After agreeing on a one-year extension of the collective bargaining agreement, a 2.5 percent pay increase for one year and a one-year extension of the customer-satisfaction agreement with the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority, striking trade unions at the PA. Convention Center have ended their 12 hour walk out.

Updated: It has been reported that Multiple Union Trades are on strike at the Pa. Convention Center including those representing the Stagehands, Teamsters, riggers and Carpenters with the electricians honoring their picket lines as contracts expired today/Thursday at 12:01am. Stay Tuned For additional Updates!

By MELANIE TROTTMAN

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Tuesday to confirm President Barack Obama’s full slate of five nominees to the National Labor Relations Board, erasing doubts about the validity of the board and its future actions.

Questions about the legitimacy of the board, which oversees private-sector union elections and referees workplace disputes at unionized and nonunionized companies, have persisted since Mr. Obama installed two members using so-called recess appointments last year while Congress was on a break. Those appointments are under Supreme Court review after lower courts found the Senate wasn’t technically in recess at the time. There are also questions about the validity of roughly 800 board decisions made since the appointments.

Mr. Obama recently withdrew the nominations of the two appointees and nominated two others to fill their seats. The swap was part a broader Senate deal to clear the nominations of five other executive-branch nominees. The two new picks for the labor board joined three previous board nominees who have been awaiting confirmation.

The three Democrats and two Republicans were confirmed in votes that at times were largely partisan. The Democrats include Kent Hirozawa, chief counsel to NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce; and Nancy Schiffer, who has worked as a lawyer for union federation AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers. Both cleared the Senate on 54-44 votes. The third Democrat, Mr. Pearce, was confirmed on a 59-38 vote for a second term that will start after his current one expires Aug. 27.

The Republicans confirmed on voice vote are Philip Miscimarra, a partner in the labor and employment group of Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP, and Harry Johnson III, a partner with Arent Fox LLP.

Before the voting began, Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa), chairman of the Senate labor committee that has overseen the NLRB nominations, told lawmakers there was no reason all the nominees shouldn’t be confirmed with strong bipartisan support.

“The vetting process has been quick, but it has been thorough,” he said. “The board is the only place workers can go if they’ve been treated unfairly and denied the basic protections that the law provides,” said Mr. Harkin, who noted that employers can also seek help from the board when unions conduct “wildcat strikes.”

But the Senate labor committee’s ranking Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee raised fresh concerns about Ms. Schiffer and Mr. Hirozawa’s ability to set aside what he has called their “pro-union advocacy past” and ability to “act as neutral arbiters between employees and employers.” Mr. Alexander said Tuesday he is still “not persuaded they’ll be able to transfer their positions of [union] advocacy to positions of judge.” He voted against them while supporting Mr. Pearce and the two Republican nominees.

The NLRB is an independent federal agency but its board members are appointed by the president. Tradition holds that if the president is Democrat, so too are most board members. The same is true for GOP presidents. The arrangement draws board critics during every administration but Republicans say the Obama-chosen board has gone further than ever to advance union interests in a way that is unfair to employers.

For their part, Mr. Hirozawa and Ms. Schiffer have said during their hearings that they would be neutral when making board decisions. But business groups remain concerned.

“Frankly, we’re concerned about the composition on the board and we can only hope that they’ll bring objectivity to their decisions,” said Randy Johnson, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s senior vice president of labor.

Go To: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323854904578637872875060486.html

The right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council has modeled legislation to strip workers of their rights nationwide.

BY Mary Bottari and Rebekah Wilce for the Center for Media and Democracy

– According to a new analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), publishers of ALECexposed.org, at least 117 bills introduced in 2013 fuel a “race to the bottom” in wages, benefits and worker rights—and resemble “model” bills from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

As working Americans speak out for higher wages, better benefits and respect in the workplace, a coordinated, nationwide campaign to silence them is mounting—and ALEC is at the heart of it. ALEC corporations, right-wing tink tanks, and monied interests like the Koch brothers are pushing legislation throughout the country designed to drive down wages; limit health care, pensions, and other benefits; and cripple working families’ participation in the political and legislative process.

Emboldened ALEC goes on the offense

ALEC’s mallet of choice for private-sector workers is so-called “Right to Work” legislation. These laws were utilitized in Southern states before and after WWII to suppress wages and keep out unions like the CIO, which supported an end to Jim Crow laws and racial segregation. In the decades that followed, they made little headway in northern states. In 2012, however, Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana rammed a “Right to Work” bill through the legislature. Next was the battle royale in Michigan. Governor Rick Snyder pushed “Right to Work” through a lame duck session in December 2012 right before a new, more worker-friendly legislature was sworn in. As CMD reported, it contained verbatim language from the ALEC bill.

In every instance, ALEC and the Kochs were there to cheer the radical policies on. Koch Industries has long been an ALEC funder, serving on ALEC’s corporate “Private Enterprise” board, but the Kochs also exercise their power through Americans for Prosperity, a David Koch founded and funded political action group that spent millions on TV defending ALEC legislators and Scott Walker against recall and providing fake, astroturf support for the bills in Ohio and Michigan. It’s not the first time the Koch family has come to the aid of union-busting bills. The Institute for Southern Studies points out that in 1958, Kansas passed a right-to-work law “with the support of Texas-born energy businessman Fred Koch, who viewed unions as vessels for communism and [racial] integration.”

Other high-profile ALEC fights include battles over “paycheck protection” in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, and Missouri. In 2012, Californians battled an ALEC-style “paycheck protection” bill, disguised as campaign finance reform. Prop 32 was defeated at the polls in November 2012, but not until millions had been spent on both sides. Opponents were right to be worried. New numbers from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel show that Wisconsin’s Act 10, which crippled unions’ ability to negotiate for better pay and benefits, cut union membership in half and forced workers to pay thousands more in benefits.

While ALEC and its supporters frame their actions as fiscally responsible and pro-worker, it is clear that this is a deeply political agenda. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that, on the whole, these types of bills don’t create new rights for employees but “significantly tilt the political playing field by enabling unlimited corporate political spending while restricting political spending of organized workers.” Fox News reporter Shepard Smith put it even more bluntly. He noted that of the top 10 political donors in the United States, only three donated to Democrats—all unions. “Bust the unions, and it’s over” for the Democrats, he said.

ALEC’s attack on wages, benefits, and unions harms all workers

ALEC’s wage suppression agenda also targets non-union workers in the low-wage sectors that are forming the core of the U.S. economy. In an issue brief called “The Politics of Wage Suppression: Inside ALEC’s Legislative Campaign Against Low-Paid Workers,” the National Employment Law Project counted 67 bills sponsored or co-sponsored by ALEC politicians in 2011-12 that eroded wages and labor standards.

Gordon Lafer, a political economist at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), told CMD, “ALEC’s efforts against the minimum wage, prevailing and living wage, paid sick leave, etc. are an across the board attempt both to worsen any kind of labor standard and also to undermine any institutional or legal basis through which workers exercise some control over the workplace in the labor market.”

As Lafer notes, the fate of union workers and non-union workers are inextricably linked: “Unions help raise standards for non-union workers. In places with unionized workers, that increases the pressure on employers of non-unionized workers to reach and meet similar standards.” To cite just one example, ALEC’s “Right to Work” law alone depresses wages for both union and non-union workers by an average of $1,500 a year, according to an EPI study.

But you won’t see these statistics at ALEC. In an annual propagandistic ritual, ALEC “scholars” rank states’ economic outlook based on how well states are following ALEC policy prescriptions. While Wisconsin under Scott Walker has consistently ranked amongst the worst in the country in job growth and economic performance even by groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in ALEC’s world, Walker’s state is 15th in economic outlook.

Average Americans pay the price

Eleven states have introduced bills in 2013 to override or prevent local paid sick leave ordinances. At least eight of these were sponsored by ALEC members, and this is no accident. Although ALEC has not adopted such a bill as an official “model,” ALEC member the National Restaurant Association (NRA) brought a bill to override local paid sick leave ordinances to ALEC in 2011, as CMD has reported.

The commerce task force’s Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee took up “paid family medical leave” as the sole topic of discussion at the ALEC 2011 Annual Meeting in Louisiana. Subcommittee meeting attendees were given complete copies of Wisconsin’s 2011 Senate Bill 23 (now Wisconsin Act 16). They were also handed a target list and map of state and local paid sick leave policies prepared by the NRA. Since then, Louisiana enacted a similar law in 2012, and 2013 has seen the introduction of a spate of similar bills, with Mississippi, Kansas, Tennessee, and Florida signing the measures into law.

Wisconsin Act 16 overrode Milwaukee’s popular paid sick leave ordinance that was passed in November 2008 by referendum with nearly 70 percent of the popular vote. In 2011, while the Capitol was surrounded by protesters and Democratic Senators were out of state, the Wisconsin Legislature moved to override the measure.

Harold Schaitberger, General President of the International Association of Fire Fighters, put it best when he told CMD, “The sole purpose of ALEC has been to develop the most anti-middle class, pro-corporation policies, legislation, and agenda in history. They’ve been waiting for just the right moment to reverse the progress of the American middle class and drive everyone to the bottom, to the lowest wages, the weakest benefits, no job security, and no retirement to speak of. We may not have the billions of dollars of the Koch brothers. But we have each other and we must stick together and fight ALEC’s cynical and un-American agenda.”

Excerpted with permission from the Center for Media and Democracy.

Go To: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15355/special_report_the_alec_fueled_race_to_the_bottom_in_wages_and_workers_righ/

Here’s some Food For Thought. When you oppose unions and union members who are picketing a non-union job site, you are most likely supporting an employer who is taking advantage of it’s workers.

Fighting injustice ain’t pretty, but someone has to do It!

Think before you judge and RESPECT WORKER’S RIGHTS!