As some people recognize, unions helped to build the middle class in this nation. Their disappearance just happens to coincide with growing income inequality, a shrinking middle class, and a growing divide between the 1% and everyone else. Why would corporations want to get rid of unions? Unfortunately, many corporations want low-wage workers who work overtime without extra pay. Unions wouldn’t tolerate that. So unions must go. They have nearly disappeared in the private sector, where people can be fired at will, with no cause. The strongest unions are in the public sector, and the teachers’ unions are the largest unions, so they are constantly attacked by those who want to get rid of the last union and have a totally free market.
Here is a useful comment by our reader, Laura H. Chapman:
There is a fairly new scheme by corporations to insert their policies into local government, with killing unions priority one.
Without much fanfare, the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC—the source of corporate-friendly and “free-market” state legislation—has spawned ready-to-use model legislation and ordinances for local governments.
ALEC’s progeny is called the American City-Council Exchange (ACCE). Set up in 2014, it is designed to promote “America’s only free-market forum for village, town, city, and county policy makers.”
In addition to proposing model ordinances and legislation at this smaller scale of governance, ACCE is also intended to diminish the influence of the National Conference of State Legislatures as a go-to-source for policy ideas and status reports on legislation. For example, the National Conference has a searchable data-base on pending or passed legislation of great use for legislators and their staff. This data base and search engine means YOU can track 50 issues in education with state-by-state reports–summaries of legislation and the text of bills. Because the National Conference is not a 100% shill for market-based policies framed by corporations, ALEC and ACCE claim it is “too liberal” as a source for ideas about legislation.
Here is how the ACCE works. Elected officials in villages, towns, cities, and counties pay $100 for a two-year membership. They are identified as members of “the Public Sector.” Here is the ACCE pitch members of the public sector.
“ACCE members receive academic research and analysis from ALEC/ACCE policy experts who work with issues, processes and problem-solving strategies upon which municipal officials vote. Provided with important policy education, lawmakers become more informed and better equipped to serve the needs of their communities.” So corporations are the sources of policy expertise and the proper way to “educate” public officials. No need for local expertise, public debate, and so on. Local elected officials can now become shills for ALEC/ACCE.
Corporations pay $10,000 to be a member of an ACCE Committee, or they pay $25,000 to become members of the Founder’s Committee with more influence on priorities.
Here is the pitch for members in “the Private Sector.”
ACCE Committee members “provide industry insights during policy creation.” “ACCE Council Committees closely imitate the city government legislative process: resolutions are introduced, meetings are conducted, experts present facts and opinion for discussion, after which lawmakers take a vote.”
The ACCE is basically a pay-to-play scheme for peddling corporate views to public officials at the local level, with a very low threshold of expense for local and policy makers to be open to ready-to-use corporate friendly ordinances and legislation. The scheme comes with the bonus of a tax deduction because ACCE is a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
ACCE first two initiatives are already in circulation, thanks to regional chapters and the nurture by ALEC of this strategy to control local governance. Some elected officials who are Democrats are trying to blow the whistle.
One of the first ACCE initiatives is a model ”Right to Work” ordinance, a local version of ALEC’s anti-union model legislation.
A second is designed to limit local government oversight of the process of contracting for municipal water and wastewater piping. Apparently the municipal and wastewater industry wants to secure total autonomy for project engineers to set performance criteria for the piping in these huge public works projects. This may also be a scheme to by-pass EPA’s 2011 “green infrastructure” practices for administering the “Clean Water Act.” For both model ordinances go to http://www.alec.org/legislation-tags/acce/
In addition to these initiatives, I think we will see more of ACCE’s influence, working in tandem with other efforts to get rid of locally elected local school boards, to have all education funding follow the child, and set up “virtual” and/or multi-location districts to process funds, meet any remnants of public accountability, all with appointed CEOs. The Center for American Progress and venture capitalists like Global Silicon Valley Advisors want to accelerate popular acceptance of such schemes as “essential” to get more bang for the buck, to allow for more choice, and so on. Getting rid of local school boards s also a strategy for killing unions.
If your community still permits unions and suddenly decides to scrap those with something that looks like a ready-made ordinance, it could be from ACCE. It might come with claims that it will not only save money on salaries, but reduce pension obligations, permit fires and hires based on performance, and also be good for business, especially for those corporations who have paid for access to your elected officials. BEWARE.
Corporations do not want employees to have due-process rights. Many also have NO respect for authentic democratic governance and the electoral process—witness the current efforts of billionaires with corporate fortunes to buy the next President of the United States and also to make it difficult to vote.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The RICH don’t want unions, because then they can’t RULE OVER the rest of us, make profits OFF THE BACKS of others with FAR LESS $$$$, and hold them hostage as their slaves.
Pretty much sums it up.
The position of the Catholic Church on union busting. Spoiler, it’s a mortal sin. http://www.catholicscholarsforworkerjustice.org/UNION%20BUSTING%20IS%20A%20MORTAL%20SIN-1%20May%202010.pdf
Which Catholic church? The one that cozies up to the rich and powerful, or the grassroots families and day to day parish priests?
While you can rebuke their motives, you have to admire their organization and how insidiously invasive ACCE’s tentacles are. You have to admire how can manipulate the rules to gain non-profit status. These are dangerous, wealthy people that want to crush the very ideals that are the foundation of our nation. Teachers are the current group in their crosshairs, but fire fighters, police as well as other municipal workers should be on high alert.
It would be great if Laura Chapman could be wrong sometimes. But, unfortunately, she bats a thousand.
Anyone who believes working people have too much power in this country is a shill or so completely out of touch they have no business in government. You cannot spend any amount of time with or among ordinary working people and believe that, in 2015. It’s not just untrue. It’s ludicrous.
If you were raised in an upper middle class family (as I was), you were raised on the stories of union corruption. I wonder if even now when unions have almost been eliminated except in the public sector, that people will recognize what unions have contributed (a vital middle class) before it is too late. I am getting up there in years and my experience with unions has not been particularly stellar (which tends to be the case with probationary teachers). I have also seen the antagonism between administration and unions carried out in rigid interpretations of regulations that look like nothing more than petty spite. In the best of situations, however, unions provide a way for management and workers to work together for the benefit of all. With the stagnation in wages continuing for decades while the top of the socioeconomic heap rakes in most of the profit, we need to ask ourselves if the decline in unions has played a role in allowing the blatantly unequal distribution of wealth. I don’t mind people making more money than I do. I didn’t become a teacher to become wealthy. I do mind their sense of entitlement and their belief in their right to dictate how the vast majority of us will live.
I wasn’t raised on union corruption stories so much as stories about how unions are responsible for driving jobs overseas because they priced American workers out of the market and the poor companies would have gone out of business if they hadn’t fled the country. Comes out to the same thing though. I was anti-union until well into adulthood.
I was in a low middle class non-union family and heard similar stories, even though union victories kept our family out of complete poverty. Unions aren’t perfect and lost their way. But ruthless corporate greed and exploitation are much, much worse. It is a hard lesson for true working Americans to learn before it is too late. I read a recent survey that attitudes towards unions are gradually changing to favorable. The 99%ers that buy into the ALEC right to work myths and teacher bashing should read about the Battle of Thermopylae. When the last of the unions are destroyed, so goes Americans’ democracy and freedoms and we all fall. If anyone thinks that is an exaggeration, they need to work corporate America rather that live off of trust funds and the sacrifices of prior generations.
I’ve never understood the thinking that contractors lobbying government will be less corrupt than unions lobbying government.
Has that been true anywhere, ever?
When Ohio teachers union lobby government they’re spending members’ money. When charters do it, they’re spending public money.
I (and everyone else on this state) are paying the lobbyists who work against public schools. White Hat doesn’t have anything OTHER than taxpayer funds.
Union membership is currently only about 12% of the workers in our country, and lots of them are government employees. Perhaps this is why the oligarchs are targeting them. Unions like the wealthy lobby for special interests, but the billionaires have a lot more money to spread their influence around, especially now since the Citizens United decision.
It’s obvious that the oligarchs want to be the only ones who can afford to fool people through the media. Unions represent the majority of the members of the union and to a billionaire that shouldn’t be.
The oligarchs see themselves as kings and the rest of us a serfs/slaves who should do what we are told and stay silent—-or else.
retiredteacher, exactly. The 12% are the Bailey Savings and Loan keeping Bedford Falls nice for all. Van Doren Stern and Capra were geniuses.
Anyone remember Dogpatch? “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Unions are sometimes their own worst enemy. True story: I’m an administrator who believes in unions, but it’s my teachers who have begun to turn against their own union for one simple reason: they fight for teachers who their peers feel are bad for kids. It’s so sad. And so unnecessary. Good unions are not just guardians of the crossed ‘t’s in the contract. Good unions are leaders and serve the common good of all their members and community. (And don’t read into this that I’m trying to fire teachers and fighting with the union, because I’m not. I’m terrified the teachers will lose their union in the future.)
Is it due process you are talking about? If a teacher is harming kids, it is very easy to suspend them in our state, with unions support, as it should be. Several are no longer teaching and charged with crimes. What is “bad for kids” and why aren’t administrators taking action?
Lisa, I think you bring up a point we should never forget. Fight for unions — and also fight for better unions.
Same with public education. Fight for public schools — and at the same time, never stop fighting to improve our public schools.
Mathvale… on “the sacrifices of prior generations….”
I have memories from childhood, about age 6 through 8, of the efforts of auto unions to organize in Detroit in the early 1940s. The imprints came from newspaper photos and family accounts of the issues, made personal by a couple of family members working for Ford and our living in Dearborn, a Ford-built housing enclave of the era. World War ii helped to end some of the slaughter (literal) in forming unions and it helped tamper the racial tensions present in those years, exacerbated by the “great migration,” and competition for jobs during the Great Depression.
Teacher unions were alien to me until I joined one for higher education, organized to get equitable pay for faculty women, early 1970s. They succeeded.
In this post I hope readers will not focus JUST on the new avenue for ALEC and friends to bust unions but also be alert to the new effort of ALEC to insinuate corporate voice and representation into every nook and cranny of local governance–villages, towns, suburban communities, cities–where citizens have a voice on policies through their elected officials. ALEC has long operated to gain control of state legislation. The new sibling wants to privatize for public schools, public libraries, public parks, public utilities and public infrastructure, including roads, bridges and so on. That influence will be easier for local school board races where big money is already flowing to secure enough seats to gain support the “bold, transformative, disruptive innovations” that are destroying public schools.
Most Americans are very ignorant of labor history in our country. That is not a condemnation, but simple fact. Even as recent as the Reynoldsburg strike in Ohio did we see “security” try to intimidate and attack teachers, reporters, and parents ala old time Pinkerton goons – one incident caught on camera during a news interview. Too much individualism in America. Newer generations are too far removed from the labor struggles of the early 1900’s. It will be a tough lesson for them to learn when ALEC is running America.
I was going around talking about the union at my school the other day. We have several young, brand new teachers, fresh out of university. NONE of them even knew what a union WAS. I was horrified.
You are right, Laura. Ask Chicagoans how they feel about their private parking meters or the toll on the privatized Skyway (basically a bridge). My town came close to selling off its power plant to Commonwealth Edison years ago. It was the overwhelming protest from residents who understood the economics that prevented that mistake. The last time we lost power for more than a few minutes was several years ago during a 100 year storm. If we had been dependent solely on Com Ed, it would have been days. Instead it was hours. I’m sure others have similar cautionary tales to tell.
Question:
“fairly new.”
How new? I’ve known about ALEC for several years via this blog; however, I did not know that they go after local governments until just a few weeks ago (via this blog). Concerned, I reached out to an acquaintance running for city council to see if she knew about this entity that goes after local control and she replied “well known.”
How new and how well known is this, really? Where has it happened? I’ve only seen it at the state rep level.
Any insight would be appreciated.
Involved Mom,
Here is information about the formation of this sibling of ALEC in 2014. There are other posts at the website below that will tell you more about the activities.
I developed supplementary information about this new American City-Council Exchange (ACCE) by looking at the membership categories and the first conference program announcing ACCE.
ACCE is structured to work by stealth with low fees for elected officials and big fees for businesses that want to influence the elected officials, from mayors to school boards, to elected neighborhood councils.
Local members of the American City-Council Exchange will try to do deals on ordinances, legislation, local building and development codes, tax abatements, regulations on dumping and everything else that is not “business friendly.”
The ideology is not different from the parent ALEC but the opportunities to choke off information and citizen engagement is greater. I view new American City-Council Exchange as another means of working on voter suppression, and in the case of public schools drumming up “grassroots” support to privatize them.
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/07/12555/alec-offshoot-takes-aim-local-government
Apparently the Chamber of Commerce has been infiltrated at least on the national level. I imagine their influence on a local level and the direction of their influence would depend on whether the big corporate donors of the Chamber have an interest in a local issue.
In a democracy where the people have a say must prove difficult for corporations to do business without restriction to maximize profits.
Maybe that explains why Coke’s CEO said it was easier to do business with Communist China than with the U.S.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2011/09/29/coke-ceo-says-its-easier-to-do-business-with-communist-china-than-with-u-s/
Do a bit of digging and you will discover other corporate CEO’s feel the same way about Communist China.
That’s the price of doing business in a democracy.
Corporations are severe dictatorships, oligarchies at best. It is pretty clear Americans have a choice of becoming China or competing with China using a new, better form of capitalism. Economists and leaders should be leading the charge of innovating a better model. Instead, they want to eliminate teachers’ lounges (Kasich), argue over a reporters’ biology (Trump), and imply bad teachers are the reason for teen pregnancy (Chetty). Sadly, too many Americans seem resigned or willing to surrender freedoms to a Chinese model of purges, oppression, and censorship. In any war, economic or otherwise, the danger is we become our enemy.