I've been following the DC council race lately primarily due to the ubber anti-worker Patrick Mara ousting the moderate Carol Schwartz. But now it's time for the top 2 candidates in the race to actually win DC council seats and the options are young, talented and pro-union Mark Long or anti-union check-bouncing Michael Brown. From the DC Union City news

LABOR IN THE NEWS: DC Unions Throw Support Behind DC City Council Candidate Michael Brown: Labor unions joined DC City Council At-Large candidate Michael Brown outside his headquarters last week to throw their support behind his campaign, reported Nikita Stewart on the Washington Post website Thursday. Representatives from the SEIU MD/DC State Council, SEIU Local 722, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, AFSCME locals and the Washington DC Building and Trades Council turned out for the event, Stewart reported. The Metro Council has endorsed DC Councilmember Kwame Brown for the first At-Large seat but has taken no position on the second seat. Other Metro Council endorsements include: DC City Council: Jack Evans (Ward 2), Muriel Bowser (Ward 4), Yvette Alexander (Ward 7) and Marion Barry (Ward 8); DC Congressional Delegate: Eleanor Holmes Norton; Shadow Senator: Paul Strauss.

AFSCME, Washington DC Building and Trades Council, Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, and SEIU local 722, what the fuck are you thinking? Read this guys lit which contains no union bug. It's like reading something straight out of the DC Chamber of Commerce.

Brown is no friend to working men and women of the district much less those represented by local trade unions. A vote for Brown and endorsement of him is a slap in the face of every hard working man and women in this city and it's shameful that you're taking this low road in endorsing someone who wants to increase the number of DC residents who get construction jobs for major projects but mentions nothing about partnering with local union apprenticeship programs to actually train these men and women for jobs in the trades.

Right now, Uniongal is leaning toward endorsing Mark Long. So far, he's the only one out there (besides Schwartz) with a union bug on his lit and posters. Now, we just need to take a much more focused review of what he hopes to accomplish in Council and make a final endorsement this weekend. Anyone have any feelings one way or another on this issue?

UPDATE

The new signs up for Mr. Brown have a union bug. I will update this when I've received or seen his new materials.

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In the recent past, Mayor of DC, Adrian Fenty has been all too willing to throw workers under the bus in his obsessed mantra of "Accountability". But for once, Adrian isn't calling for the head (yet) of any case workers in this horrific case of abuse and death from the Washington Post:

Early Saturday, Calvert authorities made a gruesome discovery: the bodies of two children encased in ice in a freezer in the home of Renee D. Bowman, 43. Bowman has been receiving a monthly government subsidy of $2,400 to care for her three adopted children: the 7-year-old girl on the street and two others who are now officially missing.

"You think you've seen it all," Sheriff Mike Evans said yesterday in announcing the discovery, "but you haven't."

With Bowman in jail, charged with child abuse, and investigators working to piece together what happened, the case again shined a spotlight on the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, which recommended Bowman to a D.C. Superior Court judge as a suitable adoptive parent in 2001 and 2004. The girls had been wards of the D.C. government.

Adrian came out to say that there will be an invesigation, but, uncharacteristically, he did not mention firing, yet.

What I've noticed about Mayor Fenty is his willingness to hold workers accountable for things that they may not have the ability to control. In the recent past, The Department of Child and Family Services has been inundated with cases yet they have not been inundated with new social workers nor have they been able to reduce the overwhelming case load most social workers now carry in the District. The case load issue falls directly in Fenty's lap. It is his poor choices in terms of the all encompassing "accountability" mantra that has caused the increase in case load and his firings which have also caused a decrease in staffing. And all of this leads to poor morale.

A few months back I had a chance to speak to a middle manager within family services and she noted that she'd read my posts on these issues (available here), and that yeah, the case load is more than excessive and yep, it sucks coming into the job never knowing if you'll have your job the next day or if you've missed one child too many who needed your help. She noted that as much as all of this sucked, that the worst part was knowing that she didn't become a social worker for money. She did it because she wanted to make a difference in the lives of families. She wanted to protect children and help moms and dads find their way. But she no longer felt that she could do this and was really just waiting to leave.

Besides being an interesting discussion about staffing, cases and families, it was more interesting to hear a perspective of "All I want to do is help, but I no longer can in my current job." There was frustration at missing kids and parents who'd fallen through the cracks. There was this sound in her voice that made me think she'd given up. This is what is saddest of all. Someone who'd only went to school to get a degree so she could help families was no so unhappy that she really just didn't seem to think anything could be done any longer.

See, this is one aspect of the Adrianisms that I have been writing about, the idea that accountability should be about real accountability. And accountability doesn't start with overworked, over stretched and stressed out workers, it begins at the highest levels first. It begins with Adrian Fenty.

I'm hopeful that Council will hold hearings (if they haven't already) on the staffing issues within all of DC government. Children shouldn't suffer the way these three children have suffered. It's time for DC City Council to address service staffing and they need to do it now before any more children die.

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Loose Lips in the Washington City Paper sure is suggesting just that in the race of Carol Schwartz and Patrick Mara:

Patrick Mara is doing a great job of challenging At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz in September’s Republican primary. The first-timer, for starters, has nearly matched Schwartz’s $100,000-plus campaign war chest.

And Mara won’t have to spend a dime of it on negative campaigning—the PACs have it covered.

For one, there’s the Citizens for Empowerment political action committee, the anti-union outfit funded largely by Miller & Long construction and electrical contractor MC Dean. Not only did the PAC donate to Mara’s campaign, but mail has started showing up in Republican mailboxes bearing the “Paid for by Citizens for Empowerment PAC” label.

One such mailer obtained by LL shows a gentleman holding an empty pocket out of his pants alongside a smaller picture of Schwartz, under the headline tax-and-spender: raising our taxes, wasting taxpayer dollars and supporting labor unions.

Then there’s the Nation’s Capital Committee for Good Government, which has yet to spend a significant dime on the race, aside from funding a Web site that declares the group’s “initial goal is to help elect Patrick Mara At-Large Councilmember.”

Rather than the $1,000 limit placed on campaign donations, PACs can accept contributions of up to $5,000 per donor. The Nation’s Capital Committee has taken two such maximum donations, both with connections to the downtown parking industry.

One came from Leonard “Bud” Doggett, the owner of Doggett Enterprises Inc., and formidable political fundraiser who died last week at age 87. The other is from Bear Saint Properties, a Georgetown-based real-estate investment firm headed up by Russell C. Lindner, who is also the top executive for Colonial Parking. Lindner is also active in the Federal City Council and Greater Washington Board of Trade.

Mara says he’s aware of the mailer and the Web site, but declined to comment on the propriety thereof. “I can’t control what others are doing,” he says. “I’m trying to focus on the campaign.”

If Mara wins, does this mean I have to campaign for Michael Brown who's running as an indy? To keep Mara out, I'd have to say, all unionists should.

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Recently, in DC, Republican incumbent Carol Schwartz has come under fire for her advocacy of and vote for the paid sick leave bill that made its way through Council. Although the bill was extraordinarily weak and pathetic, it’s still a step in the right direction. Her opponent in the Republican primary has been out bashing her for the endorsements she’s received from labor, while he’s also been intimating that Republicans and unions don’t mix (um, does he remember the 80’s and the unfortunate Teamsters’ endorsements? Or IAFF’s endorsement of DeWine in Ohio over Sherrod Brown?), clearly, he’s an idiot who can raise money and thereby threaten an entrenched Republican (I’m yawning here), good for him, even if he's an idiot.

Now, it appears that this little race, and more specifically the issue of paid sick leave, has some very interesting national implications that the AP (I know, the dreaded AP which seems to be cleaning up their act) actually reported today (not the local race, the implication of it on the nation):

Some 46 million U.S. workers lack paid sick days, but lawmakers in 12 states — including California, Connecticut, Minnesota and West Virginia — have proposed legislation in the past year that would require businesses to provide them.

Snip

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 43 percent of the private industry labor force worked in 2007 without paid sick time, a group primarily made up of low-paid employees at small businesses.

That means that the waitresses at your table, the cooks in your kitchens and the school bus drivers (who aren’t yet unionized through the Teamsters' efforts) are helping you to a nice heaping serving of whatever they are carrying from viruses to bacteria. They’re treating you to more and more sickness. I know, it’s sweet, isn’t it?

But fear not, if you live in DC, and don’t work in the food industry or health care industry, are on the job for at least a year, you might be able to qualify for prorated sick days depending on how many hours you work up to a maximum number of days. I know complicated, I prefer how San Francisco did it:

Paid sick days are already law in Washington, D.C., where employees earn days off based on the number of hours worked and the size of the business, and in San Francisco, which requires one hour sick leave for every 30 hours worked.

The Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which represents 900 restaurants, did not endorse or oppose the ballot measure that enacted the local ordinance, but won several changes, such as allowing employers to require a worker give "reasonable notice" when calling in sick, said Kevin Westlye, executive director. The law has been successful, he said.

"There's been some concern that employees are abusing the ordinance. There's been a little bit of that, but not as widespread as people thought at the beginning," Westlye said.

Interesting, no abuse and the association didn't bother to step into it, sweet.

But what you should pay attention to is who currently supports such measures on the national level, because if we’re fortunate enough to elect him President:

Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, supports the legislation.

I suppose the real thing to think about here is why vote for anyone other than Obama? But in DC... you have a choice as a Republican in the primary on September 9th, supporting an incumbent concerned with some citizen’s services and a guy who seems to think just like John McCain. Hmm, which should DC voters chose? Hmm, they both kind of suck.

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Live in DC and want to keep Free Speech?

Well, you have your chance today.

The Noise bill is up for a vote on Tuesday. The Noise bill is primarily aimed at the H street corridor where a guy “preaching” on a soap box with an amplifier basically tells everyone that they’re sinners and they’re all going to hell. While visiting a friend, I overheard it. He’s very annoying, however, he’s in one small part of the city. And this noise ordinance would affect all of us, including the many times that amplifiers are used for protests from union protests to demonstrations on behalf of genocide victims like those in Darfur or when protestors come here to tell the World Bank that their policies suck…I think you get the picture here.

DCLabor is supporting a proposed amendment to the measure and is requesting that DC residents put pressure on a couple of key council members. Unfortunately, as much as I like both of them, they aren’t good on issues relating to workers rights as evidenced in their Sick leave votes earlier this year. This is an opportunity for both of them to end up on the right side of the issue.

So, if you’re a DC resident (hell, if you aren’t still do it), take a minute and let these council members know how you feel about stripping all of us of our right to free speech.

Councilmembers Kwame Brown and Yvette Alexander voted for the legislation even though they had voiced their support for a compromise amendment – supported by labor and civil liberties groups – prior to the vote. The compromise amendment – sponsored by Jack Evans – would protect free speech and guarantee quiet neighborhoods.

Send Councilmembers Brown and Alexander the letter below to tell them to stick to their initial commitment to support free speech and reintroduce and vote for the compromise amendment at the second vote on the bill this Tuesday.

You can send them your own note by following the link or copying it into your browser.

http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/save_free_speech/8bkdx6i4a77db5jd?

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