We thought the Dropkick Murphys' screaming guitars and shrieking bagpipes were a good way to kick off the right-to-work-for-less battle in Indiana that officially starts tomorrow. It will be one hell of a fight, and Indiana Teamsters are all in.
Tomorrow's demonstration against right-to-work is likely to surpass last year's huge demonstrations in Indianapolis that went on for five weeks -- and successfuly killed the bill. This year, Local 135's parking lot will again be a staging area for busloads of union members and supporters, and we're hearing a huge contingent from Local 364 in South Bend is expected. Why tomorrow? It's the beginning of the legislative session, and the Republican supermajority wants to pass right-to-work by the time Superbowl festivities begin.
The Associated Press reports,
Indiana's Republican House leader said Tuesday that lawmakers will almost immediately take up labor legislation that's likely to dominate much of the state's 2012 session after it spurred a Democratic walkout last year.The other side is already doing some nasty stuff. Taking a page from
House Speaker Brian Bosma told The Associated Press that the first hearing on the state's "right-to-work" bill will be Friday. The joint hearing of the House and Senate labor committees is just two days after lawmakers return to Indianapolis for a brief 10-week session.
Indiana officials on Friday announced that for the first time, the state will limit the number of people it allows in the Statehouse...
No more than 3,000 people will be allowed inside the building at any one time. That number includes the 1,700 employees who work in the Statehouse, which means that typically, fewer than 1,500 others would be allowed to be there at any one time, on any given day.(Adding insult to injury, Indiana officials gave special permission for a prayer group to get access to the Capitol tomorrow, according to the AP.)
Here's what Indiana AFL-CIO President Nancy Guyott says:
Under this policy neither lobbyist nor donor will be turned away—yet everyday, taxpaying citizens will be.
This arrogant move is clearly aimed at working people who in 2011 went to the Statehouse to protest the anti-worker agenda being advanced there—and it is wrong. Our Constitution guarantees us the right to petition our government, and this limits that fundamental right.Teamsters have volunteered to rally, phone bank, e-mail, write, call and join the postcard petition campaign against the bill. The phone bank was up today, and Local 364 President Bob Warnock III is urging his members to call their lawmakers every day.
Indiana Labor unions are pitching in with a television commercial (you can watch here.)
Two new studies released today make strong cases against right-to-work. The first, by Economic Policy Institute economist Gordon Lafer, says right-to-work proponents are talking nonsense in the wake of NAFTA:
The Chamber of Commerce report promoting an Indiana RTW law focuses on economic growth rates measured from the 1970s. A major problem with looking at what happened decades ago is that we inhabit a fundamentally different economy, one that changed when the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) ushered in the current terms of globalization. In the 1970s and 1980s, companies may well have moved to RTW states in search of lower wages. But in 2012, companies looking for cheap labor are overwhelmingly looking to China or Mexico, not South Carolina. To the extent that enacting RTW legislation ever served as an effective economic development strategy—and the evidence is weak on this point—globalization has rendered RTW irrelevant...The second, by Notre Dame professor Marty Wolfson, concludes that right-to-work lowers wages. (We already know that, of course.)
The loss of manufacturing jobs post-NAFTA has been felt in every state in the country. As shown inFigure B, the highest rates of job loss have been in right-to-work states, with the Carolinas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida all losing a higher percentage of their manufacturing jobs than Indiana...
And if you don't know the lyrics to the Dropkick Murphys' "Do or Die," we think the chorus is especially appropriate:
Your dreams are in danger, and "We Must Rise"
Our time has come we are under the gun "It's Do or Die"
