Now, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi has struck down Walker’s anti-union law, saying its passage violated the state’s open meetings law and “the public’s trust”:

On Thursday, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi ruled that Republican legislators violated Wisconsin’s open meetings law by calling the meeting without a 24-hour notice. She said that renders the law void. She had put the law on hold while she considered the case.

Sumi said violating the open-meetings law betrays the public’s trust.

“The court must consider the potential damage to public trust and confidence in government if the Legislature is not held to the same rules of transparency that it has created for other governmental bodies,” she wrote in a 33-page decision. “Our form of government depends on citizens’ trust and confidence in the process by which our elected officials make laws, at all levels of government.”

The “state Supreme Court has scheduled arguments for June 6 to determine whether it will” take on the same suit against the law. Lawmakers “could also pass the law again in order to nullify open meeting concerns that led to the judge’s ruling” today. It’s worth noting that while the open meeting law has been an issue since before the law passed, Wisconsin Republicans have thus far refused to re-pass the legislation, leading some to speculate they wouldn’t have the votes to pass it again.

One way states are looking to raise revenues is to close what has become known as the “Amazon Loophole.” Currently, online retailers like Amazon.com set up subsidiary corporations in states and then argue that the subsidiary corporation doesn’t obligate the parent company to collect sales taxes in that state.

Lawmakers in numerous states, like South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, and others are tackling this loophole by mandating that Amazon customers in their states pay sales taxes, which would both provide revenue for their states and deny Amazon and other online retailers an unfair advantage over local retailers whose customers do have to pay sales taxes.

Responding to these legislators, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos remarkably claimed today that state efforts to close the loophole and have Amazon behave like any other retailer are actually unconstitutional:

Now, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is saying that some U.S. states’ tax demands are violating the U.S. Constitution. [...] “First of all, most of where we do business – Europe, Japan, some of the states here in the United States – we collect sales tax. More than half our business,” said Bezos. “We do collect sales taxes, the European equivalent of value-added tax. And in the U.S., the Constitution prohibits states from interfering in interstate commerce. And there was a Supreme Court case decades ago that clarified that businesses – it was mail-order at the time because the internet did not exist – that mail-order companies could not be required to collect sales tax in states where they didn’t have what’s called ‘nexus.’”

Bezos is referring to a 1992 Supreme Court decision that said “that retailers who lack a physical presence in a state, or ‘nexus,’ cannot be required to collect tax.” Yet states aren’t claiming extraordinary powers to tax Amazon transactions. Rather, they are expanding the definition of “nexus” to “include affiliate programs, such as when Amazon pays a commission for links that result in sales.”

But the Amazon CEO should know that his constitutional argument is bunk. After all, his company lost a constitutional challenge to New York when it sued to stop that state’s efforts to close the Amazon loophole (Overstock.com lost a similar case). “Amazon should not be permitted to escape tax collection indirectly, through use of an incentivized New York sales force to generate revenue, when it would not be able to achieve tax avoidance directly through use of New York employees engaged in the very same activities,” said Judge Eileen Bransten.

It’s crucial that states are able to excise their powers of taxation to get revenue from transactions occuring within their territory, given that state governments are losing millions of dollars thanks to tax dodging by big online retailers. As just one example, in “2011 alone, Wisconsin will lose an estimated $127 million in uncollected sales tax on purchases made online.” Unfortunately, Amazon hasn’t reacted to these state efforts just by challenging them in court. When Texas tried to close its Amazon Loophole, the retailer announced that it would end all business there.

In late March, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) signed Senate Bill 5 — which dramatically reduced collective bargaining rights for most of the state’s public workers — into law. In a fundraising e-mail sent shortly after his signature, Kasich said that “union bosses” opposed the new law and provided the opposition to his agenda.

Yet a new poll released today from Quinnipac University finds that it’s not just labor leaders who oppose Kasich’s anti-labor law, or his budget proposal, which dramatically reduces social spending in the state. The poll finds that 54 percent of Ohio voters want the law repealed, and only 36 percent want to keep it. Meanwhile, 53 percent of respondents said the governor’s budget proposal is unfair:

Numerous groups are currently collecting petitions in Ohio to put SB 5 on the Ohio ballot in November. They need 231,000 signatures to get a referendum on the law.

“Many of us are going to have to sacrifice in the short term. But I can tell you with confidence, with conviction, by making these sacrifices, we can all win in the long term,” Snyder said of his budget.

Snyder’s constituents don’t seem to be buying it, with 70 percent of Michigan voters opposed to cutting business taxes at the expense of education and other social services, according to a new poll from Michigan firm EPIC/MRA:

Meanwhile, 76 percent of voters supported a proposal to require businesses to demonstrate that they have actually created new jobs with the tax breaks they receive. Just 9 percent of voters said they think businesses would use Snyder’s tax breaks mostly to create jobs — most think companies will pocket the savings as profit.

On labor issues, 60 percent of voters oppose taking away collective bargaining rights of public employees, while nearly as many support an amendment to the state’s constitution guaranteeing a right to collectively bargain:

Support for the pro-labor amendment appears to have jumped sharply in recent weeks, as a March poll showed 49 percent of voters supporting it.

Snyder is eligible for recall in July, and a citizens group has already formed to spearhead the effort.

The latest outrage from Pearce comes from a speech he gave before the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce last week. Responding a question about how he would respond to protests by public workers against the conservative agenda, he embraced the use of Sherrif Joe Arpaio’s infamous tent city prison camps:

According to the Yellow Sheet, Pearce made this crack about what he and his buddy Sheriff Joe Arpaio would do if workers stood up for their rights and demonstrated: “I’ve spoken with the sheriff, and he has some nice buses that hold a lot of people. We’ve also got some tents with a view.”

A CNN article from 1999 describes one of Arpaio’s infamous desert prisons as a “tent city [that] looks like a military camp in the desert, with thick canvas sleeping quarters spreading out in a remote area of Arizona.” It’s unclear whether Pearce was joking or not, but even if he made the comment in humor, it’s completely inappropriate for a high official in the Arizona government to even kid about taking such measures against Americans practicing their First Amendment rights. “I find it deeply chilling that an elected official finds it funny to discuss jailing a group of people expressing their First Amendment rights,” said Arizona AFL-CIO executive director Rebekah Friend in response to Pearce’s comments. “Suggesting a police crackdown before a rally has even occurred is just more of the same intimidation, threats and innuendo we’ve come to expect from Senator Pearce and his crony (Sheriff Joe) Arpaio.”

Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) — whose state would have been the beneficiary of Boeing’s union-busting — said this week that “I’d like to see every [potential GOP 2012 presidential] candidate step up [and say] what they would do about it.” 2012 Republican hopeful Tim Pawlenty, when he was participating in a debate in South Carolina, did just that, calling the board’s decision “preposterous” and “outrageous.”

Yesterday was 2012 contender Mitt Romney’s turn, as he took a brief aside in his highly-anticipated health care speech to call the NLRB’s decision a “power grab” proving that the Obama administration “fundamentally distrusts free enterprise”:

The states, in the words of Justice Brandeis, would be the laboratories of democracy. They would try things. They would learn from one another. They would also compete with one another. So the same dynamic that would propel our economy — competition and freedom — would propel learning between the states…I’m convinced, however, that the Obama administration fundamentally doesn’t believe in that American experiment. They fundamentally distrust free enterprise and fundamentally distrust the idea that states are where the power of government resides. The most recent decision was the one made by the NLRB, to decide that Boeing can’t locate a factory in South Carolina. It was a power grab from states, with the federal government saying we know better than states.

Watch it:

To, once again, review what happened, Boeing, in 2007, announced a production line in Washington state, but in 2009 decided to move that line to South Carolina. Boeing officials very publicly explained that the decision was made because workers in Washington had engaged in a strike. According to labor law, shifting production as retribution against workers who exercise their rights is illegal.

As the Washington Post’s Steve Pearlstein wrote, “given the public statements of Boeing officials, there is nothing radical about the NLRB’s decision.” A lawyer who described himself as sympathetic to management told the Seattle Times, “If I’m [Boeing's] labor lawyer, I’m cringing when they are saying that.” But the GOP is treating this as some unprecedented assault on freedom, rather than an agency just enforcing the laws on the books and ensuring that workers don’t have their rights trampled by corporations.

One company that is hiring is Walmart, “one of the largest private employers in the U.S.” The company recently posted a job listing online for a director of “Labor Relations.” The job description requires helping the company’s human resources department maintain a “union-free” workplace. Under “Additional Preferred Qualifications,” the company seeks fluency in Spanish:

Walmart is a company notorious for breaking up labor unions and has taken swift action to prevent its workers from organizing. In 2000, “when a small meatcutting department successfully organized a union at a Walmart store in Texas, Wal-Mart responded a week later by announcing the phase-out of its meatcutting departments entirely.” When a branch in Quebec, Canada, voted to unionize, the company immediately shut down the store.

Today, New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch (D) vetoed HB 474, which, if enacted, would have converted New Hampshire into a “right-to-work” state. In vetoing the legislation, Lynch said that his veto is a rejection of the influence of outside interest groups and in defense of the right to organize:

The debate over the so-called right-to-work bill in New Hampshire appears to be largely driven by national outside interest groups, and is not a result of problems facing New Hampshire businesses or workers.

There is no justification in this case for state government to interfere with the right of private businesses to freely negotiate and enter into contracts with their employees. Therefore, I am vetoing HB 474.

Starting in January, conservative lawmakers in at least 14 states (the Wall Street Journal tracks 18) introduced so-called right-to-work legislation that would cripple the ability of workers to form strong unions. The Associated Press finds that these bills have failed to progress in almost all of the states in which they’ve been introduced. Here are just a few examples of states where right-to-work laws have been introduced and have failed to go anywhere:

INDIANA: In Indiana, House Democrats took a page from the playbook of their Wisconsin colleagues and fled the state to prevent the passage of a right-to-work bill. Shortly after the Democrats left and thousands of protesters mobilized against the legislation, the right-to-work bill was withdrawn.

MAINE: Despite a strong push by newly elected Gov. Paul LePage (R), Maine has thus far failed to move forward with the legislation. “We’ve got a budget to concentrate on,” said Sen. Christopher Rector, a Republican who was dismissive of the state’s right-to-work bills.

MISSOURI: In Missouri, Senate Majority Leader Rob Mayer (R) stressed the “need to be bold about this new agenda” and pushed for right-to-work laws — which had been on the state’s “back-burner since 1978″ — immediately after being elected. Yet when the bill came up for debate in the Senate, it was shelved a mere three hours later, as it became clear that both Democrats and Republicans would filibuster it.

The Associated Press notes that the New Hampshire House is expected to vote again on the right-to-work proposal on May 25, in a bid to get the votes necessary to override Lynch’s veto.

His interpretation is that this is mostly not about taxes, but about family policy:

One group, in the lower-right corner, includes Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, France, and Belgium. These countries, along with Austria, have several features that might contribute to low work hours. One is strong unions. Organized labor has been the principal force pushing for a shorter work week, more holiday and vacation time, and earlier retirement. These nations also have been characterized by a preference for traditional family roles: breadwinner husband, homemaker wife. This preference, often associated with Catholicism and “Christian Democratic” political parties, is likely to influence women’s employment and work hours. It is manifested in lengthy paid maternity leaves, lack of government support for child care, income tax structures that discourage second earners within households, and practices such as German school days ending at lunch time and French schools being closed on Wednesday afternoons. These countries also fund their social insurance programs via heavy payroll taxes, the kind most likely to discourage employment growth.

A second group consists of the four Nordic nations: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. These countries too have strong unions. But they also have had electorally successful social democratic parties, which have tended to promote high employment. Denmark and Sweden, in particular, have been at the forefront in use of active labor market programs to help get young or displaced persons into jobs, public employment to fill gaps in the private labor market, and government support for child care and preschool to facilitate women’s employment.

One way to characterize this, perhaps, is in terms of which kinds of political parties dominate on the right. In the hard working countries, the main right-of-center party defines itself as “liberal” whereas in the barely working countries the main right-of-center party doesn’t. The Netherlands may be an interesting test case here since traditionally the Christian Democrats have been the dominant right-of-center force but in the most recent election they lost that status to a liberal party. Will that mean an upsurge in policies designed to encourage people to work more?

Now, the city of Winter Park, Florida, is going to new lengths to stop nearly 150 city workers from joining a union. Apparently more concerned with stopping the union than saving money, Winter Park hired consultants at Kulture LLC, “a firm specializing in labor relations” at the rate of $2,500 a day to persuade workers to vote against organizing this summer:

Winter Park is paying a consultant $2,500 a day to help the city’s staff dissuade about 150 city workers from joining a union. [...] Employees in the public works, parks, fleet maintenance and water departments are likely to vote in June or July on whether to join the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, known as AFSCME. In the past few years, the city has done away with longevity bonuses and pay increases because of the economy. [...] Members of AFSCME have criticized the use of tax money to pay a group that they say has a politically right-leaning agenda.

A spokesman for the city told the Orlando Sentinel that it didn’t “do a political background check” on Kulture before hiring the firm and that the city just wants to inform workers about their options. Yet a cursory look at Kulture and the activities it conducts shows what the firm is all about: union-busting.

Kulture’s website is replete with right-wing ideology. It hosts op-eds claiming that sweatshops are an opportunity for the “third world poor” and bragging that the “labor movement is dead.” Its webpages direct users to far-right sources of information such as the Ayn Rand Institute and The Federalist Society. It also hosts the anti-union laborunionreport.com, which hosts anti-labor articles and a monthly “anti-union report.” The organization’s CEO, Peter A. List, has said that “unions are a by-product of a bad relationship.”

“We’re basically hiring them to make sure that factual, accurate information is given to our employees before they make a vote on whether or not to join a union,” says Winter Park spokeswoman Clarissa Howard. But one has to wonder how hiring a radical, Ayn Rand-promoting anti-union organization will do anything but try to scare workers into submission.

After much of the international media covered the abuses at Foxconn’s factories, the company, along with the major American corporations it supplies — like Apple and HP — announced that it would be reforming its practices.

Yet a new report from Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM), a Hong Kong-based advocacy and research group, finds that many of the practices that led more than a dozen workers committ suicide continue to live on. SACOM conducted a comprehensive study of practices at several Foxconn factories over the months of March and April and found that a number of shocking policies are in place. Here are some of the highlights of their study:

– Workers Are Being Asked To Work 80-100 Hours Of Overtime: Despite promises by Apple and Foxconn to limit overtime work to 36 hours a month, SACOM researchers found that in some factories, like in Chengdu, it is typical for workers to work 80-100 hours overtime instead. This is actually 2-3 times the legal limit of allowed overtime work.

– Workers Are Being Forced To Sign ‘No-Suicide’ Pacts: In the wake of a huge wave of suicides at Foxconn plants, the company began reforming its practices related to the suicides. Among these changes included installing anti-suicide nets to catch workers who attempted to leap out of company windows. Yet workers are also being forced to sign a non-suicide pact as a condition of employment. As part of the pact, the employees families have to promise “not sue the company, bring excessive demands, take drastic actions that would damage the company’s reputation or cause trouble that would hurt normal operations” in the case of a suicide.

– Employees Regularly Are Forced To Stand For 14 Hours A Day: SACOM found that workers in Chengdu “usually…have to stand for 14 hours a day.” “I don’t understand why we can’t sit. And we can’t bring our cell phone to the shop floor. Even the cell phone without camera is prohibited,” said one worker to the SACOM researchers.

– Employees Are Crammed Together In Dormitories With Squalid Living Conditions: In Chengdu, where almost all workers live in company-owned dormitories, the number of employees placed in a dormitory room range from 6 to 22. Employees’ living quarters are also under factory rules, and workers cannot even bring basic items such as hair dryers into their dorms. “Some of my roommates weep in the dormitory. I want to cry as well but my tears have not come out,” one 19 year-old employee told SACOM

Foxconn responded to the SACOM report with a statement given to the magazine PCWorld: “We have made tremendous progress over the past year as we work to lead our industry in meeting the needs of the new generation of workers in China and that has been confirmed by the many customer representatives, outside experts, and reporters who have visited our facilities and openly met with our employees and our management team.”

Part of the problem has to do with human capital. More American men lack the emotional and professional skills they would need to contribute. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 35 percent of those without a high school diploma are out of the labor force, compared with less than 10 percent of those with a college degree. [...] The result is this: There are probably more idle men now than at any time since the Great Depression, and this time the problem is mostly structural, not cyclical.

Jamelle Bouie says Brooks is failing to mention the Great Recession. But I’d say he is mentioning it. He’s just positing that the cause of the Great Recession is either that America’s human capital stock took a sudden negative shock in 2007 or else perhaps that the value of human capital underwent a sudden and rapid increase in 2007. But as Charlie Eisenhood showed long ago this human capital differential existed well before the recession:

Or look at the trend:

Even when there wasn’t a huge shortfall in aggregate demand, high school dropouts had a very high unemployment rate. That right there is your “structural” unemployment. But then you see this gigantic increase in the unemployment rate for dropouts that precisely coincides with an increase in the unemployment rate for folks with high school diplomas and with an increase in unemployment rate for folks with some college and with an increase in the unemployment rate for people with bachelor’s degrees. That’s right, even folks over the age of 25 with college degrees took the hit at the exact same time. And that is what a shortfall in demand looks like.

Last night, the first Republican presidential primary debate took place in Greenville, South Carolina, where former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-SC) played to the local crowd by calling the NLRB’s decision “preposterous” and “outrageous”:

You have this administration, through the National Labor Relations Board, telling a private company that they can not relocate to South Carolina and provide jobs in this state, and they’re good-paying jobs, and they’re needed jobs. It’s a preposterous decision and position of this administration…I just want to make it clear: the idea that the federal government can tell a private business where they can be and not be in the United States of America is a whole new line that this administration has crossed and its outrageous.

Watch it:

Pawlenty conveniently leaves out that the basis for the case is the very public statements from Boeing officials, who said that their justification for moving was workers in Washington having the audacity to strike. One said that “the overriding factor [in moving to South Carolina] was not the business climate. And it was not the wages we’re paying today. It was that we cannot afford to have a work stoppage, you know, every three years.” Another said that the company decided to move its production line due to “strikes happening every three to four years in Puget Sound.”

Under labor law, it is simply illegal to move production as retribution against workers striking. And Boeing must know that these statements are incriminating, as it is now claiming that it was misquoted by the NLRB. If it felt the legal argument would swing its way, trying to hide from its statements wouldn’t be necessary. In fact, one lawyer quoted by the Seattle Times said, “If my sympathies are anywhere, they are with management. But I am also a realist. If I’m their labor lawyer, I’m cringing when they are saying that.”

The sick leave law was approved by referendum — with nearly 70 percent of voters in favor — and was upheld a few weeks ago by the state’s court of appeals. However, Republicans in the Wisconsin state legislature passed a bill preempting the city’s law and ensuring that no jurisdiction within the state of Wisconsin is allowed to decide it wants to mandate paid sick days. Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) — who gained notoriety for proposing a law stripping public sector workers of their collective bargaining rights and sparking mass protests — signed the anti-sick leave bill into law today:

Gov. Scott Walker has signed a bill that prohibits local governments from passing ordinances guaranteeing workers’ paid sick and family leave…Walker, a Republican, says in a statement the bill removes another barrier to creating jobs.

But Walker’s concern about job-loss is overblown. The Drum Major Institute conducted a study examining San Francisco’s paid sick leave law and found “no evidence that businesses in San Francisco have been negatively impacted by the enactment of paid sick leave.” In fact, the U.S. economy as a whole loses $180 billion in productivity annually due to sick employees attending work and infecting other workers.

Despite Walker’s misguided action, as the National Association of Working Women noted, plenty of other cities are forging ahead with paid sick leave legislation:

In Philadelphia, a paid sick days bill was passed out of a City Council committee a few weeks ago, and in Connecticut, the state legislature is moving forward on a bill with bipartisan support. Paid sick days legislation in New York City has 35 City Council sponsors, legislation is about to be introduced in Seattle, and more than a dozen states have coalitions advocating actively for paid sick days and paid family leave policies. San Francisco and Washington, DC have already implemented paid sick days laws.

In the end, repealing Milwaukee’s paid sick leave law is simply one more way in which Walker is undertaking his assault on Wisconsin’s workers.

It is a violation of national labor law to retaliate against workers for striking, so the NLRB advanced its complaint. This has whipped the right wing into an uproar, and several Republican senators took to the floor today to deride the NLRB for “acting like thugs that you might see in a third world country”:

SEN. JIM DEMINT (R-SC): The administration, I believe, is acting like thugs that you might see in a third-world country, trying to bully and intimidate employers…This is crazy.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): This complaint is dangerous. This complaint is a dangerous road to go down. This complaint is politics at its worst…The Congress should speak, the administration should speak out and say ‘this is frivolous.’

Watch a compilation:

Ten other Republican Senators sent a letter today to the NLRB taking issue with its decision to protect workers from union-busting.

But let’s review what happened. As labor journalist Mike Elk explained, “in 2007, Boeing announced it would create a second production line to produce three 787 Dreamliner planes a month in the Pudget Sound, in addition to the production that was already occurring in Pudget Sound. Then in October 2009, it was announced that suddenly the company would move the second production line to a nonunion plant in South Carolina.” And the company’s officials made it clear that the move was made because workers in Washington had decided to strike, which, whether Republicans like it or not, is illegal.

As the Washington Post’s Steve Pearlstein wrote, “given the public statements of Boeing officials, there is nothing radical about the NLRB’s decision.” But Republicans have decided to attack anyway, revealing once more how they believe corporate America should be allowed to do whatever it wants, no matter the law.

This kind of thing makes me wonder how much of a difference could be made by pure information. How many 14 and 15 year-olds are aware of this correlation? How might their behavior—and that of their parents—change if they were better informed? My dad dropped out of high school and he’s turned out fine, but I think that still wasn’t a decision with a positive expected value. People suffer from optimism bias that can be further exacerbated by bad information. After all, it’s not totally obvious what job-relevant skills one learns in 12th grade.

Under national labor law, retaliating against workers for striking is illegal union-busting, but several Republican lawmakers have attacked the NLRB and the Obama administration for initiating the complaint. “This is nothing more than a political favor for the unions who are supporting President Obama’s re-election campaign,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). “The Obama administration is now dictating where companies are allowed to create new jobs,” wrote former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN).

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) took to the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page today to decry the NLRB’s decision, saying that it circumvents capitalism and falsely claiming that the NLRB “wants Boeing to produce the planes only in Washington state“:

In choosing to manufacture in my state, Boeing was exercising its right as a free enterprise in a free nation to conduct business wherever it believed would best serve both the bottom line and the employees of its company. This is not a novel or complicated idea. It’s called capitalism. [...]

That is apparently too much for President Obama and his union-beholden appointees at the National Labor Relations Board, who have asked the courts to intervene and force Boeing to stop production in South Carolina. The NLRB wants Boeing to produce the planes only in Washington state, where its workers must belong to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

As the Washington Post’s Steve Pearlstein wrote, “given the public statements of Boeing officials, there is nothing radical about the NLRB’s decision”; the NLRB is simply trying to enforce worker protections that are already law. And, contrary to Haley’s pronouncement, the NLRB made clear that “The complaint does not seek closure of the South Carolina facility, nor does it prohibit Boeing from assembling planes there.”

Haley also neglects to mention that South Carolina gave Boeing nearly $1 billion to open its plant in South Carolina (even as Boeing systemically dodges taxes). Nor is this Haley’s first foray into union-busting; she named a union-busting attorney to head South Carolina’s Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation for the express purpose of preventing unions from trying to unionize Boeing’s South Carolina plant. Boeing donated to both Haley’s election campaign and her inaugural gala.

The laws that the NLRB is seeking to enforce are necessary to ensure that corporations can’t threaten to move production and fire workers who exercise their right to organize. Haley’s view — and that of the rest of the Republicans attacking Obama and the NLRB — is that corporations should be allowed to ignore the law and workers’ rights if it will increase their profits.

Last night, Massachusetts took a step in that direction when the state House of Representatives voted 111-42 for a bill that would essentially strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights to negotiate for health insurance plans. Under the proposed law, unions would be allowed to negotiate with local officials for 30 days, but officials could still unilaterally impose changes in health insurance coverage if negotiations fail to reach an agreement. The text of the legislation spells this out:

(c) The appropriate public authority shall convene a meeting with a representative from each of the collective bargaining units to which the authority provides coverage and a retiree representative, hereafter called the public employee committee, and submit the proposal for plan design changes or a transfer to the commission. The proposal shall include details of changes to current plan design features and a cost savings estimate. The appropriate public authority and the public employee committee shall have 30 days to discuss the details of the proposal put forth by the appropriate public authority and negotiate the use of the 10 per cent cost savings realized by the governmental unit [...] If no agreement is reached between the parties, then the original plan design proposal or proposal to transfer to the commission submitted by the appropriate public authority shall be implemented by the appropriate public authority who shall establish an HRA to offset costs for high utilizers and retirees to be funded by 20 per cent of the estimated cost savings established under subsection [...] (d) An appropriate public authority may increase the dollar amounts for co-payments, deductibles, tiered provider network co-payments and other plan design features

“We are going to fight this thing to the bitter end,” Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, told the local press. “Massachusetts is not the place that takes collective bargaining away from public employees.” Local news station WWLP covered the vote last night. One representative who sponsored a failed amendment to neuter the bill drew comparisons to Wisconsin, saying, “Look at what happened in Wisconsin and some different places, collective bargaining rights are under assault.” Watch a report from WWLP TV:

A House leadership source told ThinkProgress that, “Contrary to statements mischaracterizing the House plan as ‘Wisconsinesque,’ the budget measure merely allows a municipality – if they wish – to seek changes to their health care plans.” The source continued, “State and municipal workers will still collectively bargain over wages, retirement benefits and most other rights.”

“There’s a class war going on this country and today the Massachusetts House sided against the middle class,” said Ed Kelly, president of the Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts, after the vote. The legislation now moves on to the senate, where its fate is uncertain, but unions plan to heavily lobby the chamber over the next month.

I don’t have to tell you that too many politicians and their corporate friends in Washington and state capitals across the country don’t care about jobs. They don’t care about the environment. They don’t care about our future. You see, they’re hell bent on pushing a destructive corporate political agenda. And that’s why what you’re doing is so critically important.

“You’re building power,” Trumka concluded to deafening cheers, “and you’re building political will to force our elected officials to consider the quality of the air we breathe, the food that we eat, the jobs that we have, the future we need for ourselves and our children.”

Coming out of Power Shift: the Briefcase Brigades are challenging Congress to help young people find work on April 27, and 350 is mobilizing businesses to tell everyone that “The Chamber Doesn’t Speak For Me.”

Transcript:

TRUMKA: Good morning out there! Anyone want to raise a little hell? My name is Rich Trumka, and I’m president of the AFL-CIO, 12.5 million men and women strong. I wish you were up here with me because this is an incredible sight, because you are what democracy looks like. You are what activism looks like. And you’re fighting on the front lines. And because of what you’re doing, I have tremendous hope for our future. Thank you for everything.

I’m proud to be speaking on behalf of 12.5 million men and women of the AFL-CIO. And I want you to know that we are are ready to be your partner in building a better America today, tomorrow, next week, and for the following decades. Because of your canvass this weekend, your powerful activism, you’re changing the conversation in Washington and across America.

I don’t have to tell you that too many politicians and their corporate friends in Washington and state capitals across the country don’t care about jobs. They don’t care about the environment. They don’t care about our future. You see, they’re hell bent on pushing a destructive corporate political agenda.

And that’s why what you’re doing is so critically important. What you do, the ideas you have, what you talk about, the doors you knock on, the signatures you collect, here and on your college campuses and in your hometowns, all of it is moving our national conversation where it has to go. And the entire country owes you a debt of gratitude. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Because of your action, we’re moving past the manufactured debt hysteria, we’re moving past those same old tired debates towards jobs and a clean green future. No more tax cuts for millionaires. No more funding cuts for health care. No more cuts for education. Let’s keep students in school and not push them unprepared into the worst job market in our history.

You’re shifting America’s focus. You’re building power, and you’re building political will to force our elected officials to consider the quality of the air we breathe, the food that we eat, the jobs that we have, the future we need for ourselves and our children. Keep up the good work! You’re making America better! God bless all of you!

At the time, as OSHA director David Michaels noted in a speech today at the Center for American Progress, Republicans hailed OSHA as “the instrument of a revolutionary law,” and part of “a new right in the bill of rights”:

Passed with strong bipartisan support, President Nixon called the Occupational Safety and Health Act one of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed by the Congress of the United States. Dr. Morton Corn, appointed by President Ford as agency administrator, described OSHA as ‘the instrument of a revolutionary law…a new right in the bill of rights, the right to a safe and healthful workplace.’ It is hard to believe, before OSHA, workers in America did not have the basic human right to a safe workplace.

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Here are Nixon’s full remarks, in which he said that “this bill could not be signed unless it had bipartisan support, Democrats and Republicans working together.” But today’s Republicans don’t reserve such kind words for OSHA.

In fact, Republicans earlier this year proposed huge cuts to OSHA’s budget that Michaels said would “have a devastating effect on all of our activities.” Republicans also blocked new regulations that would have allowed OSHA to crack down on businesses, like the Massey Energy owned Upper Big Branch Mine, that repeatedly violate workplace safety laws.

“Over the last two years, OSHA has not only attempted to implement several policy changes that would have profound impact on the workplace; it has become an administration more focused on punishment than prevention,” said Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI). The continuing resolution approved earlier this month to avert a government shutdown cut OSHA’s funding by $49 million.

OSHA has, over the last few decades, helped to usher in a significant decline in workplace injuries. As Profs. David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz found, “in the past four decades, the number of deaths due to workplace accidents fell from 13,800 in 1970 to 5,657 in 2007. The total incidence rate of private sector occupational injuries and illnesses plummeted from 10.9 per 100 workers in 1972 to 3.9 in 2008.” Still, every day, an average of 14 Americans are killed on the job, while 3.3 million Americans are injured or sickened in the workplace each year. And if Republicans have their way, OSHA will have less resources to combat these still-too-high numbers.