What Are Louisiana’s Unions Going To Gripe About At Their Wisconsin Rally Today?
This afternoon at 5 p.m., Baton Rouge’s City Hall will be populated with a pro-union rally organized by Louisiana’s SEIU chapter, the state’s AFL-CIO chapter and the Louisiana affiliates of AFSCME. It’s styled as a “We Stand With Wisconsin” solidarity demonstration.
But since the Wisconsin demonstrations are about totally different issues than unions have in Louisiana, one wonders why – other than generating publicity – the organizers of the event would bother.
But from SEIU’s press release announcing the rally, you begin to get a clue.
“We want to tell our Louisiana leaders that politicians like Governor Walker must stop scapegoating the working families of this country for the nation’s economic woes caused by the Wall Street greed that crashed our economy,” said Louis Reine, president of the Louisiana State Federation of Labor.
“Today Wisconsin … tomorrow Louisiana? We won’t allow it. More than a year after the financial crisis and bailout, working families are still reeling from the effects of a shattered economy. Politicians should be creating good jobs – not attacking nurses, teachers and firefighters.”
Charles Selders, a city-parish employee in Baton Rouge and SEIU Local 21LA leader, agrees.
“We need our elected officials to create jobs, not wage attacks on middle class and working families to score political points with big donors,” Selders said. “The real bad guys are the rich CEOs and Wall Street bankers not the hardworking people who provide vital services to our communities.”
Selders, one imagines, sees “creating jobs” by politicians as spending more on a government workforce. SEIU hasn’t taken a public position so far on what seems to be the largest union gripe in Louisiana at present – Gov. Bobby Jindal’s seeking of the extension of a few tax breaks for businesses in hopes they’ll promote economic growth and create jobs. And therein lies a parallel with Wisconsin; the Democrat narrative, disproven as it is, is that the Badger State’s budget was in swell shape before Gov. Scott Walker blew into Madison and slashed tax rates on fatcat Wall Street types. Jindal’s doing the same thing, see.
Jindal wants the Legislature to continue the state’s Quality Jobs Program, which gives tax rebates to companies that create new jobs with specific wage and benefit levels. He also wants to extend tax credits for companies that conduct research and development in Louisiana, firms that commercialize technology developed at Louisiana colleges and digital media developers.
That’s unpopular with the unions. In particular, the state’s two teachers’ unions – the Louisiana Association of Educators and the Louisiana Federation of Teachers – don’t like those tax breaks.
LFT put out a release last week screaming about Jindal’s policies aiming at bolstering the private-sector economy, and – get this – complaining that Jindal is neither cutting nor increasing funding for public education amid a $1.6 billion 2012 deficit.
“Just one day after announcing that education funding will be frozen for another year, the governor now says that he wants to add to the more than $7 billion in tax loopholes that are starving the services Louisiana families depend on,” said Monaghan.
“We understand that leadership involves making choices,” Monaghan said. “However, we do not understand the wisdom governing the choice to freeze education funding one day and to choose to expand tax breaks the next.”
“Last year, the legislature passed bills asking for a thorough review of the 441 tax incentives currently offered by the State of Louisiana,” Monaghan said. “Lawmakers said they want to know how effective the incentives are. Do they attract jobs and grow the economy, or do they add to the bottom line of giant corporations at the expense of health care, education and the quality of life in our state?
“So far, there have been no hearings, and no reports filed on the effect these tax breaks have on our economy,” Monaghan said. “In his statement yesterday, the governor stated that he does not know how much this new round of tax loopholes will cost the state.
“But we already know some of the cost of the current policy. A number of school districts have already declared fiscal exigency, and school districts around the state have announced or are discussing layoffs of teachers and school employees. Access to health care is shrinking. Whole disciplines are being eliminated from our colleges and universities.”
In other words, Wall Street fatcats are gorging at Louisiana’s public trough. Get it?
Again, SEIU hasn’t commented on what LFT is saying. But since they’re putting out press releases along the same lines, we can expect that at 5:00 today you’ll see the circle get squared. Don’t be surprised if this rally is about raising taxes on rich people so that we can “create jobs” for working people in Louisiana.
But you can be very surprised if anybody at that rally is upset about the moratorium on offshore drilling, which is the single largest driver of Louisiana’s unemployment rate growing from 6.2 percent in April 2010 to 8.0 percent in December. The left in Louisiana is doing everything they can to dismiss the moratorium’s effect.
Because those aren’t the jobs they care about.
Its amazing how my worldview differs from the union rep that you cited above. I think she fails to understand that by creating more and better paying private sector jobs, our state is able to afford the govt services that she is concerned about. However, LA already employs a far higher level of govt to private sector employees and the time has come to downsize our state govt to an affordable level.
The rally is going to be at 5 p.m. TODAY at the Baton Rouge City Hall, 200 St. Louis St.
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“But you can be very surprised if anybody at that rally is upset about the moratorium on offshore drilling, which is the single largest driver of Louisiana’s unemployment rate growing from 6.2 percent in April 2010 to 8.0 percent in December. The left in Louisiana is doing everything they can to dismiss the moratorium’s effect.” ~ Couldn’t be said any better. It is not about being prosperous to the Left, it’s about redistributing the wealth that already exists while intentionally cutting off the flow of it.
“the moratorium on offshore drilling, which is the single largest driver of Louisiana’s unemployment rate growing from 6.2 percent in April 2010 to 8.0 percent in December.”
I’ve yet to see unemployment data that supports this claim. Do you have any that you can point to?
Let’s answer it this way. What do YOU think accounts for a 1.8 percent jump
in the unemployment rate in just eight months? That’s a catastrophic rise in
an unemployment rate. In fact, Louisiana went from having one of the lowest
jobless rates in the nation to now having a rate higher than Wisconsin’s.
Can you isolate another significant factor? Please name it if you can.
The government’s own figures indicated a loss of nearly 9,000 jobs due to
the moratorium (which would represent one half of a percent change in the
unemployment rate in itself), and that was back in August. It’s impossible
to believe, with virtually no drilling activity having commenced since then,
that further damage hasn’t resulted.
The Left’s denial of the economic damage from the moratorium is beyond
scandalous.
So we’re going from you saying something is a fact, to you asking me what I think is correct and then positioning yourself to dispute? I can think of all kinds of jobs that were lost during the oil spill, from tourism to restaurants to fishing. When you say the government’s own figures, are you talking about the federal government’s ESTIMATE of potential job losses, or are you talking about documented job losses? Because so far, based on the numbers from the state’s Dept of Labor, there is scant evidence that the mining/oil sector has driven the increase in unemployment. The most recent estimates are murky, like the GNO Inc. study, and seem to obscure hard estimates on what exactly happened. They just seem to say it’s much less worse than expected. How much less worse is the question I’m asking, seriously. If you want to say I’m denying something– which I’m not, I merely asked a question– you would do well to support your contention with evidence. At this point, it seems the evidence from the State Dept of Labor is the best we have, and thus far it does not show anything like the mining/oil sector driving unemployment increases. Any further information you could point to on the matter would be appreciated.
I wonder how many are going to show up, 50 or 100?
I was once a union employee. But now I am a retired taxpayer. The taxpayer comes first when it come to cutting funds. The State employees as well as the common worker pays a portion of their medical insurance, retirement income, social security, but as I understand it those union employess in Wisconsin haven’t contributed much to anything, so if that being the case, it’s time they pay the price like everyone else. 44 States is in bankruptcy, and with those radicals controlling the oil markets its gonna get rough here in America unless President Obama and his radicals lifts the ban on drilling in the gulf of Mexico. People, American is in big trouble, $14,000,000,000,000 thats a lot of zeros…..in debt!
This is from New Zeal, Trevor Loudon, one of the very best blog sites.
The Communists are working with the Union Protests.
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2011/02/communists-backing-wisconsin-solidarity
Sorry, the link did not work.
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