Blue Mass Group

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New Hampshire GOP Legislators Try to Ban Collective Bargaining

By

NHDP Chair Ray Buckley, on Blue Hampshire.

I was just told that the House Republicans just attached an amendment on the budget bill calling for the repeal of collective bargaining.

http://www.bluehampshire.com/d…

I imagine Governor Lynch would veto this, but it’s telling that they’re trying it.

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  1. has no power to stop anything.  Thanks to John Sunnunu and the Free State Project, both houses have supramajority GOP representation.

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    p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N…

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    p>House GOP 297 – D 102 (74% majority)
    Senate GOP 19 – D 5 (79% majority)

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    p>Lynch can veto everything they pass and everything will be overridden.  It’s like Massachusetts in reverse.

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    p>They have a real meaningful pro-liberty agenda.  Including getting the state out of the job’s killing RGGI.

    • If the last public union vanished tomorrow, liberty would not advance one step. Governments would spend the money other ways.

      • more stupid “pro-liberty” cover up the lack of critical thought. Liberty is good; pro-liberty is even gooder. It’s called a glittering generality, a vague term that sounds good.

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        p>Dems used glittering generalities too, but EaBo & Co. tend to forget these warm, fuzzy, thoughtish things are easy to embrace and next to impossible for rational thought. Glittering generalities are the thousand points of light full of family values that wage a war on terror until it can be morning again in America.

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        p>Well, at least EaBo has a source for the New Hampshire state legislature.

        • The issue is your use of “job’s killing” [sic]

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          p>The first link you provide points out that the revenue generated by RGGI is used for energy efficiency projects.  In case you’re not aware, those projects don’t get installed by themselves, and the materials and transportation needed for the upgrades don’t materialize out of thin air either.

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          p>The second link points out that this would impact five coal fired power plants, but that NH only gets 15% of their electricity from coal.  More to the point, numerous studies by Synapse Energy Economics [you’ll have to search for the actual studies]* point out that natural gas sets the price of electricity in the New England grid over 90% of the time, which means that increasing the cost of coal fired power plant operations will not increase the retail price of electricity [residential , commercial, or industrial] by any noticeable amount.

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          p>Your third link also shows zero evidence of “job killing.”  It does point out that RGGI helps fund local college courses which teach NH citizens how to do energy efficiency upgrades.

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          p>

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          p>To recap, the three articles you cite [plus some knowledge of the New England electricity markets] demonstrate that the funds RGGI generates (a) don’t drive up electricity prices, but (b) do get used for energy efficiency projects which help lower cost for New Hampshire residents and businesses, and (c) help fund job training for New Hampshire residents.  It’s clear that killing RGGI is killing jobs in New Hampshire.

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          p>But keep just trumpeting “job killer” sans evidence while your political party is working on everything but jobs, and utters complete nonsense when it comes to economics.  We wouldn’t expect anything less from you over here in this reality based blog.

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          p>

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          p> * see “ISO New England Scenario Analysis Companion Report: Constructing a Future that Meets Regional Goals”, August 8, 2007.  Authors: Paul Peterson, Doug Hurley, and David White  

  2. for everyone? for state workers? for only specific provisions?
    And what are they thinking?

    • As with Wisconsin, I’m not even sure they expect to succeed. What they want is the fight.

      • right to work legislation.

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        p>Here is a rundown of a lot of what the Pro-Liberty leadership in the NH house has done.

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        p>http://www.redmassgroup.com/di…

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        p>

        * Passed a right-to-work bill that would make New Hampshire the only RTW state in the region, which could have a direct impact on Massachusetts and the regional economy, and lighten the pockets of union bosses.

        * Passed a bill effectively ending affirmative action in state agencies and public universities – “Prohibiting preferences in recruiting, hiring, promotion, or admission by state agencies, the university system, the community college system, and the postsecondary education commission.”

        * Passed a bill withdrawing NH from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, potentially saving NH millions and giving them another competitive advantage over Massachusetts. (Every other New England state plus NY and NJ remain in the compact.)

        * Passed a jury nullification bill by a surprisingly wide margin. This may create a divide between some libertarian-conservatives and some law-and-order-conservatives, but I support it. It’s a fascinating legal and political development that empowers the citizenry.

        * Passed a series of gun rights bills that would make NH a conceal carry state with no permit necessary; legalize the use of deadly force in self-defense inside and outside(!!!) of one’s home (one must first demonstrate an attempt to retreat outside of one’s home, no need to retreat at home); and extend more rights to property owners who use the threat of force to remove trespassers.

        * Passed a bill repealing an “evergreen law” that grants automatic pay raises to public employees every year.

        * Passed a constitutional amendment that would give the legislature authority over state education standards and spending. (The state supreme court mandated expenditures in a case of gross judicial activism.)

        * Expand the death penalty to include murders committed during a home invasion.

        * Passed a parental notification abortion bill.  

        * They even passed a nano-brewery bill easing restrictions on home brewers and small scale beer distributors. (Yay!) They also passed a medical marijuana bill. (Meh.)

        * Passed a bill requiring NH to join the lawsuit against ObamaCare

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        p>It’s refreshing to see NH so thoroughly reject the mistakes of the last decade.

        • I’m glad Republicans are trying to repeat their 2000-08 national disaster focused on New Hampshire.  Good luck to the people who voted them in.

        • That list certainly is an agenda, rather than a obstinate opposition.

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          p>It will be interesting to watch, as some of that should be an agenda that Democrats should relish running against.

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          p>The Tea Party is going to remain an interesting phenomenon.  The so-called “lunch pail” set were lost to Democrats a generation ago over Vietnam, and the Democrats subsequent embrace of an agenda that appeals far more, generally, to Wellesley than to Southie.

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          p>Since the days of the Reagan Democrats, this group has unreliable for Democrats, either splitting or even going GOP outright.

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          p>For the most part, though, the GOP has given them lip service and little else, but has also resisted overt attacks on their interests.  But this new breed, the “Tea Party” is changing that, which will create an interesting dynamic.

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          p>I expect that this will create much friction in both parties.  For the GOP, because runs some risk of losing an advantage that it has held for more than 30 years, but also cannot realistically spurn these new activists waving their quoted-but-unread copies of Atlas Shrugged.  For the Dems, because they need these people to be reliable again, but can’t antagonize their existing base by going soft on the issues where the “lunch buckets” lean right.

          • Let’s carry concealed weapons and shoot at each other indoors?! Congratulations on your “pro-liberty” agenda NH GOP. It’s hard to see how these changes will make New Hampshire a better place to live, but on the other hand, it’s not really about what people do or even so much what they can do as who they are. This is less a reasoned agenda than identity politics conservative style.

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            p>I agree with your take on the “lunch bucket” brigade. I live in a town with a lot of folks like this, though it’s complicated by the fact that many are at least partly self-employed.

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            p>The 1960s lost these guys, and also caused the rift between labor and the Democratic Party that never fully healed. Our conservative friends like to make jokes about labor’s influence these days, but it used to be much stronger. Kevin Drum has an interesting piece:

            as late as 1970, private-sector union density was still more than 25 percent, and the absolute number of union members was at its highest point in history. American unions had plenty of problems, ranging from unremitting hostility in the South to unimaginative leadership almost everywhere else, but it wasn’t until the rise of the New Left in the ’60s that these problems began to metastasize.

            The problems were political, not economic. Organized labor requires government support to thrive-things like the right to organize workplaces, rules that prevent retaliation against union leaders, and requirements that management negotiate in good faith-and in America, that support traditionally came from the Democratic Party. The relationship was symbiotic: Unions provided money and ground game campaign organization, and in return Democrats supported economic policies like minimum-wage laws and expanded health care that helped not just union members per se-since they’d already won good wages and benefits at the bargaining table-but the interests of the working and middle classes writ large.

            But despite its roots in organized labor, the New Left wasn’t much interested in all this. As the Port Huron Statement, the founding document of Students for a Democratic Society, famously noted, the students who formed the nucleus of the movement had been “bred in at least modest comfort.” They were animated not by workplace safety or the cost of living, but first by civil rights and antiwar sentiment, and later by feminism, the sexual revolution, and environmentalism. They wore their hair long, they used drugs, and they were loathed by the mandarins of organized labor.

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            p>

          • When did the Democrats stop being pro-lunch pail?  Certainly not when we became pro-choice or pro-gay rights – it’s not as if these things are somehow mutually exclusive.  In fact, to me it seems very consistent for the party to stand up for those whose voices aren’t always hears: women, workers, racial minorities, LGBT.  I suppose one COULD argue that we stopped being pro-lunch pail when we started chasing corporate campaign money, but the GOP is still much worse in that department.  However, I completely reject the implication that we must choose between social and economic issues.  Part of me still wishes that we had attempted to embrace the “Tea Party” to see if they meant what they said on the populist side.

            • I don’t think CentralMassDad’s point was that the liberal positions on social and economic issues are theoretically incompatible. Rather, I think he’s making the correct observation that the Democrats’ increased focus on social liberalism since the 1960s and ’70 cost them white working-class votes.

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              p>I think the suggestion that the GOP’s overreach on these issues might cost them in the long-run is an interesting one. In closely divided states like NH and WI, they could damage their brand for years by swinging a sizable portion of the white working-class vote back to the Democrats.

              • In other words can we bring our foci on social and economic issues into something closer to equilibrium?  Would we be able to create a coherent narrative from this linking them as I suggested to sell our party as the voice for the voiceless in all of these circumstances?

                • But let’s face it — there’s a significant group of people for whom such an “equilibrium” will not be possible. For example, when the Democrats decided to take the side of civil rights for African-Americans (surely a correct decision), it was inevitable that we would lose some of the working-class white vote.

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                  p>I don’t disagree with your point about selling the party as the party of the voiceless in a better way, but there are limits to this approach. There are plenty of members of “disadvantaged groups” who will not transfer their sympathies to members of other disadvantaged groups, no matter how much a political party may try.

                • It floors me that in the 21st century white working-class still shows reluctance to embrace other races.  Specific policies like affirmative action are debatable.  Truth is I’m not the biggest fan of that myself.  We just need to better tailor our messages to our audiences.  I’m not suggesting pandering and I know that in the age of mass media everyone hears everything eventually.  I just think we can talk about civil rights to the NAACP one day and labor rights to the AFL-CIO the next without contradicting ourselves.

                • Here’s Richard Trumka talking to the Steelworkers Convention before the last election,

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                  p>

                  You see brothers and sisters, there’s not a single good reason for any worker – especially any union member – to vote against Barack Obama.
                  There’s only one really bad reason to vote against him: because he’s not white. And I want to talk about that because I saw that for myself during the Pennsylvania primary. I went back home to vote in Nemacolin and I ran into a woman I’d known for years. She was active in Democratic politics when I was still in grade school. We got to talking and I asked if she’d made up her mind who she was supporting and she said: “Oh absolutely, I’m voting for Hillary, there’s no way I’d ever vote for Obama.”

                  Well, why’s that?

                  “Because he’s a Muslim.”
                  I told her, “That’s not true – he’s as much a Christian as you and me, and so what if he was a Muslim.”

                  Then she shook her head and said, “He won’t wear an American flag pin.”
                  “I don’t have one on and neither do you. C’mon, he wears one plenty of times. He just says it takes more than wearing a flag pin to be patriotic.”

                  “Well, I just don’t trust him.”

                  Why is that?

                  Her voice dropped just a bit: “Because he’s black.”
                  I said, “Look around. Nemacolin’s a dying town. There’re no jobs here. Kids are moving away because there’s no future here. And here’s a man, Barack Obama, who’s going to fight for people like us and you won’t vote for him because of the color of his skin.”
                  Brothers and sisters, we can’t tap dance around the fact that there are a lot of folks out there just like that woman. A lot of them are good union people; they just can’t get past this idea that there’s something wrong with voting for a black man. Well, those of us who know better can’t afford to look the other way.

                  I’m not one for quoting dead philosophers, but back in the 1700s, Edmund Burke said: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” Well, there’s no evil that’s inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism – and it’s something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge.

                  It’s our special responsibility because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people. We’ve seen how companies set worker against worker – how they throw whites a few extra crumbs off the table – and how we all end up losing. But we’ve seen something else, too. We’ve seen that when we cross that color line and stand together no one can keep us down. That’s why the CIO was created. That’s why industrial unions were the first to stand up against lynching and segregation. People need to know that it was the Steel Workers Organizing Committee – this union – that was founded on the principal of organizing all workers without regard to race.

                  That’s why the labor movement – imperfect as we are – is the most integrated institution in American life. I don’t think we should be out there pointing fingers in peoples’ faces and calling them racist; instead we need to educate them that if they care about holding on to their jobs, their health care, their pensions, and their homes – if they care about creating good jobs with clean energy, child care, pay equity for women workers – there’s only going to be one candidate on the ballot this fall who’s on their side…
                  only one candidate who’s going to stand up for their families… only one candidate who’s earned their votes…
                  and his name is Barack Obama!

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                  p>The reality is the corporate masters of the Democratic Party, those that have been fighting for control since the loss of McGovern, benefit from the racial divisions in this country.  The presumption that the Democratic Party leads on these issues is preposterous – the national party is FAR to the right of all but a few labor unions on economic and social issues.  

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                  p>      

              • they’ve largely abandoned their prior positions on economic issues, leaving the “lunchpail” group NO good reason to vote for them.  Not on social issues, not on economics.  Back in the 80’s when the Reagan was in the WH but the Dems had controlled the house for decades, Tony Coehlo started hitting up corporate donors and the party reinvented itself as the DLC party of Clinton and Lieberman.  

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                p>100 years ago there were Democrats in Boston and NYC, but the financial titans generally were not among them.  Today the finance industry may be the industry most closely aligned with the national Democratic Party.  Not much room for economic populism there.  I know public school teachers in NJ who voted for Chris Christie out of anger at Corzine, the “Governor from Goldman Sachs.”  It was like 1968, when Nixon could do nothing and appear to be the “peace candidate.”  People just assumed Christie had to be “better” because he hadn’t run Goldman Sachs.  Two years later those people are ready to campaign for whoever runs against Christie.

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                p>I do think the GOP is seriously overreaching and it will cost them.  Already you see plenty of buyer’s remorse in some states, including New Jersey and Wisconsin.  

                • I think by the 80s, people had long since realized that Wagner Act trade unionism was no longer working.  Too many people either had direct experience with “work rules” or bought a 1970s gas guzzling clunker of an American car, or followed the news about the Teamsters.

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                  p>At the same time, I think that Democrats realized that admitting that the Wagner Act model was broken and needed reform risked (i) offending what was then still a major constituency; and (ii) opening the door to unwanted “reforms” from the right.  So, they did nothing at all, and as unions steadily dwindled, they looked elsewhere for support.

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                  p>But it seems to me that the decision to avoid fixing problems, because of the fear of GOP input into the reform process, was an unmitigated disaster.  Because the public perception of the programs had turned so sour, Democrats weren’t perceived as “defending” important thinks, so much as they were perceived as captives of special interests.  Democratic “special interests” were an albatross around the neck of Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis in their campaigns, much to the glee of the GOP during that time.  That was why Candidate Clinton HAD to go find Democratic “special interests” in order to kick them in the shins during his campaign.

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                  p>Ultimately, I think that the stalwart defense of these programs has been a policy failure as well as a political failure, because, when the reform comes it is more radical than should have been necessary.  This is what I think happened to AFDC, for example.

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                  p>The Democrats hope is now that the radical reform over-reaches, and the backlash gives Democrats another shot.  But if they use that shot to defend, reinstate, or reinforce the old Wagner Act model, I think this shot will, once again, be squandered.

                • Folks in the labor movement have been itching for reform of the Wagner Act since it was gutted in 1947, although I don’t think you have the same goals they did.  So I’m curious what you think would be a reasonable reform – although I’d insist that it actually raise the power of the working class, and not just the paycheck – health and safety and paid time off, otherwise, your reform is what I’d call gutting…

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                  p>As to your presumption that by the 80’s people had realized it “was no longer working” I’m curious how you reconcile that with the essentially constant support for unions among a majority of Americans throughout the 1980’s.

              • … of flight away from the Democratic party for white working class voters is most easily explained in terms of the social liberalism of civil rights.

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                p>After doing some statistical digging, Larry Bartels at Princeton found the alleged flight of the working class white vote is more urban myth than substance.  

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                p>‘What’s the Matter with
                What’s the Matter with Kansas?‘                 (PDF):

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                p>

                * Has the white working class abandoned the Democratic Party? No. White voters in the bottom third of the income distribution have actually become more reliably Democratic in presidential elections over the past half-century, while middle- and upper-income white voters have trended Republican. Low-income whites have become less Democratic in their partisan identifications, but at a slower rate than more affluent whites – and that trend is entirely confined to the South, where Democratic identification was artificially inflated by the one-party system of the Jim Crow era.

                * Has the white working class become more conservative? No. The average views of low-income whites have remained virtually unchanged over the past 30 years. (A pro-choice shift on abortion in the 1970s and ’80s has been partially reversed since the early 1990s.) Their positions relative to more affluent white voters – generally less liberal on social issues and less conservative on economic issues – have also remained virtually unchanged.

                * Do working class “moral values” trump economics? No. Social issues (including abortion) are less strongly related to party identification and presidential votes than economic issues are, and that is even more true for whites in the bottom third of the income distribution than for more affluent whites. Moreover, while social issue preferences have become more strongly related to presidential votes among middle- and high-income whites, there is no evidence of a corresponding trend among low-income whites.

                * Are religious voters distracted from economic issues? No. The partisan attachments and presidential votes of frequent church-goers and people who say religion provides “a great deal” of guidance in their lives are much more strongly related to their views about economic issues than to their views about social issues. For church-goers as for non-church-goers, partisanship and voting behavior are primarily shaped by economic issues, not cultural issues.

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                p>The current state of affairs is probably linked less with this long term trend and more closely linked with the tendency of electoral outcomes to correlate with economic conditions, which has historically been a great predictor of elections.

            • from business when unions could no longer deliver votes and money as they once did.  

              • Could it be that unions are no longer as powerful in part because we forgot to stand up for policies that encourage strong unions?

                • is where my thinking comes from. He writes:

                  New rules put in place in 1968 led by almost geometric progression to the nomination of George McGovern in 1972, and despite McGovern’s sterling pro-labor credentials, the AFL-CIO refused to endorse him. Not only were labor bosses enraged that the hippies had thwarted the nomination of labor favorite Hubert Humphrey, but amnesty, acid, and abortion were simply too much for them. Besides, Richard Nixon had been sweet-talking them for four years, and though relations had recently become strained, he seemed not entirely unsympathetic to the labor cause. How bad could it be if he won reelection?

                  Plenty bad, it turned out-though not because of anything Nixon himself did. The real harm was the eventual disaffection of the Democratic Party from the labor cause. Two years after the debacle in Miami, Nixon was gone and Democrats won a landslide victory in the 1974 midterm election. But the newly minted members of Congress, among them former McGovern campaign manager Gary Hart, weren’t especially loyal to big labor. They’d seen how labor had treated McGovern, despite his lifetime of support for their issues.

                  I recommend the article. I was too small in 1972 to be able to follow politics that closely. I suspect you weren’t even born. These events seem to have been the chicken, that produced the egg you mention.

        • Liberty apparently includes expanding the death penalty, restricting reproductive choices and restricting the rights of workers to organize.  On the plus side, you can be freely denied health coverage and corporations are free to pollute more!

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          p>You can just say “conservative” eabo.

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