By Dick Polman

– Memo to the average American worker: Jeb Bush doesn’t think you’re working hard enough.

Jeb, who was born on third base and nurtured by a wealthy family, thinks that you need to work more hours. Jeb, whose net worth is in the neighborhood of $20 million, who in fact gets 50 grand whenever he opines at a podium, thinks that you need to work more hours.

Since the median American household income, for an entire year, is roughly 50 grand, you would be correct in deducing that this patrician Republican is wildly out of touch with the way people live – and tone-deaf to boot. Sort of like the way Mitt Romney was in 2012, when he dissed “47 percent” of Americans as moochers and slackers. And look what that episode did for Mitt.

Here’s what Jeb said earlier this week in a New Hampshire interview: “My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it is a four percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive. Work force participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and through their productivity gain more income for their families. That’s the only way we are going to get out of this rut that we’re in.”

In Jeb’s defense, it’s reasonable to argue (as he was trying to do, in his ham-handed fashion) that a productive economy is a healthy economy, that an economy grows when its people work harder. And he later sought to clarify his remarks, insisting that when he initially said that “people need to work longer hours,” he was referring to part-time workers, not full-timers.

But, politically, he screwed up big time.

First, the optics: When a preppie elitist says that the average working stiff isn’t working hard enough, it’s like handing an early Christmas gift to the opposition. Hence, Hillary’s instant tweet: “Anyone who believes Americans aren’t working hard enough hasn’t met enough American workers.”

Second, the killer soundbite: It’s arguably unfair to pluck “people need to work longer hours” out of context, but nobody ever said politics is fair. Just look at what happened to John Kerry in 2004. In that race, Jeb’s brother plucked a clumsy Kerry utterance out of context and dined on it for months. Kerry had said on the stump, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” He was trying to explain a complicated Senate parliamentary maneuver, concerning supplementary funding for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Bush team pounded him successfully for that sentence alone.

Third, the work statistics make Jeb look even worse. We’re not exactly a nation of slackers. According to a Gallup poll conducted last summer, the average American already works 47 hours a week; nearly four in 10 said they work more than 50 hours a week, and nearly two in 10 said they work more than 60 hours a week. And according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (an international group), we already work longer hours than our counterparts in most western industrialized nations. Check out the chart; if we work a wee bit longer, we can catch up with the likes of Lithuania, Russia, and Greece.

(Which brings to mind the classic episode, in February 2005, when Jeb’s brother encountered a divorced mom in Nebraska. The mom said that she worked three jobs. George W.’s response: “You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that.”)

Fourth, Jeb’s overall prescription for the economy is the standard Republican mantra – lower taxes (“lower rates,” as he said in that New Hampshire interview), and that includes lower taxes for the rich (natch), “reducing the size of government,” yada yada. The real problem is not the hours that Americans work, it’s the long-stagnant wages that they earn (the wages have been stagnant for decades, under administrations of both parties). But Jeb doesn’t even get to square one on wages; he even opposes raising the federal minimum wage.

Fifth, Jeb complained that workforce participation has sunk to “all-time modern lows,” and his spinners subsequently said that “under President Obama, we have the lowest workforce participation rate since 1977.” Which, again, makes it sound like we’re a nation of slackers. But the reality – which Jeb ignored, because either he’s clueless or just willfully oblivious – is that baby boomer retirements are what’s accelerating the drop in the participation rate.

But hey, the guy who was born on third base wants us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. I wonder whether that message would play well with working stiffs in the fall of ’16.

Source – http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/national-interest/item/84004?linktype=hp_blogs

By The PA. AFL-CIO

– At their meeting on Wednesday, The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO executive council made endorsements for the upcoming general election and also in a number of legislative special elections. The State Labor Federation is the largest labor organization in Pennsylvania, representing over 800,000 workers.

The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO endorsed the following judicial candidates for the November general election:

Pennsylvania Supreme Court: Judge Kevin Dougherty (D), Judge David Wecht (D), and Judge Christine Donohue (D)

Superior Court of Pennsylvania: Alice Beck-Dubow (D)

Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania: Mike Wojcik (D)

The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO endorsed the following candidates who are running for the State House in the upcoming August 11 special election:

HD174 – Ed Neilson (D)

HD191 – Joanna McClinton (D)

HD195 – Donna Bullock (D)

The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO had previously endorsed in the August 4 special election to fill the vacancy in HD161

HD161 – Paul Mullen (R)

“These candidates won the support of the Labor Movement because they are especially qualified and committed to providing equal justice and dignity for the working families of Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Rick Bloomingdale said in reference to the endorsed candidates. “Each candidate has demonstrated immense commitment to the principles of fairness and justice. We look forward to working on their behalf and sharing their record of support for the rights of working men and women,” Bloomingdale said.

Secretary-Treasurer Frank Snyder stated, “we have the opportunity to elect well-qualified candidates to the most important courts in the Commonwealth. Through their success, we will be able to end the political manipulation that weakened millions of Pennsylvanians.” Snyder continues, saying, “the importance of electing these judges cannot be emphasized enough.”

The general election is on November 3, 2015. This is the first time our history that there have been three open seats up for election on our supreme court.

Source – http://www.paaflcio.org/?p=6140

By Patrick Kerkstra

– Mayors need to know politics and policy. They need to be an ambassador for Philadelphia outside city lines, and a leader who can rally public opinion within.

But they also need to manage the enormous enterprise that is municipal government, an operation that spends $6.9 billion a year and employs nearly 28,000 people. And yet, somehow, management is often overlooked as a must-have mayoral skill.

In truth, we don’t know all that much about the management chops of Democratic mayoral nominee Jim Kenney, who is a slam-dunk election away from being the city’s next mayor. His primary campaign is the largest enterprise Kenney has ever run. For the 23 years before that, he was in City Council, where he managed a Council office comprised of just a few employees.

That’s not a lot to go on.

But after Kenney sat down for an interview with Citified, we now know a bit more about the type of manager he intends to be. And there actually are some worthwhile lessons to take from the way he ran both his campaign and his council office.
Kenney listens to smart people. Expect him to assemble a talented team, and to give them a good bit of rope to carry out his plans.

Both as a candidate and a Councilman, Jim Kenney has shown a knack for attracting top talent and letting them do their jobs. Those are promising traits.

Asked to describe his management style, Kenney says that his is still “developing,” but that his basic approach is to hire good people and let them work. “It’s going to be allowing folks who I think are extremely capable of doing their job to do their job without too much micromanaging. Now, certainly we’ll meet and discuss and we’ll figure out what direction we’re going in, but I don’t expect to be telling the police commissioner or the streets department commissioner or somebody else how they should either plow snow or pick up trash.”

And this is actually what Kenney has done, both on Council and in his campaign. A lot of people who know Kenney are agog at just how disciplined and controlled his campaign for mayor has been. That’s largely because he’s trusted and listened to the political pros that are running it.

“Jim is very deferential to the staff. He asks questions. He wants to know why he’s doing what we ask him to do, but he ultimately defers to us,” says Lauren Hitt, Kenney’s communications director.

If there were any sense that Kenney was an empty vessel, this might actually be an alarming trait. But Kenney is positively bursting with strong opinions and convictions. So it’s actually encouraging to hear — and see — that he defers to experts on a lot of the tactical decisions, even if he occasionally throws little tantrums about it.

Kenney lucked into landing Hitt and his campaign manager, Jane Slusser. Both were hard up for work after their former boss, Ken Trujillo, abruptly withdrew from the campaign, and Kenney was the one guy in town hiring. But Kenney does deserve credit for being the guy at the top of smoothly-operating campaign that featured a staff with a mix of for-hire politcal pros and lifelong Philadelphians and Kenney loyalists, like his longtime Council chief of staff Deborah Mahler and Jim Engler, who was the director of legislation in Kenney’s council office.

Another indicator that Kenney is capable of rallying talented people to his cause is the policy advisory team he assembled early in the campaign. It’s a veritable laundry list of accomplished Philadelphians, from Alba Martinez to Otis Hackney III to Phil Rinaldi to Ellen Kaplan (to name just a few).

Kenney describes his mayoral dream team this way: “Diverse, intelligent, forward-thinking, hard-working. Not afraid to tell me when they think I’m wrong. Not afraid to go and have their own initiative, to have their own new ways of looking at things.”
Kenney probably won’t restructure city government. He has some new ideas about how the machinery of government should work, but he’s a traditionalist in a lot of respects.

Every mayor organizes his government a little differently. Mayor Nutter created a class of powerful deputy mayors to oversee operations across multiple departments. The arrangement has its plusses and minuses, but Kenney clearly isn’t a fan. Expect him to use a more traditional approach, one that’s more consistent with the structure outlined in the city charter.

“The charter’s not a bad document,” Kenney says. “It needs some tweaking every now and then, but it’s a pretty solid document to run a government.”

What does that mean, exactly? A few things.

A much bigger role for the managing director. The charter intends for the managing director to be the operational chief of city government, with broad power over most every city department. Nutter’s managing director, Rich Negrin, is an important official in the administration, but he’s not running the show on a day-to-day basis. The next managing director very well might. “We’re going to have a managing director, that’s actually a managing director,” Kenney says. “And I don’t mean any offense to Rich, because he wasn’t allowed to manage.”
Deputy mayors who have been cut down to size. Kenney’s deputies won’t manage multiple departments; they’ll advise on policy or message, or lead-up specific initiatives.
More autonomous department commissioners. This just follows. Without a bevy of deputy mayors calling the strategic shots for the departments, commissioners will have broader authority under a Mayor Kenney.

Kenney is interested in reforming the city’s civil service regulations, which would be part of contract talks with the city’s unions. “I talk to department heads now, they tell me they can’t fill positions because they have to go through this whole crazy process,” Kenney says.

Does that mean more patronage? No, Kenney says. But he doesn’t have a problem with patronage where it exists (including, it should be said, in the mayor’s office). “What’s my view on patronage? Patronage employees perform and do a good job and are respectful to the citizens. Patronage has its place,” Kenney says.

There’s a lot to chew over here. Kenney’s acceptance of patronage will surely trouble some of his reform-oriented fans, while probably encouraging his more politically pragmatic ones.

But the more consequential question is probably this: How well will Jim Kenney’s successful management of tiny operations scale? After all, keeping a Council office working in sync is one thing. Straightening out L&I with limited resources? That’s another.

Source – http://www.phillymag.com/citified/2015/07/08/jim-kenney-mayor-management/

BRIEF PHILLYLABOR EDITORIAL – In unprecedented fashion, Jim Kenney has brought people together from all communities both as a City Councilman At Large and as a mayoral candidate and he will do the same thing as the next mayor of the City of Philadelphia!

– PFT General Vice President Arlene Kempin sets the records straight on the District’s plans to privatize Philly substitutes.

Arlene Kempin has a letter in today’s Inquirer challenging the District’s notion that there is a shortage of substitutes. You can read the edited letter here.

But for a more complete perspective, I wanted you to see the original version of the letter which discusses how the district has ignored the PFT and neglected to include retired teachers who are willing an able to act as substitutes in our schools:

To the Editor:

The SRC’s vote to outsource School District substitutes on June 18 compels me to share some recent history and some truths regarding the outsourcing of substitute teachers.

In the midst of the chaotic environment that School District’s management team has created, there has always been one concept that both the District and the PFT agree upon: Philadelphia’s retired teachers are a valuable resource to our schools and our students. Their experience, knowledge of the system, credentials, and willingness to serve has always been acknowledged by the union and the District.

But for the past three years, the District has blatantly and without reason blocked any new retirees from joining our substitute pool. Repeated requests—from the PFT and the individuals themselves—to allow more retirees to sign on were rebuffed. The District’s response was that our substitute pool is big enough, and we don’t need any more retirees.

In addition, the PFT has continued to stress that as long as positions were posted first for non-retirees (with a time limit for acceptance), retirees could be offered the unfilled positions without violating PSER’s regulations. This input was ignored by the District time and time again.

We must also be mindful of the dedication and commitment of hundreds of Long Term and Per Diem Substitute Teachers who had never been retired as appointed teachers from the District. Many have devoted their entire professional careers to servicing our students either on a day-to-day or long term basis.

Now we learn that the District has valued all of our substitutes so much that they must farm them out to a private company so that they may be offered bonuses for accepting designated positions. In over two years of contract talks, the District never proposed any such incentives, nor did they ever mention a shortage of substitutes.

Once again, they have ignored, disrespected, and insulted the very people that directly service our children.

Sincerely,

Arlene Kempin, General Vice President,

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers

Source – http://www.pft.org/blog.aspx?id=139

On this day, as we gather with friends and family to celebrate the 4th of July weekend and the Summer of 2015, let us also remember the true meaning of Independence Day and the brave forefathers of our great nation, who on July 4th, 1776, gathered in our great city of Philadelphia and officially adopted the Declaration of Independence and thus declared the then 13 colonies, a new nation, the United States of America! The Rest is hard fought and very important history that has made it possible for us to enjoy the freedoms we enjoy today and everyday!

God Bless America and Happy Independence Day to all Americans including the patriotic men and women and families of the Labor Movement and particularly to all of those brave men and women who have served this great nation in our American Armed Forces!!

In Solidarity!

Your Friends From PhillyLabor!