By
Mark Gruenberg
The
Democratic-run U.S. House hasn’t even gotten underway yet, but lobbies for
progressive causes – from saving the environment to restoring the teeth in the
Voting Rights Act – are already seeking spots on the incoming lawmakers’
opening agenda.
What
the Dems do when they take over is important to workers and their allies, even
though very little – if anything – of what they’re contemplating will become
law in the next two years. That’s because of a bigger GOP majority in the U.S.
Senate, plus lockstep control of it by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,
R-Kent., plus right-wing anti-worker GOP President Donald Trump in the Oval
Office. All that means most of what the Dems do, unless they can insert their
ideas in must-pass money bills to keep the government going, will be dead on arrival
on the other side of Capitol Hill.
Instead,
the measures will be planks in the House Democrats’ erection of a party
platform to present to all in 2020. Workers and their allies haven’t openly
presented their plans, yet. But Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., incoming chair of the
House Education and Labor Committee will offer an increase in the minimum wage
to $15 an hour, says Rep. Donald Norcross, D-N.J., a panel member and former
president of the South Jersey Building and Construction Trades Council.
And
Scott himself is the lead sponsor of the Wage Act, the latest labor-backed
rewrite of the nation’s basic labor laws. It would legalize voluntary
recognition (“card check”) of unions at work sites when an independently
certified majority of workers sign union election authorization cards. The Wage
Act would also remove many business- and court-erected hurdles to organizing
workers and negotiating first contracts. And the measure would increase fines
for company labor law-breaking.
That’s
in line with the aims of the new and younger Democrats elected on November 6.
Representatives-elect, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the
Democratic Socialist who is their unofficial leader, signaled they are
interested in changing policies, not party leaders. That became abundantly
clear when the 29-year-old lawmaker-to-be, a Pelosi supporter, nevertheless
joined a sit-in at Pelosi’s congressional office to agitate for congressional
action to combat climate change.
There’s
no shortage of suggestions, many of them important to workers. They include
rebuilding U.S. infrastructure (North America’s Building Trades Unions),
ordering OSHA to write a standard to cut violence against health care and
social service workers (National Nurses United and Connecticut Rep. Joe
Courtney), and ending federal subsidies of corporate employers which let the
firms underpay their workers.
That
idea comes from Sen. Bernie Sanders; He calls it the “Stop Walmart Act,” which
refers to the extremely low pay from the retail monster – which then forces its
workers to depend on public programs. Another, from Rep. Jerrold Nadler who
will head the House Judiciary Committee next year, is to stop letting firms
forcing workers into mandatory arbitration, even on labor law violations. The GOP
Supreme Court majority legalized that, too.
But
all of these ideas will take a back seat to one from Pelosi herself. In a
Washington Post op-ed, co-written with Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., the two
outlined “real change to restore democracy.” Their measure, with the symbolic
bill number HR1, would restore enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act,
again targeting them to states and local governments with histories of racial
discrimination at the polls.
Given
the proliferation of so-called “Voter ID” and other voter repression
mechanisms, Republican-run governments have imposed since their 2010 sweep,
that cause alone will give the Dems a lot to counteract. HR1 will also attempt
to counteract the GOP Supreme Court majority’s 2010 Citizens United ruling,
which threw open the U.S. campaign finance system to a tsunami of special
interest, right wing and capitalist class corporate cash – overwhelming the
rest of us.
The
Dems’ measure “would require all political organizations to disclose their donors
and shut down the shell game of big money donations to super PACs” – campaign
finance committees – Pelosi and Sarbanes wrote. That corporate and ruling class
campaign cash, they declared, has stopped congressional action on workers’
causes, ranging from improving the Affordable Care Act to enacting workers’
rights to raising the minimum wage.
And
HR1 would expand conflict-of-interest laws to “end the revolving door” between
business and government, Pelosi and Sarbanes said. “On Day 1, Democrats will deliver
something real for all Americans – the most ambitious set of democracy reforms
in a generation. These bold and positive reforms will return us to government
of, by and #ForThePeople,” Sarbanes tweeted.
“Our
communities sent me and my fellow Members-elect to Washington with a call to
action – get dark money out of politics, clean up corruption, and make sure
every vote and every voice is heard. Let’s make good on that promise,” tweeted
Rep.-elect Katie Hill, D-Calif.
Once
HR1 gets put on the table, the other ideas will come up. That includes raising
the federal minimum wage, now $7.25 hourly, for the first time in a decade.
That hike will be “a priority within our first 100 hours” Pelosi told union
members. (IPA Service)
Courtesy:
People’s World
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