By Dennis Owens

– It was a freezing January day in 2011 when Tom Corbett was sworn in as governor.

But conservatives were warmed by the great promise of the day, and the promises.

There would be school choice, liquor privatization, and pension reform; they were certain, because a Republican House, Senate and Governor now controlled the Capitol.

Three-and-a-half years later, those promises are unfulfilled, and the hope is fading.

And conservative lawmakers blame one source for the dis-union in the GOP ranks.

“The unions have far too much power in our legislature,” said Representative Rick Saccone (R-Allegheny). “They have a stranglehold on our legislature.”

“The unions still have an awful lot of political clout,” said Representative Stephen Bloom (R-Cumberland). “They have more influence in this Capitol than almost any other interest group, including the taxpayers.”

“The public sector unions have too much influence up here,” said newest Senator Scott Wagner (R-York).

“The unions control this state right now,” insists Representative Dan Moul (R-Adams). “Make no mistake about that, and they do it with money.”

Public sector unions—AFSCME, UFCW, PSEA, SEIU—don’t support the conservative agenda and fund politicians that oppose it. That includes several Republicans in moderate districts who won’t vote against union interests.

“It takes a lot of courage, and we have a lot of people up here that don’t have the courage,” said Wagner. “And again, it’s on both sides. It’s here in the Senate and over in the House. Everybody wants to get reelected.”

“It amazes me,” said Saccone. “With a group so few in number in this state, but with so much money flowing in through PAC donations, can have such an influence on us.”

The unions call that nonsense. “I wish we were that powerful,” said Wendell Young IV, President of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. “The reality is it’s the issues that are powerful. The reality is there are some people in this building, not all but some conservatives, that spend a lot of time rallying around certain issues that they’ve just been wrong about.”

On Wednesday, when asked why his own party wasn’t supporting pension reform in the House, Governor Corbett alluded to members being swayed by “special interests.” When asked, what special interests?

“Special interests are the unions, the public sector unions,” Corbett said.

But the unions blame Corbett, and his failed leadership, for the lack of accomplishment.

“We would come to the table with a Governor Corbett if he would show up,” Young said. “But he started out this crusade years ago with a he knew it all, he understood it all and he was gonna tell us what was gonna happen.”

What’s likely to happen, conservatives now fear, is Tom Wolf, heavily backed by those unions, becoming governor and all of those conservative dreams left unfulfilled.

“Immediately after [Wolf] won the nomination, look how much money was pumped into his campaign account from the special interest unions,” Moul said. “Do you think we can get things like pension reform done when he’s here? There isn’t a chance. At least here (with Corbett), we thought we had a chance.”

According to the Department of Labor Statistics, union membership in Pennsylvania in 2013 was 12.7%. It has steadily declined since 1989, when it was 20.9% but still leads the national average of 11.3%.

Source: http://www.abc27.com/story/25937539/conservatives-blame-union-clout-for-lack-of-gop-accomplishment

PhillyLabor.com

PHILADELPHIA–“The passage of the cigarette tax by the PA House of Representatives is a huge victory for our public schools. The projected $40 million in revenue it is expected to generate will enable schools to open on time this September. The tax will bring about $80 million to schools in the 2015-16 school year, which would put us on a path to restoring some of the drastic cuts to programs and services for schoolchildren.

BY Moshe Marvit

– The Supreme Court issued its long-awaited opinion in Harris v. Quinn yesterday, a case that threatened to be the worst decision for unions in decades.  When the class-action suit was first brought in 2010, at issue was whether unionized home healthcare workers who are covered by collective bargaining agreements, could be subject to a fair share provision that requires non-union members to pay for the benefits they receive from the union.  This remained the issue when it arrived at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2011.  However, once the case arrived at the Supreme Court in 2013, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation raised the stakes and argued that anything short of a right-to-work model—under which any employee covered by a collective bargaining agreement could forego paying any dues—for all public employees violated the First Amendment.  In the Court’s decision, a five-Justice majority held that fair share provisions for home healthcare workers were unconstitutional, and indicated repeatedly that the 1977 case that allows such provisions for all public sector employees is on shaky ground.

Much of the media coverage of Harris v. Quinn has called the case a loss for labor, but indicated that it could have been much worse. The majority stopped short of explicitly overruling Abood v. Detroit Board of Education—the 1977 case that established the framework for fair share fees in the public sector—an outcome that could have spelled financial ruin for public-sector unions. However, anti-union forces are already waiting in the wings with further challenges: Several lower court cases currently under consideration will likely constitute the next round of attacks on the stability of both public and private sector unions.

In Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, several California teachers represented by the anti-union Center for Individual Rights have an appeal pending in the Ninth Circuit, where they are challenging the state’s agency shop law. Unlike in Harris, the teachers are not making an argument that they are not public employees that are covered by the precedent set by Abood.  Instead they argue that all fair share (or agency shop—the phrases are fairly interchangeable) arrangements are unconstitutional as applied to public sector employees.  Today’s decision in Harris, combined with earlier decisions, have laid the groundwork for the conservative justices to perform a full reconsideration of right to work in the public sector.

In the private sector context, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation have a case in Texas challenging union security clauses under the Railway Labor Act, which covers railway and airline workers.  In Serna v. Transport Workers Union of America, several dissident airline employees argue that the requirement that workers opt-out of union membership should be replaced with an opt-in procedure.  In the alternative, they argue that the requirement that workers who opt-out of membership must renew their objections each year be held unconstitutional.  Though these issues may seem technical, they place at risk the way that workers finance unions.

In Knox v. SEIU, Justice Alito, writing for the majority, invited challenges to the agency shop, writing, “Our cases to date have tolerated this impingement and we do not revisit today whether the court’s former cases have given adequate recognition to the critical First Amendment rights at stake.”  Many saw Harris v. Quinn as a response to that invitation.  But in Harris, Justice Alito, again writing for the majority, made clear that since home healthcare workers were not “full-fledged” public employees, the Court did not need to consider whether Abood should be overruled.  Instead, in Harris, the majority engaged in (the words of the dissenting Justices), “gratuitous dicta critiquing Abood’s foundations.” It’s hard to see this as anything other than another invitation to strike down fair share arrangements, and another step toward establishing a judicially created right-to-work model for all public-sector employees.

Source: http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/16898/what_harris_means_for_workers_rights

By Joel Mathis

– “Gov. Chris Christie signed a $32.5 billion state budget today that all but abandons a first-term plan to repair New Jersey’s derelict pension system, slicing $1.57 billion from a payment required by law for public workers’ retirement funds,” the Star-Ledger reports.

The budget offers increases in funding to schools and hospitals. Christie vetoed Democratic bills that would’ve raised $1.1 billion for the pension funds by taxing millionaires and businesses.

“As I have said before, I strongly believe that punitively raising taxes on our already overtaxed residents and small business owners is not the answer to the state’s short- and long-term fiscal challenges,” Christie wrote in his veto message.

PhillyLabor.com Editorial – It is understandable that Gov. Christie does not want to raise taxes on NJ residents who are already paying an absurd amount of taxes. However, why does his solution have to come only on the backs of the working men and women of NJ and not at least share the burden by imposing a millionaire’s tax on the wealthiest 1%. Just another right wing politician raging a war on working people! And some people want this guy to be our next President???? God Forbid!

Source: http://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/07/01/christie-signs-jersey-budget-deep-pension-cuts/