House votes to restrict unions

[SecularMotion]

Source: Boston Globe

House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly last night to strip police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees of most of their rights to bargain over health care, saying the change would save millions of dollars for financially strapped cities and towns.

The 111-to-42 vote followed tougher measures to broadly eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees in Ohio, Wisconsin, and other states. But unlike those efforts, the push in Massachusetts was led by Democrats who have traditionally stood with labor to oppose any reduction in workers’ rights.

Unions fought hard to stop the bill, launching a radio ad that assailed the plan and warning legislators that if they voted for the measure, they could lose their union backing in the next election. After the vote, labor leaders accused House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo and other Democrats of turning their backs on public employees.

“It’s pretty stunning,’’ said Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. “These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected. The same Democrats who we contributed to in their campaigns. The same Democrats who tell us over and over again that they’re with us, that they believe in collective bargaining, that they believe in unions. . . . It’s a done deal for our relationship with the people inside that chamber.’’

Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2011/04/27/house_votes_to_limit_bargaining_on_health_care/

[inademv]

1. Isn't Mass. the home of the bluedogs?

[aquart]

4. They don't watch Maddow, do they?

They didn't see her funding charts. This is simply insane.

[Freddie Stubbs]

47. No it is not

[roguevalley]

53. fuck the dems in Mass. Fuckers.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

58. What you and your weiner dog said!

I have a half-beagle, half-chihuahua who wants a play date!

[roguevalley]

64. bring him on! I can only imagine he looks awesome. :-D

[Admiral Loinpresser]

66. His name is Chalupa

and he's a disgusting, horny little devil about nine months old. But he's a gregarious go-getter and all about the love!

[HereSince1628]

2. At some point, labor just has to say enough and support other parties.

We have a country where the only ideas that gain traction come from corporate serving think-tanks.

[iwishiwas]

5. I think you are right.

[HillbillyBob]

8. I think that we need to have massive nation wide/crippling strikes.

Of course I would like to 'to strike' the baggies and idjits..and set up that those who don't support unions for police and firemen don't get any service, let their damn house burn down.

[24601]

57. What a stupid idea - agree with me or I'll break my oath of office.

It with be quickest way to kill off any remaining unions.

Air Traffic Controllers - Support my union or I'll crash planes
NFL Players - Support my union or I'll fumble on purpose
Nurses - Support my union or I'll give you a fatal dose of medicine
Bus Drivers - Support my union or I'll drive us off a cliff
Teachers - Support my union or I'll turn your kids into morons - Oops, too late on that one


Sure - piss off the overwhelming majority of the population and end up with a constitutional amendment outlawing all unions.

[Occulus]

62. Which of course isn't what was said at all

But then, you jolly well knew that, didn't you?

[bread_and_roses]

10. at some point Labor has to realize that the electoral system has failed us

-totally, and is not a path to revitalization - or even to continued existence at the current life-support levels. I saw Labor's marriage to the Ds recently referred to as "rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic." I'd liken it more to fighting over the leaky and rotting lifeboats.

The political path has failed Labor as it has failed unorganized workers in this country. Time to take another path.

[pasto76]

29. most union folk I work with vote republican

which is stupid.

[aquart]

3. Why would Mass Dems commit mass suicide?

Are you sure this isn't an Onion article?

[Gman]

6. WTF??

[Zorra]

27. +1

[fasttense]

7. Wow, we American citizens are losing most of our basic freedoms

and most people only shrug.

Why do state governments thinks it's a ok to take away our right to form unions? Even the UN considers the right to collective bargaining a basic requirement of civil freedoms.

I've seen this act before, in Pinochet's Chile. Pinochet rounded up all the union members, locked them away and eventually killed most of them, with the advice of Milton Friedman. Most Banana Republics attack their Unions 1st before they can fully implement their power and control as a dictatorships or oligarchy.

Here's to being very happy that Milton Friedman is dead and wont be personally consulting on this destruction of America's civil freedoms.

[Teaser]

11. from zero to crazy in 6 lines of text

no one is going to round up union members and kill them here. Well maybe Sarah Palin, but she'll never hold elective office again.

[plumbob]

13. Actually been going on since at least the 1850s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_labor_issues_and_events


My own grandfather was left for dead in 1934 organizing for the IWW in the west Texas oilfields. He was beaten with clubs, breaking every bone in his body (literally). 6 years in bed, and he was up and at 'em by 1940.

[primavera]

15. Your grandfather sounds like an inspiring and heroic man

It must make you proud to be related to him.

[plumbob]

18. I am! After his oldest son and daughter in law were killed in an auto

accident, he and my grandmother raised their five kids, ages 6 month to 10 years, beginning the year they turned 65. He worked as a carpenter until his 86th birthday, when my youngest cousin graduated from Texas Tech.

He came to this country in 1901 from Germany without knowing a single word of English.

I really do believe he did well.

[PatSeg]

31. What an incredible story

I'd say he definitely "did well".

[bitchkitty]

46. A great man!

The kind of man we should start electing.

[fasttense]

32. A lot of things happening lately would have seemed crazy ten years ago.

Yeah, I don't suspect the Mass. House to go rounding up labor union leaders. I was just pointing out how dictators and oligarchs attack unions first. I could have used Hitler as an example but I thought that was over the top.

Perhaps a more recent example would be Iraq. The provisional government, established by the US, arrested and jailed union leaders 1st before implementing "free" trade policies in that country. And that was done by US federal government officials.

Maybe not as crazy as it seems on the surface.

[Citizen Worker]

9. If this act of betrayal fails to energize the Labor movement to begin building an alternative

political party Labor is essentially dead.

Nearly 20 years ago the late Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers Union worked tirelessly to launch a bona fide Labor Party but the Labor hierarchy did not want to offend democrats so the name was changed to Labor Party Advocates. It fizzled before it got off the ground because workers knew that it was all a charade. Now, we have democrats in the "most liberal state" in the country pissing on the workers who put them in office and these bastards will probably get away with it because "where else are you going to go?"

[Township75]

12. I guess that Wisconsin governor isn't so bad. More Dems seem to be acting like him..

all the time.

I guess we all owe hima big apology. Maybe instead of showing up with signs to protest in WI, we should all show up with big baskets of flowers and sing songs of repentence.

Oh well, as long as we keep Repubs out of power, we can feel good about ourselves.

[primavera]

14. MASSACHUSETTS?!

It's gotta be a typo, they must have meant Texas.

[catrose]

17. Texas has no unions for public employees

You see stuff in the horrible newspaper in Austin like "We pay our police MORE THAN ANYBOY--$50,000/year--so we should have the right to tell them they have to live within Austin city limits." (and pay huge property taxes, never mind that they couldn't afford to live in any place they'd want to) For some reason--and not all of them monetary--many police live in the surrounding small burgs or on acreage outside of the county and town.

[rayofreason]

48. Wrong.

http://www.cwa-tseu.org/

http://www.tsta.org/

http://tx.aft.org/

http://www.cleat.org/about/

[nonperson]

16. What the USA needs is a good old fashioned

Labor and tax strike.

Do no work.

Pay no taxes.

Republicans and their teabagger sock puppets want a shutdown? No problem. Let's see how well they do after a few weeks of total shutdown courtesy of we the people.

Edit to add:
Same goes for Democrats that act like Republicans.

[border_town]

19. I live in Mass

and I haven't heard anything about this, not have I heard or seen any radio or TV commercials, and I watch the news every morning. I also find it hard to believe that our Governor Patrick is going to Wisconsin at the end of this month to be the key not speaker for their Democratic meeting. This has got to be a false story.

[primavera]

22. Then call your representative...

... and ask wtf they're doing, are they all on crack?

[Welibs]

20. These are NOT Democrats, they are Blue Dog Republican plants.

These guys are a bunch of phonies and when the Dems need them most they are not there. They are too busy voting for their Republican masters.

It's good they lost a pile of their seats in 2010 and hopefully they'll lost the rest of them in 2012!

[border_town]

24. This still ahs to get

through the senate and then Gov Patrick. I am very skeptical this will make it. But yes I will be in touch with my local reps.

[seaglass]

52. Deval Patrick led the charge google it from January. n/t

[dotymed]

21. We desperately need to build a viable

"Labor" party to combat all of this bullshit. Austerity for us, record wealth for "them."
Damn, when do we participate in this class war?????

[primavera]

23. Thank you!

I get so sick of hearing about how Dems should refrain from engaging in class warfare while Repukes have been doing nothing but that for decades!

[Admiral Loinpresser]

59. + 1,000 n/t

n/t

[mistertrickster]

25. Stabbed in the back by our own party. Time to take away THEIR health care. nt

[LiberalFighter]

26. I'm getting the feeling from his wikipedia file that he is crooked.

[Snoutport]

28. is it a trap?

I wonder if this bill has something in it the courts will block...that will mess up the anti-union move? I'm hoping...otherwise i just got stabbed in the back.

[One_Life_To_Give]

30. Why? Is this better than negotiating?

Mass's budget problems aren't surprising or atypical. Underfunded pensions and ballooning costs of health care are putting strain on budgets everywhere including MA. Yes making changes to those benefits by the system will involve a fight, probably strikes etc. And in the end the Gov't, Employees and Taxpayers will come to an agreement (although none may like it).

So what are they afraid of? They intend to unilaterally cut health-care benefits for all MA Public Employees and declare any resulting strike illegal? Yes the options available to gov't suck, but this isn't how we do things in the America I knew.

[commonsensedem]

33. Explaination

Just fyi, long time lurker, never written before. I live in Ma. and have been following this issue for awhile, it has been a huge issue among those involved in municipal politics. This is NOT Winsconsin like at all. First it does not allow municipalities to unilaterally strip unions of all bargainign rights. Second it does not affect public employees who do not work for cities and towns.

What it does do: It allows municipalities to unilaterally move their union from private insurance to the same exact insurance state employees receive. The thought behind it is if the state has more people to insure the lower the costs among its members, including cities and towns. Most communities will save hundreds of thousands of dollars. Believe it or not the idea for doing this came from the same thought process that brought together unions: together they can bargain lower rates and better services for their membership, seprated, smaller unions within small towns are at the mercy of insurance companies.

[Historic NY]

34. In my 30yr career my municipal health plan changed many times....

the only thing our union contract ever had was that it would be equal to or greater than what was presently in effect. We never got diminished service & we never bargained for it. Ny State has had many different state health insurance carriers. We didn't have supplement dental or eye glass coverage but everything else was alway top notch with Empire plan. We were allowed to sign onto the local CSEA dental & eye glass portions that they provided their members at a weekly cost.

Do they have some state plan? It sounds like eveyone operates on different pages.


http://www.cs.state.ny.us/ebd/about/index.cfm

[Freddie Stubbs]

35. House votes to restrict unions

Source: The Boston Globe

House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly last night to strip police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees of most of their rights to bargain over health care, saying the change would save millions of dollars for financially strapped cities and towns.

The 111-to-42 vote followed tougher measures to broadly eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees in Ohio, Wisconsin, and other states. But unlike those efforts, the push in Massachusetts was led by Democrats who have traditionally stood with labor to oppose any reduction in workers’ rights.

Unions fought hard to stop the bill, launching a radio ad that assailed the plan and warning legislators that if they voted for the measure, they could lose their union backing in the next election. After the vote, labor leaders accused House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo and other Democrats of turning their backs on public employees.

“It’s pretty stunning,’’ said Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. “These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected. The same Democrats who we contributed to in their campaigns. The same Democrats who tell us over and over again that they’re with us, that they believe in collective bargaining, that they believe in unions. . . . It’s a done deal for our relationship with the people inside that chamber.’’

Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/04/27/house_votes_to_limit_bargaining_on_health_care/?page=full

---

[meegbear]

36. FUCKERS!

[Deep13]

37. Like the UK Labor Party, the Democratic Party...

...has outlived its usefulness. We need a true labor party in this country.

[slay]

41. Yeah. Remind me again - who do the Dems represent anymore?

cause it sure ain't me! Seems to me they represent the same type rich fuckers the republicans do. Hrmmmm.

[Deep13]

44. A slightly less scary group of wealthy backers than the Rs have. nt

[slay]

45. I'd agree with that assesment

sadly.

[Brickbat]

38. Here's hoping the unions vote to restrict endorsements, campaign funding and volunteers.

I'm all for withholding support from people who don't support me.

[Autumn]

39. The Union needs to go after every one of those

Democrats who voted for this. Get rid of them and replace them.

[Recursion]

40. Unfortunately this is essentially implied by Romneycare (nt)

[neoralme]

42. Disaster.

[hlthe2b]

43. Can you clarify your subject line to state this is MA House & not US?

[Freddie Stubbs]

49. Sorry, but per LBN rules you must use the exact headline of the article

[hlthe2b]

50. You can add a clarification in parentheses after the title

e.g., House votes to restrict unions (MA)

[Kingofalldems]

51. Oops--too late on this one.

Maybe some bad news will come up tomorrow.

[jody]

54. MA has 2.8m workers, 414k union mbrs 58% of which are public employees. nt

[Freddie Stubbs]

60. So why aren't they descending on the capitol by the thousands like in WI?

[jody]

63. Could it be that 2.6M private non-union workers don't care about 242K public employee union mbrs?

[mountainlion55]

55. Strike!

If everbody that is sympathetic to organized labor went out and built up two weeks of living supplies and then just stayed home and played with the kids or dogs for two weeks we would bring the plutocracy to its knee's!!! :wtf: :argh: :mad:

[Bozita]

56. This sign would play nicely on the streets of MA ...

[Odin2005]

61. I'm. Speechless.

:grr:

[midnight]

65. Bipartisan effort across the country to destroy unions....

Why can't bipartisan efforts be toward bringing home the troops, or giving the rest of the country the same health care that they get off or our dime....

[4dsc]

67. Single payer anyone?

I am just wondering how long its going to take before we take a serious look at single payer as a party and tell the American people this is the way of the future because it will lower the cost of health care.