Thanks,
I'm about to hang it up for the day, work wise. So I'll see if I can
get to the videos now.
It's currently 85 degrees outside and 84 degrees inside. But we have
a rare wind blowing straight through the house, so it feels more like
75.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/31/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
I can tell you how to reach the videos. When you hear the title of a story
and the word, link, press enter on the link, usually I have to do it on the
second letter of the first word. When you get into the link, press h until
you get to the title of the story and arrow down until you hear , I think
it's a 1 button, and press enter. The text is fine too. I don't know how
you get to it. It just seems like the video is easier. If you press enter on
that #1, the video just starts.
Thank goodness we are not having a heat wave here, although it is getting
warmer again, in the upper 80's, I guess. Yesterday, I happily had the
windows open because it was Sunday, not much traffic noise or exhaust, and a
cool breeze. But today, it was a bit too warm. I'm back to a bit of air
conditioning, which I hate!
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2017 5:27 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: NLRB: just because Labor Relations is in the
name, don't believe it
Miriam,
Interesting. I saw that there were videos, but only had time to copy the
text. I'll go back and take a longer look...time permitting.
Life is never dull. Tomorrow morning we'll be at Seattle's Swedish Medical
Center, where our eldest daughter's husband will undergo brain surgery. Don
has Parkinson's and has already had one rod inserted in his brain. This
will be the same surgery, only on the other side. He will then have two
remotes with which to alter each side separately.
It's about a two hour surgery, if all goes according to plan, and we don't
like the idea of Jennifer sitting all alone in the waiting room.
Both her boys work, and their youngest daughter-in-law is driving across the
Cascades to Ellensburg to dog sit for the two days Don will be in the
hospital. Swedish has neat hotel-like rooms for family members to rent, at
very reasonable rates. But Jennifer's insurance also covers that cost. On
9-11 Don will turn 59. He's been dealing with Parkinson's for at least 10
years. coincidentally, 9-11 is also our youngest daughter's birthday. And
my best friend's wife has the same misfortune. I say "my best friend",
although Dick died from cancer back in 1990. One of those rare humans who
never said, or thought, a negative word about anyone. He was a believer in
the old adage, if you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at
all.
So Dick did have silent moments.
And last but not least, we, here in the Great Northwest, are going to have a
heat wave. It is to begin tomorrow and last until Saturday.
Temperatures will zoom up to 95 degrees on Friday, but Tuesday through
Thursday will be moving up through the 80's. Most of America would welcome
a "cooling down" stretch in the 80's. Still, it's what ones body is
acclimated to. I get any heavy work out doors done in the morning. And of
course we once again have air conditioning in our truck. That's because we
finally retired the old 2003 Ford Sport Trak, with its dead air conditioner,
and bought a 2017 Toyota Tacoma, with everything working. It's not as
comfortable as the Ford, but Ford quit making the Sport Trak a couple of
years ago. Our last three vehicles were Ford trucks, and all of them were
dependable to the end.
Of course the new vehicles have "on-screen" touch controls for things like
CD player and radio.
Take care and stay cool.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/31/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Interesting. You get transcripts. I got this in a podcast, but also as
a video. There's a terrific series of three discussions that Paul Jay
has with members of the Working Families of Maryland. Most of them,
one way or another, are supportive of, or making excuses for, the
Democratic Party because the Working Families actually is an arm of
the Democratic party, although it doesn't admit to it. Paul Jay is
arguing with them because in many cases, most of them seem to be making
excuses for corporate Democrats.
He's becoming another one of my heroes. He makes his position very
clear, even though he's a journalist. His questions are sharp.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2017 1:10 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Bob Hachey <bhachey@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] NLRB: just because Labor Relations is in
the name, don't believe it
Here's another example of what is going forward while we all giggle
and gawk at Russiagate.
Carl Jarvis
Michael Arria is a reporter who covers labor and social movements.
He's also the author of Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
transcript
Trump Stacking The National Labor Relations Board to Favor
Corporations SHARMINI PERIES: It's the Real News Network. I'm Sharmini
Peries, coming to you from Baltimore. It would be reasonable to expect
that the head of the Labor Department and the National Labor Relations
Board would be those who advocate for working Americans, people who
will use the power of the Department and the National Labor Relations
Board to rein in corporate greed and to improve the lives of ordinary
working Americans. Well, while most of Washington and its legislators
and its press have been preoccupied with Russiagate, some fundamental
changes are taking place that can unravel labor conditions in this
country for decades to come. Joining me now to take a closer look at
who's who in labor relations these days and in the Trump
administration is Michael Arria. Michael is a reporter covering labor
and social movements. He's also the author of Medium Blue: The
Politics of MSNBC. Thanks for joining us, Michael.MICHAEL
ARRIA: Sure, thanks for having me.SHARMINI PERIES: So, Michael, before
we dive into this topic, let's outline what the Labor Relations Board
is and what it does.MICHAEL ARRIA: Sure. So, the NLRB is the National
Labor Relations Board, was created in the 1930s, 1933, under FDR. It's
a five-person board which is responsible for interpreting and
enforcing labor law in the United States. It's had a variety of issues
throughout the years, but I'd say in recent memory, it had become kind of
a joke. Under George W.
Bush, he had ...
George W. Bush, when president, had refused to appoint some people to
open seats, and the Democrats controlled the Senate at the time, so
they had refused to confirm some of his appointments. And for a large
amount of time, I think from December 2007 through June of 2010, the
five-member board only had two members on it, which led to questions
regarding its authority, and ultimately a legal challenge. The Supreme
Court ruled in 2010 that it ...
Not only did the two-member version of the board not have any
authority, but also, none of the decisions it had made had any
authority either.So that was kind of the state of the NLRB not too
long ago. It was not really regarded by many in labor as a beacon of
hope, to put it mildly. But I think what we've seen, really, to the
surprise of many, since Obama was able to fill out the remaining seats
on the board, we've seen the NLRB kind of emerge as an effective
interpreter of this kind of current economic landscape we're in. We
have seen them make all kinds of important decisions that kind of tilt
some of the power back to workers. They ... Very important decision
that increased the organizing rights of graduate students, a very
important decision that increased the organizing rights of employees
at charter school.And perhaps most importantly, in 2015, the
Browning-Ferris ruling, which kind of chipped away at the legal
barrier between a corporation and its given franchises. So when we
look at movements like the Fight for $15, or the efforts to organize
fast-food workers and retail workers, there's been attempts by groups
like the SEIU to kind of hold corporations like McDonald's responsible
for the actions of its given stores, and rulings like this, I think,
have been a real breakthrough, and they've been, if unexpected, very
welcomed by labor. And that might kind of sound like a long-winded
backstory, but I think it's necessary context to the In These Times
piece I wrote, which is about the fact that the Trump administration
is now poised to not only tilt the balance of power back to management
on the board, but also potentially undo a lot of these important
rulings that have taken place.SHARMINI PERIES: Michael, honestly, last
time I saw anything related to the Labor Relations in the mainstream
media is when Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta was appointed, and
some of the controversy around that. But media has really dropped the
ball on protecting the interests of ordinary workers, but you have
been a unique exception to that. Give us a sense of who's getting
appointed to the Labor Relations Board that concerns you.MICHAEL
ARRIA: Well, you're definitely right to say that it hasn't been
covered. I'd say that the ... When we look at the hearing which took
place on July 13th, it took place just 10 days after, I believe, the
Senate had gone back into session, and ... The Senate session had
begun just 10 days after the nomination of one of the nominees, and
the other one just four days after, so there's very little time to
potentially research or vet these two nominations. It was kind of an
unprecedentedly fast-tracked ... In addition to the two people that
were nominated to the NLRB board, the GOP also bundled in another
nominee to the Labor Department in the same hearing, a guy named
Patrick Pizzella, who probably deserves a hearing of his own. He
worked with the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff during the 1990s to
try to get the North Mariana Islands exempt from labor law, kind of a
very ugly story there.But this was all kind of rushed. There was a
letter sent to Lamar Alexander, who's the head of the HELP Committee,
who held the hearings, to ask him for an extension of time to take a
closer look at these nominations, and that was not granted, so the
entire process was kind of sped up. And the two nominees to the NLRB,
the first one is a guy named William Emanuel, who's a management-side
attorney based in Los Angeles. He comes from a firm called Littler
Mendelson, which has been notoriously connected to union-busting for
decades. He authored an amicus brief on class action waivers; class
action waivers have actually been deemed illegal by the NLRB. And when
he was nominated, as is customary, he handed over a list of clients
that he'd worked with that he said he would recuse himself from if
they had cases come up in front of the NLRB, and the list is full of
corporations which have clashed directly with the NLRB in recent
years: J.P. Morgan, Nissan, probably most prominently Uber.So that's
one of the nominees to the NLRB, and the other one is a guy named
Marvin Kaplan, who served for the Republicans on the House Committee
on Education and the Workforce, which held hearings during his tenure
scrutinizing many NLRB decisions, and he was also instrumental in
developing a piece of legislation called the Workforce Democracy and
Fairness Act, which is trying to increase the amount of time between
when a board authorizes a workplace unionization vote and when that
vote actually takes place. So, since 2014, that space of time has been
11 days, but many people, anti-labor forces are trying to extend that
to at least
35 days so that management can have a little more time to potentially
stomp out any organizing or attempts at creating a union. So that's
the history and backstory of the two people that were nominated. They
both have long careers connected to anti-labor policies, I'd say.SHARMINI
PERIES:
What kind of effect,
or how will the dynamics change with existing members and these new
appointments, as far as you can foresee?MICHAEL ARRIA: Well, it's
difficult to say for sure. I think this is part of a much wider plan
by the Trump administration to crack down on labor. I mean, you
mentioned the new Labor Secretary earlier.
It was just announced a couple days ago, I think, that he is moving
ahead at undoing the overtime legislation that Obama passed shortly
before leaving office that would potentially increase the pay of, I
think, 4.2 million Americans. We see some of these OSHA rules have
already been folded back, and we see the ... Trump's budget, which he
had revealed, which calls for deep cuts to the Labor Department, and
cuts to these work training programs.So it's hard to see how this
shakes out, but this is kind of like the last piece, I think, to the
Trump administration's assault on labor, because up until this point,
they have really not had control of the NLRB, and these ... You know,
we're talking about how the process was kind of sped up, and there
wasn't much time. These nominees are expected to get confirmed,
obviously, with the Republicans in control. The final vote in the
committee was
12 to 11, down
party lines, so everybody, I think, is expecting them to control this
agency soon.SHARMINI PERIES: And on the part of workers and ordinary
citizens, families of working poor and so on, what can they actually
do to protect their rights, especially if these nominations go
through? I just don't think people are aware and conscious of these
changes that are taking place that can dramatically change their lives in
the years to come.MICHAEL ARRIA:
Yeah, I mean, I
think it's different with every situation, but I actually ... It's
interesting, I think, as the NLRB has kind of changed, and we're
talking about this story being under-reported, but I'm not sure if any
of those Obama-era advancements were reported very much. There has
been a few calls in various places for some in labor to focus a little
more, maybe, on what's referred to on the right sometimes as "judicial
activism," and maybe try to take some of what the NLRB does a little
more seriously, and push for new types of enforcement of these
rules.So it's going to be very interesting to see it play out, and I
think it's especially interesting because Trump has had a very ...
You know, on one hand, it's easy to say that he's leading this assault
on labor; on the other hand, he courted labor during the campaign in a
way that we really haven't seen from a Republican since Ronald Reagan,
and for all the talk about how he ran a campaign with no investment in
polling and he really didn't know what he was doing, I think that when
we look at labor, it definitely paid off. I mean, he got more labor
votes than Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or George W. Bush, or George
W. Bush's dad. So we're looking at a kind of a ...
Like everything with the Trump administration, there's kind of a huge
gulf between the rhetoric and the actual policy, and we see a lot of
focus on the rhetoric, but I think this is just one of the many
examples where we see the policy kind of passing by without much
comment or reporting.SHARMINI
PERIES:
All right, Michael Arria, thank you so much for joining us today and
giving us a snippet of what's going on in the ... As far as the Trump
appointees and the changes that are taking place in the area of labor.
Love to have you back to discuss more. Thanks so much.MICHAEL ARRIA:
Sure, thanks for having me.SHARMINI
PERIES: And thank you for joining me here on The Real News Network.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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