When local leaders preach fear and loathing, it should come as no surprise when ignorant, thuggish constituents feel empowered to act out violently.

A mobile home belonging to a gay couple was torched and an offensive epithet was spray-painted on the front steps, authorities said.

Paul Day, 25, and Christopher Robertson, 23, returned home from errands Monday to find their house in Kings Manor Mobile Home Park in Lakeland burned and the words “Die Fag” spray-painted on the front steps.

Posted as Florida, Tampa, Hillsborough Homophobia

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On Thursday, Ronda Storms led the rabid pack of fundamentalist commissioner dogs on a personal attack against one of the few sources for unbiased women’s health care in the Tampa area.

The idea came from Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms: eliminate funding for a teen educational program sponsored by Planned Parenthood.

Commissioners went along with her Thursday, while expressing none of their personal feelings about the nonprofit group that supports women’s reproductive rights.

But Storms had made her feelings clear in a conversation last week, said Barbara Zdravecky, who oversees Planned Parenthood in 15 counties, including the Tampa Bay area.

Storms supports life - Zdravecky remembers hearing her say - and Planned Parenthood supports death.

“I have to say I was pretty shaken,” Zdravecky said. “I’m used to taking hits. But I was surprised at her lack of humanity.”

Zdravecky, other nonprofit officials and proponents had just finished lobbying the commission the night of July 21 and were standing around after nearly three hours of budget discussion.

They wanted commissioners to give them $39,500 during the next two years for Source Teen Theater, a $130,000 program in which Tampa teens teach other kids about such topics as sexual activity, drugs, gangs and family violence.

Storms remembers the conversation, too.

She had called for Planned Parenthood’s removal from the budget. Zdravecky asked her to reconsider. Surely, Zdravecky asked, the commissioner must support preventing teen pregnancy, even if she doesn’t support Planned Parenthood.

“There is nothing you can say or do for me to support you,” the commissioner said, according to Storms’ version of the conversation. “Thank you very much for your comments.”

But Zdravecky pressed on.

“I am prolife and you’re not,” Storms remembers saying.

Storms thanked them and told them she could not support the request. She even remembers that she smiled at them.
……

Zdravecky remembers a more blunt conversation where Storms said, “I am prolife, you are prodeath” twice.

“I believe anyone who professes to be a proponent of Christianity would treat me with more dignity than the way I was treated,” Zdravecky said.
……

Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Central Florida has been in Hillsborough for at least 25 years and operates a clinic in Temple Terrace. About 95 percent of the 65,000 clients Planned Parenthood sees annually in the region aren’t coming for abortion services, Zdravecky said.
……

During the budget discussion that led to Thursday’s 5-2 vote, Storms didn’t comment other than to call for the elimination of the project’s funding.

Commissioner Brian Blair spoke at length about how he favored the way the Pregnancy Center of Plant City operated. He said that its crisis pregnancy counselors encourage “the young women to choose life” and that its executive director raises money without asking for county help.
……

Castor said that Hillsborough had $8-million to give to nonprofit groups.

“Their request,” she said, “was one of the more modest.”

Previously, Ronda has suggested that the working poor obtain birth control so that those pesky little babies stop falling out of financially challenged uteri. Now she is responsible for de-funding a program that encourages kids to think and act responsibly.

I honestly think that some stray shards of glass may have migrated north from her scarred and bloody elbows and become lodged firmly in her fundamentally flawed brain.

Storms said she has worked $2.01-an-hour jobs in her life, spent nights at Salvation Army and lived in her car. But she worked and put herself through school, she said, “crawled across glass on my elbows.

Posted as Florida, Tampa, Religion, War on the poor, Culture war

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Trade Pact Approved By House

The House narrowly approved the Central American Free Trade Agreement this morning, delivering a hard-fought victory to President Bush while underscoring the nation’s deep divisions over trade.

The 217 to 215 vote came just after midnight, in a dramatic finish that highlighted the intensity brought by both sides to the battle. When the usual 15-minute voting period expired at 11:17 p.m., the no votes outnumbered the yes votes by 180 to 175, with dozens of members undeclared. House Republican leaders kept the voting open for another 47 minutes, furiously rounding up holdouts in their own party until they had secured just enough to ensure approval.

The House vote was effectively the last hurdle — and by far the steepest — facing CAFTA, which will tear down barriers to trade and investment between the United States, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
……

During last night’s debate, which lasted 2 1/2 hours, the bitterness of the Democrats’ opposition shone through in condemnations such as that by Ohio’s Dennis J. Kucinich, who thundered: “CAFTA is for multinational companies who want to make a profit by shutting plants in the United States and moving to places with cheap labor.”
……

The Democrats voting in favor were Reps. Victor F. Snyder (Ark.), Melissa L. Bean (Ill.), Dennis Moore (Kan.), William J. Jefferson (La.), Ike Skelton (Mo.), Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), Edolphus Towns (N.Y.), Jim Cooper (Tenn.), John S. Tanner (Tenn.), Henry Cuellar (Tex.), Ruben Hinojosa (Tex.), Solomon P. Ortiz (Tex.), Jim Matheson (Utah), James P. Moran Jr. (Va.) and Norman D. Dicks (Wash.).

Jim Davis is not on this list. Call and thank him for doing the right thing.

WASHINGTON:
409 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-3376
FAX: (202) 225-5652

DISTRICT:
3315 Henderson Boulevard
Suite 100
Tampa, Florida 33609
(813) 354-9217
Florida Toll Free: 1 (888) 266-0205
Fax: (813) 354-9514

Satellite Office:
1186 62nd Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33705
(727) 867-5301
FAX: (727) 867-5302

More:

In west-central Florida, Reps. C.W. Bill Young, R-Indian Shores, and Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, voted for CAFTA. Jim Davis, D-Tampa, who is running for governor and usually supports free trade, voted against it.

Davis said he primarily voted no because he had concerns that the administration would not hold CAFTA countries accountable for enforcement of labor and environmental laws.

“Trade agreements are promises, and promises are only good if they are kept,” he said.

Posted as Florida, Imperialism, Tampa, Workers, War on the poor

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Note: as promised earlier, during the next week or so of light blogging, I’ll be re-posting some stuff that may be relevant to current events. This post first appeared in November 2003. More on this controversy here and here.

November 12th, 2003
SP Council: We like music. Just not this kind of music…

The City of St. Petersburg was recently appalled at the behavior of an invited guest. See, the City sponsored a concert in Vinoy Park, a waterfront location that has hosted hundreds of amplified music shows in the past, including plenty of loud rock and roll. But this show seemed different somehow and attracted a dark and brooding crowd to Brion Kerlin’s hood:

The first thing Brion Kerlin heard was the thump of the bass, so loud it shook the sides of his 34-foot trawler.

But hasn’t he heard bass thumps from concerts at Vinoy before? Doesn’t sound like a big deal so far.

Then came the lyrics.

Kerlin is no prude, and he admits using the occasional curse word. But the string of obscenities flowing from the Nov. 2 concert at Vinoy Park offended him.

“This concert was way out of bounds by anyone’s standards,” said Kerlin, 57, who lives on his boat at the city’s marina, about a half- mile from the park. “There’s no question that everyone could hear this.”

Well, it’s apparently out of bounds by Mr. Kerlin’s standards anyway. Let’s see… an outdoor concert on the water… yep, lots of people should be able to hear it alright. But lotsa people can hear artists cursing from that same stage on many weekends each year. Again, what’s the big deal?

Performing that day was the Urban Car Show tour, featuring rapper 50 Cent. The event was cosponsored by the city of St. Petersburg and drew more than 5,300 people to the park.

Like many others that day, Kerlin called the police to complain about the noise and the vulgarity. He was told officers would check into the situation, but neither the music nor the profanities stopped.

Now I think we might be getting somewhere. Instead of a Blues Festival featuring ‘authentic’ black music as interpreted by middle aged white artists playing to a crowd of middle class white fans, the City had the gall to invite an ‘Urban’ rapper to play Vinoy, and 5,300 people, most of whom were definitely NOT white and middle class, actually showed up. So, his neighborhood overrun by, ahem, blacks, Kerlin (who sounds a lot likethis guy) and his neighbors called the police for protection from this music that they don’t understand. And the police refused to shut the concert down and send those 5,300 interlopers home!

……

Bill Proffitt, a spokesman for the St. Petersburg Police Department, said officers could do nothing about the vulgarities.

“We see that as a free speech matter,” he said.

The city has a noise ordinance, but it can be difficult to enforce. Because the concert was held in the afternoon, police weren’t expecting many complaints and didn’t have a noise meter to measure decibel levels, Proffitt said.

The department has now decided to equip the supervisor on duty at such events with a meter, Proffitt said. Violating the noise ordinance could result in a 60-day jail sentence and a $500 fine.

So, is the City going to fine itself? More important: will the noise ordinance be enforced at a Jimmy Buffet show, or just for artists who the City sees as possibly troublesome?

Council member Virginia Littrell, whose district includes Vinoy Park, also wants to give police the ability to halt performances that feature profanity. She has asked the city’s legal department to explore different options.

“It wasn’t just the music itself,” Littrell said. “It was also the language in between the songs.”

Florida has a vague obscenity law that would be difficult to apply to the words spoken or sung at a concert, City Attorney John Wolfe said.

A park is typically considered a public forum, where it would be difficult to restrict freedom of speech. But because the city usually cosponsors these events and fences them off from the rest of the park, Wolfe said an exception could be made.

“We’re creating something other than a traditional public forum,” he said.

Wolfe plans to draft an ordinance to present to council members within the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, he’s also working on a set of standards that could be used when the City Council decides which events it will cosponsor. Wolfe said the goal would be to attract acts appropriate for a “family and tourist” destination.

Here we go. This should certainly cut down on the need to censor and discriminate once the concert has already started. Much more efficient.

Local promoter Dave Hundley said the fault really lies with those who allowed the act to perform.

“It’s 50 Cent,” he said. “What were people expecting? This is what the artists do and this is what the people who pay to see them expect.”

Hundley said cursing is common in many concerts, from rock to hip- hop to punk. And while he’s no fan of profanity, and has chastisedbands who swear during all-ages shows, the language can be part of an artist’s message.

“Even though I may not like what they’re doing, it is art. Sometimes it is supposed to shock or to raise eyebrows,” he said.

As I said before, lots of people hear cursing from that stage all the time. The strong reaction to this particular event is all about white SP residents’ ignorance and fear.

Council member Rene Flowers said she was familiar with the acts in the Urban Car Show tour and was afraid there would be problems. She urged her colleagues to be more vigilant when screening acts that will be held in a city park.

Said Flowers: “Some things just aren’t appropriate to have outside like that.”

‘Some things,’ or Rap Music?

Howard Troxler weighs in with his opinion: (he’s alittle kinder and much more understanding than myself)

Dirty words!

At a hip-hop concert!

Who knew?

It came as a terrible shock to the city. Perhaps City Hall had confused the event that it was CO-PRODUCING, an event for which it had eagerly fenced off its own park, with, say, an arts and crafts show, or a Taste Of Someplace-or-Other, or perhaps a nice powerboat race.

#$%^$!

Naturally, the city swang into action after the fact.

“I don’t want to create a citywide censor,” council member Bill Foster said, meaning precisely, of course, that he wants to create a citywide censor.

“But we do need a mechanism,” Foster continued, “where we can cut the power when this type of activity goes on.”

(Let us not be distracted by the sudden vision of Foster stationed beneath the stage at future concerts, his hand hovering over the plug, poised to do his civic duty.)

In case you are missin’ my drift here, it is not to defend dirty words, but rather to say that if the city didn’t want a high-volume, loudly vulgar event in a waterfront park, it could have, you know, not held it.

The right way to deal with this is on the front end. If the city wants to insist on a “family” atmosphere for its co-sponsored park events, it is perfectly within its rights. It risks being namby-pamby, but it can try.

The wrong way is to try to regulate the content of public performers, through ordinance or any other way, even though that is the natural temptation. Even the council’s sensible Virginia Littrell, whose district includes the park, raised the possibility of police shutting down the worst offenders.

I am pretty sure she does not mean “Out, out, damned spot.”

But that Shakespeare reference leads us to the cultural thing. See, there is vulgarity in outdoor performances all the time, and not just when “urban” (what is that word code for?) performers do it.

Admittedly, the Nov. 2 concert was unprecedented in its duration and vigor. But if the city is going to start getting choosy about who plays in the parks, it had better act in an even-handed fashion. It seems to me to be a nearly impossible job.

There is no sense trying to delineate on the basis of content. The city is not competent to declare that Shakespeare is art and rap music is not. I am not hip to hip-hop, but smart people tell me that it is an artistic reflection of the urban condition, which by necessity includes plenty of aggression, anger, danger. So when an artist includes the word #@#$#% in a song, that’s part of the deal.

Fair enough. Who is anybody else to say it isn’t valid? After all, the museums are full of paintings of nekkid people, and the playhouses full of their own styles of vulgarity.

Who gets to say that 50 Cent isn’t art, but that a play on Broadway titled Urinetown is? Or if you want to stick to music, how about the rock group that had a song in the national Top 10 earlier this year featuring the lyrics, “She (really bad word here) hates me?”

Posted as Civil Liberties, Florida, Tampa, Culture war

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Note: as promised earlier, during the next week or so of light blogging, I’ll be re-posting some stuff that may be relevant tocurrent events. This post first appeared in May. More on CAFTA here.

May 13th, 2005
Why does Jim Davis hate Florida families?

Actually, maybe I’m being a little too hard on Jim – maybe it’s his love of big corporations, rather than his hatred of the Florida family, that spurred him to vote for the bankruptcy bill and publicly support DR-CAFTA.

The bill would make it much harder for families in distress to write off their debts and make a fresh start. Instead, many debtors would find themselves on an endless treadmill of payments.

The credit card companies say this is needed because people have been abusing the bankruptcy law, borrowing irresponsibly and walking away from debts. The facts say otherwise.

A vast majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States are the result of severe misfortune. One recent study found that more than half of bankruptcies are the result of medical emergencies. The rest are overwhelmingly the result either of job loss or of divorce.

To the extent that there is significant abuse of the system, it’s concentrated among the wealthy - including corporate executives found guilty of misleading investors - who can exploit loopholes in the law to protect their wealth, no matter how ill-gotten.

Furthermore ,

It makes it harder for average people to file for bankruptcy protection; it makes it easier for landlords to evict a bankrupt tenant; it endangers child support payments by giving a wider array of creditors a shot at post-bankruptcy income; it allows millionaires to shield an unlimited amount of value in homes and asset protection trusts; it makes it more difficult for small businesses to reorganize, while opening new loopholes for the Enrons of the world; it allows creditors to provide misleading information; and it does nothing to rein in lending abuses that frequently turn manageable debt into unmanageable crises. Even in failure, ordinary Americans do not get a level playing field.

As for DR-CAFTA ,

-CAFTA does NOT include adequate enforcement for violations of internationally recognized labor and environmental standards. It only requires enforcement of national law, which is often inadequate, and the penalty for violations is a set of modest fines, which the government pays back to itself.

-CAFTA’s worker rights protections are substantially weaker than those under current U.S. law, with higher standards (international standards) and tougher penalties (loss of trade privileges).

- CAFTA threatens the livelihoods of millions of small farmers in Central America and the Dominican Republic, while increasing domination by agricultural monopolies and hurting U.S. family farmers.

- CAFTA would prevent access to affordable life saving medicines in a region where half the population live in poverty.

- CAFTA will prohibit governments in the region from ensuring that foreign investment serves national development goals, and has a provision like NAFTA that would allow foreign corporations to sue governments that pass strong labor, public health or environmental laws.

CAFTA includes rules that promote privatization and deregulation of services including education, health care, postal service, construction, transportation and water supply. Such policies have proved particularly devastating for families living in poverty.

So, Jim, as he prepares his run for governor, seems much more concerned with the wants of powerful corporations than with the actual needs of his constituents. Call Mr. Davis and ask him why he hates Florida families.

WASHINGTON:
409 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-3376
FAX: (202) 225-5652

DISTRICT:
3315 Henderson Boulevard
Suite 100
Tampa, Florida 33609
(813) 354-9217
Florida Toll Free: 1 (888) 266-0205
Fax: (813) 354-9514

Satellite Office:
1186 62nd Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33705
(727) 867-5301
FAX: (727) 867-5302

The vote may be very close, so call now.

The trade agreement that would erase tariffs between the United States and the Dominican Republic as well as Central America, opening the prospect of a vast exchange of crops and goods, once seemed to be the inevitable next step after NAFTA.

But now, a mix of influences has President Bush contemplating a losing fight for congressional approval. The problem is that the agreement’s heavy tilt toward agriculture has cost DR-CAFTA, as it is known, some key GOP votes, including those of several Floridians. In addition, this latest free-trade proposal seems to be more harmed than helped by the record of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which opened economic borders between the United States, Mexico and Canada in 1994.
……

Though DR-CAFTA was signed by country leaders in May last year, the Bush administration has delayed sending a bill to ratify it in Congress. Under special fast-track authority, the White House can speedily push through trade agreements, bypassing often lengthy committee proceedings that would try to amend the agreement.

“They haven’t pulled the trigger because they don’t want the embarrassment of losing,” said Lori Wallach, a former trade lawyer and DR-CAFTA opponent who is director of Public Citizen Global Trade Watch. “There’s never been a situation where an agreement has sat around this long.”

Analysts say the blame lies with the poor track record of DR-CAFTA’s big brother. NAFTA, which took effect more than a decade ago.

“It’s very hard to make a case that NAFTA has had any benefits,” said Mark Weisbrot, an economist at the Center for Economic Policy and Research in Washington, which is critical of U.S. trade deals.

Indeed, it’s hard to pin down conclusive data on NAFTA’s effect. Business interests highlight increased cross-border trade and a boom in the garment assembly industry in Mexico. But grass-roots activists stress job losses in the United States. Tomato and pepper farmers in Hillsborough County were among those hardest hit.

Whatever the truth, most agree there is a widespread perception that NAFTA has failed to live up to expectations. As a result, new agreements are met with less enthusiasm.

Several key Hispanic groups who backed NAFTA in the ’90s are opposed to DR-CAFTA or have declined to support it.

“These agreements are a very hard sell,” Weisbrot said. “They are incredibly unpopular.”

Even so, the Bush administration says it intends to proceed as early as late May. “Over the next few months, one of our trade priorities will be the free trade agreement with Central America and the Dominican Republic,” Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said at a March 30 board meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers in Miami-Dade County.

But it remains doubtful that the deal has the votes in Congress. A number of Republican members have broken ranks with the White House, including Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite of Crystal River and Rep. Mark Foley of West Palm Beach.

“There’s no question that members remain concerned over the impact of NAFTA,” Foley said after a committee hearing attended by Central American trade and labor ministers Thursday. “It’s one of those steep inclines for the administration to climb.”

Even so, the battle in Congress is just getting started, and there is time for compromise.

“There’s maybe some tweaking that could be done” to make it more palatable for Floridians, said Foley, who represents a heavy sugar-growing constituency. “We’d like to be helpful. If they took sugar off the table, it would certainly help.”

On the other hand, Democrat Rep. Jim Davis of Tampa says he is inclined to support free trade with Latin America. DR-CAFTA presents “important business opportunities” for Tampa Bay. “It’s important to have ties with these countries,” he said.

It is vehemently opposed by a statewide coalition of farm worker, labor, environmental and church groups. Labor activists say the deal fails to offer protection to workers in countries where workers rights are not enforced. Cheap U.S. exports could wipe out Central American farmers, raising unemployment and migration.

“Our opposition is based on the human factor and the practical effects of NAFTA,” said Eric Rubin, state coordinator for the St. Petersburg-based Florida Fair Trade Coalition. The coalition has campaigned statewide via hundreds of thousands of mailings and weekly speaking engagements.

Rubin says DR-CAFTA enjoys little public support. “It’s only a small and powerful segment of the business community that back it.”

Posted as Florida, Tampa, Workers

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Note: as promised earlier, during the next week or so of light blogging, I’ll be re-posting some stuff that mayu be relevant to current events. This post first appeared in January.

January 20, 2005
Wal-Mart Still Sucks

Wal-Mart is a union busting, small business killing, community poisoning, government subsidized, sweatshop supplied, job killing peddler of cheap ass Chinese crap.

Wal-Mart pays janitors $2.00 per DAY and takes out life insurance policies on other low paid employees, betting that their lack of decent, affordable healthcare (pdf) will lead to an untimely demise. Wal-Mart threatens the hard working middle class lifestyle by keeping wages and benefits at miserly levels.

Wal-Mart discriminates against women.

And despite the claims of their current high profile PR campaign of lies, Wal-Mart does not create jobs, and Wal-Mart does not provide adequate benefits to their workers or to the communities in which they do business.

Here’s the SP Times offering Wal-Mart some free ink to go along with the paid ads purchased in Tampa and elsewhere around the country. See, it’s easier to lie about reality than to actually do anything about it.

Claims that Wal-Mart drags down the nation’s pay and benefits do not square with Michael Martin’s experience.

“I’m making more after working four years at Wal-Mart than I did after nine years at Winn-Dixie,” said the 32-year-old produce department manager. “I left Winn-Dixie because I couldn’t get a promotion. Here I got one after six months.”

And so went Martin’s third media interview Thursday. By midafternoon he and a half-dozen fellow volunteers at a Tampa Wal-Mart Supercenter had talked of their experiences to three local newspaper reporters and four television stations while a Wal-Mart spokesman flown in from corporate headquarters listened nearby.

The media event, one of 14 in hand-picked markets nationally, is part of a stepped-up nationwide PR campaign to silence the world’s largest retailer’s army of critics: retail workers unions, academics, lawyers, preservationists and politicians who have been attacking the discount store giant and much of what it stands for.

Like a sleeping bear that has been kicked awake, Wal-Mart said the company has decided it must be far more aggressive about fighting back.

“For too long, others have had free rein to say things about our company that just are not true,” said Lee Scott, president and chief executive officer. “Our associates (Wal-Mart-speak for employees) are tired of it, and we’ve decided to draw our own line in the sand.”

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. took out full-page ads in 100 newspapers nationally on Thursday including the St. Petersburg Times, Tampa Tribune, Florida Sentinel and Weekly Challenger as well as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
……

The United Food and Commercial Workers union, which has been trying to organize Wal-Mart workers, has a corporate campaign attacking Wal-Mart for its affect on competitor pay and benefits in union markets. In California, union workers went on strike last year when their employers demanded and got wage and benefit concessions to better compete against Wal-Mart’s pricing.
……

In California, Wal-Mart said its average hourly employee earns $10.15 an hour. A recent University of California-Berkley study estimated Wal-Mart workers there earned $9.70 an hour in 2004, or 31 percent less than the $14.07 average paid those who work for other large retailers.

The study also says families of Wal-Mart workers use 40 percent more in taxpayer-funded health care and 38 percent more in other public assistance programs than the average for other large retailers.

“I’m rather skeptical of the facts Wal-Mart is putting out,” said Elizabeth Drea, a spokeswoman for the UFCW Local 881 in Chicago. “They’re trying to do a glossy PR campaign to gloss over the reality.”

Avoid Wal-Mart. You don’t need any of their chintzy plastic junk. And you do have choices. Do business with local merchants. If you must shop at a large national chain, be an informed consumer and consider retailers other than Wal-Mart.

Posted as Florida, National, Workers

Other posts by Norwood.

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Light blogging is expected to continue this week, but frequent SideBlog eruptions will continue to keep things interesting.

For those of you who remain blissfully unaware, BlogWood has two fairly new SideBlogs featuring links to the day’s most noteworthy Blog and News postings. Even if BlogWood itself is a little lacking in the posts department, the News SideBlog and the Blogs SideBlog, which are both right there on the, uh, side, will provide hours of potential escapism to the legions of loyal BlogWood readers who have come to rely on this site for their daily dose of reality.

Also, in a transparently lazy attempt to maintain the record traffic levels of up to 5 -10 visitors per day, I will continue to plumb the depths of the BlogWood archives for meaningless tripe which I can dress up a little and present as somehow relevant to current events. (See below)

Speaking of recycled tripe, here’s a pretty picture from December, 2003 of Hillsborough County cops playing with their new Christmas present sponsored by Rupert Murdoch. See the News SideBlog for more.

Posted as Florida, Tampa

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Note: Continuing my place holding trend of recycling old junk, I am presenting some classic BlogWood posts that may have some relevance to today’s headlines. The following post first appeared on February 8.

February 8, 2005
Right-to-work… for less money and an early death

Unions have been on my mind lately, for a variety of reasons, and I thought that it was high time to address the right-to-work issue.

Right-to-work is part of the Taft-Hartley act of 1947:

“In the face of the workers’ determination to resist Wall Street’s attack, Congress nevertheless steamrollered through the savage Taft-Hartley Act….

“Truman’s conduct on anti-labor legislation affords a striking example of how a Wall Street political chieftain operates. He took the lead in the labor-hating drive of 1946. He threatened the miners and seamen with military force. He smashed the railroad strike. He called a special joint session of Congress to demand shot-gun passage of a law to draft strikers and force them back on the job at the point of a bayonet….

“The Republicans and Democrats in Congress took their cue from Truman. As they vied with each other in cooking up the harshest anti-labor laws, Truman–looking ahead to the 1948 elections–changed his tactics….He became silent, uttering no protest as the Taft-Hartley Act was slicked through Congress.

“Then, at the last hour, Truman made his grandstand play for labor support by a belated veto….As for the Democrats in Congress…they gave a decisive majority to the Slave Labor Law–voting 106 to 71 in the House and 20 to 22 in the Senate.”

Specifically, right-to-work

laws undermine the ability to build effective unions by creating a free-rider problem — workers can enjoy the benefits of union membership in a workplace without actually joining the union or paying union dues. Right-to-work laws increase employer leverage to resist unions by enabling them to benefit from free riders; and vastly decrease union membership, thus dramatically diminishing unions’ bargaining power.

Unions are responsible for the weekend, for the eight hour workday, for paid holidays and vacations, and for countless other benefits that most working people now take for granted. Recently, union members have been able to stave off many of the cuts in benefits that non-union workers have had to suffer.

Almost all union workers - 89 percent - have access to employer-provided medical benefits, compared with 67 percent of nonunion workers. Seventy-three percent of union workers have dental care coverage, compared with 43 percent of nonunion workers. For vision care, 56 percent of union workers receive benefits; only 26 percent of nonunion workers are covered.

The advantages of union membership also show in whether or not employees must pay for part of their health care benefits. For single coverage, the employer pays all costs for 43 percent of union workers, but only 21 percent of nonunion workers receive employer-paid coverage.

For family coverage, 33 percent of all union workers are not required to contribute, but only 7 percent of nonunion workers receive coverage that is fully paid by the employer.

When union members are required to contribute toward their health care coverage, they pay far less than nonunion workers. The average flat contribution for single coverage for union members is $56.53 a month, or $678.36 per year, compared with $68.98 per month, or $827.76 per year for nonunion workers.

For family coverage, union members contribute an average of $195.12 a month, or $2,341.44 a year, compared with $273.51 a month, or $3,282.12 per year, for nonunion workers.

Nonunion workers face much higher costs for medical coverage than they did only a few years ago. The average annual nonunion employee contribution for family coverage is $1,052.64 more today than it was in 2000.

Overall, employers pay 83 percent of the cost of health care benefits for family coverage for union workers, but only 67 percent of the costs for nonunion workers.

Fifty-nine percent of workers have access to retirement benefits, with 50 percent participating in at least one type of retirement plan. The vast majority of these workers are covered only by a defined contribution plan, such as a 401(k), and the data do not reveal the size of the retirement accounts for these workers.

Only 21 percent of all workers are covered by defined benefit retirement plans, which are primarily traditional employer-funded pension plans with a predetermined retirement benefit paid out for life after retirement. Only 10 percent of all private sector establishments still offer these plans. This benefit is now really a union benefit, with 70 percent of all union workers covered by a defined benefit plan, compared with only 16 percent of nonunion workers.

Fifty-three percent of all workers are covered by defined contribution retirement plans, which are largely funded by the workers themselves. Among union workers, 48 percent are covered by these plans, which are often offered in addition to pension plans at union workplaces.

The union advantage extends well beyond health and retirement benefits. Union workers are more likely to receive employer-provided life insurance and twice as likely to have short-term disability coverage.

Union workers are also more likely to receive paid time-off benefits and greater amounts of paid time-off. For example, union workers with 20 years of service receive an average of 22.3 paid vacation days, compared with 18.1 days for nonunion workers.

Unions have also been able to maintain larger wage increases for their members, with annual wage cost increases averaging 3.0 percent for union workers and 2.5 percent for nonunion workers from September 2003 to September 2004. Largely because of the rising cost of benefits, total compensation costs for union workers rose 5.8 percent, compared with 3.4 percent for nonunion workers. This growing differential in union and nonunion costs will fuel greater employer opposition to organizing drives going forward.

Which brings us back to right-to-work.

‘Right to work’ has nothing to do with a right to a job or employment. The deceptively named ‘right to work’ laws ban workers’who by a majority vote decided to form a union in their workplace’and employers from negotiating union security clauses. By law, unions must represent all workers’members and nonmembers’in contract negotiations and other workplace issues.

A ‘right to work’ law would allow nonmember workers to get all the benefits of union membership and pay nothing, while forcing unions and their members to foot the bill for those not willing to pay their share. The result is weaker unions with inadequate resources to represent members.

In the 28 non-’right to work’states, federal law protects those workers who do not want to join the union. Workers in those states are required to pay only a fair share to cover the costs of their union representation, but not the cost of a union’s political, legislative, social or charitable activities.

It’s really a ‘right to work for less’

It’s no coincidence that some employer groups, Big Business and ultraconservative lawmakers back ‘right to work’laws because such laws weaken unions and in turn depress wages. Studies show that workers in ‘right to Work’ states earn significantly less, while workers in non-’right to work’ states earn significantly more. A primary reason is that workers with a union contract earn higher pay’weakening unions lowers average pay. Workers of color and women workers who are union members make significantly higher wages.

The average worker in a ‘right to work’ state earns about $5,333 less a year than workers in other states. (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2001)

Hispanic union members earn 45 percent ($180) more a week than nonunion Hispanic workers. (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jan. 2002 )

African Americans earn 30 percent ($140) more a week if they are union members. (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jan. 2002)

Union women earn 30 percent more ($149) a week than nonunion women. (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jan. 2002)
…

‘Right to work’ laws reach far beyond wages. Quality-of-life issues such as health care, education, worker safety and poverty suffer greatly in ‘right to work’ states.

In ‘right to work’ states 21 percent more people are without health insurance compared with those in free-bargaining states. (source: State Rankings 2000, A Statistical View of the 50 United States, Morgan Quinto Press)

‘Right to work’ states spend $1,699 less per elementary and secondary pupil than other states. (source: Education Vital Signs, 2000′2001 school year)

The infant mortality rate in ‘right to work’ states is 17 percent higher than in other states, and the poverty rate is 12.5 percent compared with 10.2 percent in other states. (source: State Rankings 2000, A Statistical View of the 50 United States, Morgan Quinto Press; U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, March 2002)

The rate of workplace death is 51 percent higher in ‘right to work’ states. (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2001; AFL-CIO, ‘Death on the Job,’ April 2002)

It’s clear that living in a right-to-work state tends to drastically reduce one’s standard of living, and the only people to benefit are those who profit unfairly from the under-compensated worker. This group includes CEOs who pay themselves 500 times what their workers earn as well as the politicians who support the legalized theft of labor.

Simply put, joining and actively supporting a union allows you as a worker to take back a little bit of what you deserve, and if you live and work in a right-to-work state and you enjoy a union negotiated contract without joining the union, if you are a free rider, your short sighted selfishness is contributing to the slow death of organized labor.

More:

Ralph Nader on Taft-Hartley

Pamphlets in the Fight Against Taft-Hartley 1947-1948

Federal Labor Laws

US Labor Unions

How to Organize a Union in Your Workplace

ZNet Labor Watch

‘Right to Work’ States Are Really Restricted Rights States (AFL-CIO)

Right to Work States

Posted as Civil Liberties, Florida, National, Workers, War on the poor

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Note: As promised earlier this week, I am occasionally rerunning posts from the past that have some relevance to current events. This post first appeared on May 21, 2004.

Meaningless feel-good election year tripe:

The governor signed into law Thursday legislation that will cut the gasoline tax by 8 cents a gallon for the entire month of August.

The law also restores a popular one-week holiday on sales taxes for books and clothes valued at less than $50 and other school supplies under $10. The tax holiday, the first since 2001, runs July 24-Aug 1.

“I have always believed it’s the right thing to do to help Florida shoppers, readers and drivers keep more of their hard-earned money,” Bush said in a prepared statement. He thanked lawmakers for adding books to the holiday for the first time.

The sales tax holiday is expected to save shoppers an estimated $35.5-million. Retailers say the state won’t lose tax revenue because people will shop more that week and pay just as much sales tax on other items that aren’t exempt.

The gas tax cut, pushed by Democrats in the Republican-run House, is expected to save drivers $59.7-million. Gas stations must pass the savings on to consumers or they can be charged with third-degree felony and lose their state fuel-dealer’s license.

Reality check:

Advocates of sales tax holidays have their heart in the right place. Sales taxes are regressive, requiring low- and middle- income taxpayers to pay a larger share of their income in tax than the wealthiest taxpayers. Virtually any sales tax cut will therefore provide larger benefits, as a share of income, to low-income taxpayers than to the wealthy. But sales tax holidays are a problematic way of achieving low-income tax relief, for several reasons:

* A one-week sales tax holiday for selected items still forces taxpayers to pay sales tax on these items in the other fifty-one weeks of the year. In the long run, sales tax holidays leave a regressive tax system basically unchanged.
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* Sales tax holidays are poorly targeted, providing tax breaks to even the wealthiest taxpayers. The benefits of sales tax holidays are not limited to state residents, but also extend to consumers visiting from other states.

* Many low-income taxpayers spend essentially all of their income just getting by�which means that they have less disposable income than wealthier taxpayers. These poor taxpayers may not have the luxury of shifting the timing of their consumption to coincide with weeklong sales tax holidays. By contrast, wealthier taxpayers are more likely to be able to time their purchases to coincide with the holiday without throwing their finances out of kilter.

* Retailers know that consumers will shift their spending toward sales tax holidays to take advantage of the temporary tax exemption. Savvy retailers can take advantage of this shift by increasing their prices during the holiday. There is some evidence that Florida retailers did exactly that during a recent sales tax holiday there: one study found that up to 20 percent of the potential benefits from that state�s sales tax holiday were reclaimed by retailers in the form of higher prices.

Sales tax holidays do have advantages, of course. As previously noted, the biggest beneficiaries from a sales tax cut are the low- and middle-income families for who these taxes are most burdensome. And the heavily-publicized manner in which sales tax holidays are typically administered means that taxpayers will be very aware of the tax cut they receive and will know that state lawmakers are responsible for it.

But in the long run, sales tax holidays are simply too insignificant (and too temporary) to change the regressive nature of a state’s tax system and may lull lawmakers into believing that they have resolved the unfairness of sales taxes. Policymakers seeking to achieve greater tax equity would do better to shift the overall tax burden to wealthier taxpayers by scaling back sales taxes permanently, or by providing a permanent low-income tax credit.

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So, in Florida, lawmakers have specifically threatened to prosecute any gas stations that do not pass on the savings from this bill, but they have done nothing about the gouging by other retailers mentioned above. This means that SUV owners will be sure to get their breaks, but that the poor are likely to see little or no savings.

A permanent fix to Florida’s highly regressive tax system is sorely needed.

Florida taxes its poorest people nearly five times as hard as the very wealthiest (those whose incomes average $946,000) and more than twice as hard as the upper middle class. In Alabama, contrastingly, the bottom-to-top ratio is just over two to one.

These statistics were compiled by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington-based public interest organization, which rates the 10 most regressive state tax systems according to the differences between tax burdens on the poorest and richest citizens. The 10, in descending order of unfairness, are Washington, Florida, Tennessee, South Dakota, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Alabama.

Posted as Florida, Tampa, War on the poor

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The rally and press conference outside actually drew a hundred or more people. 5 or 6 county police officers were also milling around. I asked one if he saw the irony in the fact that the county seemed to be spending money to acknowledge gay pride simply by paying the officers to be there, thus violating their own ban. He declined to comment.

County quashes gay issue

Hillsborough commissioners touched off a tempest last month when, without discussion, they distanced themselves from gay pride events.

Wednesday, again without discussion, they quashed an effort to revisit the issue.

And they did so out of agenda order, while scores who showed up to speak on the issue were temporarily distracted by a gay rights rally outside.

Nadine Smith, leader of a gay and lesbian rights group, called the silent vote disrespectful, evidence that commissioners know their position is indefensible.

“There is victory in your silence,” said Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, in addressing commissioners at the end of the meeting. “I think your silence comes from an inability to justify what you have done.”

Commission Chairman Jim Norman said he decided to consider the issue out of order because County Center officers worried about their ability to keep the building secure with so many people lingering. The vote came shortly after the 10 a.m. gay rights rally began, not later in the day, as the agenda placement suggested.

“I did not want any at-risk situations to occur,” Norman said. “I’m always going to put public safety before other issues.”

It was an unusual step for a commission accustomed to drawing large crowds eager to weigh in on contentious issues. The commission has entertained standing-room-only crowds repeatedly in recent years, often setting up chairs in the County Center library to accommodate the overflow.

There were no chairs set up Wednesday.

The crowd came after commissioners received a request from the president of the Friends of the Library of Tampa-Hillsborough County Inc., who asked the board to review a June 15 vote banning gay pride acknowledgment by county government. That 5-1 vote, led by Commissioner Ronda Storms, followed a published account about the removal of a gay pride display at West Gate Regional Library.

Friends of the Library president Karen McClure called it “disturbing” that the board would “cease to acknowledge ideas of a segment of our community.”

Expecting the issue to come up later in the meeting, even McClure arrived after commissioners dispensed with it.

As was the case last month, Kathy Castor was the lone vote of dissent when the rest of the board voted simply to “receive and file” McClure’s letter without debate.
……

Wednesday’s meeting drew a crowd that filled nearly every seat in the chambers, with another 40 or so people protesting outside the building.

The meeting opened, as usual, with 45 minutes for public comment on agenda items. Perhaps a dozen or more were able to speak, a fraction of those who signed up, most protesting the commission’s position.
……

The crowd left the room, many planning to return to hear discussion of McClure’s request.

Outside, Bart Birdsall, a Greco Middle School librarian who is gay, used a bullhorn to read from books on a gay pride display that was taken down at the West Gate Library. As Birdsall read, about a dozen people carrying rainbow flags and antiban signs marched in a circle around him.

Smith, of Equality Florida, was among them.

“This is about singling out a group of people for discrimination and putting the county’s seal of approval on that discrimination,” she told the crowd.

Wearing a name tag that read “Human Being,” she asked business owners who disagree with the county ban to place signs in their windows to let patrons know they support diversity.

Instead of a boycott, she advocated a “buycott,” directing spending at gay-friendly businesses.

Equality Florida plans to post a list of those establishments on the Web site www.buycottfl.org “Nationwide, people are already calling to boycott this area,” said Michael Brill, president of the Tampa Bay Business Guild.

Local business owners, who had signed up to speak to commissioners but didn’t get a chance, spoke to the crowd outside.
……

Upstairs, inside their nearly empty chambers, commissioners quietly accepted McClure’s letter.

That’s right: Hillsborough County’s version of democracy includes severely limiting public comment and holding sneaky votes to avoid debate over a policy that may well be illegal under a Florida statute designed to protect libraries from moralizing politicians.

Commissioner Kathy Castor, the only member to vote against the ban, opened the door for the board to ditch the policy. She said the board violated state statutes with the ban. That’s because it prompted the director of the county library system to strip displays of gay-authored books, even though it didn’t specifically target libraries, Castor said.

She quoted Florida statutes, approved in 1984, that created a volunteer library advisory board and gave it sole authority to select books and make its own policies.

Interruption of that process requires filing a grievance to the panel, the statute states. Commissioners do have leeway to change library rules, but only upon recommendation by the county administrator, the statute states.

Because the county did not follow that procedure, the policy is not valid, Castor told commissioners. County Attorney Renee Lee did not return calls seeking an official interpretation of the 1984 statute.

Former Commissioner Jan Platt, who helped write the statute 20 years ago and is a member of the fundraising group Friends of the Library, agreed with Castor. The statute was intended to build a buffer between elected officials and libraries. It’s crucial, she said, to take the authority to decide library content “out of political hands.'’

Without commenting, the board moved on to the rest of its agenda.

Posted as Florida, Tampa, Hillsborough Homophobia

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