and Minnesota Supplemental Aid - could not have their cash grants in cash or put into a checking account. Rather, they could only use a state-issued debit card at special terminals in certain businesses that are set up to accept the card.

The bill also calls for unconstitutional residency requirements, not allowing the debit card to be used across state lines and other provisions that the Welfare Rights Committee and others consider unacceptable.

Buechner testified, “We’ll leave you with this. It is not right to punish a whole group because of the supposed actions of a few. You in this room could have a pretty rough time if that was the case. It is not right to stigmatize and dehumanize women living the hard life of trying to raise children while living 60% below the poverty level. It is not right to use racist, bumper-sticker hate to inflict human misery for political gain.”

It may not be right, Angel. But it sure as hell is effective, and that's why politicians without shame continue to use the poor as their own political punching bags.

Personally, if I lived in Minnesota, I'd be out looking for skeletons in the Republican closets. It seems to be the most effective way of purging these immoral creeps.

From Freakout Nation:

GOPers in Minnesota seem to be suffering from memory loss; an unemployed person has to utilize public transit to go out in the world and be proactive in seeking work. Instead, they present the poor with isolation, not letting them use their debit card, sit home and not seek employment. The poor can stay poor because they don’t give a damn.

Let’s mix that in with the embattled Planned Parenthood, ACORN, Health Care Reform, undoing child labor laws and the dubious promise to get work for America as a whole. Where are the jobs, John?

There is an obvious target on the poverty stricken in this country. Let’s not forget, just as many poor people are Republicans. This won’t fare well and they’re signing their own Get Out of the House certificate. As the classes divide even more with their assistance, this is further proof that their campaign against government spending was simply to gain power and now, they’ve gone power mad.

Tags: Minnesota, Poverty, War on the Poor, welfare rights

Rich Get Richer and Poor Get Poorer With New Congress

Rich Get Richer With New Congress

Wednesday 23 March 2011

by: Jim Hightower, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Change is not the same thing as progress. In fact, change can be the exact opposite. It can be regressive, as we're now learning from -- where else? -- Congress.

A flock of tea party-infused Republicans has certainly changed the political dynamic there, and exultant GOP leaders are claiming that they are now the voice of "The People." But most people won't find themselves represented by this change, much less see it as progress.

That's because the newcomers in Congress, whether Republican or Democrat, tend to live high up the economic ladder, way out of touch with the people they're representing. Indeed, 40 percent of newly elected house members are millionaires, as are 60 percent of new senators.

While the great majority of workaday Americans are struggling to make it on about $30,000 a year -- and having, at best, puny pensions and iffy health coverage -- these incoming lawmakers tend to be sitting pretty on hundreds of thousands of dollars each in accumulated wealth. Their financial reports show them holding extensive personal investments in such outfits as Wall Street banks, oil giants and drug makers.

Their wealth and financial ties might help explain the rush by the new Republican House majority to coddle these very same corporate powers. From gutting EPA's anti-pollution restrictions on Big Oil to undoing the restraints on Wall Street greed, they're pushing for a return to the same laissez-fairyland ideology of the past 20 years that got our country in massive messes.

At the same time, they're out to kill a green-jobs program, bust unions, cut Social Security, defund Head Start and generally stomp on the fingers of working families trying to hold onto the middle class rungs of the economic ladder.

The change in Congress is taking America backward, not forward, for the new majority literally is the voice of millionaires. That's not progress.

Speaking of wealth, there is one piece of uplifting economic news that's sure to bolster the millionaire Congress' solidarity with "The People" -- meaning the people who actually count in their world.

Forbes magazine reports that there are 199 more billionaires this year than last. Moreover, the combined wealth of the world's 1,210 billionaires now totals $4.5 trillion dollars, up by nearly a trillion dollars from a year ago. So, see, the economy is not stuck in the doldrums, as so many party-poopers keep saying.

Also, with an average of $3.7 billion in their bank accounts, you can just bet that these uber-rich folks will be spending like crazy, and you know what that means, don't you? It means that their vast piles of wealth will soon begin to tinkle down on you and me -- just you wait and see!

And wait. And wait. And keep waiting.

Workers in our country have been dramatically increasing their productivity since the highly ballyhooed economic recovery began about 20 months ago, generating billions of dollars in new wealth. Yet wages have stayed stagnant. Practically none of the increased wealth from worker productivity gains has gone to the workers.

Instead, 94 percent of the money has been siphoned off by the corporate powers for such things as fattening profits at a record pace and jacking up CEO pay to exorbitant levels. Also, nearly $2 trillion of the gains have simply been stashed in the corporate vaults, rather than using it for wage hikes or new job creation.

And even the little bit of job creation that is taking place is "bottom heavy" -- 40 percent of the jobs lost in the recent economic crash were higher-paying positions, but 49 percent of the new jobs are low-paying.

So we see corporations and billionaires wallowing in fabulous new wealth, while productive workers fall out of the middle class. And our new congress-members are just fine with that, even pushing a program of more tax breaks and subsidies for the corporate elite, while vehemently opposing efforts to create jobs and advance the middle class. Making the richest people richer is not a recovery -- it's a robbery.

National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.

Copyright 2010 Creators.com

All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.

Attacking the US Middle Class?

Published on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 by Riz Khan - Al-Jazeera

Attacking the US Middle Class?

Politician and activist Ralph Nader examines the future of workers' unions in the US.

Is war being waged on those who benefit most from the workers'' unions - the US middle class?

In Wisconsin, hundreds of thousands of people are protesting against a controversial bill that would take away state workers'' rights to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.

Supporters of workers'' unions accuse conservatives of trying to break labour unions because they are viewed as the most powerful counterweight to corporate politics. But critics say unions have too much political power and restrain competition.

The Human Cost of Slashonomics

Published on Monday, March 21, 2011 by The Nation

The Human Cost of Slashonomics

by Katrina vanden Heuvel

An important new initiative from Half in Ten, a national campaign to reduce poverty by 50 percent over the next ten years, and the Coalition on Human Needs, is putting a face on irresponsible “slash and burn” deficit reduction by showing how it would damage real lives. The organizations are collecting people’s stories so that the cruel consequences of draconian cuts to key federal programs are plain to see.

Consider the story of Carolyn, who was in her 40s when her husband of 25 years left her with two daughters. She had never received any kind of assistance and describes turning to her local community action agency as “the hardest thing I had ever done.” Her fears were quickly allayed as she “was treated with respect and was never made to feel like a drain on society.” She enrolled in a workforce development program that helped her with tuition and books while she attended community college.

“I went to college five days a week and spent the weekend working, so I never had a day off,” writes Carolyn. “When I graduated I became a Registered Nurse, able to support myself and my family. I couldn’t have done it without the Federal Workforce Development Program and the supportive services the local Community Action Agency provided.”

But the Boehner-led “so be it” Republicans would nearly eliminate funding for Community Service Block Grants (CSBG) for the remainder of 2011, and President Obama proposes cutting it in half in 2012. The cuts would disrupt the antipoverty services provided by 1,065 community action agencies nationwide to over 20 million low-income people, including 5 million children, 2.3 million seniors and 1.7 million people with disabilities. What makes the cuts even more insane is that the agencies generate $6.54 from state, local, and private sources for every federal dollar received, according to the Coalition on Human Needs.

People like Carolyn would be hit doubly hard—not only would the community action agencies reach fewer people, but the kind of workforce development programs that allowed her to change her life would also be slashed by Republicans. In fact, at a time when 14 million Americans are out of work, more than 8 million adults and youth would lose access to job training and other employment services. Job training under the Workforce Investment Act programs for adults, youths, and dislocated workers would essentially be shut down until July 2012.

But, hey, at least folks can turn to higher education, right? Actually, not really. At a time when the US is now 12^th in the world in the percentage of 25 to 34 year olds with a college degree, the GOP bill would result in 9.4 million low-income college students losing all or some of their Pell grant. It would reduce the maximum Pell grant by a whopping 17.4 percent! (Obama would increase Pell Grant funding by 20 percent.)

The GOP cuts would be a disaster for students like this senior at University of Missouri who anonymously writes, “I will be applying to medical school at the end of this year. I come from a single-parent household and my mother makes about $20,000/year; hardly enough to put me through college. Without federal aid such as the Pell Grant, I would not have enough money to attend college at all.”

The student also works as a medical assistant at Planned Parenthood, where the GOP would eliminate all federal funding. That means zero funding for 820 health centers that do 90 percent of their work on preventive, primary care.

“I know first-hand how important the services we provide to people really are,” writes the Mizzou student. “The majority of our patients literally cannot afford to go anywhere else, and without our care, they simply would not receive services such as cancer screenings, birth control, and so much more.”

Nor would many of them be able to heat their homes, if the Chainsaw Republicans have their way, and President Obama’s 2012 budget isn’t much better. Despite the fact that a record number of households are expected to need assistance to pay for heating or cooling, the cuts in the GOP bill would essentially wipe out the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) contingency fund for 2011. The contingency fund provides aid during periods of particularly severe weather or energy price increases. Obama’s cut of about $2.5 billion would deny assistance to more than three million households.

That doesn’t sit very well with Kimberly Thompson, who turned to her local community action agency when her 89 year old, very independent grandmother was facing “nursing home institutionalization.” Through the CSBG, the agency was able to purchase a walker for her, deliver a hot lunch daily, and “provide a home care worker to do light housekeeping and help her with personal care.” The agency also signed her up for LIHEAP and “weatherized her home which lowered her utility bills and gave her more money each month to buy food and medicine.”

“All of these services enabled my grandmother to stay at home for the rest of her life until she died at the age of 92, three years later,” writes Thompson. “If she didn’t have those community services, she would have had to move to a nursing home which would have been a much greater cost to the government—and therefore, the taxpayers—and also would have caused her much emotional distress.”

What is most maddening about the budget debate is that few legislators are talking about alternatives like increasing revenues by closing obscene tax loopholes and corporate giveaways and making the wealthy pay their fair share. Instead, the proposals hit the most vulnerable people the hardest—lower-income people, children, seniors, people with disabilities, unemployed workers, and others. (For a “Better Budget for All” check out this report.)

Kudos to Half in Ten and the Coalition on Human Needs for collecting these stories and making these budget cuts real. If you have a story to tell, please share it. The only way we win this budget battle is to show the very real consequences of these abstract numbers being thrown around Washington, DC, and then organize and demand alternatives.

© 2011 The Nation

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.

The Poor Fight Back

Published on Thursday, March 3, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

The Poor Fight Back

Chicago Tenants Block Streets to Protest Republican Budget Cuts

by John Bartlett

On Friday evening February 25th, 400 people, mostly low-income tenants, braved a chilly winter day to take to the streets in Chicago to stand up against the proposed Republican budget cuts. The cuts would decimate many of the nation’s affordable housing programs. Initiated by the Chicago Housing Initiative, a coalition of organizations focused on preserving subsidized housing, the demonstration included acts of civil disobedience. Although many of the organizations had never previously engaged in civil disobedience, the Coalition felt that the situation is so dire that we have to take stronger action. Eleven people blocked a main downtown street to send a message that low-income and working families are ready to fight.

People came to the demonstration to tell elected representatives that the economic crisis is not over for the majority of people living in this country. Rents are too high. Foreclosures have not slowed down. Millions are still looking for work or working at jobs that don’t pay enough. So many people are struggling just to survive and to meet the basic needs of themselves and their families. Ms. Adrena Townsend, one of the protestors, said, “I came here because I cannot tighten my belt any more. I cannot do without my home. The House’s proposed cuts are aimed at basic human needs such as housing, food, education, and health care. These are not extra trimmings, they are basic necessities.”

Just before it left for its February recess, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to slash $61 billion from the current federal budget. They want to cut the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) by 66%. The program provides people with money to pay for heat in the winter. Are these lawmakers willing to turn down or turn off their heat to cut the deficit? They want to cut Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program by 10 %. This program helps pregnant women, new mothers and young children eat well. The House’s spending bill would discontinue housing assistance for homeless veterans and cut housing subsidies, job programs and more. In addition the House wants to cut programs like the Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that fund the agencies that provide necessities such as rental subsidies and energy assistance. These cuts are direct hits to “human services” programs the help meet the basic needs of so many.

The government may need to make cuts, but who decides what to cut? On February 11, 2011 House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) promised that budget cuts will be historic. The Republican controlled House proposed cutting the Housing and Urban Development’s $43.5 billion 2011 budget by over 21%. Yet on February 24th we learned that the Air Force is awarding Boeing a $35 billion contract to build air tankers. Why do the House’s proposed cuts almost solely target human need programs? Why is it that Congress does not ask working families what is most important to them?

During the demonstration, protestors chanted, “Tax cuts for the rich, service cuts for the poor, we can see who you’re for and we won’t take it anymore,” a slogan that highlights a very real division in this country. One aspect of this division is defining the role of government. The Tea Partiers and their (billionaire) backers want people to think that government is too big and business can handle things on its own without any government interference. According to Herman Bonner, a subsidized tenant and protestor at Friday’s demonstration, “I believe the role of government is to ensure that the basic needs of everyone are met and that people have a voice in how this is done.”

How you view the government and its role shapes what you think causes the crisis facing this country. For those Tea Party budget cutters in Washington the crisis facing our country is the huge deficit. If nothing is done about the deficit then the country will fall into default and decay. Yet less than two months ago those same representatives voted to cut the taxes on the rich. These cuts were pushed through in the face of growing evidence that wealth disparity in this country has reached epidemic proportions. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, the wealthiest 1 % of the population owns 33 % of all the wealth and the top 10 % own over 70 % of all the wealth. The last time there was such inequality was the 1920’s just before the depression. Rather than ask the rich to pay their fair share, the Tea Party plans to cut the deficit and to do it on the backs of the poor.

For millions of Americans, the day to day struggle to maintain food on the table and a roof over one’s head defines the crisis. For many families, the economy is stuck in a depression. They worry whether they will have a job next week or next year and what will happen if they don’t. Young and old alike worry about social security benefits and retirement. They are afraid that the government will abandon any commitment to help and that they will be left to fend for themselves. They don’t expect handouts but they do expect – and deserve - support.

The tenant representatives who blocked traffic on Friday are the beginning signs of a budding movement to demand economic justice. This brewing discontent can also be seen in Madison, Wisconsin where union workers are battling for their right to collective bargaining. There will be more protests as people are asked to “compromise” and to forgo basic necessities. In January, the wealthy won their tax cuts and now they want more. It is in this context that the tenants took to the street chanting “They say cut backs and we say fight back.” It is for this reason that people need to unite and fight the draconian cuts to human services that are happening across the country on the local, state, and federal level.

John Bartlett is Executive Director for the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, where he has defended tenants’ rights for the past seventeen years. Mr. Bartlett began his work for social change more than 20 years ago in Seattle, Washington as a door-to-door canvasser/fundraiser for an environmental organization. Mr. Bartlett is a certified mediator and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Community Organizing from Northeastern Illinois University.