Unions Increasingly Locked Out Of Louisiana Political Influence
On Friday, a group of some two dozen union members descended on the Baton Rouge offices of Rep. Bill Cassidy in an attempt to protest his stance on the Ryan plan for Medicare. The issue isn’t one of particular union concern, though clearly the demonstrators were scared up by labor organizers.
But the outcome of their appearance served as an excellent manifestation of how things are going for the union movement in Louisiana these days…
Nobody answered the door at Cassidy’s office and the group of about 25 headed to the parking lot with orange dayglo signs that read “Medicare is not welfare.”
Notwithstanding the Baton Rouge Advocate’s peculiar interest in the demonstration’s non-story, the article about which contained quotes from a sizable fraction of the union members in attendance (including the Advocate’s favorite union pipefitter/Letters To The Editor contributor Michael Day), Cassidy isn’t the only politician in Louisiana uninterested in organized labor’s advocacy.
Last week a bill by Sen. Danny Martiny (R-Kenner) to ban union-friendly Project Labor Agreements in Louisiana taxpayer-funded construction projects sailed through the Louisiana Senate on a 27-4 count. SB 76 was the subject of some rather heated discussion on the Senate floor when it came time to assign it to a committee. Martiny had to fight to get the bill into the Labor committee, which has a friendlier composition than the Transportation Committee in which it was originally placed by Senate President Joel Chaisson. And when he won that fight, veteran Senator Joe McPherson (D-Woodworth) howled about rich contractors and bad memories.
The Democrat also made reference to “pencils stuck in the ceiling from the last time the contractors did something like this,” which was an allusion to the fight to pass the right-to-work statute in 1976 where 15,000 union members descended on the Capitol and a bomb was set off in the chamber. McPherson also took a shot at what he insinuated [was] Martiny’s lack of respect for the rules, a statement interpreted by some observers as an attack on the latter’s prospective candidacy for Chaisson’s job when [the Senate president] and McPherson will both be term-limited out of the body next year.
“I’m glad I won’t be here,” he said.
McPherson missed the final Senate vote on SB 76 Thursday, as did seven of his colleagues – including Republicans Mike Michot (R-Lafayette), Gerald Long (R-Winnfield) and Buddy Shaw (R-Shreveport). The four votes against were all black Democrats – Yvonne Dorsey (D-Baton Rouge), Karen Carter Peterson (D-New Orleans), Edwin Murray (D-New Orleans) and Cynthia Willard-Lewis (D-New Orleans). But even among the Senate’s black caucus the vote wasn’t unanimous, as J.P. Morrell (D-New Orleans) and Elbert Guillory (D-Opelousas) voted for the bill while Sharon Weston-Broome (D-Baton Rouge) and Lydia Jackson (D-Shreveport) didn’t cast a vote.
And several fairly reliable Democrats voted for the bill, including Francis Thompson (D-Delhi), Butch Gautreaux (D-Morgan City) and – surprisingly enough – Ben Nevers, who is actually a union contractor back home in Bogalusa.
That’s a far cry from 15,000 union members storming the Capitol, a bomb going off and 45 years of rough memories. The SB 76 vote shows even Democrats at the Capitol aren’t afraid of the unions anymore.
Another piece of legislation barring PLA’s also passed through a notable legislative body last week, this one in the U.S. House of Representatives. Namely, an amendment by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) kiboshing the use of PLA’s was successfully added to the 2012 Military Construction-Veterans Affairs appropriations bill, which will go to the House floor in early June.
Among the votes in favor was one from Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-Louisiana), who voted “no” on an amendment banning PLA’s in all federal contracts back in February – and caught hell for it from the state’s construction industry. Alexander’s reversal on the PLA issue marks a return to political sanity – when he voted against a project-labor agreement ban in February, he was siding with unions who represent a mere 2.8 percent of the state’s private-sector workforce.
It’s a good bet that the fraction of that 2.8 percent who vote Republican is less than half. But these days, when if you’re a Union Democrat you might be able to get the Baton Rouge paper to follow you and a few of your union friends to a demonstration at a Congressman’s office shuttered for the Memorial Day holidays but that’s the extent of your impact, it seems the days of setting bombs or even influencing Democrat politicians on legislation are over in Louisiana.
That so puny a display from the state’s unions should come in an election year indicates how small a factor the movement is in the state’s politics these days.
[...] Scott beat me to this by a few minutes tonight, which is I guess a good thing. [...]
Go ahead and stir them up!
Sick people… If it weren’t for what organized labor helped accomplish in the past, the rights and priveledges that you have at work would not exist….. Leave mr day alone…. Or go work in some slaveshop in another country…. God bless America….in the past lies the future…. Organized labor will be back someday soon… Bigger and stronger than ever
Dude, unions are finished. Nobody outside of government employees (and maybe not even them either) wants to join ‘em anymore. Who would want a sluicebag like Richard Trumka or Jimmy Hoffa controlling their dues money?
Way more than half the people in a union right now didn’t vote to be in one. Don’t talk about rights and privileges (especially since you can’t spell privileges anyway) where unions are concerned.
well mr macaoidh what planet are you from? your wrong about the protest i organized it. and your wrong about medicare not being a union issue. check the aflcio blog. do you hold down a job mr.macaoidh? if so it seems medicare would matter to you.
In which parish are you registered to vote, Mr. Day?
Scott, what makes you think he’s only registered in ONE parish? Remember the Democrat / Organizing for America / SEIU/ AFLCIO / ACORN mantra: Vote Early, and Vote Often………..
Barry, I’m told by someone who would know that there is no “Michael D. Day” registered to vote in East Baton Rouge, Livingston or Ascension Parishes. And furthermore, the address used under his letters to the Advocate is/was a union hall.
Just trying to get to the bottom of that tip. I notice that “Mr. Day” hasn’t responded to the question as yet. I find that telling.
Why do left leaning people think the US is any different from the world’s past societies? Why do left leaning people think the US can continue the social welfare system ”as is”? How can left leaning people not see the terrible financial system train wreck we’re headed for? Social welfare spending broke the Roman Empire, and has broken every past civilization, and we are NO exception. Roman politicians used to joke that they’d be OK as long as they could keep providing “more bread and circus’”; in today’s terms this is food stamps and a welfare check to pay the Direct TV bill.
Where is the money to maintain current programs at “status quo” is going to come from? Do you really think the answer is “taxing the rich”. Aside from the immorality of taxing one man’s income at a different rate than another’s, don’t you realize the US already has a very hight tax rate compared to lots of other very attractive places to live. If you think “taxing the rich” is the answer and this will also lead to “social justice”, please realize that when you do this, the ”rich” will simply leave (or simply quite working – what’s the point if the tax man gets more than you get to keep), and, to paraphrase Richard Pryor from one of his old comedy routines, instead of “justice”, you’ll be left with “just us”.
Medicare is like all other social welfare spending; together with the other social welfare, it’s the “crack cocaine / crystal meth” of society. Just as with any other drug, you feel good, temporarily, when you take it, but it’s keeps taking more and more to get the same “high”, and eventually, the damage it does to your body leads to death. The road social welfare spending has put our country on will cause the collapse of our financial system and the death of the US economy. When that happens, where will the union workers be then? OUT IN THE COLD WITH ALL THE REST OF US!! Wake up! We’re all in this together.
All Paul Ryan has tried to do is to get our country into economic “rehab”. Lots of us think he didn’t go far enough; lots of us think we should “kick the habit” by going “cold turkey”.
Let me provide for my own retirement and medical care; I can’t do any worse than the government has done and I won’t ask any else to pay for my mistakes. Why? Because it’s not ANYONE’S responsibility to take care of me; not the government’s, not the union’s, not society’s, and I, for one, resent, the implication that people, including me, are so dumb and incompetent that they can’t simple take care of themselves.
The AFL-CIO blog? I’m sure that’ll make for great reading. Are there updates on Mr. Trumka’s hush-money payments to United Mine Workers’ murder victims?
http://www.nrtw.org/files/nrtw/Trumka%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf
And if you organized that goatscrew, here’s some advice – next time, call ahead to find out if the folks are going to be in the office before you show up. It’ll help to prevent your little group from looking like abject boobs when your friends at the Advocate write their non-story.
mr macAoidh
you don’t have a clue.
i vote in ebr every election for some years now. i can see that you guys are not worth the hunt to try and chat with. you guys hold your tea bags up and i’ll hold my “real” grass roots signs that were paid for out of my hard earned money. im out.
Then you must be using an alias to pen your drivel in the Advocate, or you’re committing voter fraud. How many times did you vote in the last election?
Yeah, the Union Coneheads got a FREE PASS from their New Messiah in the Whitehouse on ObamaCare. They force the issue on us Tax Paying Citizens, but the Union Money Grabber Bosses who are in the hip pocket of the Democrat Liberals, decided their Union Buddies wouldn’t have to participate because of their help in the election. Want to see who is destroying Medicare Einstein. Try looking in the mirror with the Socialists you are helping to elect. They are draining the system and it will be dead in a few years for all of us. We demand that the politicians cut spending, meanwhile your power grabbers in Washington continue to share the bed with Socialist Union Bosses who never lose money. But I guess the Unions will get another bailout and the taxpayers will once again suffer for Union “Entitlements”. Maybe we should call it Union Welfare.
[...] as Scott McKay informed us Monday, Sen. Martiny authored and carried the important LPA bill, SB 76, which recently passed the Senate, [...]
Let’s just face the facts. Times are changing. At one time there was a real necessity for Unions, that time has passed. We can’t be black mailed anymore into giving more than there is to give. It’s the same for the Government. For years we (that’s U.S. Taxpayers through our Government) gave and gave to the less fortunate, to the more fortunate (like Senators and Congressmen)giving some free so-so healthcare and other services, to the others the Rolls Royce of healthcare and services. We have people working for local, state and federal government agencies putting little if anything into their retirement and paying little or nothing for their healthcare. It has all been placed on the taxpayer, that’s those people who actually pay taxes, not just people who file tax returns and get everything and then some back from the government. We have people getting Social Security benefits who at town halll meetings when the subject of cutting Social Security in one way or another comes up they become an unruly mob yelling things like “I put my money in to Social Security and I’m going get what I deserve”. Well, if we gave you back what you put in it wouldn’t be but a fraction of what you have gotten or will get out of Social Security by the time you die. So what do you deserve. Do you deserve a medal because you didn’t save money and invest it or be more frugal over the years so that you didn’t have to have Social Security as your only money coming in at retirement. Should you be proud of that fact.
Look, everyone is going to have to give something. We are going to have to cut back on things and increase taxes whether we like it or not, and I doubt anyone of us is going to like it. But just as we would tell our children to toughen up, or do the right thing, or be brave, or be fair we are going to have to bite the bullet and do things not just for ourselves but for this country. If we don’t start looking at the big picture this country can and willl fall. We think it can’t happen here, well, think again.
Stop being such jerks and listen to the truth of what’s going on and decide to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.
I agree with MacAoidh’s observations that the Advocate’s report of the demonstration at Cassidy’s office was a “non-story”.
However, isn’t this is really just a smaller version of the recent public employee union unrest in Wisconsin?
The protesters clearly meet the definition of a mob: Government by a mass of people, or the intimidation of legitimate authorities. Going further, don’t these protesters meet the definition of a goon squad? In the context of pro-union violence, a goon squad may be formed by union leaders to intimidate or assault parties selected by the directives of union leadership.
I’m sure that the “non-story” would have been a very big story if there had been 500 demonstrators, with half from out-of-state.
[...] Unions Increasingly Locked Out Of Louisiana Political Influence [...]
[...] had with a group of seniors to explain that the Ryan Plan on Medicare doesn’t affect them. Day and some of his fellow drones showed up at the Congressman’s Baton Rouge office a couple of weeks ago in an effort to protest his [...]