This week in the war on workers

Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

This week, the war on workers was everywhere. Cutting Social Security is making war on working people. Not raising the debt ceiling is making war on working people. The entire economic debate of the week was framed around various ways to harm us.

On the debt ceiling, national Republicans are behaving like Minnesota Republicans: nothing will satisfy them but abject surrender and they're willing to blow up the economy over it. The numbers under discussion keep growing, and the proposals keep getting worse, with Social Security in the crosshairs.

For instance, Joan McCarter wrote about the zombie lie that we're all living longer, so it's okay to raise the retirement age, when in fact, American life expectancy dropped slightly from 2007 to 2008 and proposals to raise the retirement age would shorten the average number of post-retirement years an individual man would get. But the zombie lie keeps rising again and being presented as the basis for some kind of "reasonable compromise" on Social Security. And if you live a long life, well, good for you?but the chained CPI under discussion would cut your benefits as you aged.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are pushing a tax repatriation holiday, which would be a massive handout to giant corporations.

That big national discussion is the framework for this week's update on the war on workers: it's big, it's pervasive, and there is no one in the bottom 98% of earners who it's not being waged against.

But what of the stuff you might have missed?

• House Republicans proposed massive cuts to transportation. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in response:

  [I]t is astonishing and unconscionable that the House Republican leadership would push a surface transportation re-authorization bill that would gut current infrastructure investment by a third and obliterate over half a million jobs in the next year alone. This proposal prescribes a grim reality at a time when 14 million Americans who want to work cannot find jobs and our nation suffers a $2.2 trillion infrastructure deficit.

• Various House Republicans continued to practice the "as long as I've got mine" approach to governance, on behalf of themselves and their districts, while cheerfully voting against the best interests of the public at large.
• As DemFromCT has covered, Connecticut is among the states wrestling with budget issues, and a vote of union members did not produce the supermajority needed to accept a wage freeze and reduce pensions. This week, unions asked Gov. Dannel Malloy to reconvene talks to figure out how to avoid layoffs. Malloy, who is trying to avert layoffs, is open to talks to clarify the deal but has said he will not renegotiate.

There was some good news...

• An Idaho judge granted an injunction against an anti-union bill affecting union construction contractors.
• Good news for medical interpreters and patients in Washington state:

  Washington is one of 14 states that pay medical interpreters to help Medicaid clients with limited English skills talk with their doctors. Now, it might be the only state with interpreters who are protected by a union contract.

  Last week, about 1,600 independent contractor interpreters ? who are represented by the Washington Federation of State Employees ? ratified a contract with the state. It assures them pay of $30 per hour and creates a system for allotting work that cuts out a middle man.

  Reportedly 44% of state payments have been going to middlemen.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/IS9-J00F-qA/-This-week-in-the-war-on-workers

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