Texas Labor Movement Does The Right Thing At The Intersection Of Politics And The Climate Crisis-- DCCC Weeps Bitterly

This story has a happy ending-- but it didn't always seem like it would while Kate Aronoff was writing it in real time last week in Austin. The big Texas AFL-CIO convention was considering which candidates to endorse for November. The building trades unions and the unions involved with the fossil fuels industries were not nearly excited as the rest of the labor movement was about the progressive candidates who were firmly backing the Green New Deal. They made a move to stop the endorsements of some of Texas' most energetic grassroots campaigns. Saturday was looking pretty ugly. Then the sun came out... on Sunday.

Aronoff focussed on the most important congressional race in Texas-- the non-DCCC effort to win the gerrymandered central Texas district that, incongruously, winds from Austin and its northern suburbs into the exurbs northwest of Houston (TX-10). Progressive champion Mike Siegel, ignored entirely by the DCCC, nearly ousted Republican incumbent Michael McCaul in 2018, holding McCaul down to a narrow 51.1% win, his closest ever. McCaul, who married into one of Texas' wealthiest families, spent $1,754,122 to Mike's $477,926. The DCCC spent zero on the race, petrified another working class progressive would break into Congress. What did they learn from the 2018 results? To support Siegel as he tries to finish the job he started 2 years ago? Not on your life. Conservative and anti-democratic DCCC head Cheri Bustos, recruited a Republican corporatist, currently pretending to be a Democrat, Shannon Hutcheson, claiming she could raise more money than Siegel. Siegel has raised more grassroots support and virtually all the local endorsements, including from unions. (Blue America has also endorsed Siegel and you can contribute to his campaign-- and to the other Texas' candidates who support the Green New Deal and a progressive agenda-- by clicking on the 2020 Turning Texas Blue thermometer on the right.)

"Having been dual endorsed by the Houston-based Texas Gulf Coast Labor Federation, Siegel and Hutcheson battled it out for the Texas AFL-CIO endorsement he won in 2018, made at the regional federation’s Committee on Political Education (COPE) Convention in Austin this past weekend. While Siegel won it again, his harder-fought victory this cycle offers a preview of what it will take to win labor’s support for a new generation of climate policies."

Siegel and his supporters spent last weekend in nearly round-the-clock meetings with unions, some of whose international leadership have previously spoken against the Green New Deal. “Everybody throws in something about a just transition when they talk about taking on climate change,” Rick Levy, President of the Texas AFL-CIO, told me. “But I think there’s concern about how central workers issues are going to be to that process. ... It’s just really hard when you’re in that industry, particularly in a place like Texas,” Levy said of unionized fossil fuel workers in the Right to Work state. “You see all these slings and arrows headed your way to your livelihood, climate change being one of them.” The Green New Deal, he told me, “is either the panacea or the devil depending on where you’re coming from.”

“It’s going to take a lot of real work for people advocating for this type of legislation to prove that the cost of transition is not going to be in working class communities,” Levy added. “The way power is distributed, it’s a hard sell to say that that’s not going to be the case.”

Siegel was aware of the resistance to this core element of his platforms, and worked hard to make sure it wouldn’t cost him with members. “Spent 3 days caucusing... Only opposition was Green New Deal,” he told me in a text message after Sunday’s floor vote on the CD 10 race. “My job was to build trust and let folks know we won’t move forward until labor is on board.” It seems to have worked. What ended up winning Siegel the endorsement, Levy said, was his time spent “addressing working people’s issues, and giving them a sense that he cared about those concerns and would actively work to incorporate them.”

It was a good weekend for Green New Deal-backing candidates overall. The Texas AFL-CIO also endorsed the Green New Deal supporter and Justice Democrats-endorsed candidate Jessica Cisneros against Representative Henry Cuellar, a conservative Democrat representing Texas’s 28th Congressional District who has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of donations from fossil fuel interests. In the 25th Congressional District, the Texas AFL-CIO issued a dual endorsement for Julie Oliver and Green New Deal supporter Heidi Sloan.

Like most Green New Deal advocate, Siegel believes decarbonization will be a process of designing a suite of policies, not one hulking bill. To make that work politically, he says, labor will have to be “in the driver’s seat.”

“We’re not gonna snap our fingers and implement a national Green New Deal policy,” he told me. “It’s going to be iterative, a series of pieces of legislation over time.” Before the convention, he had already signed onto a pledge from unions committing to hire a labor representative to work on any such measures. “We can put labor guarantees into this legislation that reinforce the right to collectively organize, and even demand sectoral bargaining,” he said. Labor is often, mistakenly, treated as a unified bloc when it comes to climate issues, with press and policymakers assuming that the outspoken international leadership of building trades unions (generally skeptical of decarbonization plans due to job displacement fears) speaks for the AFL-CIO’s 12.5 million members and large non-AFL-CIO unions like SEIU and the Teamsters. It’s true that the trades, clustered in the AFL-CIO’s Energy Committee, can hold outsized sway. Echoing a letter from that committee saying that Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey’s Green New Deal “makes promises that are not achievable or realistic,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s spoke out briefly against it in April 2019. But the statements were also less aggressive than right-wingers attempting to gin up labor-environmentalist conflict made them out to be. Furthermore, several union internationals and locals, including SEIU, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA and the New York State Nurses Association, have endorsed the Green New Deal, which boasts hearty support among rank-and-file union members. Ocasio-Cortez sat down to talk about the Green New Deal last week with members of Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), locals of which eagerly supported water protectors at Standing Rock in stark contrast to union leadership. Building on the work of people like Tony Mazzocchi, groups such as Trade Unions for Energy Democracy have been rallying labor around climate action, around the world, for years. This weekend’s convention in Texas further highlighted a labor movement that’s anything but monolithic, both between and among unions.

Ryan Pollock is a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 520 in Austin as well as the city’s Central Labor Council, which recommended that the Texas AFL-CIO endorse Siegel. The national IBEW and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 1624 have also backed Siegel. At the Texas AFL-CIO’s Constitutional Convention last summer, he worked with members of other unions to get a resolution supporting federal climate policy passed unanimously through the state AFL-CIO, in a process that mirrored the kind of negotiations that happened at the COPE convention.

It wasn’t easy. Oil runs deep in Texas. The Permian Basin in the West has given rise to one of the biggest oil booms in history. The jobs bound up in the fossil fuel economy aren’t just limited to miners and drillers and refinery workers. They include utility and railroad workers and even-- in some sense-- public employees, whose salaries in many places are contingent on the tax revenue extractive industries furnish to states and cities. In West Texas boomtowns, few if any sectors are untouched by the oil and gas business and its volatility.

Much of the tension over jobs and environment comes down to the type of work union members are doing. Pollock is an indoor electrician wiring commercial buildings. Energy experts note that an energy transition will require effectively tripling the amount of activity that takes place on the grid, electrifying everything while converting combustion-based activities—from transit to home heating-- to run on electricity. Electricians like Pollock will likely see work proliferate during that transition: IBEW workers around the country have been enthusiastic about solar power-- Local 11 in Los Angeles, for example, has seen a windfall in work thanks to the state’s pro-renewables legislation. But UA plumbers and pipefitters have been less open to Green New Deal proposals, since “electrifying everything” would also mean replacing much of their work running gas lines. And IBEW members also include workers at the coal-fired Fayette Power Plant East of Austin in CD 10, which Siegel has urged shutting down over rampant pollution concerns: one of Siegel’s 2020 ads highlights a third-generation pecan farmer whose family business has been destroyed by pollution from the plant, which also left him with a massive brain tumor.

“There’s no easy answer to these folks other than we have to take care of you,” Siegel said of the Fayette plant workers. “We have to make our demands to take care of you as specific as our demands to unwind fossil fuel energy production. The only other choice is environmental destruction and calamity.”

Pollock spent no shortage of time convincing members of the plant’s IBEW Local 66 to support Siegel and the climate resolution at last summer’s Texas AFL-CIO constitutional convention. “I laid out that we’re both IBEW,” Pollock said. “I’m doing this to make sure that we are taken care of, that you are taking care of. This stuff isn’t going away. The ever-increasing cost of fossil fuels means your plant’s in danger no matter what we do. We can do this now or we can do it later, or we can kick this can down the road,” he says of mapping out what a just transition might look like. “This is about labor getting ahead of the ball for once in the last century or so, and it’s about us calling the shots and not letting someone else call them for us.” Siegel supports providing five years of the same salary for any workers whose jobs are eliminated by a Green New Deal, with an option for workers over 55 to retire with full pension and benefits.

Pollock and Siegel’s other labor backers managed to get Local 66’s agreement on the climate resolution, which passed unanimously. But they weren’t persuaded to endorse Siegel. Local 66 and UA made up the small minority that backed Hutcherson through the nominating process this past weekend.

Though she boasts of working-class roots, Hutcheson would normally be an odd fit to win a labor endorsement over a guy with a string of union supporters, background in labor activism and what Data for Progress has deemed the third most ambitious labor platform in the country. She runs a boutique, women-owned corporate law firm called Hutcheson Bowers, which, as the Texas Observer reported, has represented a for-profit prison company that runs ICE detention centers. Hutcheson also penned a handbook for employers called “Agencies Run Amuck,” full of tips for how companies can defend themselves against the tyranny of federal labor law.

Still, many workers see any talk of decarbonization as an existential threat greater than any management-side Democrat. From the decline of the auto sector to the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs under NAFTA, there’s never been what workers in the United States would consider a “just transition.” Many are understandably weary of empty promises. Historically, environmentalists have made vague promises of jobs in the future, while opposing existing infrastructure projects like oil pipelines, which provide union members with lucrative work. After decades of attacks on organized labor and a dearth of infrastructure investment, the Green New Deal’s employment promises can still ring hollow.

Joe Uehlein, Founding President of the Labor Network for Sustainability, is the former secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Department, having entered the labor movement in the 1970s as a United Steelworkers member at an aluminum plant, and then as a LIUNA member working on heavy construction projects. He’s worked for decades now at the intersection of labor and climate. Uehlein emphasized the sheer number of jobs union members have to gain from a Green New Deal, from a transportation overhaul to energy efficiency upgrades to infrastructure investment to agriculture. These policies, he believes, have the potential to expand the labor movement by bringing more people into the work of decarbonization. “The fact that [a just transition] has never happened is the biggest stumbling block,” he told me. “But at the same time, our history is replete with things that never happened that people imagined and fought for and won.”

Another serious Green New Deal supporter in the Austin area-- Heidi Sloan-- was also endorsed by the AFL-CIO (co-endorsed, actually, along with another progressive Green New Deal backer) seems to be as campaigning as hard for Bernie as she is for herself. "Climate change is humanity's greatest threat," she told me yesterday, "but it's also our greatest opportunity to rebuild our economy for the many, not the few. Workers make the world go round, and we need leaders who understand both the urgency of climate crisis and the absolute necessity of centering the working class in our response to this crisis. Our underdog campaign won the endorsement of the Texas AFL-CIO because when we talk about a Green New Deal, we talk about a just transition for workers and we back that talk up with a demonstrated commitment to labor. Our campaign was ranked by Data For Progress as having the strongest labor platform among both candidates and incumbents, and for years I have walked picket lines, supported union drives, and stood with striking workers. Over Thanksgiving I was arrested in solidarity with airport workers on strike for higher wages and better healthcare. I'm ready to fight for workers in Congress, and during this campaign I will keep working to build trust with union organizers, labor leaders, and every day working class people."

Progressives Ask Why So Many Unions Seem Anti-Progressive

 A South Boston anti-busing protest in the 1970s (source)

by Gaius Publius

As a new Democratic insurgency has risen over the last year, unions have clung tightly to the old guard.

— Aida Chávez & Ryan Grim, The Intercept

The modern progressive movement is far and away a very good friend of labor. The labor movement, on the other hand, seems far less a friend of progressives.

This varies from union to union, of course, and also within unions. There are many pro-progressive unions and union members. National Nurses United, for example, strongly supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary, and unions with many pro-Sanders members endorsed Clinton because their leaders unilaterally chose to do so.

Yet it seems that in the aggregate, organized labor has an anti-progressive tilt. That's not the news though, just an observation. The news is that, for the first time in a while, progressives are noticing this fact, wondering in public what it might mean, and quietly asking each other what they should do about it.

My own comment: sure took a while. This problem has been obvious for quite a long time. But let's stick to the facts for today, look at the questions and leave the answers for later. 

First, Aida Chávez and Ryan Grim raise an interesting question at The Intercept (see headline below). Note that not only is the underlying story — the union behavior — interesting, but also that this question is being asked at all:

Carpenters, Steamfitters, and Other Trade Unions Coalesced Around Notorious Ferguson Prosecutor. Why?

St. Louis County, Missouri, labor unions spent heavily in an effort to re-elect prosecutor Bob McCulloch, who was ousted on Tuesday by criminal justice reformer Wesley Bell, campaign finance reports reveal.

It’s common for police unions to support prosecutors, but the labor groups who backed McCulloch came from the trade union movement: steamfitters, carpenters, electrical workers, and others with no obvious connection to the criminal justice system. Their support came in the form of both endorsements and campaign funds. The unions pumped in at least $25,000 of the $237,000 McCulloch raised during the campaign, arguing that his longtime support of organized labor deserved loyalty.

It's not just the racist Bob McCulloch whom many unions support; this is "an emerging pattern" (emphasis added):

As a new Democratic insurgency has risen over the last year, unions have clung tightly to the old guard. In New York, they sided with Rep. Joe Crowley over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and with Gov. Andrew Cuomo over Cynthia Nixon, even walking out of the Working Families Party on his orders. (In Missouri, the WFP supported Bell.) And the union backing is not limited to incumbents. Unions were firmly behind Gretchen Whitmer, who defeated Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s gubernatorial primary, for instance, and with Brad Ashford, a conservative Democrat who lost to insurgent Kara Eastman in an Omaha, Nebraska, congressional primary.

Next, let's turn to the climate front. Among retweets of progressives like Robert Reich by the United Mine Workers Twitter account, we find this response to progressive critics of the DNC's recent "all of the above" strategy of taking money from fossil fuel companies:

Your message to coal miners, refinery workers, O&G [oil and gas] production workers, fossil fuel utility workers & families is "we hate your industry so it's OK to refuse industry $$." Can't then say say "oh, YOUR money is OK. But we still hate your industry."

— United Mine Workers (@MineWorkers) August 11, 2018

Let's break this down. The DNC wants to keep feeding at the fossil fuel company trough. Progressives object to that and campaign to stop it. The UMW objects to progressive pushback and says to progressives, in effect:

• You hate the industry we love.
• You don't want industry money.
• So you shouldn't want our money either.

As a statement of "we just don't like you," this seems pretty clear, and not that far from a conversation that goes like this:

"Spare some change? I'm on your side."
"But we don't like you."
"Let me explain why you should."
"I guess you weren't listening. We don't like you."
"Of course I was listening. Spare some change?"

The three unions most opposed to oil and gas pipeline protests are the Operating Engineers (heavy equipment operators), Pipefitters and Laborers (LiUNA), whose president interestingly called those protestors "thugs."

It's true that not all unions take these stands, and one could argue in defense of those that do that they're just protecting jobs. But is that really all that's going on? Or is it also true that, when it comes to progressives and their values, they're just opposed on principle?

I'll close with two more thoughts. As Chávez and Grim point out, police unions naturally support prosecutors and the "criminal justice system." But is there not also a racial component to their support for obvious racists like like Bob McCulloch? If so, what values do these unions and those like them represent — true criminal justice, or something else? After all, actual justice would look like ... justice.

Second, as noted above, the leadership of most large unions supported Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders despite Sanders' lifelong and consistent support for workers and unions. As Elizabeth Bruenig asked in 2015, "So why are the very unions that give Sanders money hesitant to lend him their endorsements?"

Again that question, which brings us back to the question posed at the beginning: Why would unions that have nothing to do with criminal justice support a vengeful racist prosecutor like Bob McCulloch? Corrupt Joe Crowley? Powerful, corrupt Andrew Cuomo? Blue Dog Brad Ashford? And so many similar others?

These aren't answers, only questions, but questions in need of asking.

As you ponder them consider both aspects of this issue. The problem isn't simply why so many unions oppose progressives. It's also, what should progressives, in their unbending support for unions, do about it? After all, if a progressive transformation of the nation is not just desirable but critical to our survival, how should those working for that transformation deal with those working against it?

More pointedly, should anti-progressive unions be treated as allies, simply because they're unions?

One more thing to watch as our nation's problems grow worse, the need for solutions grows urgent, and progressives, or at least a few of them, take a brand new look at an old and seemingly unsolvable dilemma.

GP
 

See, It's Not All Banksters Financing Her: LIUNA-- The Laborers Union-- Gave $4 Million To The Clinton Campaign

Hillary's single top campaign donor is George Soros, in so far for $7,039,800. I have nothing negative to say about him and I suspect he honestly believes in the status quo centrism she represents and isn't actually trying to bribe her or even guarantee any more access into the halls of power than he already commands. Still, I sometimes point to this gigantic contribution as evidence of why Hillary is the wrong candidate for a Democratic Party collectively sick to its stomach of the corrosive effect of big money on the political system and of rigged elections and a rigged economic system.

A reasonable response is "But look at her second biggest contribution, the Laborers Union, millions of low wage workers sending in their $27 contributions." But that wouldn't be accurate. The only non-billionaire among her top 5 donors, LIUNA (the Laborers Union) is a corrupt right-wing union run as a dictatorship by a corrupt, right-wing sleazebag, Terry O'Sullivan. O'Sullivan gave the Clinton operation $4,000,000, not individual laborers. I wouldn't attribute the same motivations to him that I'd attribute to George Soros. Last cycle O'Sullivan's #1 recipient of his union's cash in Congress was grotesquely corrupt New Jersey Machine candidate Donald Norcross ($20,000).

Predictably, O'Sullivan's biggest congressional chunk of change so far this year went to the same Senate candidate most handsomely supported by the Wall Street banksters: Patrick Murphy. Other major recipients of LIUNA largesse include Pennsylvania racist Lou Barletta ($5,000), vulnerable right-wing Florida Republican Carlos Curbelo ($5,000), Sacramento's most corrupt Democrat, Isadore Hall ($5,000), Long Island GOP freakshow Peter King ($5,000), Norcross again, of course ($5,000), House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair, Fred Upton ($5,000). So far this cycle, O'Sullivan has thrown $179,000 to over 40 House Democrats, including nearly every one that the Democrats are targeting in their bid to win back the House. The bulk of the money he gives to Democrats go to corrupt conservative New Dems and Blue Dogs like John Delaney, Jim Cooper, Scott Peters, Dan Lipinski, Terri Sewell, Kurt Schrader, Gwen Graham, Jim Costa, and Sean Patrick Maloney.

But my favorite LIUNA contribution of 2016 wasn't the money O'Sullivan gave Paul Ryan or any of his anti-union thuggish colleagues but the contribution to Nevada Assemblywoman and tea party congressional candidate Michele Fiore, best known for rhetoric so violent that she makes Trump seem like a hippie in comparison. Best known for her gun nut calendar and Christmas cards and for a bill to allow concealed firearms on school campuses (and day care facilities), she has also been telling her constituents that cancer is a fungus and can be flushed out with salt water. She owes the IRA over a million dollars in back taxes, took in over $6 million in her very fishy home health care service (whose license was eventually revoked) and has called for shooting Syrian refugees in the head. Terry O'Sullivan's gal (not Hillary, Michele): "I am not OK with Syrian refugees. I’m not OK with terrorists. I’m OK with putting them down, blacking them out. Just put a piece of brass in their ocular cavity and end their miserable life. I’m good with that." That's LIUNA-- and the $4 million they gave Hillary.

Hillary's Campaign Is Bragging About Being Endorsed By LIUNA. Meet LIUNA And The Right-wing Nut Who Runs It

Just before the Thanksgiving break, the Clinton campaign stiffed MoveOn and its 8 million grassroots members just as they were playing kissy-kissy with the worst and most degenerate of the right-wing labor unions, LIUNA, which disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO in 2006 and, earlier, was prosecuted by the Department of Labor for racketeering, corruption and ties to organized crime. It’s a shame," said Anna Galland, the executive director of MoveOn.org Civic Action, "that Secretary Clinton declined to participate in the MoveOn member forum. She missed an opportunity to speak directly to and energize the progressive base she’ll need in her corner not just to win the nomination but also the general election, if she is the party’s nominee." Now let's look at a little background on the conservative unions that have been lining up behind Clinton and particularly the Laborers Union and their corrupt right-wing boss Terry O'Sullivan.

Although unions have been maligned, denigrated and marginalized by Big Business and their conservative political allies and by the right-wing propaganda machine, the contributions unions have made to the lives of ordinary working men and women are profound and undeniable. From abolishing child labor laws to pushing for Social Security, Medicare, health and safety standards and the minimum wage-- not to mention the whole concept of the weekend!-- unions have been in the forefront of every battle between democracy and the nefarious forces of plutocracy. The Republican Party and the plutocrats behind them understood that by weakening unions, they would be weakening the effective opposition to their greed and selfishness-based agenda. The Democratic Party, without the backbone of the millions of working people represented by unions is, for the most part, just another set of craven politicians eager to sell out. Unions have kept the Democrats on the right path-- at least most unions have.




For years we've been warning readers about the Building Trades Unions. When I was growing up, these were the pro-war, pro-Nixon, racist, hippie-hating disgraces to the union movement. Today, the Building Trades Unions, have basically not changed all that much. They're still the conservative end of the union movement and they still give more support to Republicans than to Democrats.


In 2012 the 4 biggest recipients of Building Trades congressional campaign contributions were all conservative Republicans: Steve LaTourette (R-OH), Jon Runyan (R-NJ), Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ) and Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (R-Gambino).

At the height of the Keystone XL Pipeline LIUNA threatened progressives in Congress that they would help Koch-backed Republicans beat them in November. (We already saw them back conservative New Dem Colleen Hanabusa in Hawaii against progressive Senator Brian Schatz over Keystone XL.) O'Sullivan decided threatening House incumbents that they will help Republicans was the best tactic for his members and he singled out several top targets-- all 100% union backers: Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), Tim Ryan (D-OH), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Carol Shea Porter (D-NH), Alan Grayson (D-FL), Jackie Speier (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Mike Honda (D-CA) and Judy Chu (D-CA). Here's part of a letter O'Sullivan sent to members in Jan Schakowsky's Illinois district, where she's facing a crackpot Republican who wants to abolish unions altogether.

As we head into the 2014 election season, I want to bring your attention to an issue of critical importance to our Union; your member of Congress is trying to destroy job opportunities for our LIUNA brothers and sisters. Representative Jan Schakowsky recently signed a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urging him to reject the Keystone XL Pipeline, a vital infrastructure project that would create millions of hours of work for LIUNA members, increase U.S. energy independence, and safely transport a resource that will be developed with or without the pipeline.


To all proud, strong and united LIUNA brothers and sisters, I say, enough is enough! Our members and their families are angry, disappointed and disillusioned with out-of-touch, job-killing politicians who choose to side with environmental extremists over work for our members. There so-called "friends" of ours are destroying good-paying work opportunities with family-supporting benefits, at a time when LIUNA members are trying to put food on their tables, keep roofs over their heads, and maintain middle-class lifestyles.


For every action, there is a reaction, and our reaction to this frontal assault on our way of life needs to be loud and clear. If you do not stand with us, we sure as hell will not stand with you.


…[Your] member of Congress has chosen to side with hard-core anti-Keystone organizations rather than with hard working LIUNA members and their families. Please keep that in mind when Congresswoman Schakowsky seeks your vote this fall, and be sure to let her know how angry and disappointed you are that she is trying to keep your brothers and sisters from working.


If Congresswoman Schakowsky and other politicians continue to stand in the way of jobs for Laborers, let's make sure they "feel the power" and fury of LIUNA this November.

Schakowsky was reelected 134,070 (65.7%) to 69,876 (34.3%). I don't know how big of a bribe the Koch brothers have given LIUNA General President Terry O'Sullivan, but I bet it's pretty big. His whole assertion could have come right from an episode of the union-busting Rush Limbaugh show. He should be very proud of himself and he's completely in the tradition of other labor leaders who sold out their own members-- Ronald Reagan, of course, comes right to mind. When Republicans challenged Van Jones' assertion that the whole Keystone Pipeline project would only create 35 permanent jobs-- no, not 35 thousand or 35 hundred, just 35-- Politifact investigated and they found Jones telling the truth and the Republicans lying-- as usual. O'Sullivan is lying to his members as well.

A few weeks ago, when Obama finally nixed the Keystone Pipeline, O'Sullivan told his half-million members that "President Obama today demonstrated that he cares more about kowtowing to green-collar elitists than he does about creating desperately needed, family-supporting, blue-collar jobs.  After a seven-year circus of cowardly delay, the President’s decision to kill the Keystone XL Pipeline is just one more indication of an utter disdain and disregard for salt-of-the-earth, middle-class working Americans... Barack Obama’s disdain for working people is evident. The President may be celebrated by environmental extremists, but with this act, President Obama has also solidified a legacy as a pompous, pandering job killer."

Tuesday he told those same members that "LIUNA is proud to endorse Secretary Clinton for President of the United States. The strong, proud and united members of LIUNA will be on the frontlines of the 2016 elections; on the streets, knocking on doors, making calls and encouraging family, friends, and neighbors to elect Hillary Clinton as the 45th President of the United States. LIUNA members and leadership believe that Secretary Clinton is the right leader to move our country forward and the most qualified candidate to address the many challenges facing the United States."

Last year LIUNA contributed large amounts of money to the worst Blue Dogs and New Dems in Congress, anti-working family fake Dems like South Jersey's Donald Norcross (the top recipient of their cash), John Barrow, Nick Rahall, Cheri Bustos, Ami Bera, Pete Gallego, Steve Israel, Dan Lipinski, Sean Patrick Maloney, Patrick Murphy, and Kyrsten Sinema. But LIUNA also gave $10,000 pops to reactionary Republicans like Lou Barletta (R-PA), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Rodney Davis (R-IL), Dave Reichert (R-WA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Peter Roskam (R-IL), Steve Stivers (R-OH), Pat Tiberi (R-OH), Fred Upton (R-MI) and Greg Walden (R-OR), the chair of the NRCC. They only gave Paul Ryan $5,000 last year, the same amount as they gave him in 2012 and the same amount they had gifted to far right extremists Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH) and Joe Walsh (R-IL).

And over on the Senate side their biggest contributions went to right-wing corporate Democrats Joe Manchin and Claire McCaskill. Obviously, not one nickel to Bernie Sanders.

So far this cycle LIUNA has given thousands of dollars to House Republicans again-- racist Lou Barletta (R-PA), Paul Cook (R-CA), Ryan Costello (R-PA), Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Dan Donovan (R-NY), Sean Duffy (R-WI), Chris Gibson (R-NY), Richard Hanna (R-NY), Randy Hultgren (R-IL), Evan Jenkins (R-WV), Bill Johnson (R-OH), David Joyce (R-OH), John Katko (R-NY), Mike Kelly (R-PA), Peter King (R-NY), Leonard Lance (R-NJ), Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Thomas MacArthur (R-NJ), David McKinley (R-WV), Patrick Meehan (R-PA), Tim Murphy (R-PA), Tom Reed (R-NY), Dave Reichert (R-WA), Jim Renacci (R-OH), Ileana Ros Lehtinen (R-FL), Peter Roskam (R-IL), Paul Ryan (R-WI), Bill Shuster (R-PA), Chris Smith (R-NJ), Pat Tiberi (R-NJ), Steve Stivers (R-OH), Michael Turner (R-OH), Fred Upton (R-MI), Greg Walden (R-OR), Ed Whitfield (R-KY) Don Young (R-AK) and Lee Zelden (R-NY).

And in Florida, they don't care who wins the open Senate seat, as long as it isn't progressive icon Alan Grayson. They've already started funding the Senate campaigns of two right-wing anti-worker candidates, Republican David Jolly and New Dem Patrick Murphy. LIUNA has also given to Joe Heck's Senate campaign in Nevada. Their biggest single investment (so far) though was $30,000 to the Boehner for Speaker Committee, although they've also given thousands to the Blue Dog PAC and the New Dems' Moderate Democrats PAC. And although almost all their other contributions this cycle have gone to incumbents, they managed to connect to the most corrupt Democrat in Sacramento, Isadore Hall, a candidate for the open CA-44 seat and gave him $5,000. Birds of a feather.

Below is a video of the MoveOn forum that Hillary snubbed while she was plotting with LIUNA's Terry O'Sullivan how to move America backwards. You can contribute to Bernie Sander's campaign here.

Central Florida Building and Construction Trades Council Endorses Grayson For U.S. Senate

Democratic Party political boss and throwback Chuck Schumer has no primary and no viable Republican opponent for reelection next year. So he has plenty of time to sit on the phone calling progressive donors and threatening them for backing Alan Grayson in his Democratic primary battle against Schumer's conservative puppet, New Dem/"ex"-Republican Patrick Murphy, who has just spent 3 years in Congress voting to back Boehner's and Wall Street's agenda. Almost everyone I know from the Democracy Alliance has gotten at least one slimy phone call from Schumer demanding they not back Grayson. And in a few cases, it's actually worked! 

One group Schumer's huffing and puffing didn't work with is the Central Florida Building and Construction Trades Council, which includes more than a dozen local trade groups and unions and represents several thousand Central Florida workers. They endorsed Grayson today.

Council President Wes Kendrick said:

Working people in Florida need a bold leader like Alan Grayson, who will stand with Elizabeth Warren in the Senate and take on Wall Street. Alan is a fearless leader and fighter for all working people who has a proven track record of getting things done even when it was not easy.

Patrick Murphy's Republican father owns a huge construction company, and they expected to win the backing of the more conservative building trades unions. This endorsement has left them reeling and wondering why Schumer doesn't seem to be delivering what he's promised.

Grayson, who has a 98% lifetime legislative voting record from the AFL-CIO, has earned the Council endorsement with his powerful and unambiguous stands for working families, stepping out ahead of Democratic leadership in advocating and proposing legislation to benefit workers and unions. While Patrick Murphy has been a shill for Wall Street banksters, Grayson never takes his eye off the ball for Florida's ordinary working families. He said:

I’m honored by this endorsement. Wall Street and the corporate wing of the Democratic Party are attacking me because they know my vote can't be bought and I can't be bossed around, but with the support of grassroots Democrats, Labor and others who believe in fighting for working people, I'm going to win this race.

Blue America has endorsed Grayson because of his positions and his voting record. If you'd like to help him win this race against the worst elements of the Beltway elites-- from both party establishments-- please consider making a contribution on this Blue America page. In 2012 and 2014, Grayson was the only Member of the House of Representatives who raised most of his campaign funds from small donors like us, not lobbyists or special interests.

How Happy Is YOUR Labor Day?

Last week, prostrating himself before the Koch brothers and other right-wing billionaire campaign financiers, Mitch McConnell swore that if they helped the GOP take over the Senate-- and reelect him in Kentucky-- he would guarantee that there would never be a vote taken on raising the mimimim wage. Happy Labor Day… as the rest of the civilized world enjoys nice long vacation, regular pay raises, healthcare, pensions, maternity leave and benefits most American workers no longer even dream of.

Yesterday, the Lexington Herald-Leader released a poll showing that most Kentuckians disagree with McConnell on the minimum wage. Kentucky voters have been victimized by a systematic anti-union propaganda onslaught through right-wing radio and it has had a tremendous impact-- except on the minimum wage. Thanks to the success of Hate Talk Radio, the state is pretty much anti-union these days but increasing the minimum wage is still something even Kentucky workers see as beneficial.

Fifty-five percent of Kentuckians think the federal government should raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, while 37 percent want to leave it alone. Eight percent were not sure.

Support for raising the minimum wage has dipped slightly since February, when a Bluegrass Poll showed 61 percent favored raising the minimum wage and 32 percent opposed it.

The issue appears to be especially popular among young people and blacks. Sixty-five percent of respondents ages 18 to 34 say the minimum should be higher, and 75 percent of blacks embrace it.

Seventy-one percent of Democrats back it, while only 35 percent of Republicans favor it. Fifty-six percent of independents said the minimum should be higher.

Slightly more women than men-- 57 percent to 53 percent-- endorse it, and 52 percent of Kentuckians with four-year college educations like the wage hike.

Support for raising the minimum wage decreased as income increased.

Sixty-five percent of respondents making less than $40,000 a year support a higher minimum wage, while only 41 percent making more than $80,000 a year favor it.

The increase garnered most support in Eastern Kentucky, where 62 percent back it. That dropped to 51 percent in Western Kentucky and the Louisville area.

Jane Eberwein, a retired businesswoman and teacher in Lexington, said the minimum wage should be increased.

"There are so many low-income people who can't get their head above water. I don't think it would be catastrophic to businesses to raise the minimum wage," she said. "It's been done before in the past and didn't kill business."

…Glenda Dryden, a poll respondent who agreed to a follow-up interview with the Herald-Leader, said Kentucky needed a right-to-work law.

"Unions were good things when workers were treated terribly, like having to work 15-hour days, but unions now, from what I read, are about raising a lot of money," said Dryden, a clerk in the Madison County sheriff's office. "People should be able to work without having to join unions."

Uninformed views like Glenda's warm the hearts of the plutocrats who met with McConnell. The party that wants to do away with the minimum wage entirely-- and that includes both Kentucky senators-- considers "Right to work" laws good labor policy-- a work force free of labor unions. Over the weekend, Tim Fernholz's look at the state of labor in America, has been driving conservatives crazy. Start with the chart up top. "[T]he share of US national income going to salaries and wages," he writes, "has been falling pretty steadily in the past four decades, and despite some recent gains, hasn’t yet returned to pre-recession heights."

Every time America produced $10 of income this year, $4.26 went into a worker’s pocket-- and the rest went to investors (minus taxes, of course.) Bummer.

This state of affairs is likely why, despite a growing economy and a falling unemployment rate, there’s still not much of a sense that a US recovery has truly taken hold-- unless you’re a corporation. Corporate profits as a share of national income are at their highest level since the US government began measuring them in 1947, which is even more amazing when you consider the growth of executive salaries and the rising number of self-employed professionals whose business income isn’t counted in this measure:

Trends like these are driving the debate about inequality in the United States today, and make Thomas Piketty’s theories about the growing advantage of capital over labor so compelling to many, even as economists debate the precise sources and durability of this disparity.

If these charts are giving you more heartburn than your Labor Day feast, consider raising a glass to US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen: Her revolutionary strategy at the Fed is predicated on generating higher wages for workers, a move that, at least in theory, puts some of the Fed’s awesome monetary power on the worker’s side of the scale.

Although the building trades unions tend to back Republicans and conservative Democrats, the GOP jihad against working families is not aimed only at progressive unions. All working families suffer under Republican policies-- which doesn't stop sold-out, right-wing labor bosses.

According to a February report from the Congressional Budget Office, the Democratic proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 would reduce total employment by 500,000 workers over the next three years. At the same time, it would lift more than 900,000 families out of poverty and increase the incomes of 16.5 million low-wage workers. What’s more, it’s reasonable to think we would gain jobs as a result of new economic activity generated by higher wages and new consumer spending.

But none of this mattered to Republicans who read the report. For them, it was vindication. “Raising the minimum wage could destroy as many as one million jobs, a devastating blow to the very people that need help most in this economy,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, all but speaking for most of the Republican Party, and echoing decades of rhetoric against increasing the minimum wage.

All of this doomsaying raises a question: If raising the minimum wage destroys jobs and prevents employment, then lowering it would do the opposite. And if you gain from lowering the minimum wage, then why have one at all?

…Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, for example, has no tolerance for the minimum wage. “When you set the minimum wage, it may cause unemployment,” he told ABC News during his 2010 Senate campaign. “The least skilled people in our society have more trouble getting work the higher you make the minimum wage.”

UPDATE: Rick Weiland

Let me tie the early morning post in with this one by quoting the Democratic candidate for the South Dakota Senate seat, Rick Weiland:

The next time you hear another Big Money attack on organized labor, consider the source. These are the same people who legally change their business address to a foreign country to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. These are the same people who oppose allowing young Americans to refinance their old, high interest student loans. These are the same people who park their profits in overseas banks instead of investing in America.

The only way we can win in November is to hold them accountable.

For my part, I will continue to work as hard as I know how to take our country back from Big Money.

Can The Koch Brothers Money Get To A Labor Leader? Ask Terry O'Sullivan

Although unions have been maligned, denigrated and marginalized by Big Business and their conservative political allies and by the right-wing propaganda machine, the contributions unions have made to the lives of ordinary working men and women are profound and undeniable. From abolishing child labor laws to pushing for Social Security, Medicare, health and safety standards and the minimum wage-- not to mention the whole concept of the weekend!-- unions have been in the forefront of every battle between democracy and the nefarious forces of plutocracy. The Republican Party and the plutocrats behind them understood that by weakening unions, they would be weakening the effective opposition to their greed and selfishness-based agenda. The Democratic Party, without the backbone of the millions of working people represented by unions is, for the most part, just another set of craven politicians eager to sell out. Unions have kept the Democrats on the right path-- at least most unions have.

For years we've been warning readers about the Building Trades Unions. When I was growing up, these were the pro-war, pro-Nixon, racist, hippie-hating disgraces to the union movement. Today, the Building Trades Unions, have basically not changed all that much. They're still the conservative end of the union movement and they still give more support to Republicans than to Democrats.

In 2012 the 4 biggest recipients of Building Trades congressional campaign contributions were all conservative Republicans: Steve LaTourette (R-OH), Jon Runyan (R-NJ), Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ) and Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (R-Gambino). The building trades unions are pulling the same pro-conservative bullshit again this cycle-- and they've pulled the AFL-CIO along with them on at least one crucial issue, the Keystone Pipeline.

This has some people surprised on the grounds that the project is set to create very few permanent jobs. The issue here, however, is all about the building trades unions. The building trades have been backing Keystone for a long time because from the viewpoint of a construction worker all jobs are temporary jobs. Actually building the pipeline will involve thousands of construction workers.

The larger union federation had been staying studiously "neutral" out of concern for larger issues of coalition politics, alliance with the environmental movement, etc. But there's no big countervailing forces inside the labor federation against the building trades' interest in the pipeline. The State Department's recent report that gave a favorable verdict to the pipeline changes the calculation in terms of the bigger coalition. If the State Department is giving it a thumbs up, then for all the unions that don't care it's not clear what's gained by neutrality. And for the building trades the upside of building the pipeline remains what it ever was-- construction jobs.

Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), one of the biggest supporters of unions and working families in America, gets it. "This pipeline will carry Canadian tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico for export. It's not about creating jobs in this country-- it's about lining pockets already full of cash. That's not in the national interest and it's not how we should be doing business." He's asking progressive sot continue pressuring President Obama not to give in. "It's about more than the environment, although that's an important part of our effort. It's about ending special treatment, taking conflicts of interest seriously, and restoring public trust in government decisions. When TransCanada, Keystone's parent company, gets to handpick the contractor that writes its environmental impact assessment-- and when the State Department doesn't think that's a problem-- we know things have gone off the rails. Well, let's fix that."

Unlike Raúl and a handful of intrepid progressives, many Democratic elected officials are reluctant to go up against Obama and the Big Money interests that are pushing for this horror. That's why we're taking a close look at the independent candidacy of Marianne Williamson to replace Henry Waxman in one of the most progressive districts in the country, CA-33. The Democratic Party is backing a state senator with a solid liberal reputation, Ted Lieu, but another of Williamson's main opponents is a former Republican who is being run by EMILY's List, Wendy Greuel, the careerist from the Valley who was just defeated by Eric Garcetti when EMILY's List tried to push her into that job. The worst kind of garden variety candidate of meaninglessness, Greuel parrots whatever her consultants think will position her best for a win in a district that she has no relation to whatsoever. An incredibly authentic person, Marianne Williamson can always be counted on to speak exactly what she thinks and feels for real. On the day the AFL-CIO announced they are backing Keystone XL, Marianne told us, "I am disappointed by today’s strong indication that the AFL-CIO will support the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline particularly when it creates very few permanent jobs for American workers while doing potential permanent damage to the environment. What we should be doing is creating large numbers of permanent jobs by investing in clean energy for the future, reducing our carbon footprint and becoming free of our addiction to fossil fuels. I strongly urge President Obama and all candidates in this race for Rep. Henry Waxman’s seat to continue Waxman’s legacy of preserving the environment while creating jobs through green energy production. We don’t have to trade our economy for our conscience, in this area or in any other."

So it should have come as no surprise yesterday when the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) threatened progressives in Congress that they would help Koch-backed Republicans beat them in November. (We already saw them back conservative New Dem Colleen Hanabusa in Hawaii against progressive Senator Brian Schatz over Keystone XL.) Now they're threatening House incumbents that they will help Republicans. The imbeciles at that union have singled out several top targets-- all 100% union backers: Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Tim Ryan (D-OH), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Carol Shea Porter (D-NH), Alan Grayson (D-FL), Jackie Speier (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Mike Honda (D-CA) and Judy Chu (D-CA). Here's part of a letter the conservative shill who runs LIUNA sent to members in Jan Schakowsky's Illinois district, where she's facing a crackpot Republican who wants to abolish unions altogether.

As we head into the 2014 election season, I want to bring your attention to an issue of critical importance to our Union; your member of Congress is trying to destroy job opportunities for our LIUNA brothers and sisters. Representative Jan Schakowsky recently signed a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urging him to reject the Keystone XL Pipeline, a vital infrastructure project that would create millions of hours of work for LIUNA members, increase U.S. energy independence, and safely transport a resource that will be developed with or without the pipeline.

To all proud, strong and united LIUNA brothers and sisters, I say, enough is enough! Our members and their families are angry, disappointed and disillusioned with out-of-touch, job-killing politicians who choose to side with environmental extremists over work for our members. There so-called "friends" of ours are destroying good-paying work opportunities with family-supporting benefits, at a time when LIUNA members are trying to put food on their tables, keep roofs over their heads, and maintain middle-class lifestyles.

For every action, there is a reaction, and our reaction to this frontal assault on our way of life needs to be loud and clear. If you do not stand with us, we sure as hell will not stand with you.

…[Your] member of Congress has chosen to side with hard-core anti-Keystone organizations rather than with hard working LIUNA members and their families. Please keep that in mind when Congresswoman Schakowsky seeks your vote this fall, and be sure to let her know how angry and disappointed you are that she is trying to keep your brothers and sisters from working.

If Congresswoman Schakowsky and other politicians continue to stand in the way of jobs for Laborers, let's make sure they "feel the power" and fury of LIUNA this November.

I don't know how big of a bribe the Koch brothers have given LIUNA General President Terry O'Sullivan, but I bet it's pretty big. His whole assertion could have come right from an episode of the union-busting Rush Limbaugh show. He should be very proud of himself and he's completely in the tradition of other labor leaders who sold out their own members-- Ronald Reagan, of course, comes right to mind. When Republicans challenged Van Jones' assertion that the whole Keystone Pipeline project would only create 35 permanent jobs-- no, not 35 thousand or 35 hundred, just 35-- Politifact investigated and they found Jones telling the truth and the Republicans lying-- as usual. O'Sullivan is lying to his members as well.

The State Department report puts the total at 42,100 jobs, though the definition of a job in this sense is a position filled for one year. Much of the construction work would come in four- or or eight-month stretches. About 10,400 seasonal workers would be recruited for construction, the State Department said.

When looked at as "an average annual job," it works out to about 3,900 jobs over one year of construction or 1,950 jobs each year for two years.

The rest of the jobs would be the result of spillover spending (formally called indirect or induced economic activity) as Keystone workers buy equipment and materials to complete the project and spend their money on an array of services, including food, health care, and arts and entertainment. As you might expect, it’s much harder to measure the widespread effect on job creation.

There’s no doubting that most of the economic activity comes during construction. Jones honed in on jobs after construction, which aren’t really a source of sharp debate.

"There’s very few jobs operating pipelines," said Ian Goodman, president of the Goodman Group Ltd., an energy and economic consulting firm in Berkeley, Calif. "That’s one of the reasons why pipelines are attractive to the oil industry. They’re relatively inexpensive to build and operate."

The report says the project would provide jobs for about 35 permanent employees and 15 temporary contractors.

The full-timers would be "required for annual operations, including routine inspections, maintenance and repair." Some would work in Canada. The U.S. employees would work at pump stations along the pipeline route as well as a Nebraska office.

The project’s impact on housing, property taxes and service industries once in operation? Not much. Not much is known about the contractors’ workload except they would provide additional specialized support.

Still, arguments about the relatively small number of permanent jobs from the pipeline often belie the nature of construction jobs, which are comprised of temporary projects by definition, said Matt Dempsey, a spokesman for a coalition of pro-Keystone groups known as Oil Sands Fact Check.

"You build it, you move on," Dempsey said.

Our ruling

Jones said the Keystone pipeline will only result in 35 permanent jobs after construction.

The numbers, as reported by the State Department, back him up, though that’s the nature of any big construction project, be it a highway or monument.

Jones’ claim is True.