WSLC Reports Today -- July 21, 2009

TAKE ACTION on health care reform!

The strategy of the insurance companies and others who hope to kill health care reform is DELAY. They want to slow the process down until the 2010, in hopes that the impending election (and their campaign money) will have even more influence on Congress.

We need to make sure Congress hears our message: WE CAN'T AFFORD TO WAIT! We need real health reform with a robust public option for insurance coverage.

YOU can deliver that message at one or both of the following events.

Congressman Adam Smith's Health Care Town Hall Meeting this Saturday, July 25 from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at the Milgard Family HOPE Center, 10402 Kline St. SW in Lakewood. Make plans to attend and bring a friend or family member to support health care reform NOW with a robust public option. RSVP via e-mail or by calling 253-593-6600.

"We Can't Afford to Wait" rally underscoring the human cost of delaying health care reform will be held Tuesday, July 28 at 11:45 a.m. at the Seattle Federal Building, 915 2nd Ave. (2nd & Marion). RSVP to Lori Province how many people you or your organization can bring.

► Today from AP -- Obama defends August deadline for health care bill -- President Obama is defending his relentless campaign for a health care bill before Congress's August recess, saying "the default in Washington is inaction and inertia." He reiterates his opposition to taxing people's employer-provided health benefits, noting that "the House has put forward a surtax." And he repeated his feeling that wealthier Americans, "such as myself," should pitch in and help reinvent the system to spread coverage to those now without it.

► In today's NY Times -- Democrats may limit tax increases for health care plan -- Bowing to unease among lawmakers and governors in their own party, Democratic leaders suggest scaling back a plan to tax top earners to pay for the sweeping legislation and signal a retreat from their ambitious timetable. Congressional aides say it is increasingly clear that the Senate would not be ready to vote on its bill before its recess begins on Aug. 8, and that House Democrats seemed unwilling to vote to raise taxes without knowing where the Senate stood.

► In today's Washington Post -- Health industry cash flows to drafters of reform -- As protesters marched outside, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) sat down inside a San Francisco mansion for a dinner of chicken cordon bleu and a discussion of health-care legislation before his Senate Finance Committee. At the table were about 20 donors willing to fork over $10,000 or more to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, including executives of major insurance companies, hospitals and other health-care firms. ... Health-related companies and their employees gave Baucus's political committees nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008, when he began holding hearings and making preparations for this year's reform debate. Top health executives and lobbyists have continued to flock to the senator's often extravagant fundraising events in recent months. To avoid any appearance of favoritism, his aides say, Baucus quietly began refusing contributions from health-care political action committees after June 1. But the policy does not apply to lobbyists or corporate executives, who continue to make donations.

► In today's Seattle Times -- State wisely invests in children's health (editorial) -- Credit us for being one of only 13 states swimming against a recessionary economic tide to cover children from families with incomes up to 300% of the federal poverty level, or $54,930 for a family of three. Record job losses in recent months mean a rise in the number of uninsured. Washington's choice is to consign these children to emergency-room care or to provide health care coverage. Lawmakers smartly chose the latter.

► In the Tri-City Herald -- Call her Grant, just Grant -- Rep. Laura Grant-Herriot is just Laura Grant.

► In today's Columbian -- Union grip on public schools threatens future of education (column by AWB President Don Brunell) -- (More evidence of the rightward political-ideological drift at the state's largest business group into the union-bashing territory more familiar to the likes of the EFF. Is it any wonder that business and labor tend to clash in Olympia? Believe it or not, there are many businesses in this state -- businesses affiliated with their local chambers of commerce -- that respect workers' rights and the collective bargaining process, and have productive, mutually beneficial relationships with unions. But you wouldn't know it from the propaganda churned out by the AWB and eagerly published in mainstream -- and now "tax-subsidized!" -- newspapers. This concludes today's rant.)

► In today's Oregonian -- AFT's Randi Weingarten in Portland to address union dispute -- Randi Weingarten, one of the nation's top labor leaders as head of the 1.4 million-strong American Federation of Teachers, comes to Portland to help settle a conflict with one of the union's affiliates. The AFT on July 7 removed three senior officers and the 17-member local executive board of the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals Local 5017 and seized the local's finances through a "protective order."

Cap-and-Trade and Green Jobs Conference
The Washington State Labor Council will host the Cap and Trade and Green Jobs Conference from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, August 5 at the Coast Wenatchee Hotel to explain national climate change and energy policy initiatives that will affect every working family in Washington state. The conference is being held the day before the WSLC's 2009 Convention convenes in Wenatchee so delegates are encouraged to come a day early and participate in this important conference. Learn more or REGISTER ONLINE!

► In today's NY Times -- Obama's strategy to reverse manufacturing's fall -- Though manufacturing has long been in decline, the loss of factory jobs has been especially brutal of late, with nearly two million disappearing since the recession began in December 2007. Even a few chief executives, heading companies that have shifted plenty of production abroad, are beginning to express alarm. So far, however, Obama’s administration has not come up with a formal plan to address the rapid decline. Instead, it has pursued ad hoc initiatives -- bailing out GM and Chrysler, for example, and pushing green energy by supporting the manufacture of items like wind turbines and solar panels.

► In today's Washington Post -- Federal employee union leaders defend GS system, to a point -- Presidents of the two largest federal employee unions (AFGE and NTEU) launch a defense of the General Schedule pay system that the Bush administration attempted to eliminate and the Obama administration, at a minimum, wants to reenergize. Yet their defense was not without caveats. Both spoke to the need to modernize the familiar 60-year-old GS system.

► In today's NY Times -- 2008 surge in black voters nearly erased racial gap -- In last year’s presidential election, younger blacks voted in greater proportions than whites for the first time and black women turned out at a higher rate than any other racial, ethnic and gender group.

► In today's SF Chronicle -- Big labor changes possible, ex-NLRB chief says -- Former National Labor Relations Board chairman and Stanford law Professor William Gould said Monday that the biggest changes to labor law since 1935 are within reach if provisions that have inflamed employers, particularly the elimination of secret balloting in union organizing, are modified.

► At AFL-CIO Now -- Contractors' association supports EFCA -- The International Council of Employers, an association of some 10,000 masonry contractors who employ members of the Bricklayers union, has endorsed the Employee Free Choice Act. These contractors join more than a thousand businesses around the country who have expressed support for the EFCA.