Ariz. governor pushing pro-cronyism bill

Dark days are ahead for Arizona if Gov. Brewer’s personnel bill passes the state senate (Photo: Ms. Phoenix/Creative Commons)

Ariz. Gov. Jan Brewer’s administration and the pro-corporate, anti-worker Goldwater Institute have been pushing new legislation that would wipe out civil service protections for public employees and promote political cronyism in the state government. Brewer’s personnel reform bill, HB 2571, includes a radical plan to wipe out the requirement that the governor needs a reason to fire a state employee and make every state government employee “at-will.”

HB 2571, which passed the state house on a party line vote and now heads to the senate, would allow for long-term employees to be let go without cause. Political appointees could the fire civil service workers to bring in their own friends. This would bring back a political spoils system and reduce checks on political power including whistleblowing and good governance.

This follows an assault on public service that includes extended job vacancies in vital positions, mandatory furloughs and a four-year pay freeze. Tonight, AFSCME members from across the Grand Canyon State will participate in a tele-townhall to discuss Brewer’s latest power grab and the most effective ways to fight back. It is vital for all public workers that Brewer’s pet personnel bill fails in the Arizona Senate.

Clockwise from Top Left: ”Tier It Down” Rally in Zuccotti Park (New York City), demonstration during Philadelphia Mayor Nutter’s budget address, and about 65,000 people gather at the “Reclaim Wisconsin” rally (Madison, Wisc.)

AFSCME members were busy this weekend making their voices heard by public officials who prefer to dictate rather than negotiate. In Madison, New York City and Philadelphia, AFSCME members and allies rallied in opposition to anti-worker tactics used by Wisc. Gov. Scott Walker, N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.

Approximately 65,000 AFSCME members, labor allies, progressive activists and concerned Wisconsinites gathered at the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison on Saturday, the one-year anniversary of Gov. Walker stripping public workers of their rights. These demonstrators rallied against the backdrop of upcoming recall elections for Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, state Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald and three other state senators. The event also marked the premiere of the feature-length documentary, We Are Wisconsin.

In New York City, AFSCME members and allies held a “Tier It Down” rally in the birthplace of the Occupy movement and the 99 percent, Zuccotti Park. They gathered in the public square to protest Gov. Cuomo’s proposed “Tier VI,” a plan to cut public workers’ pensions by an additional 40 percent.

In Philadelphia, even though local AFSCME leaders helped Mayor Nutter find more than $400 million in savings and $100 million in new revenue during his first four years in office, Nutter has turned his back on public service employees. City workers made their disappointment heard at Nutter’s budget address to the city council, booing and making noise from the visitors’ gallery as Nutter unfairly blamed public workers and AFSCME for the City of Brotherly Love’s fiscal woes.

Demonstrators in all three locations this past week did their best to draw attention to disparity between the top one percent of income earners and the rest of the nation, to public officials who prefer to balance their budgets on working families’ backs and to the unprecedented stripping of workers’ rights.

“Our society is rapidly losing its moral balance as we demand no sacrifices from those who are wealthy,” said Rabbi Michael Feinberg, Executive Director of the Greater New York Labor Religion Coalition in Zuccotti Park, “but make repeated demands for sacrifices from working men and women.”

AFSCME members gather for a photo at the statehouse demonstration on Thursday (Photo: Arizona AFL-CIO)

More than 1,000 AFSCME members, labor allies and community activists rallied outside the Arizona Legislature yesterday to protest four anti-worker bills targeted squarely on state and local public service workers. Two weeks ago, Ariz. lawmakers passed a bill that would put an undue burden on unions and other organizations to collect dues and donations from members. Although the remaining three bills appeared dead, even lacking support from Gov. Jan Brewer, anti-worker legislators brought the zombie, anti-worker bills back from the dead this week.

Demonstrators rallied for workers’ rights and against the influence of the corporate-run organizations—the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Goldwater Institute—that have outsized political influence in the Grand Canyon State. AFSCME members joined with our sisters and brothers from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, the Communications Workers of America, the International Association of Machinists, UNITE HERE and the United Steelworkers in opposing the bills.

One of the zombie bills passed by the Senate this week would end release time for all public service workers except for police officers. The final two pieces of undead legislation are languishing in the legislative process. The bill to completely ban collective bargaining between public service workers and state and local governments appears likely to fail.  A piece of paycheck deception legislation, however, could reach the governor’s desk.  AFSCME activists will continue to apply pressure to keep these bad ideas from becoming bad laws.

Nick Dranias from Goldwater Institute

Razing Arizona: Gov. Jan Brewer and her legislative allies lost this round over public pensions, but have a whole slew of plans that would hurt working families. Click here to see the video and sign the open letter.

Anti-worker politicians continue to push a slew of ALEC-inspired legislation in Arizona aiming to take away the rights of public service workers. They want to make it harder for police and firefighters to stay safe on the job, expand class sizes for public school teachers and make it impossible for all public workers to bargain collectively. All of this came on the heels of a unilateral pay cut enacted by Brewer and the state legislature when they raised the amount public workers pay into their pension plans.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Eileen Willett, however, struck down this backdoor pay cut just last week. According to Judge Willett, the pension change broke a contractual agreement between the workers and the state government and therefore violated the state constitution. Willett’s common sense ruling is a good sign for AFSCME members in other states who are fighting to protect the benefits they have long been promised.

In California, public workers are under attack at the state and municipal level. The “hybrid” pension plan offered by Cali. Gov. Jerry Brown includes a 401(k)-style component that will place a dangerous burden on public workers, including low-income employees who are least able to absorb stock market losses. Measures on the ballot in San Diego and San Jose this June would leave future city workers with inadequate retirement security and harm current workers by repealing their vested pension benefits.

AFSCME members in California, Arizona and across the country are on the front lines of the fight to protect a future in which workers can retire in dignity after their many years of public service.

It would be inaccurate for me to suggest that the Arizona Legislature is waging a war on unions.

Legislators are very busy men and women with lots of important issues on their plate.

In order to be more precise and journalistically complete, I would have to point out that in addition to regular working people, Arizona lawmakers are waging war on children, on sick people, on poor people, on teachers and on unions.

Essentially, on all regular, hard-working people.

It’s a big job. Legislators can’t do it alone, and they don’t have to. The Republicans who control the Legislature appear to be controlled by the lawyers who run the Goldwater Institute, and who do most of the heavy lifting for them.

For instance, Goldwater folks helped to produce a series of proposals approved in committee Wednesday that would ban collective bargaining by any government employee in Arizona, including police and firefighters.

In other words, the men and women whom we ask to conduct the daily business of government for rock-bottom wages, along with the men and women whom we ask to confront armed criminals or run into burning buildings, would have no opportunity to engage their employer in contract talks.

Given the dramatic changes proposed in the bills, it might seem puzzling that the first witness called by legislators described the proposal he was speaking about as a “modest change.” That is, until you found out that the witness was a lawyer from (you guessed it) the Goldwater Institute.

The lawmakers say that these attacks on working people are “not personal.” It’s just business.

Big business. Mixed in with a little ignorance.

I’m wondering how many Arizona legislators would know the story of Mary Harris “Mother” Jones.

Would they know that in 1903, she led what was called the “March of the Mill Children” over 100 miles from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt’s Long Island summer home? Roosevelt refused to see her.

Business interests at the time considered Mother Jones to be a radical making unreasonable demands. Do you think the lawmakers know what those demands were?

She wanted to reduce the 55-hour workweek. For children.

It was union workers who got the workweek reduced to 40 hours. And who got health-care benefits.

And paid vacations. And safety regulations. And all the other things that we now take for granted.

Some of those activists died in the effort to win the right of negotiation for regular folks.

And now members of the Legislature want to take them away.

These same legislators have made ongoing cuts to education, making it more difficult for children to learn about American history, perhaps because they themselves don’t care about the past.

About transcendent events like the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire of 1911, in which more than 140 people, mostly women, died while locked in their sweatshop. Or the “Ludlow Massacre” of 1914, in which mine operators fired on workers and their families with guns.

Things have changed a lot since those awful days, of course.

We’ve gotten complacent. And in the process, clever politicians (and think-tank operatives) have persuaded working people to turn on other working people. They persuade us to envy and resent the benefits others enjoy, rather than using such people as examples of what all working people deserve.

This happens when you stop teaching or learning about labor icons like Mother Jones, Samuel Gompers, John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, A. Philip Randolph or Cesar Chavez.

And instead elect men and women who don’t know history or care about working people, and who listen only to high-priced lawyers in fancy suits.

Reach Montini at 602-444-8978 or ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2012/02/01/20120201montini0202-leaders-wage-war-working-people.html#ixzz1lRGZn0DX

Jan Brewer’s Latest Outrage

By Rebekah Friend, Arizona AFL-CIO (Contact)

To be delivered to: The Arizona State House, The Arizona State Senate, and Governor Jan Brewer

There are currently 7,784 signatures