ALEC 

stands its ground

By Dana Milbank, Published: December 4

 

It was like going into the belly of the beast.

This week in Washington is the annual “policy summit” of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful, secretive organization funded by the Koch brothers and other corporate interests that is famous for drafting conservative legislation that Republican state legislatures adopt down to the last semicolon. And the news media were invited to attend!  

I descended the escalators at the Grand Hyatt downtown, two floors below street level, excited by the possibilities listed on the ALEC agenda:

• The environment and energy task force, led by private-sector American Electric Power. 
• The tax and fiscal policy task force, headed by Altria. 
• The international relations task force, run by Philip Morris. 
• The commerce and insurance task force, by State Farm. 
• The health and human services task force, by Guarantee Trust Life Insurance.

Alas, I was quickly regurgitated from the belly of the beast. Outside the meeting rooms, a D.C. police officer, stationed to keep out the riffraff, turned me away. 

“Our business meetings are not open, and so the subcommittee meetings and task force meetings are not open,” explained Bill Meierling, an ALEC spokesman. I could wait a few hours and then attend a luncheon and some workshops, as long as I promised not to record them. 

But Meierling wanted to assure me that there was nothing untoward about this arrangement, and that it was absolutely not true that the corporations that fund ALEC were behind closed doors, handing their legislative wish lists to the conservative state legislators who then pass them, rubber-stamp style, from coast to coast. 

“What you fundamentally need to know about this organization is it’s completely legislator driven,” he said.   Uh-huh. And ALEC is proving that by keeping reporters from the rooms where the legislators are or are not receiving their marching orders from corporate patrons. 

This probably won’t fly much longer. ALEC has been a major force behind the conservative swing in state capitals, and it claims 82 alumni in the House — including Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) — and 11 in the Senate. Its advisory council includes Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, Diageo, AT&T, Peabody Energy, Koch Industries and UPS, and exhibitors at its conference this week include the Charles Koch Institute, the Family Research Council and the Heritage Foundation. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) are addressing the conference. 

But ALEC’s fortunes began to change with the killing of Trayvon Martin and the resulting attention to the danger of “stand your ground” laws, one of many initiatives ALEC spread from sea to shining sea. Some corporate sponsors, including Amazon, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Kraft, McDonald’s and Wal-Mart, quit ALEC. 

On Tuesday, the Guardian newspaper published a trove of internal ALEC documents showing how grim its situation has become:

• The group has lost almost 400 state legislators in the past two years and more than 60 corporations. 
• Its income fell a third short of projections in the first six months of this year.  
• To raise money, the documents showed, ALEC considered expanding its policy portfolio to gambling.
• Concerned about potential tax problems with its designation as a 501(c)(3) charity, it is considering 501(c)(4) status, which would allow it to lobby more openly.

Among the ALEC documents obtained by the Guardian: a draft loyalty oath for legislators who serve as the group’s state chairs, declaring that “I will act with care and loyalty and put the interests of the organization first.”

When I first dealt with ALEC as a state government reporter 18 years ago, it was right of center but known for thoughtful policy research. But it adopted an aggressive agenda to pass legislation expanding gun rights and voter-identification requirements, and limit the reach of public-employee unions, social-welfare programs, consumer and environmental protections, and Obamacare.

Emboldened by the Guardian report, liberal politicians held an anti-ALEC teleconference Wednesday afternoon. “ALEC,” said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), a former member of the group, “is nothing more than a corporate-funded and dominated group that operates much like a dating service, only between legislators and special interests.”

Danielle Conrad, a Nebraska state senator who quit ALEC, called it a “shadowy group” that made a “radical shift” in its agenda.

At the Grand Hyatt, Meierling, who joined ALEC from the United Way in January, told me that he’s gradually introducing transparency but that ALEC “can’t just kick the doors open.” 

Actually, it can — unless it doesn’t want people to see what’s behind those doors.

BLOGGER'S NOTE :

 

 

 

 

 Trayvon Martin did not die in vain.

His death, by many estimates, has brought national attention to the ill conceived efforts of ALEC and other organizations like it.  May God Bless Trayvon Martin, and may his family take some comfort in the changes his death has, and will continue to bring.

 

The context: House and Senate committees are investigating abuses of administratively uncontrollable overtime. The Senate federal workforce subcommittee will have a hearing on it next week, following the House hearing last month.

Border Patrol union advocates overtime changes that would cut officers’ pay

 

By Joe Davidson, Published: December 3

It’s not every day that a federal labor organization tells Congress to reduce union members’ pay.But that’s what the National Border Patrol Council advocates.

“Frankly, I am asking you for a pay cut,” Brandon Judd, president of the council, recently told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on national security. “I am coming to you and I am telling you, agents are willing to take a pay cut.”

The context: House and Senate committees are investigating abuses of administratively uncontrollable overtime. The Senate federal workforce subcommittee will have a hearing on it next week, following the House hearing last month. 

This type of overtime, commonly called AUO, is meant to cover Border Patrol agents and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) law enforcement officers who must work longer than scheduled hours when, for example, chasing suspects through the desert. 

But rather than a method used to compensate employees for the unexpected circumstance, it turned into a regular pay trough even for the desk-bound. That dirtied its reputation for the officers who legitimately needed it.

In an October letter to President Obama, Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner said “AUO problems are ongoing and pervasive.” She called the abuse “a violation of the public trust and a gross waste of scarce government funds.”

Judd and others could see what was coming. 

It’s not that he and other leaders of the Border Patrol Council, which is part of the American Federation of Government Employees, are trying to curry favor with Congress at the expense of their membership. But they do know how to get in front of a situation.

“We see the writing on the walls,” said Shawn Moran, a council spokesman. “We know that the alternative is far worse than what we are pushing for.”

The stinging report from the Office of Special Counsel leaves AUO in its current form a wounded bureaucratic creature with diminished chances of survival. 

Perhaps sensing change was coming, union leaders started working with Congress on fixes to the overtime system well before Lerner issued her report. The result is legislation that has the support of Democrats, Republicans and labor, but not management, at least not yet. 

DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard said “while many frontline officers and agents across the department require work-hour flexibility,” often through the use of AUO, “misuse of these funds is not tolerated.”

DHS is examining the overtime system, and the Obama administration is reviewing the bill. Its chief sponsors are subcommittee chairman Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the Senate and subcommittee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) in the House, where there also are Democratic co-sponsors.

“Establishing this new pay schedule will make our borders more secure and save taxpayer dollars,” Tester said. 

The legislation would provide agents three overtime options: 1) work 100 hours per pay period and get 25 percent overtime; 2) work 90 hours with 12.5 percent overtime; or 3) work no overtime. Comp time could be taken for unscheduled overtime worked beyond 80 to 100 hours per two-week pay period, depending on the option. 

Judd said “this legislation will ensure that Americans have a Border Patrol that is properly trained, adequately equipped and fairly compensated.”

Fairly, but not as lucratively.

Moran said most of the union members would lose about $6,500 annually compared with their income before this year’s budget cuts. 

So what do they get in return?

“It brings a lot of long-term stability in terms of pay,” Moran said. “That will increase morale.”

Chaffetz said the bill would save taxpayer money.

“In addition to saving $125 million a year, we are looking to bring more consistency to those who risk their lives everyday protecting the border,” he said. “This new pay scale is a long-term solution that will iron out the kinks of the current system through old-fashioned planning and time management. These changes will both reduce opportunities to abuse the system and provide compensation for unanticipated emergencies such as capturing criminals.” 

For many years, AUO, which amounted to a 25 percent increase in pay, was routinely expected by agents and promoted by the agency. Union leaders say many field agents generally work 10-hour days.

“When I applied for the job, it was actually a part of the compensation package that you were told that you would earn,” Judd told the House hearing. “ It said that you would earn a substantial amount of irregular overtime in the form of administrative uncontrolled overtime. So, yes, all Border Patrol agents,” until changes about year ago, “were told that this was part of your compensation package.”

But simply ending the overtime system without a fair replacement would be a deal-breaker for many agents.

“If you remove the overtime system that we currently have,” Judd said, “you wouldn’t be able to retain employees. . . . We need an overtime system that would be cost effective to taxpayers, increase border security and include incentives to retain our employees.”

Low bank wages costing the public millions, report says

By Danielle Douglas, Published: December 3 

Almost a third of the country’s half-million bank tellers rely on some form of public assistance to get by, according to a report due out Wednesday.  Researchers say taxpayers are doling out nearly $900 million a year to supplement the wages of bank tellers, which amounts to a public subsidy for multibillion-dollar banks. The bank workers collect: 

 $105 million in food stamps 

$250 million through the earned income tax credit

$534 million by way of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program 

Committee for Better Banks organizers say they are in the early stages of their fight and trying to make the public aware of workplace conditions. The release of the report Wednesday will kick off a week of events, including a rally in front of a Bank of America branch to protest the increasing reliance on ATMs with videoconference tellers. Officials at Bank of America declined to comment

The University of California at Berkeley’s Labor Center provided the data to the Committee for Better Banks, a coalition of labor advocacy groups that published the broader study, to be released Wednesday, on the conditions of bank workers in the heart of the financial industry, New York. In the that state alone, 39 percent of tellers and their family members are enrolled in some form of public assistance program, the data show.

“This is the wealthiest and most powerful industry in the world, and it’s substantially subsidized by our tax dollars, money that we could be spending on child care or pre-K,” said Deborah Axt, co-executive director at Make the Road New York, one of four coalition members. 

Profits at the nation’s banks topped $141.3 billion last year, with the median chief executive pay hovering around $552 million, according to SNL Financial. In contrast, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the median annual income of a bank teller at $24,100, or $11.59 an hour. 

For its report, the committee spoke with 5,000 bank tellers, customer service representatives and technicians about their pay, benefits and treatment in the workplace. Workers bemoaned their poor wages and long hours without overtime pay.

Alex Shalom, 20, works part time at a Bank of America branch in Manhattan, where he makes $13.50 an hour, or $14,000 a year. The pay is barely enough to pay rent and cover his tuition at Hunter College, Shalom said. 

“It’s not a livable wage,” he said. “Bank of America is making all of this money . . . but we’re not getting paid for holidays.” 

Another common complaint among bank workers was the intense pressure to meet sales quotas. One Wells Fargo employee, Victoria, who would only give researchers her first name, claimed she received more than 50 e-mails a day from managers pushing sales goals. Employees, she said, had to aggressively peddle products “just to be able to keep our jobs.”

Wells Fargo spokeswoman Richele Messick said: “Wells Fargo works hard to create a positive work environment for our team members and a culture of doing what is best for our customers.”

Although banks have rebounded from the depths of the recession, analysts say they are still contending with economic headwinds that are placing pressure on revenues. As a result, they say, institutions may be less inclined to raise wages and maintain full-time staff.

“The interest-rate environment is very unfavorable to banks. There is an increasing amount of regulation that has further squeezed profit margins,” said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. “When margins are tight and you’re looking for maximum efficiency, you have to make tough decisions.”

The committee’s report arrives as fast-food workers, retail employees and other low-wage workers stage strikes across the country, including one planned for Thursday. They are fighting to have their pay raised to $15 an hour and for an easier path to forming unions. 

“As this low-wage policy spreads beyond fast food into banking and other sectors, it makes it much tougher for the economy to grow,” said Gregory DeFreitas, an economics professor at Hofstra University. “People are scrapping by on so little, so the demand for products remains low and the broader economy is hurt.”

Committee for Better Banks organizers say they are in the early stages of their fight and trying to make the public aware of workplace conditions. The release of the report Wednesday will kick off a week of events, including a rally in front of a Bank of America branch to protest the increasing reliance on ATMs with videoconference tellers. 

The bank stepped up the use of remote video tellers in the past year, raising concerns that the machines would eliminate branch workers. 

Officials at Bank of America declined to comment, but in the past the bank has said that the technology is meant to supplement, not replace, its branch employees.

BLOGGER'S NOTE:   THIS IS WHY A FEDERAL SAFETY NET (that addresses basic human needs - health care, food & nutrition assistance, housing, and education) IS SO IMPORTANT.  The GOP wants to get the government out of the business of looking out for our neighbors; but with incomes declining, and affordable medical care, food and housing nonexistent, what options do working class people have?  Do we wait until their untreated health care needs cause epidemics; until substantial numbers of Americans can neither read nor write; until they are literally dying by the thousands on our streets?  At what point do we step up to the plate?