It sounds like your priorities and responsibilities have your time in
Seattle all tied up, but just in case you find the time and as long as
you are in Seattle you might want to drop in on one of the radical
bookstores. Try the one at 5418 Rainier Ave. South. I understand that
there are some other radical bookstores in that vicinity too.
On 7/31/2017 5:27 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
