Texas AFL-CIO E-Mail News July 11, 2014 1-Texas Supreme Court Decision Twists Law, Harms Workers and Families 2-Abbott Cant Abide Audience at Planned Debate 3-Business and Labor Make Case for Immigration Reform 4-Republicans Tell Obama to Address Border Security, Then Wont Fund It 5-Krugman Explains Sadomonetarism; Its Actually Interesting 6-Van de Putte Posts Video Praising DPS Work Along Border 7-UAW Posts Video on New Union Local at Volkswagen 1) Our friends at Texas Watch reported today on a Texas Supreme Court decision that does a great injustice to victims of a deadly disease caused by exposure to asbestos. The Texas AFL-CIO has long, hard experience losing members of the old Asbestos Workers union (now part of the Heat and Frost Insulators Union). For many of those workers and their families, a day in court and the collection of legitimate damages from companies that had no eye on safety was the only consolation for their suffering. The Texas Supreme Court has twisted the law on several occasions to deny benefits and damages for work-related injuries and illnesses, whether in the Workers Compensation or personal injury arenas. If this is what a friendly climate for business looks like, the future of the jury system in our state and the prospect of open courts are in dire condition. Dont take it from us. Take it from the dissent by three Republican justices who actually tried to apply the law instead of their ideologies to the problem at hand - the premature death of a 40-year-old man who was exposed to asbestos from the time he worked with his father on construction projects. As Texas Watch states: A sharply divided Supreme Court of Texas handed down an opinion today that is devastating for workers exposed to cancer-causing asbestos. In Bostic v. Georgia-Pacific, the Court creates an exceptionally high causation standard for asbestos-related cancer cases, effectively blocking many workers and their families from having their day in court. (See Case No. 10-0775, majority, concurrence, dissent.) Alex Winslow, Executive Director of Texas Watch, a citizen advocacy organization active on civil justice issues, stated: The Texas Supreme Court is closing the courthouse doors for workers who are going to die a terrible death simply because they showed up for work and did their job. This decision breaks the promise of meaningful accountability for workers who, through no fault of their own, were poisoned by asbestos-laden products. In the words of Justice Lehrmann, this opinion does not just offend logic - it offends justice. Mesothelioma is a rare and fatal cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Exposure to asbestos in low doses can cause mesothelioma. Asbestos is the only known environmental cause of mesothelioma in North America. Corporate special interests pushed through restrictions on the legal rights of asbestos victims with the passage of SB 15 in 2005. In doing so, however, they purported to create a process that would allow the sickest mesothelioma plaintiffs to go to the front of the line with their lawsuits. An activist Supreme Court, led by Justice Willett today, went even further, ensuring that there would be no line at all for these Texans and their families, effectively closing the courthouse door on many of them. The majority misread and misapplied precedent, disallowing direct, scientifically reliable proof of causation in mesothelioma cases. Justice Lehrmann led the dissent, joined by Justice Devine and Justice Boyd, a former asbestos defense lawyer who is intimately familiar with these complicated cases. In a stinging and exhaustively-researched dissent, Justice Lehrmann stated that the majoritys holding does not just offend logic - it offends justice, further noting that it misconstrues precedent and requires plaintiffs to meet an arbitrary standard of proof. Counter to science, the Supreme Court of Texas now requires mesothelioma plaintiffs to prove that exposure to each defendants product was sufficient by itself to cause their mesothelioma. The Court insists afflicted workers must have studies with levels of specificity that scientifically do not and can not exist. Lehrmann writes: [T]he Court effectively forecloses recovery for mesothelioma plaintiffs with intermittent exposure until researchers develop epidemiological studies demonstrating a doubling of the risk in that population. The Court also forecloses recovery for mesothelioma plaintiffs who were exposed to multiple sources of asbestos when no single source of exposure is sufficient, by itself, to more than double that plaintiffs risk of developing mesothelioma. Timothy Bostic, the plaintiff in this case, was first exposed to asbestos while working with his father on residential construction jobs at the age of five. He later worked at other facilities where he was also exposed to asbestos. Mr. Bostic died at the age of 40 from mesothelioma. At trial, his relatives presented extensive, direct proof from multiple expert witnesses about the type of asbestos fibers he was exposed to and their effect on the body. A jury found in their favor. The Supreme Courts opinion means that Mr. Bostics family will receive nothing for his death from mesothelioma. texaswatch.org/2014/07/scotx-devastates-workers-poisoned-by-asbestos/ 2) Were not much into the debate about debates story, but thin skin or what? Attorney General Greg Abbott wants to debate Sen. Wendy Davis, the COPE-backed candidate for governor, in a studio without an audience, the McAllen Monitor reports. Abbotts camp claims it is worried the issues discussion could be interrupted by cheers or boos, and is apparently even more worried about the mix of said cheers and boos that might go to each candidate. That said, we have seen plenty of debates in which the audience is asked to remain silent except at the beginning and the end. It may seem incredible, but even political partisans will maintain decorum under consensus ground rules. Do Abbotts handlers think a Rio Grande Valley audience cant sit still while two candidates discuss the future of Texas? The Monitor article makes you wonder whether Abbott, who has accepted just two debates even as Davis has called for six, wants to demonstrate his actual knowledge of state government at all: Representatives from both major party gubernatorial campaigns reached an impasse Thursday on the format of a fall debate in the Rio Grande Valley, Monitor Editor Carlos Sanchez said. Democrat Wendy Davis campaign would like the Friday night event to be in front of an audience, while Republican Greg Abbott wants the event to be broadcast without a live gathering, Sanchez said. The two sides were not able to reach an agreement during a roughly two-hour meeting Thursday morning in McAllen. The Wendy Davis campaign, which initially proposed a town hall format, said, We can live without a town hall format, but we want a live audience, Sanchez said. The Abbott campaign has expressed concerns that a live audience can be disruptive to the debate. Its their hope that this can be a discussion of substantive issues, and if youve got clapping and howling and whooping that we wont be able to have that kind of discussion. The sides have agreed to most of the Sept. 19 events other negotiable points, including the venue: the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance, Sanchez said. Read more: themonitor/news/local/abbott-davis-hit-impasse-on-rio-grande-valley-debate/article_bb9007fa-089b-11e4-a8c2-0017a43b2370.html 3) Business columnist Chris Tomlinson of the Houston Chronicle discusses the Texas business communitys support for a comprehensive immigration reform bill and includes a quote from Tuesdays Texas AFL-CIO news release pulling in the same direction. As the AFL-CIO prepares its own full-court press for action on the immigration situation, Texas AFL-CIO President Becky Moellers call to aim high, think big and get the job done may ultimately apply to President Obama. AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka has signaled that all evidence indicates Congress is not going to act this year on an immigration bill, so the White Houses executive authority would be the next best path to some kind of progress: The legal entanglements of 50,000 children entering the United States illegally this summer may have highlighted our broken immigration system, but Texas businesses are warning that Congresss failure to pass comprehensive immigration reforms could create a bigger long-term economic crisis. Leaders in Houstons manufacturing, construction and agriculture industries joined colleagues in 40 other cities across the country last week to complain that federal immigration law has left them without enough workers, and that the market favors the unscrupulous. They want comprehensive immigration reform now. This is about the economy, jobs and a strong workforce for Texas, said Nelson Salinas, lobbyist with the Texas Association of Business, which promotes pro-business policies... The Republican Party of Texas hurt efforts to ease the economic stress by removing the so-called Texas Solution from its platform last month. Instead of supporting a guest worker program to bring in legal workers, party delegates instead demanded that local police round up those in the country illegally and called for the denial of in-state tuition for kids brought who grew up here without papers... Companies that follow the rules want a chance to compete for the skilled labor of the 11 million people who are working in the country illegally, said Bob Bacon, CFO of Houston-based TAS Commercial Concrete Construction. If we are able to hire them, as we do all of our employees, through the legal process, were going to withhold taxes and social security, were going to pay workers compensation, he said. It will be a level playing field. Labor agrees with management in this case. Texas AFL-CIO President Becky Moeller praised Texas businesses for supporting a comprehensive immigration bill. To address the crisis at hand, the legislative process needs to continue and the political process needs to take a back seat, she said. A new poll shows that business leaders arent the only ones frustrated by inaction in Washington. More than 80 percent of Texas voters of every political stripe think the nations immigration laws are not working and that Congress needs to take action, according to a survey of 1,000 people last month on behalf of the Partnership for a New Economy, a bipartisan, pro-business lobbying group. When it comes to exactly what policy Texans support opinions vary. But 61 percent said they would support comprehensive reforms that include additional border protections, visas for workers with needed skills, an employer verification program, work permits for those already in the country and citizenship for those brought here as children. The U.S. Senate has passed a plan that includes all of those elements. The only majority in the nation that seems opposed to comprehensive immigration reform is the one in the House of Representatives. Read more: houstonchronicle/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Texas-businesses-need-immigration-reform-now-5612915.php#/0 4) Meanwhile, as Attorney General Greg Abbott trumpets a likely lawsuit seeking at least $50 million from the federal government to pay for the cost to Texas of dealing with the border surge, he might want to consider making the Republican-led U.S. House the focus rather than the White House: A key Republican said Friday that President Barack Obamas multibillion-dollar emergency request for the border is too big to get through the House, as a growing number of Democrats rejected policy changes Republicans are demanding as their price for approving any money. The developments indicated that Obama faces an uphill climb as he pushes Congress to approve $3.7 billion to deal with tens of thousands of unaccompanied kids whove been arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border from poor and gang-ridden Central American nations. And they suggested that even as the children keep coming, any final resolution is likely weeks away on Capitol Hill. As House members gathered Friday morning to finish up legislative business for the week, Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky, chairman of the Appropriations Committee that controls spending, told reporters: Its too much money. We dont need it. Read more: statesman/news/ap/political/obama-official-says-immigrant-kids-draining-funds/ngdGK/ 5)Columnist Paul Krugman of The New York Times, who is both a Nobel Prize-winner in his field of economics and a Pulitzer Prize-winner as a journalist, riffs on a new concept: sadomonetarism. Before the snores begin, these few paragraphs may explain the nature of the class warfare game at the center of the Federal Reserve faster and more understandably than any economics text: Ive written a number of times about the phenomenon of sadomonetarism, the constant demand that the Federal Reserve and other central banks stop trying to boost employment and raise interest rates instead, regardless of circumstances. Ive suggested that the persistence of this phenomenon has a lot to do with ideology, which, in turn, has a lot to do with class interests. And I still think thats true. But I now think that class interests also operate through a cruder, more direct channel. Quite simply, easy-money policies, while they may help the economy as a whole, are directly detrimental to people who get a lot of their income from bonds and other interest-paying assets - and this mainly means the very wealthy, in particular the top 0.01 percent. The story so far: For more than five years, the Fed has faced harsh criticism from a coalition of economists, pundits, politicians and financial-industry moguls warning that it is debasing the dollar and setting the stage for runaway inflation. You might have thought that the continuing failure of the predicted inflation to materialize would cause at least a few second thoughts, but youd be wrong. Some of the critics have come up with new rationales for unchanging policy demands - its about inflation! no, its about financial stability! - but most have simply continued to repeat the same warnings. Who are these always-wrong, never-in-doubt critics? With no exceptions I can think of, they come from the right side of the political spectrum. But why should right-wing sentiments go hand in hand with inflation paranoia? One answer is that using monetary policy to fight slumps is a form of government activism. And conservatives dont want to legitimize the notion that government action can ever have positive effects, because once you start down that path you might end up endorsing things like government-guaranteed health insurance. Read more: nytimes/2014/07/11/opinion/paul-krugman-who-wants-a-depression.html?ref=opinion 6) Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, the COPE-endorsed candidate for Lieutenant Governor, posted a 30-second YouTube video that commends the Department of Public Safety for its work along the border and calls out those who would instill fear, intolerance and hate because of the situation: https://youtube/watch?v=mm67qwrHI1Q 7) The AFL-CIO today passed along a UAW video and article on the formation of a new union at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga: The UAW didnt give up after a vote to unionize at Volkswagens plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., barely missed passage in February. It continued to move forward and the union announced Thursday that it has reached a consensus with VW and will form Local 42 for workers at the Chattanooga plant. While no formal agreement has been reached, UAW officials say they expect the automaker to recognize the union once enough of the plants employees have signed up, although no specific threshold was announced. An op-ed in the Times Free Press laid out the stakes at the Tennessee plant: There is a lot at stake: a new SUV assembly line at Enterprise South industrial park and about 1,350 new full-time jobs, the red faces of Tennessee politicians, UAWs survival, VWs strong belief in a works-council culture that puts workers in decision-making partnership with plant management, a new union hybrid that might be palatable all across the South and Chattanoogas future. The February vote was heavily influenced by outside sources, including numerous Republican politicians, who relied upon big money and dishonest anti-union propaganda to convince a slim majority of the eligible workers to vote against the union. The UAW initially challenged the vote with the National Labor Relations Board but withdrew the challenge not long before announcing that consensus had been reached with VW. None of the plants workers will be required to join the union and no dues will be collected before a collective bargaining contract is agreed upon. VW previously expressed interest in creating a European-style works council at the Chattanooga plant. The automakers plants in other countries are all covered by collective bargaining agreements, with the Tennessee plant being the lone exception. See the video: aflcio.org/Blog/Organizing-Bargaining/UAW-to-Form-Chattanooga-Local Ed Sills Texas AFL-CIO
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 04:30:01 +0000
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