Bush, Slave Labor and Arizona

By GottaLaff

Your Daily Dose of BuzzFlash, brought to you by the one and only Mark Karlin:

The draconian Arizona Anti-Mexican Immigrant law -- this legislation is not aimed at white immigrants -- would not have passed and been signed under Bush; Karl Rove would have made sure of that.

[...] Bush and Cheney were basically heirs to the slavery tradition of low wage labor and believed that corporate America should have access to the cheapest possible labor market -- legal or otherwise.

[...] Without a Republican in the White House to protect the right of corporations to exploit illegal labor, the Republican Governor of Arizona signed the law [...] and became a right wing populist hero even if it will probably cause her state hundreds of millions of dollars in boycott revenue and litigation costs.

The Republicans still have a split in their party between the corporatists who are happy to employ illegal immigrants at sub-living wages and the white Tea Party populist base that is upset that whites are becoming a minority [...]

That's the Republican dilemma; corporatist profits and slave wages over jobs for Americans and the bigot vote.

Bush was on the side of the corporatists, so the worst of the GOP immigration bills, a la Arizona, never passed during his administrations [...] because big business wanted a continued supply of rock bottom low wage labor. [...]

Americans who have lost their jobs cannibalize themselves by shopping at Wal-Mart because it's -- well -- cheap, and they don't have much money to spend because their jobs were sent overseas or filled here by illegal immigrants.

And who do the Wal-Mart shoppers blame: Obama?

Sometimes you just can't buy stupid.

More here.

Video- Child Labor: Problem in Our Own Backyard

Gobsmacked. More here.

Specter gets ready to flip back on union bill

By GottaLaff

Arlen's playing his Arlen games, fine and dandy. But let's hope EFCA doesn't get too watered down in the process:

Labor is pushing hard for Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would let workers join unions by signing cards, instead of holding secret-ballot elections. [...] The Senate appears to be engaging in an elaborate operation to help Arlen Specter save face before he folds and votes with his, ahem, fellow Democrats on one of labor's top legislative priorities. [...]

The right wing of the GOP, in particular, hates the bill, which would probably help slow -- or even reverse -- a long trend of declining union membership, by making it easier to organize workplaces.

Suddenly, though, the whole calculus has changed. Specter said when he switched parties that he would still oppose the legislation "in its current form." But just as realpolitik dictated that he oppose the bill as a Republican, he probably has no choice but to support it as a Democrat, especially if his two opponents in the party's primary -- both of whom have been Democrats since before April -- stay in the race.

All of that may explain why Specter suddenly acknowledged today that he's feeling a lot better about the legislation. He's been in talks with Democrats Tom Harkin of Iowa and Dianne Feinstein of California about how to change the proposal a bit to get him on board. Chances are, he won't drive a very hard bargain; one union official says labor will probably go along with minor tweaks as long as the "core principles" of the bill are preserved. Specter will be able to point to some cosmetic changes to explain why he's going back to supporting legislation he's supported in the past, and that will be that.

And lo and behold, just in the nick of time, President Obama agreed today that some compromise could probably work, as well, and reiterated his support for the bill.

'Card-check' advocate joining Obama's team

By GottaLaff

Relieving some of the labor pains:

A prominent supporter of a contentious labor bill is joining the Obama administration.

Mary Beth Maxwell, executive director of American Rights at Work (ARAW), a labor advocacy group, will sign on as a senior adviser to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. Maxwell’s primary job will be to work with the White House task force on improving the middle class, chaired by Vice President Biden. [...]

Founding ARAW in 2003, Maxwell is a longtime activist and an expert grassroots organizer, having worked as a field director for Jobs with Justice and NARAL.

Wait. What? A community organizer? Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. How will Sarah Palin react? I better start wringing my hands right now!

One labor official said he found Maxwell’s appointment “really heartening” because it shows the administration is serious about improving the lives of the American middle class.

“They are not just putting her in a closet. They are putting her in a job where she can get things done,” said Bill Samuel, director of government affairs for the AFL-CIO.

And for those who were concerned that EFCA hasn't gotten enough attention:

This year, Maxwell has emerged as a key figure in the labor movement’s campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make union organizing much easier. At ARAW, Maxwell has organized rallies in support of the bill across the country as well as directed spending for various ad buys to keep up pressure for passage of the measure. [...]

Labor officials took Maxwell’s appointment as a positive sign of the administration’s backing of the union bill. Both Obama and Biden have called on Congress to pass the legislation, but the White House has remained somewhat uninvolved in the battle so far as support has faltered for the bill in the Senate.

“They know she is not a wallflower. She is going to continue to make a case for it,” Samuel said. “She has been a pretty strong proponent of the Employee Free Choice Act and always has been."

Three thumbs up.

Labor Agency Is Failing Workers, Report Says

By GottaLaff

Rachel Maddow just Tweeted the following:

This is why the words "Elaine Chao" instigate an involuntary teeth-grinding reaction from me...

And here is what she linked to. You might want to grab some Tylenol, Imitrex, or, at the very least, a good stiff drink:

The federal agency charged with enforcing minimum wage, overtime and many other labor laws is failing in that role, leaving millions of workers vulnerable, Congressional auditors have found.

In a report scheduled to be released Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office found that the agency, the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, had mishandled 9 of the 10 cases brought by a team of undercover agents posing as aggrieved workers.

In one case, the division failed to investigate a complaint that under-age children in Modesto, Calif., were working during school hours at a meatpacking plant with dangerous machinery, the G.A.O., the nonpartisan auditing arm of Congress, found.

When an undercover agent posing as a dishwasher called four times to complain about not being paid overtime for 19 weeks, the division’s office in Miami failed to return his calls for four months, and when it did, the report said, an official told him it would take 8 to 10 months to begin investigating his case. [...]

The report pointed to a cavalier attitude by many Wage and Hour Division investigators, saying they often dropped cases when employers did not return calls and sometimes told complaining workers that they should file lawsuits, an often expensive and arduous process, especially for low-wage workers.

During the nine-month investigation, the report said, 5 of the 10 labor complaints that undercover agents filed were not recorded in the Wage and Hour Division’s database, and three were not investigated. In two cases, officials recorded that employers had paid back wages, even though they had not. [...]

Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis said she took the report’s findings seriously.

“I am committed to ensuring that every worker is paid at least the minimum wage,” Ms. Solis said, “that those who work overtime are properly compensated, that child labor laws are strictly enforced and that every worker is provided a safe and healthful environment.”

Ms. Solis said the Wage and Hour Division planned to increase its staff by a third by hiring 250 investigators — 100 of them as part of the federal stimulus package — “to refocus the agency on these enforcement responsibilities” and “ensure that contractors on stimulus projects are in compliance with the applicable laws.” [...]

Ms. Solis’s predecessor, Elaine L. Chao, often defended the Wage and Hour Division, saying it had concentrated on larger, tougher cases, and secured back wages for more than 300,000 workers a year and collected more than twice as much annually as the division had done in the final years of the Clinton administration.

The report concluded that the Wage and Hour Division had mishandled more serious cases 19 percent of the time. In such cases, the accountability office said, the division did not begin an investigation for six months, did not complete an investigation for a year, did not assess back wages when violations were clearly identified and did not refer cases to litigation when warranted.

It's a good thing the fetus was being protected so diligently by BushCo and other anti-choice zealots, because once a child is born, all that goes right out the window. Health care, labor laws, poverty... Pro-life, my ass.

Much more here.

"Inheritance" always had such a nice ring to it... until BushCo came along.

U.S. Trade Policy to Emphasize Social Issues

By GottaLaff

Trade-offs:

The Obama administration is aggressively reworking U.S. trade policy to more strongly emphasize domestic and social issues, from the displacement of American workers to climate change.

Even as world trade takes its steepest drop in 80 years amid the global economic crisis, the administration is preparing to take a harder line with America's trading partners. It will seek new benchmarks before supporting already-written trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea and is suggesting that it will dig in its heels on global trade talks, demanding that other countries make broader concessions first. [...]

In the United States, more Americans are blaming cheap imports for job losses at home and congressional leaders pressed successfully to include a "Buy American" provision in the $787 billion stimulus program to give an edge to U.S.-made products. [...]

During the campaign, Obama said he generally supports free-trade policies, but also signaled a tougher trade approach that is only now beginning to be outlined. Both in Kirk's testimony and in a policy statement issued by new Obama appointees at the office of the United States Trade Representative, the administration vowed to make tougher labor and environmental standards a pre-requisite for trade deals. Rather than stressing the signing of new agreements, the administration indicated it will instead prioritize stricter enforcement of existing ones before the WTO -- the Geneva-based body that arbitrates global trade.

In what appeared to be a jab at the Bush administration's zealous pursuit of free trade agreements, [Ron Kirk, Obama's nominee as U.S. trade representative] -- the former mayor of Dallas -- said "I do not come to this job . . . with 'deal fever.' We're not going to do deals just for doing so."

The administration, he said, is conducting a review of trade agreements signed by the previous administration with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. He said outright that the deal with South Korea, as currently written, "is simply unfair." He added that "we are prepared to step away from that" if it is not reworked. [...]

Though Kirk declined to detail what those benchmarks may be, analysts have suggested they might involve, for instance, a U.S. insistence that murders of union leaders be sharply reduced in Colombia before lending support to the deal.

The new USTR statement also stated that trade policy must now contain a new element of "social accountability," including on issues such as climate change. [...]

"The result will be a complete re-think on what U.S. priorities are on trade and what trade agreements look like in the future," said Randall Soderquist, Senior Trade Program Associate at the Center for Global Development. "This could mean starting from scratch versus just taking the baton from the Bush Administration."

Yet the administration still appears to be toeing a line, saying it will move to address the concerns of American workers while also carefully avoiding words and deeds that directly smack of protectionism.[...]

"It is true that cheaper foreign products helped squeezed American families stretch their dollars, and the sale of our goods and services abroad support American families," [Kirk] said. "But it is also true that the overarching benefits of trade are difficult to appreciate when a plant closes in a small community because of increased foreign competition."