Finest worksong: is change coming at DOL?

While some progressives are scolding the President-elect for not moving fast enough to the left, we're looking at bread-and-butter issues ourselves theses days.  Some of the national news suggests that there will be some shifts in policy and approach that will have a great impact on Southern Minnesota's working families.

The Washington Post reports in Labor Dept. Accused of Straying From Enforcement:

The next labor secretary will be taking charge of an agency widely criticized for walking away from its regulatory function across a range of issues, including wage and hour law and workplace safety. . . .

. . .There are few federal agencies where the ideological differences separating many Democrats and Republicans play out more plainly. Labor is one of the government's largest regulatory enforcement agencies, overseeing issues from overtime payments and pension regulations to workplace safety and training programs. The agency has a total budget of $50.4 billion and 16,800 employees. . . .

One interesting contrast in the way the Bush administration has been running the DOL: while the department has been cited by the GAO for lax enforcement of laws protecting worker safety, minimum wage and overtime laws, the department beefed up oversight of labor unions. Lovely. Here's to change and to our labor friends in the First--Laura, Audra, Liz, Dale, Russ, and the rest--who worked so hard to educate, organize, and mobilize union voters this year.

The Post also reports Senate Could Give New President Early Legislative Victories given beefed Demcoratic control of the chamber:

Though they are two votes short of their quest for 60 votes -- with two races still undecided -- Democrats say that regular support from a few Republican moderates will allow them to pass bills that were halted in the current Congress by GOP parliamentary roadblocks. These include health-care programs, immigration revisions and presidential nominations.

The article quotes Senator Klobuchar.  An item we find of interest:

Stimulus: Obama is proposing a stimulus package that could include $500 billion in new spending and $200 billion in middle-class tax cuts, but Democrats cannot be certain that they have the votes to pass such a major proposal. House Republican leaders have disparaged the costly proposals, meaning Democrats may have to find 60 votes to overcome a GOP filibuster.

Democrats appear to have a fall-back plan should that package run into trouble. They now hold a 60-plus majority on a smaller proposal to spend tens of billions of dollars on infrastructure construction.

The second proposal sounds like what Walz and Klobuchar discussed with the Mankato Free Press. The New York Times reports in Squeezing the Most From a Stimulus Plan:

...Prominent economists argue that more than 50 percent of the next package, whatever its size, should be devoted to spending — on public infrastructure like highway and school repair, and on items like food stamps and stepped-up aid to state governments, subsidizing their spending.

Mr. Zandi, who advised the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, said in testimony last month before the Senate Budget Committee that nearly every dollar spent in this fashion generates $1.50 or more in economic activity. Repairing a road, for example, means hiring workers who spend their new salaries at supermarkets, which in turn hire more store clerks and stock more groceries to handle the extra spending.

This “multiplier effect” is missing, however, when the stimulus comes as a tax break. . . .

And there's this in the Post article:

In April, 50 Democrats and six Republicans supported legislation that would have amended the 1964 Civil Rights Act by allowing more time for workers to file discrimination complaints. Five new Democrats will be replacing Republicans who opposed the legislation named after Lilly Ledbetter, the female employee who lost her suit against Goodyear Tire and Rubber over discrimination claims. The Supreme Court ruled that Ledbetter should have filed her claim within six months of the alleged incidents.

So here's a shout-out to all of Laura's "peeps":

Photo: Congressman Walz joined members of Rochester's HERE Local 21 in early 2007 to protest the illegal firing of hotel workers by the then new owners of Holiday Inn Express.

Comments

[CHC]

Thanks for your kind words and your support. Your work on these pages have been helped me stay informed on the real news going on in the 1st.

Dale