BROKE-BACK DEMOCRATS!

'Cipients Speak!
by Maureen D. Taylor
State Chair, MWRO

Workers entered a new world yesterday, one that will have ramifications for their futures forever. The legislation called “RIGHT TO WORK” means that workers will forever have the right to work for lower wages, for missing benefits, for non- existent safety regulations, and for no job protections against workplace offenses.

Michigan joins the rest of America and the 23 other states who have already passed similar legislation. The Governor of Michigan, Republican Rick Snyder, was quite candid as he analyzed what the “true” meaning was of this significant vote that has shaken the entire world. Gleefully, he explained that this was not an attack on organized labor but was, in fact, a measure that supports a worker’s right to choose! He went on to say that this legislation allows unions to demonstrate why they are important. If they are unable to convince workers that they are still relevant, workers should be able to stop paying dues. Contracts negotiated by those who decide to stay will still cover non-union employees.

Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, Pontiac – these are all cities that are synonymous with the birth of organized labor. The powerful unions from that era marked forever the strength and the influence of blue-collar workers for years. There was a time when the General Motors worker was the highest paid worker in the world. All contractual agreements negotiated by municipalities, schools, and organizations from city to state were modeled after those written by organized labor. Why? Because these words took into consideration both the health and safety of those covered by those contracts. Wages that separated workers from poverty were negotiated. Health benefits that addressed the medical needs of workers and their families were settled. Time off, continuous training, all kinds of community services programs, blood drives, holiday fund-raisers, events for children and seniors alike – this is the legacy that organized labor has given millions of middle income families.

Yesterday, that world was changed forever. The race to the bottom has been fueled, the back of the Democratic Party - which depends on unions at election time - has been broken. Republicans, who depend on corporate dollars, have secured electoral victories for decades to come. Is this the battle we want to fight? Time to analyze what just happened, and why.

MWRO Opposition to Right To Work

Michigan Welfare Rights Organization stands against the awful, regressive “RIGHT TO WORK” laws being forced on workers in this State. We are not fooled by these slick t.v. commercials. All attempts to “trick” residents into believing that this law has anything to do with freedom of choice is a blatant lie and must be exposed.

The truth is that the corporate community has decided that the best way for them to continue to make maximum profits while not hiring us for work is to lower our wages, take away our benefits, develop robots and technology that replace us permanently; and to convince us that this is the American future for us all. This is NOT our future!

“RIGHT TO WORK” is an attack against organized labor and more. What is the UNION?? Unions are those workers that set livable wages for all. Unions are those workers that set safety regulations that suggest all ten finger and both lungs are sacred. Unions are those workers who set policies that protect women when management supervisors want a quick touch. Unions are those workers who won’t allow companies to force children to work in mines.

We have failed over the years to define what a UNION is and why they are important, a mistake that has now come to hurt us. The UNION movement was born at night, but not LAST NIGHT, so we are now forced into this fight for our lives and for the future of the next generation of workers. The percentage of organized labor unions is today at its lowest but we are not fooled into believing that those worker protections we owe to UNIONS are no longer critical.

Children, grandchildren, all the children will one day ask, “What did we do to stop this attack on our collective standard of living when the corporate beast came after our futures?” All workers, from those who are low income to those who are middle income to those who are upper income, should be alarmed at this attempt to turn the clock back. Tuesday, many of us will travel to Lansing to make our voices clear about this “RIGHT TO WORK” lie. It is but one step toward the long march to re-capture the future of the next generation.

Another World Is Possible, Another America Is Necessary. The “needs of the many must always outweigh the needs of the few.” You get what you organize to take.

Maureen D. Taylor
State Chair, MWRO

MWRO Party and Computer Lab Fundraiser

Depression, Recession, Bail-Outs Got You Down?

Free your worries at the MWRO Anti-Depression Party!

Friday, August 17, 2012 from 8-11pm
International Institute, 111 E. Kirby/John R (north of DIA), Detroit, MI.

Fight Depression Ticket - $10
Really Fight Depression Ticket - $15 (includes dinner)
B.Y.O.B. – Set ups available

Party like it’s…
1929: Stock Market crashes.
1939: John Steinbeck publishes “Grapes of Wrath.”
1949: China becomes communist.
1959: Fidel Castro leads Cuban revolution.
1969: Woodstock concerts begin summer of love.
1979: Mother Teresa awarded Nobel Peace Prize.
1989: Savings & loan crisis is exposed.
1999: Prince starts a music revolution!

Tickets available at the door or in advance at the MWRO office. Contact MWRO at (313) 964-0618 or mwroinfo@gmail.com for more info. If you cannot attend please consider mailing a donation to MWRO, 23 E. Adams St, 4th fl, Detroit, MI 48226.

Proceeds will benefit the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization Technology Fund for our Digital Justice Coalition matching dollars effort to build a community computer lab.
Thank you!

Press Release on Detroit Housing Takeover Discussion

The Housing Is a Human Right Coalition is presenting to the Detroit City Council today at 1:00 p.m. its work to move homeless families into abandoned bank- and government-owned houses. The community is invited to this discussion on addressing the need for safe, affordable housing for homeless veterans, women and children; and improving the security and quality of neighborhoods across Detroit.

Maureen Taylor, MWRO State Chair, will lead the Coalition's presentation, including a history of the increasing homeless crisis in Detroit and the significant potential for addressing the economic and social costs through the City of Detroit's Nuisance Abatement ordinance.

For additional information, contact the Housing Is a Human Right Coalition through the MWRO office at (313) 964-0618.

Emergency Managers Attack Our Democracy

As we prepare to take a bus load of low income people to the Michigan Supreme Court tomorrow, here's another reminder of why this Emergency Manager issue is so significant. Governor Snyder and corporations are trying their hardest to take away our democracy. We've got to stop them from taking away from our families and communities any more of the little we've got left!

Read more about this: Dictators Over Communities of Color: Coming to a Town Near You at Michigan Forward.

The Scandal of Michigan's Emergency Managers

Joe Harris, state appointed emergency manager in Benton Harbor, Mich., unlocks the door of the city manager's office.

 REPOSTED FROM BANCO.ORG

On January 20 the progressive think tank Michigan Forward and the Detroit branch of the NAACP sent a joint letter to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder expressing concern over Public Act 4, the Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act. Signed into law in March 2011, it granted unprecedented new powers to the state’s emergency managers (EMs), including breaking union contracts, taking over pension systems, setting school curriculums and even dissolving or disincorporating municipalities. Under PA 4, EMs, who are appointed by the governor, can “exercise any power or authority of any officer, employee, department, board, commission or other similar entity of the local government whether elected or appointed.”

What are the qualifications for such a powerful office and the six-figure salary that accompanies it? Not much: PA 4 requires “a minimum of 5 years’ experience and demonstrate expertise in business, financial, or local or state budgetary matters."

Last year the state held a pair of two-day training sessions for EMs, both run primarily by companies that provide outsourcing services to municipalities and school districts. Yet PA 4 made the emergency manager the single most powerful person in the city.

Results were swift. In April the Benton Harbor EM, Joe Harris, decreed: “Absent prior express written authorization and approval by the Emergency Manager”—himself—“no City Board, Commission or Authority shall take any action for or on behalf of the City whatsoever other than: i) Call a meeting to order, ii) Approve of meeting minutes, iii) Adjourn a meeting.” The move in effect abolished Benton Harbor’s elected City Commission and replaced it with an unelected bureaucrat, perhaps the first time this has happened in US history.

The implications went beyond Benton Harbor. “Since the beginning of your administration, communities facing or under emergency management have doubled,” Michigan Forward and the NAACP wrote to the governor, citing a “failure of transparency and accountability” in the process of determining which jurisdictions need an emergency manager. The financial review team assigned to Detroit, for instance, had recently met in Lansing, nearly 100 miles away—“a clear example of exclusion and voter disenfranchisement,” according to the authors. On February 6 an Ingham County circuit judge ruled that the Detroit team’s meetings must be held in public.

Of Detroit’s 713,777 residents, 89 percent are African-American. The city of Inkster (population 25,369), which recently got an EM, has a black population of 73 percent. Having EMs in both cities would mean that more than half the state’s black population would fall into the hands of unelected officials.

* * * * * * *

Everyone agrees that something must be done to “fix” Michigan’s struggling urban centers and school districts, although news of a $457 million surplus in early February prompted the state budget director to declare, “Things have turned.” But at what cost? In 2011 Governor Snyder stripped roughly $1 billion from statewide K-12 school funding and drastically reduced revenue sharing to municipalities. Combined with poor and sometimes corrupt leadership and frequently dysfunctional governments, these elements have brought Michigan cities to the brink of bankruptcy. Residents of the hardest-hit places have fled if they are able.

* * *

The state’s first emergency managers—previously known as emergency financial managers—were appointed between 2000 and 2002 by Republican Governor John Engler in the cities of Hamtramck, Flint and Highland Park to prevent them from declaring bankruptcy. Although all eventually left when their job was done—the last in 2009—all three cities are back in the red. In January the Highland Park School District was assigned an EM. (That city—population 11,776—is 93.5 percent African-American.) Others followed, in Ecorse, Benton Harbor and Pontiac, as well as Detroit public schools.

Under PA 4, EMs have proven to be a divisive solution. Outsourcing services to private companies and abolishing collective bargaining takes a page right out of the right-wing playbook: a 2011 report titled “101 Recommendations to Revitalize Michigan,” published by the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy, calls for ending “mandatory collective bargaining for government employees who already enjoy civil service protections.” Many are worried that EMs will hasten the gentrification of places like Benton Harbor, pushing out poor residents to make way for developers. In one of his first acts under PA 4, Joe Harris replaced nine people on the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority and all nine members of the planning commission.

Despite their relatively short history, EMs have a record of abusing their powers. This past summer Arthur Blackwell II, Highland Park’s former emergency financial manager, was ordered to repay more than $250,000 he paid himself. In Pontiac EFM Michael Stampfler outsourced the city’s wastewater treatment to United Water just months after the Justice Department announced a twenty-six-count indictment against the company for violating the Clean Water Act.

Multiple efforts are under way to rid Michigan of PA 4. The first is a lawsuit brought in June 2011 by the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice and the Center for Constitutional Rights challenging the law under the state Constitution. Despite efforts by the Snyder administration to bypass the legal process and force the Republican-controlled state supreme court to hear the case immediately, the lawsuit is pending. Representative John Conyers is pursuing the issue through the Justice Department, arguing that the law’s impact on minority populations may violate the Voting Rights Act.

But Michigan Republicans seem to be most concerned about a petition drive, organized by Michigan Forward, seeking a citizen referendum to overturn the law. As of mid-February the petition had more than 200,000 signatures, well over the number necessary to put the law on hold. The group plans to turn in the petitions on February 29. Since PA 4 replaced the law that created emergency financial managers, this could eliminate the positions in Michigan until the referendum is voted on in November.

GOP lawmakers are discussing replacement legislation, with Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger warning about “the chaos that could ensue if the emergency manager law is suspended.” Since Michigan law prevents referendums on appropriations bills, PA 4 opponents fear that any such law will contain an appropriation to make it “referendum proof,” a tactic already used by the state GOP this year.

The outcome of the citizen referendum and the constitutional challenges may well determine if laws like PA 4 remain unique to Michigan or become the national standard for dealing with impoverished urban areas. With the Indiana Senate having just passed an emergency manager bill of its own, we may be heading down that path. by Chris Savage

http://www.thenation.com/article/166297/scandal-michigans-emergency-managers#