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Pence issues a thinly veiled shutdown threat to Democrats President Donald Trump did not mention the 35-day shutdown that he began last December in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, preferring instead to wax poetic about unity and cooperation. The next morning, however, Vice President Mike Pence suggested Trump would welcome another shutdown unless Democrats give in to the White House’s demands. In an appearance on CBS News Wednesday morning, Pence repeated White House talking points about criminal gangs and “narcotics” that are allegedly streaming across the border. In reality, undocumented immigrants are less than half as likely to commit a crime in the United States as native-born Americans. And, while illegal drugs do sometimes cross America’s southern border, Trump’s proposed solution — a border wall — would not address this problem. As ThinkProgress previously reported, “cocaine seizures on U.S. borders . . . regularly measure in tons, making it impractical to have individual migrants ferry it across.” For this reason, “dealers prefer to smuggle drugs into the country via legal ports of entry, which allow them to bring in high-value substances that are more easily hidden.” Nevertheless, Pence used his appearance on CBS to issue a thinly veiled threat to Democrats — give Trump what he wants, or federal workers and their families will pay the price. Trump “has laid out a plan,” Pence said, which includes “a steel barrier,” “additional detection technology,” and more border guards. “All of that is exactly what the American people want us to do,” Pence falsely claimed, before delivering his threat. — Feb 7
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What the Government Shutdown Told Us About Worker Power Do we have your attention now, Leader McConnell?” Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, posedthis question after shutdown-related staffing shortages at the Federal Aviation Administration all but halted air traffic in the Northeast. The longest-running federal government shutdown came to an end just hours later, fittingly brought to an end by government workers, the people most impacted by the ordeal. Nelson made waves among the labor community at an AFL-CIO awards ceremony earlier in January when she called for a general strike in support of furloughed workers. “Federal sector unions have their hands full caring for the 800,000 federal workers who are at the tip of the spear,” Nelson said. “Some would say the answer is for them to walk off the job. I say, what are you willing to do?” The solidarity from flight attendants was all the more remarkable given that they’re private sector employees. Though they might have received their paychecks throughout the shutdown, Nelson pointed out that they depended on the public sector workers that make up the backbone of aviation safety. “Our country doesn’t run without the federal workers who make it run,” Nelson told Slate, “and there’s no industry where that’s more evident than the airline industry, where our private airlines work in tandem with the federal agencies.” As labor historian Joseph McCartin wrote in the American Prospect, the ghosts of 1980s labor history haunted federal workers throughout the shutdown. McCartin literally wrote the book on a devastating moment for the American labor movement — the air traffic controller strike of 1981, when the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization defied a federal strike ban, only to see its members summarily fired by President Ronald Reagan. Surely it’s no accident that the Trump administration admitted Reagan into the Labor Department’s hall of fame. — Feb 7
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The State of the Union Is... From the AFL-CIO Over the past two years, the Trump administration has overseen a wide-ranging and deeply harmful assault on the rights, dignities and livelihoods of working people. Here are just a few of the president’s worst anti-worker actions:
- Denied a paycheck to 40% of the federal work force through the longest government shutdown in history.
- Jammed through massive corporate tax cuts on the backs of working people, encouraging further outsourcing and automation.
- Derailed the Department of Labor’s overtime rule, blocking millions of workers from receiving a pay raise.
- Proposed widespread cuts to health care, targeting critical funding for Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the health coverage of millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions.
- Undermined the new conflict of interest rule, potentially costing working people more than one-quarter of our retirement savings.
- Stacked the National Labor Relations Board with union-busting corporate lawyers.
- Made workplaces more dangerous by rolling back important federal safety regulations.
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OSHA’s Mugno: Delayed Again If the nomination of Scott Mugno to head OSHA was an airplane flight, the endless delays would have driven you to give up air travel by now. As we last reported, Mugno had been re-re-nominated to the post of Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA. Mugno was originally nominated by Trump in October 2017, testified before Congress on December 5, 2017 and was approved by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee on December 13, 2017. But because his nomination didn’t come to a vote before the end of that year, the White House was forced to renominate him on January 16, 2018 and he was again approved by the HELP Committee shortly thereafter. But yet again, the full Senate did not vote on his nomination due issues not related to his qualifications, forcing him to be re-re-nominated on January 16, 2019. The HELP Committee was scheduled to re-re-approve him (along with a number of other Department of Labor nominees) in a mark-up scheduled for tomorrow, but that session was inexplicably postponed to a date yet-to-be-determined. No word yet about why the mark-up was postponed. Just a scheduling issue? Time needed to go back and look at old yearbooks? Who knows? It’s Bad All Over But Mugno should not feel alone. The Washington Post reports today that even Republican Senators are growing concerned about the unprecedented number of vacancies still existing: “The Partnership for Public Service, which has tracked nominations as far back as 30 years, estimates that only 54 percent of Trump’s civilian executive-branch nominations have been confirmed, compared with 77 percent under President Barack Obama at the same point in his administration.” And the Labor Department is one of the worst: “Only 41 percent of the Interior and Justice departments’ Senate-confirmed posts are filled, and just 43 percent of such positions have been filled at the Labor Department.” — Feb 6
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Which Was AAM’s Favorite Super Bowl Ad? Big news outta Atlanta: They had a Super Bowl and the New England Patriots won, again. Maybe you tuned in for the defensive gamesmanship, but come on: I know you didn’t. You weren’t at that Super Bowl party to watch Bill Belichick raise another trophy. You were there for the food … … and the commercials. That’s what I tuned in for, at least. But not one of those weird, creepy ones, like that ad from Turbo Tax. I really focused in on this one from Kia. — Feb 6