Minnesota workers get the old "bait and swich" from the Dumb Donkeys and their coalition partners.

This Democratic Party front group set up by the AFL-CIO, Working America, sent out this letter (see below).

Please read it very closely.

In my opinion there is something very demented and perverse about this letter.

These Dumb Donkeys are living for a week on the current Federal Minimum wage of $7.25 instead of trying to live on the $9.50 an hour they are proposing.

This is very typical of the way these Democrats operate.

Why wouldn't they try living on their pathetic miserly proposed poverty wage of $9.50 an hour? Wouldn't this be the real test since EVERYONE already knows no one can live on $7.25?

Quite frankly, no one can even live on $15.00 an hour without maxing out a few credit cards until they have to declare bankruptcy.

We have gone from hearing these politicians and their front groups talking about "Elect us if you want the Minimum Wage to be a living wage" to "American needs a raise" to "$9.50 will help" to what the Democrats in the Minnesota State Senate propose instead of $9.50--- "$7.75 is better than $7.25."

These dishonest morons know full well their Democratic counterparts in the Minnesota State Senate are proposing to reach a "compromise" at $7.75--- and furthermore, they are well aware that Mark Dayton has met with the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce (more commonly referred to as the "Minnesota DFL Business Caucus because Democrats don't like people to know they work behind closed doors with the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce to give working people the shaft). Dayton and this "DFL Business Caucus" have agreed the Minimum Wage should not be raised over $8.00 an hour.

Of course this "liberal" billionaire Governor Dayton whose inherited wealth was, and is, being derived almost exclusively from the super-exploitation of Minimum Wage workers who are more often then not subjected to the double-whammy of not just poverty wages but wage theft.

Come on, really; did these Minnesota State legislators have "to spread the word about how hard it really is to live on $7.25 an hour?"

Don't they really have to "prove" that a human being can live on their proposed $9.50 an hour?

Slick as shit the way they pulled off this bait (a living wage) with this switch (another poverty wage). Saying one thing to get votes; doing another thing to keep the corporate bribes coming.

Bait and switch is illegal in the retail world; not in the world of politics.

Anyways, read this letter for yourself...



Alan,

We've learned a lot this past week.

Because of our participants across the state, we've helped to spread the word about how hard it really is to live on $7.25 an hour.

We walked through some of the biggest hurdles minimum wage earners have to face, and had real conversations with workers across Minnesota about why a raise is important to them.

We've gotten close, and we need you to act now. Will you contact your state lawmakers now?

Alan, no one should have to skip a meal just to afford bus fare to work. Raising the wage to $9.50 is a start that will help thousands of Minnesota workers.

Can you do one final thing and make sure HR 92 passes the Senate?

It's been a great week, so thank you for participating. For taking action, following along online and engaging with the Challenge in all the ways that you did.

We can do this.

Thanks for all that you do,

Bree Halverson
State Director, Working Minnesota

P.S. Check out all of the photos and blog posts from the week.

Minnesota state employees have their standard of living slashed.

Rank-and-file AFSCME workers in Minnesota say: We don't want Eliot Seide and his toothless, management-loving paper union

Minnesota's billionaire "liberal" "pro-labor" governor, Mark Dayton, has ordered working hours for thousands of state employees reduced by up to 20% while bringing in lower-paid new hires to do the jobs of the members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees with no objections from the District Director, Eliot Seide, or his side-kick, Eric Lehto. Why no opposition from Shar Knutson, President of the Minnesota AFL-CIO or her side-kick Mark Froemke.

What is going on here? State employees are losing 20% of their pay--- their standard of living slashed--- and these union "leaders" sit in silence doing nothing?

No wonder this leaflet is being distributed by a rank-and-file organization made up of AFSCME members who are pissed off:

We don't want Eliot Seide and his toothless, management-loving paper union

Our Dues - Our Union.

OUR AFSCME

Our rights.

Our Livelihoods.

Building a rank and file caucus for a democratic, fighting, militant, united union.

Brothers and Sisters,

With every new contract we have had our rights and our livelihoods decimated. Only a paper union with leaders taking our dues while doing nothing to represent us would have allowed this to happen.

This isn't Eliot Seide's union. This is our union. Let Eliot Seide go into the business world to build his fortune instead of building his fortune on our backs, off our unresolved grievances and problems.

Eliot Seide negotiated a concession contract with a Democratic governor.

The wage increases are far off-set with the rising prices we pay for groceries, home mortgages and rents, home and car insurance, gas, electricity, home heating fuels, child care and college tuition for our children. Our co-pays for healthcare have increased. This is going backwards, not forwards.

Our pensions are at risk.

We get no support or help from union leaders as unfair and unpaid disciplinary suspensions mount. Grievances have become a hassle. Arbitration has become too costly. What do our dues pay for?

One by one we are being picked off and fired as we gain seniority with increased pay levels.

Our union has shamefully endorsed a Minimum Wage for other workers based on what the Chamber of Commerce wants instead of the living wage morality, human decency, justice and solidarity requires.

We have a union leadership covering its betrayals with glowing hypocritical statements of admiration to real leaders like Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela as a cover for refusing to stand and fight the injustices of the present.

We ask you to build a caucus of OUR AFSCME in your AFSCME local and in your workplace. Together we can get our AFSCME back on course. This is OUR union. OUR dues.

We need an active and involved membership. We need to understand self-serving power in our union and the power of management concede nothing without struggle. Our union was built in struggle. Our union will survive in struggle fighting for our rights, for safe workplaces and for our livelihoods.

Forward together. Together In Struggle. Together in Solidarity. OUR AFSCME the voice of the rank-and-file

Labor, "Cost-of-Living" and "Standard-of-Living"

We see, in the article below, what happens when "cost-of-living" is not introduced into this discussion about the Minimum Wage.

Each and everyone of us should be responding to every single article we come across about linking the Minimum Wage to cost-of-living.

I would love to respond to this particular article but the Star Tribune editorial board has banned my letters from being published in their newspaper even though their editors have waged vicious red-baiting campaigns against me.

So much for “democracy” and the much ballyhooed “free press” these editors and “journalists” from the Star Tribune like to boast about.

On the one hand the Star Tribune refuses to allow a discussion about the relationship between wages and cost-of-living; while on the other hand its editors and journalists drum into people's heads that an increase in the Minimum Wage will cause a loss of jobs and then poll results reflect what people have been fed day in and day out, every single day of the year and then these poll results are brought forward to “prove” people want an increase in the Minimum Wage as long as it isn't too much. How convenient that this big-business calling itself the Minneapolis Star Tribune would be able to come up with poll results that its fellow poverty-wage loving big-business partners with the advertising dollars will appreciate. 

This article, like most articles on the Minimum Wage, can be broken down into at least 4 issues relating to the Minimum Wage that need to be responded to.

One thing we might consider doing is setting up a committee to respond to all these articles--- everyone would forward every article on the Minimum Wage they come across to one person, then that person would ask each of four people or so to respond to a different section of the article with a "letter to the editor" and even a longer op-ed piece. This might be a project we propose at out Uniting People National Conference Call about the Minimum Wage on April 27?

Democratic and Republican hacks are busy writing letters from their business perspectives on the Minimum Wage and then they ask people to sign the letters and send them in. The Star Tribune then calls to “verify” that these people sending the letters actually wrote them by asking, “Is this your original writing and no one else's?” Of course, the signer of the letter always dishonestly responds, “Yes; this letter is my original letter.”

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has never entertained the idea that there is this inseparable relationship between wages and “cost-of-living.” This is a taboo topic for the Minneapolis Star Tribune--- as anyone can see from this article written by one very reactionary Rachel E. Stassen-Berger who the editorial board of the Minneapolis Star Tribune don't like to mention that she is the granddaughter of the racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Communist, anti-labor, Nazi-loving and thoroughly corrupt lying former Minnesota Republican Governor Harold Stassen and president wan-a-be.

One thing I am wondering about is why some people seem to want to evade the Minimum Wage by saying things like "we need a living wage not a Minimum Wage."

There doesn't seem to be an understanding that the Minimum Wage is meant to protect workers by providing workers with a real living wage; not give employers a large body of cheap labor that is then used not only from which super-profits are derived but is used to drive all wages down.

In my opinion, we should be united in calling for the Minimum Wage to be a real living wage.


Doing otherwise lets these politicians off the hook. After all, this is an issue specifically about the Minimum Wage so why would we want to try to turn it into an issue about a “Living Wage Act” or anything else someone might choose to call it?

This issue about the Minimum Wage is the most important “kitchen table issue” and we, as leftists, should be concerned we are a catalyst for united action on this issue.

Anyone else have thoughts about this?

I would point out, that not once, has the Minneapolis Star Tribune published an article about the hideous Indian Gaming Industry which was created by these worthless Democrats for a bunch of extremely wealthy racist white mobsters like Angelo Medure, the Fertitta family and Malnik who force 44,000 Minnesotans to work in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws while Indian Nations are mired in the perpetual poverty causing debt from which wealthy investors like the Rockefeller's, Koch's, Mellon's and the teacher union pension fund managers reap huge profits. 

And anyone can read the Minneapolis Star Tribune, listen to Minnesota Public Radio stations or even the foundation-funded "community radio" stations to understand why this mainstream big-business corporate media is silent on this issue involving the plight of casino workers in the same way the Minneapolis Star Tribune is so loathe to publish just one single article explaining the relationship between wages and "cost-of-living" which determines the "standard-of-living" for working people. 

Oh, yes; before I forget... did you ever notice the millions upon millions of advertising dollars the Minneapolis Star Tribune receives from this hideous Indian Gaming Industry where these wealthy racist white mobsters own every single slot machine, table game and reap all the profits from the hotels/motels, restaurants/bars and how this great "free" media remains just as silent as these mobsters reap further huge profits from the casino "gift shops" from all this crap manufactured in sweatshops in Bangladesh, Taiwan, India, Mexico and the Philippines that is illegally sold as "Authentic Native American Crafts" completely in violation of federal laws? 

And Minnesota State legislators along with all our great "progressive" members of Congress all go along to get along--- a get massive campaign contributions from the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association which is run by another extremely wealthy racist white crook, John McCarthy--- who, by the way, just happens to be the new owner of Tony Doom Enterprises which sells all the campaign paraphernalia from yard signs to pens and pencils and those refrigerator magnets to the very politicians he dishes out the funds from the Indian Gaming Industry in the form of campaign contributions.

And let's not leave out this illustrious wife-beating prick who is so loved by the Editorial Board of the Minneapolis Star Tribune--- Kevin Leecy. How much does Kevin Leecy haul in from the Indian Gaming Industry as a direct result of his own tribal members living in such disgraceful poverty because they are paid poverty wages working in the Fortune Bay Casino?

Let's just sweep all these injustices under the rug right along with any discussion about the Minimum Wage and "cost-of-living" as these bastards tell us that there is this so-called "median income" of around $50,000.00 that is supposed to describe the "standard-of-living" of Minnesotans.

You know--- Rachel E. Stassen-Berger inherited more than her looks from her grandfather, Harold Stassen; she learned to lie just like him.  

Between the right-wing bigot Jane Friedman and Rachel E. Stassen-Berger, the Minneapolis Star Tribune has a couple real "prize" journalists writing about the plight of working people.

By the way... have you noticed Rachel E. Stassen-Berger and Jane Friedman have never asked how most Minnesota working class families will ever be able to pay this winter's heating bills? "Cost-of-living."


Don't misunderstand me. Minnesota does have a handful of very good state legislators. A worker who has had all but three fingers chopped off in an industrial accident working at MinnTac can count them all on his one hand.

Alan L. Maki

http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/246078891.html?page=all&prepage=1&c=y#continue

Minnesota Poll: Minimum wage hike is popular, but $9.50 target isn’t

• Article by: RACHEL E. STASSEN-BERGER , Star Tribune 
• Updated: February 19, 2014 - 5:39 AM

Nearly 80 percent in poll say increase minimum wage.

Minnesotans overwhelmingly believe it is time to lift the state’s minimum wage, but fewer than half are ready to raise it to the level proposed by some DFLers, according to a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll.

The poll found that 42 percent of Minnesotans say it’s time to increase the state’s minimum wage to $9.50 an hour — a figure proposed by House leaders and supported by Gov. Mark Dayton. Another 37 percent say it should go above the current minimum of $6.15 but stay below $9.50.

Only 16 percent of Minnesotans say the minimum wage should stay where it is. At $6.15 an hour, the state minimum is below the federal standard and one of the lowest in the nation.

The poll found support for raising the wage floor across all groups: Whether men or women, Democrats or Republicans, young or old, urban or rural, Minnesotans say $6.15 is not enough.

“I think it should be more. It should be minimum of $10. Minimum,” said Jeff Richard, 51, a temporary worker in Lakeville. “I don’t know how someone working for less would possibly live.”

The poll results will give advocates of raising pay a boost as they try to change the wage floor again this year.

Last year, amid division among Democrats over how high to go, the DFL-controlled Capitol left the minimum wage unchanged.

Backers have vowed not to let that happen again. Dayton and House DFL leaders, along with many advocates, have settled on $9.50 by 2015. Supporters have spent months pushing legislators to support the increase.

They also plan a massive rally to welcome the Legislature back to the Capitol when it reconvenes next Tuesday.

“This clearly indicates that a broad swath of Minnesotans believe that this is the way to go,” said Brian Rusche, co-chair of a group campaigning for a $9.50-an-hour minimum wage.

The poll surveyed 800 Minnesota adults between Feb. 10 and Feb. 12 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Three-fourths of respondents were reached through a land line, one-fourth by cellphone.

The sample included 39 percent Democrats, 30 percent Republicans and 26 percent of Minnesotans who said they were independent or identify with another party.

Effect on job growth debated

Some Minnesotans — including those who support an increase — say they harbor concerns that a higher wage could come at the price of lower job growth.

According to the poll, 31 percent of Minnesotans believe there will be a significant loss of jobs if the minimum wage is raised to $9.50. Meanwhile, 39 percent said a jump to $9.50 would cause “few or no minimum wage jobs” to be lost.

“I think $9.50 would be awfully hard on a lot of small-business owners,” said Cindy Manthei, a 55-year-old who works in a meat market. The Republican from Loretto said she wants the wage floor to go up, but only a little.

Roger Golby, a DFL activist from Annandale, said he too fears the effect of a sudden jump in wages.

“I think it should be a gradual increase and not immediate … to allow companies to slide into it,” said Golby, 64. Otherwise, he said, “There may be some layoffs.”

Bruce Nustad, president of the Minnesota Retailers Association, said if the minimum wage jumped suddenly, his members would be forced to reduce jobs.

He said the fact that 37 percent of those polled support increasing the wage to something below $9.50 an hour is “somewhat encouraging.”

“I think we all know that level is going to go up,” Nustad said. He would like legislators to ask: “What’s the reasonable level that’s not overly dramatic?”

No matter what final dollar amount they land on, lawmakers will have to settle on a phase-in time for the new wage, determine which businesses would have to pay it and whether any will be exempt.

In Minnesota, about 114,000 workers were paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 or less in 2013. According to the state Department of Employment and Economic Development, more than 460,000 Minnesotans, or about 16 percent of all workers, were paid less than $9.50 an hour in 2012.

Income is a big divide

The poll found that higher-income Minnesotans were least likely to support a minimum-wage increase.

Nearly half of those earning more than $75,000 annually said the minimum wage should remain $6.15 an hour, where it has been since 2005. Most employers pay the federal minimum, although some employers are allowed to pay the lower state minimum.

According to the poll, Democrats were most comfortable with a significant increase — 64 percent said the rate should be increased to $9.50 and another 27 percent said it should be increased, but by less. Nearly all independents — 85 percent — favored an increase. So did Republicans, but by a smaller share. About 58 percent said boost wages, though only 14 percent said as high as $9.50. Another 36 percent of Republicans said keep the minimum unchanged.

“I don’t see that government has any business telling private business how much to pay their people,” said Richard Larcher, 72, of Dora Lake. “That’s just silly, and it will cost jobs.”

Rachel E. Stassen-Berger Twitter: @RachelSB

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Posted By Alan Maki to thoughts from podunk at 2/24/2014 09:05:00 PM

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Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,

Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

 

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell: 651-587-5541

Primary E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

E-mail: alan.maki1951mn@gmail.com

Blog: http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/