Rep. Jack Williams and the AFL-CIOs Al Henley respond to my questions on the prevailing wage destruction bill (see another video below).
by Glynn Wilson
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Republicans in the Alabama House of Representatives voted to move two bills out of committee this week that would outlaw the state government and any local government from establishing prevailing wages for skilled work on public works projects as required by federal law under the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 on one hand, but provide prevailing wages for convicts working for private industry on the other.
“It’s rotten politics and it’s very insulting to regular old working folks to put middle class construction workers in a race to the bottom and it’s just totally unacceptable,” said state AFL-CIO President Al Henley. “They voted to pay prevailing wages to convicts doing work inside the prison and then voted to take prevailing wages away from construction workers. That is just beyond belief and I don’t think they’ll ever be able to explain it.”
Richard Franklin, president of the Birmingham chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, said the bill was just another in a long line of bills this year being passed by tea party Republican legislatures across the country at the behest of the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, a corporate-funded organization based in Washington that provides training, support and other services to conservative state legislators all over the country, according to Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“One of its prime functions is to draft (big) business-friendly ‘model legislation’ that is then disseminated to state legislators around the country to be introduced and enacted,” Bookman reported. “When you see a spate of similar bills suddenly pop up almost simultaneously in legislatures around the country, ALEC is almost always behind it.”
Republicans in the Alabama Legislature had Richard Franklin, president of the American Federation of Teachers in Birmingham, Alabama, kicked out of a public hearing on a bill that would take public school tax money and give it to private corporations to set up charter schools. Their reason? He was “smiling.”
He said he also thinks it was because he is black, and with a union that opposes charter school legislation. Watch this video to see our exclusive interview with Franklin.
Other union officials say they don’t think the Republicans have the votes to pass the legislation.
For more information, read our earlier story about the issue below.
Bren Riley, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer, at a press conference in Montgomery
by Glynn Wilson
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The Alabama AFL-CIO, like many unions across the country, is in the midst of a rebranding.
Unions have been in decline in the U.S. for many years. But due to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens Unites v. the Federal Election Commission, which freed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns, and due to the labor uprising last year in Wisconsin, unions are rethinking their strategies and trying to grow stronger to take on the growing corporate power and resulting income inequality throughout the country.
Bren Riley, the new Secretary-Treasurer of the group, held a sparsely attended press conference at the group’s Road Kill Barbecue on Tuesday and said the state’s umbrella union will be highlighting income “inequality” in the coming months.
“We are on a mission to keep the 1% from expanding because the 1%, as we all know, is against everything we are as the 99%,” he said.
The Top Issues Include Unemployment Compensation, Wage Floors and Charter Schools
The Alabama AFL-CIO announced its agenda for the second half of the legislative session today in a press release, challenging Republicans on bills related to Unemployment Compensation, Worker’s Compensation and Charter Schools.
“SB 300 and HB 285 will make Alabama’s Unemployment Insurance, ranked 49th out of 50, the worst in the nation,” said Al Henley, President of Alabama AFL-CIO.
Alabama Workers are entitled to Unemployment Insurance when lose their job through no fault of their own. Maximum benefits are $265/week.
A delegation representing civil rights and labor leaders will be in Berlin, Germany, on Wednesday April 4 to urge Daimler AG and its shareholders to seek repeal of Alabama’s racial profiling law, H.B. 56, according to a press release sent out in an e-mail blast by the Service Employees International Union.
The law denies fundamental civil rights to immigrants and minorities and impacts trade union activities between and among union members, inhibiting freedom of association, according to a complaint being filed today with the International Labor Organization of the United Nations by the SEIU and its affiliate, the Southern Regional Joint Board of Workers United.
Daimler, which produces Mercedes-Benz vehicles in Alabama, is a founding signatory of the United Nations Global Compact, which calls on businesses to “make sure they are not complicit in human rights abuses.”
Until now, Daimler and Mercedes-Benz have been silent on this law which violates human rights, even though one of its German executives was arrested under the Alabama law.
MARGARETVILLE, Ala. — It is a lovely Sunday morning and amazingly quiet in the suburbs on this April Fool’s Day. The Carolina Wren’s are feeding new young in the hand-crafted birdhouse attached to the screened-in porch. They stop only occasionally between feedings to sing, and they sound about as happy as I feel with my new dog and best friend Jefferson laying at my feet.
If I didn’t know better, I would finish by saying “all’s right with the world.”
But you and I both know better.
As I peruse the headlines from my hand-made html news page, which may go the way of the Dodo bird soon and be replaced by a Word Press front page, and as I look through the Google alerts and other e-mails, I run across an interesting column from Phil Rockstroh, who calls himself a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City but who is from the South. He laments the fact that his white male Southern buddies cling to the Republican fantasy of “free-market capitalism,” while their jobs disappear and their lives diminish into a political bitterness they cannot seem to escape.
Task Force Says Bad Schools Hurt National Security
by Glynn Wilson
Republicans in the Alabama Legislature are pushing a bill to take some funding away from already cash-strapped public schools in the attempt to privatize public schools, a move that most experts say will just make public education in the U.S. worse.
A report just out from a task force led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City’s school system, says the nation’s security and economic prosperity are at risk if America’s schools don’t improve.
“The dominant power of the 21st century will depend on human capital,” the report warned. “The failure to produce that capital will undermine American security.”
The task force says the State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies face critical shortfalls in the number of foreign language speakers, and that fields such as science, defense and aerospace are at particular risk because a shortage of skilled workers is expected to worsen as baby boomers retire.
The AFL-CIO and other labor unions joined the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights March this year on the 47 anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Alabama AFL-CIO Al Henley addressed a night rally in White Hall on Wednesday night. Watch the video to see what he had to say. To see our full coverage of the events, check out this story and links.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The dogwoods, azaleas and cherry blossoms are in full bloom a full three weeks before Easter here, but of course that’s no sign of global warming and climate change, according to the Republicans and the media in Alabamaland.
The so-called Christians could care less. It must all be part of god’s plan. Right.
Nevermind that if there was a god, even the people who know a little about science yet believe say he gave the human species free will, which has led him to greedy pursuits that in fact do impact the climate.
Now if I was a Christian and I was searching for an answer to this riddle, I would conclude that if there were any such thing as a plan based on a “creation” event, if there was a god he would hold man in contempt for screwing up that creation.
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
