The Bill Goes to the Senate, but Voters Will Have a Chance to Defeat it at the Polls in November
by Glynn Wilson
The Republican controlled House of Representatives in Alabama voted 65-22 this week to pass a bill dubbed “The Goodyear Bill” that is being billed by Republicans and the mainstream media as “Gov. Robert Bentley’s jobs plan,” another amendment to be tacked onto an already overburdened constitution that would authorize new and expanding corporations to keep the income taxes of their employees rather than paying them to the state.
No where in the Republican rhetoric or the news coverage does anybody address the fact that the state can’t afford to give away more tax money to corporations which already pay no corporate taxes, because the state is already too broke to continue funding many state agencies and programs. They state can’t afford to continue maintaining some roads. There is all kinds of hand-wringing going on over continued funding for the state retirement system.
While Governor Bentley pledged to raise no taxes yet continue fully funding law enforcement in his State of the State Address, it has become obvious that the state does not have the money to continue paying for an already over-crowded prison system.
The bill now moves over to the 35-member Senate. It will need 21 votes to pass. If approved there and signed by the governor, opponents would have a chance to raise a campaign to stop its approval at the polls. The voters would have a shot at defeating it in a referendum vote during the general election in November.
ANNISTON, Ala. — Several hundred union workers showed up at a “Save Our Jobs” rally here Monday night in the face of a threat by Republicans in Congress to claim reductions in the federal deficit by slashing up to 1,000 civilian jobs at the Anniston Army Depot. The American Federation of Government Employees and the Alabama AFL-CIO led the rally and are launching a campaign to get the public involved to try to save the jobs.
The Republican plan, which goes far beyond the deficit reduction proposal and military spending cuts put on the table by the Obama administration, could also result in a hiring freeze, furloughs for workers, pay freezes, a drop in the pay of the remainder of the depot’s 4,000 workers and an increase in employee contributions to their pension funds.
Everett Kelley, vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the union leadership are trying to figure out how to combat the “travesty” and the “disaster” such drastic layoffs would have on the community.
The American Federation of Government Employees Local 1945 in the Anniston-Jacksonville area of Alabama says about 1,000 U.S. government workers are about to be laid off and their work assigned to contractors in other locations. So they are planning a “Save Our Jobs” rally for Monday, Jan. 30, at the Anniston Meeting Center Monday beginning at 5:30 p.m.
“Union member or not, we are in this fight together,” the union says in a press release announcing the event. “When one employee is cut the entire community is affected. With everyone’s help we can stop this attack on federal employees. We need to fight back and this meeting is the first step.”
Two steelworkers tell their story about how they lost their jobs when Mitt Romney and Bain Capital took over the steel plant in Kansas City and eventually shut the place down.
On the final day of 2011 as I sit here sipping my coffee trying to remember, perusing the other top story lists and trying to figure out a way to sum it all up from here, one thing occurs to me. While the protesters in the Arab world and the Occupy protests are making all the lists, I can’t find one single mention of the protesters in Wisconsin or the reenergized efforts of organized labor across the U.S. on any of the lists.
Could it be that the American news media’s anti-union bias is at work here?
A federal appeals court has balked at deciding a controversial legal case pitting the Alabama Education Association and its ability to raise membership dues against the new Republican administration dead set on weakening public employee unions and suppressing votes for Democrats.
According to a court filing that just popped up online from the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, the federal appeals court panel tossed the state’s appeal in the case back to the all Republican Alabama Supreme Court. The professional organization for teachers won a victory in a lower court and obtained a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of a law passed by the new so-called “Super Majority” of Republicans in the state Legislature, a law written to prohibit payroll deductions to groups that use some of the money for “political activity.”
The appeals court panel indicated it would be “constitutional” for the Legislature to block the payroll deduction if the organization is guilty of “electioneering.”
Fred Redmond, International Vice President of the United Steelworkers and Vice President of the national AFL-CIO, listening to a Latino who wanted to be a history teacher but now cannot attend Alabama or Auburn due to the immigration law
WASHINGTON, D.C. — An AFL-CIO report released Thursday sheds new light on the crisis Alabama immigrant families are facing as a result of HB 56, the latest and broadest law targeting immigrants.
According to the report, none of the delegates expected the humanitarian crisis they experienced in Alabama.
“Each of us was profoundly affected by what we saw and heard. Many were aware of the law, and understood generally that it was an attempt by the state of Alabama, like many other states, to do something about the illegal immigration crisis, given the failure of the U.S. Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform,” said William Lucy, president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, delegation member and one of the authors of the report. “The parallels to Jim Crow were all too real, and the prejudice we heard about felt all too familiar.”
Don Blankenship was head of Massey Energy when 29 coal miners lost their lives in a massive explosion on April 5, 2010. Forced to resign, he has been largely invisible since, according to the AFL-CIO.
“Public records show that Blankenship has incorporated a new venture in Kentucky. Paperwork for McCoy Coal Group Inc. of Belfry, Ky., has been on file since January, though, and it has yet to seek a single mining permit,” says Kentucky Energy and Environment spokesman Dick Brown.
Following the April 2010 the explosian at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine, a United Mine Workers report on the disaster summed up the tragedy in its title: Industrial Homicide.
Unless Congress acts before the Christmas holiday recess, basic lifeline aid for nearly 2 million workers who have lost jobs will be cut off Dec. 31 as the extended unemployment insurance benefits expire. In Alabama alone, this means 24,700 will lose unemployment benefits, according to a report just out from the AFL-CIO.
Over the course of 2012, an estimated 6 million U.S. workers struggling to find jobs will lose these essential benefits if Congress continues to focus on keeping tax cuts for the 1% who crashed our economy rather than helping the 99% by extending unemployment insurance.
“If Congress fails to act, the impact on families, communities and our economy will be devastating,” says Jenn Kauffman, field communications director for the AFL-CIO.
The average weekly benefit for an unemployed worker on the federal extension is about $297, which amounts to only half of the income needed to cover the most basic necessities of food, housing and transportation, as measured by the annual Consumer expenditure survey. In Alabama, the weekly benefit averages $203.67.
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.
