Obama and the 1%

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Obama defies base, hires Wall Street lobbyist for re-election campaign

By Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller   12:02 AM 10/25/2011

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President Barack Obama’s new senior campaign adviser is a longtime Wall Street lobbyist, and has the potential to damage the president’s aspirations to appeal to the protesters currently “occupying” New York City’s Zuccotti Park.

Obama’s new adviser, Broderick Johnson, has an extensive history of lobbying for big banks and corporations, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2007, he lobbied for JP Morgan Chase and in 2008 Johnson lobbied for Bank of America and Fannie Mae. From 2008 through 2010, he lobbied for Comcast and in 2011 he lobbied for Microsoft.

Johnson is currently a partner at D.C.-based communications firm Collins Johnson Group, which boaststhat it excels at “providing superior strategic planning and political consulting services to multinational corporations, government entities, political campaigns and parties, elected leaders, nonprofit organizations, issue groups, investors and entrepreneurs.”

Including open houses and social events, Johnson has visited the White House 17 times since 2009, according to White House visitor logs. One of those meetings was with Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.

In early 2009, Johnson was named partner at lobbying firm Bryan Cave LLP’s Washington, D.C. office. In that role, his responsibility was to “establish and lead the firm’s new Public Policy & Governmental Affairs Client Service Group.”

That means that during those White House visits, Johnson was a registered lobbyist.

Johnson also donated more than $150,000 of his own money Democratic candidates and causes since 2008. Public political donation records show Johnson has, since 2006, never donated to a conservative or a Republican.

Perhaps most troubling to those who normally would consider themselves Obama’s 2012 base, though, is how Johnson has lobbied on behalf of the Keystone XL pipeline. The Huffington Post previously reported that Johnson is a “former Bryan Cave LLP lobbyist registered on the Keystone XL account” and that Bryan Cave LLP earned approximately $1.08 million lobbying for TransCanada between 2009 and 2011.

Environmentalists are upset about the near-finalized pipeline proposal that would allow TransCanada to build a $7 billion, 1700-mile pipeline through the heart of the United States. If the State Department approves the proposals and the pipeline is built, it would transport crude oil from tar sands in Alberta, Canada to U.S. refineries along the Gulf of Mexico.

Liberal group Friends of the Earth, which adamantly opposes the Keystone XL pipeline, is furious with Obama’s decision to hire a former pro-pipeline lobbyist. The group is disgusted with what it considers Obama’s blatant support for crony capitalism.

“Apparently the hope and change idealism of the 2008 campaign has been replaced by cynical status quo insiderism for 2012,” Friends of the Earth spokesman Nick Berning told The Daily Caller. “It’s as though the Obama campaign were intentionally trying to alienate its base.”

The Obama re-election campaign appears to have tried to hide or downplay Johnson’s lobbying history, as the original campaign press release announcing his hire completely ignored it. Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse hasn’t returned TheDC’s request for comment on the issue, either.

Later, though, Politico reported that an anonymous Obama campaign official said Broderick “is no longer a lobbyist — he deregistered in April — and he will not discuss any matters related to his former firm’s clients with the campaign.”

The Republican National Committee, however, thinks this kind of behavior on the part of the Obama campaign is typical and to be expected from the president.

“This is just more of the same from the president that promised he would change Washington,” RNC spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said in an email to TheDC. “While President Obama publicly attacks lobbyists and Wall Street, he’s more than happy to use their influence and cash to fuel his campaign.”

Even though it’s hiring Wall Street lobbyists, Obama’s 2012 campaign plans to channel the Occupy Wall Street movement into an attack on Republicans,according to the Washington Post. Obama has announced public support for the protesters, too. In an October 6 news conference, Obama said that the protest movement “expresses the frustrations the American people feel, that we had the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, huge collateral damage all throughout the country.”

“And yet you’re still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on the abusive practices that got us into this in the first place,” Obama added.

It’s unclear how, if at all, Obama can account for the inconsistencies between his campaign rhetoric and his actual political actions. Hiring Johnson represents another test for Obama, if he’ll actually address concerns about the former Wall Street lobbyist’s past.

Johnson’s wife, National Public Radio host Michele Norris, also announced she plans to recuse herself from hosting the taxpayer-subsidized radio network’s All Things Considered program through the 2012 election because of an apparent conflict of interest.

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Facebook, freedom and thin-skinned bosses

By Bruce Barry, Special to CNN

November 11, 2010 -- Updated 1434 GMT (2234 HKT)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Bruce Barry: Losing private-sector job over a Facebook remark doesn't violate freedom of speech
• Employers shouldn't view offhand remarks on Facebook as threats, he writes
• Barry: National Labor Relations Board says comments may be protected under labor law
• Workers shouldn't forfeit rights, he says, and thin-skinned bosses can scare away talent

Editor's note: Bruce Barry is professor of management and sociology at Vanderbilt University and author of "Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace" (Berrett-Koehler, 2007).

Nashville, Tennessee (CNN) -- The recent news item about a Connecticut worker fired for Facebook postings that annoyed her employer, like other accounts of employees sacked for private speech, was bound to draw a lot of attention. Americans hold First Amendment rights to free speech as a kind of sacrosanct birthright, and for many of us the idea that you can lose your job for expressing private thoughts away from work offends the core principle of freedom of expression.

In fact, though, firing a worker for off-the-job speech that unsettles an employer is pretty routine, and for the most part very legal. The First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights protect us from infringements on our liberties by acts of government, not from the oppressive acts of nongovernmental actors such as private-sector employers.

Combine that with the labor law concept of "employment at will," which makes it possible to fire someone without due process for just about anything short of discrimination, and you are left with an American workplace where free expression has scarcely more moral credibility than employee theft. A particularly eye-catching example is an Alabama woman who lost her job -- with no legal recourse -- during the 2004 election season because her Republican boss didn't like the John Kerry bumper sticker on her car in the factory parking lot.

Widespread use by just about everyone of online networks and social media opens new opportunities for workers to engage in personal expressive activity that might arouse the notice and disapproval of one's employer, and by extension opportunities for touchy or paranoid employers to police and punish essentially harmless extracurricular speech.

So in a sense, the situation involving Dawnmarie Souza, the Connecticut emergency medical technician fired by an ambulance services firm for posting negative comments about her boss on Facebook, is just the latest skirmish in an ongoing conflict between employers' desire to keep workers in line and the rights of employees to live their private expressive lives without unwarranted employer interference.

Holding a job should not require giving up your right to an expressive private life.
--Bruce Barry

Fired for Facebook?

Dare to trash your boss on Facebook?

RELATED TOPICS

• Facebook Inc.
• First Amendment Rights
• U.S. National Labor Relations Board
• Labor Law

But there's a wrinkle that makes this case important: the involvement of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which contends that Souza's Facebook comments could be protected activity under labor law. Americans don't enjoy general free speech protections against infringement by a private employer (with some limited exceptions, such as certain kinds of whistle-blowing). But federal labor law does grant union-eligible workers the right to engage in "concerted activity" for the purpose of "mutual aid or protection" -- essentially, to communicate with each other about working conditions and terms of employment. Those same federal laws bar employers from interfering with workers' efforts to improve their work situations.

If Souza had dissed her boss in, say, a blog post or a letter to the editor, her expressive act would likely earn no protection against her employer's wrath. But on Facebook her comments catalyzed responses from and interaction with some of her co-workers. That online "conversation" involving Souza and other employees of the same firm is what the NLRB alleges could amount to protected concerted activity. If the courts agree (at this point it's just a charge by the NLRB, with a hearing slated for early next year) then Souza's dismissal was illegal.

When this case does reach a courtroom, lawyers will tussle over the nature of social media sites. Does interaction within a closed Facebook circle of friends amount to private conversation, or are negative comments about one's job or boss on Facebook the equivalent of a public statement that could affect a firm's reputation? Does it matter how big one's network is? How many co-workers have to chime in to the conversation to make it "concerted" activity?

Until this works its way through the courts, employment lawyers are advising corporate clients to ensure that employee policies regarding internet use are not written so broadly that they chill workers' exercise of their associational rights under labor law.

Souza's situation turns more on labor law protections than on constitutional free-speech rights because she worked for a private-sector employer. The First Amendment does afford more protection to public-sector workers, but government employees reading this shouldn't get their hopes up. Federal court decisions along with developments in management practice have combined to make even the public-sector workplace rather inhospitable to employee free-speech claims.

Consider the cautionary tale of Ashley Payne, a Georgia public school teacher forced to resign last year when administrators learned in an anonymous email about pictures of her on Facebook holding an alcoholic beverage during a trip to Europe. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Payne kept her network settings private, and never friended any students. A year later, as her case crawls through the legal system and she awaits her day in court, Payne is still unable to find a teaching position.

A common reaction among working professionals to stories such as Souza's and Payne's is to advise people to manage their online presence and their digital footprints more carefully and prudently. Avoid giving your employer a reason to frown on your online expressive activity, goes the argument, even when you do it on your own time, on your own device, and on private networks. This is reasonable advice to the extent that it equates to "avoid being really stupid," but it's unfortunate advice if it counsels individuals to suppress their own private expressive life as a career strategy.

To be sure, employers need not tolerate any and all extracurricular speech by workers that might genuinely pose a legitimate threat to the firm's interests or to its workplace harmony. If I worked for CNN, with a spare-time hobby maintaining the web site timewarnerisevil.com, it certainly shouldn't behoove my employer to retain my services in the name of some abstract notion of off-work freedom of personal expression. Employers need not allow workplaces to become debating societies or free-for-alls for hostility and harassment.

But it's troublesome when employers favor a management culture so bent on predictability and control that even mild or tangential departures from expressive conformity are treated with suspicion and rebuke. Employees will kvetch about jobs and bosses until the day there no longer are jobs and bosses, and enlightened employers understand that new technological vehicles for said kvetching will inevitable emerge and evolve.

Holding a job should not require giving up your right to an expressive private life, even if you might be prone to the occasional untoward remark about the people who sign your paycheck. Cultivating a thin-skinned managerial impulse to treat workers' expressive activities as existential threats to the enterprise isn't how you manage a workforce; it's how you chase talent away to your competitors.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bruce Barry.

Delta attendants say 'no' to union - Claims of moving "onward and upward" by some workers

By DAVID SHAFFER and DEE DePASS, Star Tribune staff writers

November 3, 2010

Flight attendants at Delta Air Lines narrowly rejected union representation in the first of three votes to organize the majority of employees at the world's second largest airline.
The results, announced shortly after the close of voting Wednesday, were 9,544 votes against the union, and 9,216 in favor of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) or other unions. The margin was 328 votes, or 1.7 percent.
AFA President Pat Friend said Delta's management ran "the largest anti-union campaign that this country has ever seen" and the union would challenge the fairness of the election and seek a revote. Delta rejected the union's claims as "ridiculous" and said it looked forward to integrating its workforce two years after the merger of mostly nonunion Delta and heavily unionized Northwest Airlines
If the result stands, it means that 7,200 former Northwest flight attendants, including 1,900 based in Minnesota, will no longer be represented by the union or be covered by their existing contract. Delta said it will announce a transition plan for those workers at a later date.
More than 93 percent of Delta's 20,100 flight attendants voted in the election, which has been underway since Sept. 29 by telephone and the Internet.
At Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, a major Delta hub, some flight attendants stepping off parking shuttle buses Wednesday afternoon expressed sorrow and disbelief that their union could disappear.
"They said we have to take off our union pins -- now," said Mary Beth Balzart, a 23-year flight attendant who burst into tears as she entered the Lindbergh Terminal and reached for the tiny white AFA pin on her uniform. "It's just really sad. Not only did we lose Northwest Airlines, but now we also lost our union."
Several workers who supported the union were fearful of saying anything, or declined to give their names. Union opponents showed less reserve.

"Delta has been good to us without a union," said Suzette Klein, an 11-year flight attendant who voted against the union. Another "no" vote, Helena Luke, who has worked for Delta for four years, said, "I'm happy that there is no union. They tend to slow down progress. So I say, onward and upward."
In Atlanta, Mathew Palmer, a Delta flight attendant who helped organize the "No Way AFA" campaign that included rallies, a Facebook page and a website, was jubilant. "We as a group cannot be higher than our planes fly,'' he said.
Palmer said many former Northwest flight attendants believed the union had failed them. "They have a contract, yes, but what is that contract worth?" he said, noting that Delta workers' pay exceeded that of pre-merger Northwest attendants under their union contract. "So it really makes you question, what value is this union I have?"
Delta, based in Atlanta, had 12,900 non-union flight attendants before the merger with Northwest. The airline's other hubs are in Detroit, Memphis, New York, Salt Lake City and Cincinnati. This is the third time the AFA has lost a union election at Delta since 2002.
The decision by Delta flight attendants was the first of three winner-take-all union votes that affect 50,000 Delta workers. Two other elections that wrap up in the next two weeks will determine whether baggage and cargo handlers and passenger agents -- long unionized at Northwest, but not at Delta -- will be represented by the International Association of Machinists.
Delta Air Lines has long been among the least unionized of the major carriers. Delta's pilots and flight dispatchers have unions, but the airline's record of paying well has largely kept other unions out. The Northwest merger brought its heavily unionized workforce to Delta, creating an untenable mix of union and nonunion workers that is being resolved in these showdown elections.
Union leaders said they will ask the National Mediation Board to investigate allegations that Delta interfered with the election through mailings, e-mail, intimidating contacts with workers and a breach of voting secrecy on company computers.

It could take months for the federal agency that oversaw the election to investigate the union charges and determine whether another vote is justified. Earlier this year, another Delta union won a revote for the airline's flight simulator technicians because of management interference, though the workers still rejected the union in the second election.
Delta said interference charges are common after union elections. "The AFA clearly plans to continue its fear-and-smear campaign, even after our flight attendants have decided," it said in a statement.
The AFA last month complained to the mediation board that Delta encouraged flight attendants to use the airline's computers to vote, a possible breach of ballot secrecy. But Delta, in a statement, said airline computers also were used to vote in the 2008 AFA election, and nobody complained.
dshaffer@startribune.com • 612-673-7090 dee.depass@startribune.com • 612-673-7725

© 2010 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

Obama worse than Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Dubya on immigration

Washington raid brings deportations, mixed signals

By MANUEL VALDES (AP) – 8 hours ago

BELLINGHAM, Wash. — First they were arrested and faced deportation under what has proven to be the Obama administration's only workplace raid. Then they were given work permits, and told they could stay in the United States while their employer was being prosecuted.

Now, the more than two dozen undocumented workers arrested during the February raid here at Yamato Engine Specialists Ltd. are again facing deportation.

"Well, what can you do? You can't run, that'd be worse," Gerardo Arreola Gonzalez, one of the 28 workers arrested, said about the raid. "I had to face it. Yes, I felt fear, thinking, 'The dream is over.'"

Gonzalez's unusual journey through the immigration system symbolizes just how much immigration policy has changed under President Barack Obama — and how it's still a work in progress.

The deportations and likely removals are a conclusion to a case that displeased both advocates for illegal immigrants and those who lobby for stricter immigration enforcement.

In this case, the company, the workers, and even the Seattle U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office that conducted the raid came in for some sort of punishment or special scrutiny.

Two days after the raid, ICE officials traded urgent e-mails going over answers to questions sent by an apparently miffed White House, according to e-mails obtained by the Associated Press through a federal records request.

In all, 28 men and women — mostly from Mexico — were arrested that February morning. One man opted to leave the country shortly after the raid. The 27 who remained were given work permits until the case against Yamato ended.

Now, five of the 27 workers have been deported. Seven have been allowed to leave the country voluntarily and 15 await court dates with an immigration judge, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lorie Dankers.

Dankers declined to comment further on the case.

"We're disappointed. We really did think that things would be different under the Obama administration," said Pramila Jayapal, executive director of OneAmerica, a Seattle-based immigration advocacy group. "It's very mixed signals ... we thought we were getting an administration that was supportive."

Immigration advocates were elated when Obama took office, thinking he'd bring immigrant-friendly enforcement policies. The raid shocked them, and they protested loudly.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano then ordered an internal review of the raid. The workers arrested were given work permits, and the company became the focus of the investigation.

But those who favor strict immigration enforcement saw Napolitano's review as a signal for lax enforcement, and a rebuke to the Bush administration's immigration policy.

For William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, Obama's approach to targeting involved employers is no better than the Bush administration's targeting of those here illegally. Both are incomplete policies, he said.

"I am for the actual enforcement against all parties involved in illegal immigration," Gheen said. "Obama is an arbitrary enforcer, just like Bush, on immigration."

The Obama administration's approach became clearer in the months after the raid: a focus on employers. Hundreds of audit forms were sent out to businesses nationwide, notifying employers to certify that their workers have valid Social Security numbers and other forms of identification proving eligibility to work in the U.S. The administration has also sought to maintain workable enforcement agreements between ICE and local police agencies, and has sought to improve conditions for immigrants detained by the government.

The government's audits of employment status have led to significant job losses. In Los Angeles, American Apparel fired 1,500 workers in September. In Minneapolis, another 1,200 janitors were cut in November.

In order to level charges against employers who hire illegal immigrants, federal prosecutors need the testimony of those workers, and that requires the arrest, confinement and questioning of employees to obtain evidence.

"The most convincing part of that proof comes from illegal aliens," Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Reno said after the Yamato case. "It's going to be just as disruptive to the illegal aliens. That's not going to change."

That new reality doesn't sit well with either side of the immigration debate.

"How could you trust their testimony if you bribed them for it? These people will say anything you want them to say," Gheen said.

"They're saying they're not actively going after the worker, but the workers are a casualty when they have lost their jobs," Jayapal said.

Meanwhile, ICE officials were heartened by some of the response they received to the raid, according to the e-mails obtained by the AP.

Seattle-based Special Agent in Charge Leigh Winchell forwarded an e-mail to his staff from Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, a vocal immigration enforcement advocate, who said Napolitano's call for a review was "backwards."

"I cannot control the politics that take place with these types of situations, but I can remind you that you are great servants of this country and this agency," Winchell wrote to his troops.

Days after the raid, Winchell told his office to convey that ICE is going after the employer, not the workers, according to the e-mails.

The case against Yamato concluded in September with a $100,000 fine being leveled. Members of the immigrant family that owns the company issued a public apology. Yamoto's owners fled Uganda four decades ago when dictator Idi Amin's regime drove out the country's entrepreneurial Indian minority.

Messages left with Yamato management for this story were not returned.

With the case wrapped up, notices of court appearances for the workers began to appear. ICE agents had warned the workers of it.

Gonzalez, who is from Mexico, had entered the country in 1998 at the age of 19, first living in Arizona, where he started his family. He came to Washington seeking a better job, becoming a welder at Yamato, making $10 an hour. For now, a local lawyer is helping him but he knows he could face deportation.

"If I have to go to my country, I have to go to my country," Gonzalez said. "...it'll be a challenge for (my family)."

At Yamato, under a basket of employment applications, a poster now warns that Yamato is a company that uses E-verify — the federal program that checks a worker's eligibility to work in the United States.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Union election ordered at Foxwoods casino

By Stephen Singer
Hartford, Connecticut (AP) 11-07

The National Labor Relations Board during late October ordered a union election at Foxwoods Resort Casino, which has been targeted by the United Auto Workers in a drive to organize 3,000 dealers.

The decision could set the stage for one of the first unions at a tribal casino. Foxwoods, one of the largest casinos in the world, has 340,000 square feet of gambling space in a 4.7 million-square foot complex.

Peter Hoffman, regional director of the NLRB’s regional office in Hartford, rejected the argument by Foxwoods owners, the Mashantucket Pequot tribe, that the tribe’s employment law has jurisdiction in the matter.
“In reaching this conclusion, I have fully considered but find no merit to the employer’s claim that its ‘inherent authority’ to regulate employment and labor relations on its tribal lands precludes” the NLRB’s jurisdiction in this matter, Hoffman said.

Hoffman also said he found “particularly unpersuasive” a claim by the Mashantuckets that a strike against the casino would severely disrupt the tribe’s ability to provide essential services to its members.

A federal appeals court ruled earlier this year that Indian casinos are bound by the NLRB, and Hoffman cited that ruling in his decision.

The Mashantuckets said in a statement that the NLRB does not have jurisdiction “as the tribe is the governing body which has the inherent authority to regulate employment on its reservation and it has historically done so.”

Spokesman Bruce MacDonald said the issue is not about a worker’s right to organize.

“The issue is one of respecting the tribe as a government,” he said.

Foxwoods has 14 days to file a request with the NLRB in Washington for a review. MacDonald said tribal officials have not yet decided whether to appeal.

Bob Madore, director of UAW Region 9A, said the decision is a victory for Foxwoods employees.

“We were confident we would win this case,” he said. “It’s simple: Regardless of where you work, you have a right to form your own union. That’s the law, and that’s why the NLRB ruled in favor of an election.”

UAW officials during September filed for the election, saying it won a “supermajority” of the 3,000 dealers who signed cards backing a union drive. At least 30 percent of employees of a proposed bargaining unit must sign cards to force a vote, which is supervised by the NLRB.

A date for an election has not been set.

Foxwoods opposed the union’s petition to the NLRB for an election, prompting a hearing and the ruling that was issued.

Madore said UAW Region 9A, which represents university employees, legal aid workers and others in New England, New York City and Puerto Rico, decided to start its union campaign at Foxwoods with the 3,000 dealers. About 11,500 people work at a variety of jobs at Foxwoods, which opened in 1992.

“You walk before you can run,” he said.

Jacqueline Little, a poker dealer at Foxwoods for 15 years, said she was ecstatic at the news of the NLRB decision.

Little, of Coventry, R.I., said health insurance is inadequate and annual pay raises do not keep up with inflation. She even criticized cigarette smoke in the casino, which is exempt from Connecticut’s no-smoking laws.

Foxwoods and the nearby Mohegan Sun have been in the sights of unions for years. In 1999, the president of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union declared Indian-operated casinos the new frontier for union organizing.

Both casinos have said unions are unnecessary because workers are paid well and receive good benefits. Tribal sovereignty also precluded unions, the Indian tribes said.

That argument was struck a major blow with the federal court ruling earlier this year.

Little said she believes the NLRB decision will pave the way for an ultimate union victory.

“It’s inevitable. We’re going to have a union at Foxwoods,” she said.

On the Net:
www.foxwoods.com 

www.uaw.org 

www.nlrb.gov

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