By Mary Wilson

– Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s office said it has the votes in the state House to pass a tax package that could be the key to ending the state’s five-and-a-half-month budget impasse.

“We are confident that we have the votes to pass a final budget,” said spokesman Jeff Sheridan, “and we are hopeful that this is over soon.”

The announcement signals a major development for budget talks in the Republican-controlled House, where anti-tax sentiment threatened to take negotiations back to square one earlier this month.

House GOP leaders said they’ll hold the tax vote Saturday and work through the weekend on budget-related legislation.

The details of the tax plan are still a mystery.

“Nobody knows whether or not we’re going to go (personal income tax) or sales tax, or has any real specificity, besides rumors, about the rates,” said Rep. Mike Schlossberg, D-Lehigh.

The measure is expected to include some increase in the personal income tax, an expansion of the sales tax, and higher cigarette taxes.

“You know the game plan generally where it’s at,” said Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, who said he wouldn’t be supporting the tax plan rolled out for a vote.

Lawmakers are under increasing pressure from social services organizations and school districts that are cut off from their state funding due to the budget impasse. If it continues into the New Year, some schools have said they’ll have to close.

Some schools say if it continues into the New Year, they may have to close.

Source – http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/item/89310-wolf-says-tax-plan-can-pass-pa-house-vote-scheduled-saturday

By Mike DeNardo

— The influential leader of IBEW Local 98 says he wants to develop a trade school with the Philadelphia School District.

John Dougherty, business manager of Local 98, says he’s been talking with Mayor-elect Kenney and Governor Wolf about moving beyond the union’s apprenticeship programs. Dougherty wants to create a way for his union to help teach electrical, engineering and architectural trades to public school students.

“We’re already in the education business. We just want partners in the city and the public school system in which we can again, entertain opportunities to educate kids more with real-life work opportunities.”

School Reform Commission chair Marjorie Neff believes some sort of partnership is doable.

“I don’t know if I want to see one school, but rather figuring out ways to look at neighborhoods and look with our partners and say, what kind of program could we have in this neighborhood?”

Neff says career and technical education is essential, because not all students go to college.

Source – http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2015/12/13/union-wants-to-help-teach-trades-to-philadelphia-students/

By Bastiaan Slabbers

– Joyce Craig can never be repaid for the sacrifice she made, said Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Derrick Sawyer as he closed his brief remarks in front of the Lawncrest fire house on Rising Sun Avenue Wednesday evening.

Every day, Craig will be remembered by colleagues on duty at the fire station, Sawyer said. Her locker, No. 8, is now retired, and a wreath hangs from the locker door. One entire wall of the lobby is covered with paintings, photos and badges.

The small ceremony at the Engine 64 Fire House marked the anniversary of Craig’s death early on the morning of Dec. 9, 2014, while battling a fire in the West Oak Lane section of the city. Posthumously promoted to lieutenant, Craig was the first female firefighter to die while serving the Philadelphia Fire Department.

The ceremony was held as part of the healing process, said Sawyer. While the family will never forget, events such as this will make their road a little lighter, he said.

When a community suffers the loss of someone in blue, it is important to always remember them, said Kathy Wersinger, a resident and employee of Councilwoman Marian Tasco’s office. The memorial service was a joint effort between the community and Philadelphia Fire Fighters and Paramedics Union Local 22.

A fire department campaign to promote the installation of smoke detectors is resulting in fewer fires, Sawyer said. The wider use of these devices means fewer firefighters have to run into burning buildings. So far this year, the department has had the fewest injuries in its history. Three three years ago, 24 firefighters were injured; that rate has decreased by half.

Source – http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/viewfinders/item/88979?linktype=hp_blogs

By The American Postal Workers Union

– The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced today that it would seek to stop the proposed merger of Staples and Office Depot, the nation’s largest and second-largest office-supply chains. The agency filed an “administrative complaint” charging that Staples’ proposed $6.3 billion takeover of Office Depot would violate the nation’s anti-trust laws by “significantly reducing competition nationwide.”

APWU President Mark Dimondstein praised the decision. “This is an important victory for consumers and businesses against Staples’ unbridled greed and its dangerous corporate agenda,” he said. “It is a big step toward stopping the merger.”The APWU has been an outspoken critic of the buyout.
“Our union conducted two studies showing the negative impact the proposed merger would have on consumers and businesses. It was clear that a merger of these two companies would have left just one national office-supply superstore chain. This would inevitably force customers to pay higher prices and leave them with fewer choices.”

The FTC voted 4-0 to issue the complaint and to authorize its staff to seek a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction in federal court to prevent the two companies from consummating the merger and to maintain the status quo pending a hearing on the matter. The administrative trial is scheduled to begin on May 10, 2016.

BY Joe Burns

– Two thousand workers at the Kohler faucet plant in Northern Wisconsin have been walking the picket since November 16. Such a strike would have been commonplace decades ago. Nowadays it is a rarity. Major strikes of over 1,000 workers are few and far between. Even rarer are open-ended strikes at an industrial plant.

Today’s battered labor movement no longer thinks of watershed strikes; we are so beaten down and used to defeat that no particular loss is seen as critical. And sadly, it’s not as if labor must win this particular battle to survive. The truth is labor has learned to live with defeat. But a more fundamental point is at stake: Labor must redevelop the ability to win this type of strike if we are to have any chance of survival.

The Kohler strike is an open-ended, large scale, non-publicity style strike in manufacturing, a traditionally organized industry. Labor has become adept at hit-and-run publicity strikes such as the Walmart, retail and fast food strikes of recent years. Although important, these are not the fight-to-the-finish type battles, nor do they involve anywhere near the number of workers or level of participation, that this strike does. It is likely that more days of work lost to striking have accumulated in two weeks of the Kohler strike than in five years of retail and fast food strike activity.

Decades ago, victory or at least a draw in such a strike would have been likely. Here we have a union, the United Auto Workers (UAW), with close to a century of unionism and a long history of confrontational class struggle. The strike involves almost 100% participation by the workers facing a historically anti-union corporation. Indeed, the Kohler plant was one of the most anti-union holdouts in the North at a time when most corporations operating in Northern and Midwestern states like Wisconsin temporarily accepted workers’ demands for unions and the right to strike.

The Kohler plant has a history of intense battles, including a 1934 strike which resulted in the formation of a company union. After the workers abandoned company unionism for the UAW, one of the longest strikes in U.S. history commenced in 1954. The strike in many ways was a dividing line between the mass militancy of the 1930s era and the modern era, which outlaws effective trade union activity. The strike produced picket line militancy, congressional hearings replete with conservative attacks on militancy, a Supreme Court case and finally a settlement in 1966 which kept the union intact. Unlike in many of today’s battles, the national UAW and AFL treated this is a key battle and helped sustain a national boycott of Kohler products for almost a decade. Despite the company’s vehement anti-unionism, the labor movement was able to fight the battle to a draw.

As recent as 20 or 30 years ago, progressives in the labor movement regarded strike solidarity as critical to labor’s success. The idea was that when a section of the working class went into an important battle, all of labor must view their victory as our highest priority. Battles such as the P9 strike at Hormel in Austin, Minnesota, the Detroit news strike and the Staley lockout drew support from thousands of trade unionists across the country who viewed those battles as their battles. Today, in contrast, when workers choose to fight, they often do so in isolation or with sporadic support from the entire labor movement.

Former ILWU longshore organizing director Peter Olney wrote a perceptive article a number of years ago which could have been written about the Kohler strike. Writing in the aftermath of the RIO Tinto lockout where workers employed massive solidarity to beat back an attack of unionism at a long-organized mine, Olney called for reviving the lost art of strike strategy. After detailing the many forgotten elements of such strategy, Olney concluded, “Perhaps most importantly, the labor movement has lost the concept of ‘swarming solidarity.’ Central labor bodies—once charged with mobilizing labor forces in their geographic areas in support of striking or locked-out workers—have become principally tasked with political action work.”

Olney pointed out that defensive battles like the Kohler strike are critical for the labor movement to win. “Every time these battles are lost, it sends out a widespread message that unions can’t defend their members and the union movement is dead. Conversely, when workers win these fights, confidence in labor grows and organizing becomes a bit easier because of the positive demonstration effect.” By this measure, the labor movement must rally behind the battle of the Kohler workers and view their victory as essential for the labor movement.

Yet victory is far from certain, for we have seen this script play itself over and over in the last three decades. A local union, tired of the unfair management’s relentless attacks, decides to take a stand. The courageous workers go out on strike with spirits high on the picket line. After some spirited picket line activity, the employer seeks and obtains and injunction against mass picketing. The union largely complies with this directive. The more enlightened unionists in the city and throughout the country help organize some sporadic solidarity rallies and holiday fundraising while most in labor goes about their business. The employer hires permanent replacement scabs, and production continues. The strike is eventually compromised or lost.

If labor is to not just survive but thrive, we must be able to change that story line—and win. That means concrete acts of solidarity such as resolutions of support, solidarity efforts and fundraising. But it should also mean that the labor movement begins to discuss what it means to break out of this cycle of losses—a cycle that is directly attributable to the rules of the game being fixed in capital’s favor. One hundred years ago, the AFL under Samuel Gompers’ leadership strategized about how to defy injunctions, as did a generation of trade unionists in the 1930s.

Labor developed a philosophy of defiance to unjust laws and promoted the right to an effective strike. Today’s national labor movement offers no such strategic guidance and is far more likely to counsel compliance with unjust labor laws.

In recent years, many in labor have become accustomed to highly choreographed strikes and well-scripted campaigns. All those things certainly have a place in the worker’s movement. Yet, real trade unionism based on local unions rooted in the workplace do not work that way. We don’t always get to pick the battles we support or the struggles that take place. But solidarity, and our survival of the labor movement, requires we support those increasingly rare instances when workers do choose to fight. The Wisconsin Kohler strike is exactly such a battle in need of such support.

Source – http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18641/all_of_the_labor_movement_should_be_paying_attention_to_wisconsins_kohler_s