Republicans in Washington Senate take a hard right turn
Republicans demote
Democratic chair;
push ALEC-written
attacks on workers
By DAVID GROVES
OLYMPIA, Wash. — A year ago,
the new Majority Coalition Caucus
(MCC) of Senate Republicans and
two defecting Democrats vowed
“governing from the middle, govern-
ing from the center” when they seized
control of that body from the Demo-
cratic majority elected by voters. The
MCC promised a new era of biparti-
sanship and moderation.
What a difference a special elec-
tion makes.
With the addition of another Re-
publican senator, Jan Angel of Port
Orchard, the MCC no longer needs
both Democratic defectors to vote
with them, and on Jan. 27 they
demonstrated that the era of biparti-
sanship (such as it was) is finished.
Over the objections of Senate De-
mocrats, Republicans voted to make
Angel the new co-chair of the Finan-
cial Institutions, Housing and Insur-
ance Committee. Democratic defec-
tors Sens. Tim Sheldon of Shelton and
Rodney Tom of Medina both voted
with Republicans to demote their for-
mer “Roadkill Caucus” compatriot,
Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-Lake Stevens),
who had been sole chair of the com-
mittee, leading Hobbs to declare that
Postal workers launch national protest
against outsourcing mail jobs to Staples
The opening of Postal Service retail centers at Staples stores nationwide is
being met with protests and threats of boycotts by the American Postal Work-
ers Union (APWU) and the National Letter Carriers Association.
The so-called “Retail Partner Expansion” program began in November in
80 Staples stores in northern California, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and central Mas-
sachusetts in a trial, but Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe says he wants to
expand the program “as soon as possible” to approximately 1,500 Staples
stores nationwide.
The union is demanding that postal employees be assigned to perform the
postal work at Staples stores. If Staples and the USPS refuse, the APWU says
it will ask customers to take their business elsewhere.
On Jan. 28, more than 200 APWU members and supporters demonstrated
outside Staples stores in San Francisco and San Jose challenging the arrange-
ment.
APWU President Mark Dimondstein said the union supports the expansion
of postal services and retail hours, but added: “We cannot accept USPS plans
to replace good-paying union jobs with nonunion low-wage jobs held by
workers who have no accountability for the safety and security of the mail.”
the moderates had lost control of the
Senate.
Also on Jan. 27, the Senate Com-
merce and Labor Committee heard
SB 6300, a bill sponsored by Sen.
Randi Becker (R-Eatonville) that
would create new administrative re-
porting burdens for all public em-
ployee unions and require them to file
multiple reports with the Public Em-
ployment Relations Commission, in-
cluding financial reports listing all of
the unions’ expenditures, and to have
that information posted publicly on-
line.
The bill’s co-sponsors include An-
gel, state chairwoman of the Ameri-
can Legislative Exchange Council
(ALEC), a corporate-funded organiza-
tion that pushes controversial right-
wing agendas in state legislatures
across the country. An investigation of
ALEC by The New York Times found
that “corporate interests effectively
turn ALEC’s lawmaker members into
stealth lobbyists, providing them with
talking points and signaling how they
should vote.”
Sen. Angel is among several state
legislators who have received thou-
sands of dollars worth of “scholar-
ships” to attend ALEC conferences,
but during last fall’s campaign she
portrayed herself a “moderate” and
called criticism of her role with the
PAGE 4
The high court’s decision could po-
tentially affect tens of thousands of
workers covered by union contracts,
who must take time to put on and take
off protective gear such as hard hats,
steel aprons, work gloves and steel-
toed boots.
That time is a bargaining subject,
Associate Justice Antonin Scalia’s rul-
ing said.
Because the Steelworkers contract
said the workers could not get paid,
Sandifer and his allies sued, saying the
1938 Fair Labor Standards Act — the
law that enacted the minimum wage
and overtime pay — governed their
time. Had they won, U.S. Steel and
other firms would have had to pay tens
of thousands of dollars each for lost
time. But the workers lost in the lower
courts, and they lost at the High Court,
too.
“U.S. Steel does not dispute” the
lower courts’ conclusion that “had the
clothes-changing time in this case not
been rendered non-compensable” un-
The angry chairman of the com-
mittee, Sen. Janéa Holmquist Newbry
(R-Moses Lake), did not appreciate
the comparison, claiming that union
dues are “mandatory” and Freedom
Foundation funding is voluntary.
“I’d ask that you not bring this ar-
gument before our committee,” she
said, raising a few eyebrows in the
room.
On Jan. 28, Sen. Holmquist New-
bry’s committee heard another
ALEC-inspired bill. SB 6307 would
set aside Republicans’ aversion to
state government control over local is-
sues by preempting any county, city or
town from setting employment stan-
dards. The goal is to repeal the voter-
approved $15 minimum wage in
SeaTac and the City Council-ap-
proved paid sick leave ordinance in
Seattle, and block any local jurisdic-
tions from creating any similar stan-
dards in the future.
The bill is part of a national cam-
paign by ALEC to block pro-worker
policies adopted in cities and counties
across America.
(Editor’s Note: David Groves is
communications director for the Wash-
ington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO,
and editor of the labor news website
The Stand.)
...Middle class stronger in unionized states
(From Page 3)
“The inequality of bargaining power
between employees who do not possess
full freedom of association or actual lib-
erty of contract and employers who are
Supreme Court rules collective bargaining
determines pay for putting on protective gear
WASHINGTON, D.C. (PAI) — If
Clifton Sandifer and his co-workers
want to get paid for the time they take
putting on steel-toed boots, protective
jackets, hard hats and other gear before
starting their shifts at their U.S. Steel
mill in Northwest Indiana, their union
will have to successfully bargain for it
for them, the U.S. Supreme Court says.
That same rule applies, the court
adds, in cases where union workers
take time to put on or take off protec-
tive gear. Otherwise, it’s considered
“changing clothes.”
That’s because, in a 9-0 decision on
Jan. 27, justices said time used in tak-
ing off and putting on work gear is a
bargainable subject under labor law,
even though another federal law, the
Portal to Portal Act, says workers
should get paid for the time they need
to put on and take off protective gear.
In Sandifer’s case, the United Steel-
workers Union and U.S. Steel had
agreed the workers would not be paid
for the time involved.
corporate group “a bunch of hooey.”
SB 6300 turns out to be cookie-
cutter “model legislation” from ALEC
called the “Union Financial Responsi-
bility Act.” The heart of SB 6300 is its
proposed new Section 2, which lists
the contents of the new reports that
would be required. It is an identical
list — word for word — to the list un-
der the ALEC model legislation’s Sec-
tion 3. ALEC’s language has literally
been copy-and-pasted into the Wash-
ington bill.
Greg Devereux, executive director
of the Washington Federation of State
Employees, AFSCME Council 28,
testified in opposition to the bill on
Jan. 27, calling it “unnecessary, du-
plicative, burdensome and punitive,”
noting that his union is already subject
to federally required reporting and
that information is already posted on
U.S. Department of Labor website.
Geoff Simpson of the Washington
State Council of Fire Fighters also tes-
tified in opposition, pointing out that
unions are democratic, transparent or-
ganizations with information about
their finances readily available to their
members. On the other hand, he noted
that the Freedom Foundation, a right-
wing think tank that testified in sup-
port of the bill, is secretly funded and
refuses to disclose where it gets
money and how it’s spent.
der a labor law section that let the union
and the firm bargain on the issue, “it
would have been a principal (job) ac-
tivity,” and thus the workers would
have been paid, Scalia said.
Instead, U.S. Steel argued that,
thanks to the union contract the work-
ers were just “changing clothes,” and
labor law does not order firms to pay
them for that.
The object of the relevant section of
labor law “is to permit collective bar-
gaining over the compensability of
clothes-changing time and to promote
the predictability achieved through mu-
tually beneficial negotiation. There can
be little predictability, and hence little
meaningful negotiation, if ‘changing’
means only ‘substituting,’” Scalia
added. “If the vast majority of the time
is spent in donning and doffing
‘clothes’ as we have defined that term,
the entire period qualifies, and the time
spent put ting on and off other items
need not be subtracted.”
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
organized in the corporate or other
forms of ownership association sub-
stantially burdens and affects the flow
of commerce, and tends to aggravate re-
current business depressions, by de-
pressing wage rates and the purchasing
power of wage earners in industry and
by preventing the stabilization of com-
petitive wage rates and working condi-
tions within and between industries.
And government employers, like
corporations, sometimes need to be re-
minded by organized workers to treat
their employees fairly. That’s why Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to
Memphis in 1968 to help city sanitation
workers gain recognition for their union
as they faced low pay, terrible working
conditions, and racist supervisors. Even
the conservative icon Ronald Reagan
recognized that public sector workers
should be able to join unions and col-
lectively bargain. Reagan signed a bill
to grant municipal and county employ-
ees the right to do so when he was gov-
ernor of California.
Critically, the benefits of workers
having a voice in the economy and in
democracy spill over to all of society. In
these ways, unions make the middle
class. The challenge of rebuilding the
middle class will take a long time, but
would be impossible without a clear un-
derstanding of what makes the middle
class strong. This paper will explore in
detail why we need to do this and how
we need to go about it. To rebuild
America’s middle class, we need to re-
build the labor movement. It’s that sim-
ple—and that challenging.
(Editor’s Note: David Madland is
director of the American Worker Project
at the Center for American Progress
Action Fund. Keith Miller is a research
assistant with the American Worker
Project. This article was published by
Center for American Progress Action
Fund, www.americanprogressaction.
org.)
FEBRUARY 7, 2014