UPDATE: H. 97 passes House.
I’ve seen updates from inside the State House that H. 97 has passed the House. Don’t know any details, so this can stand until Julie or another FPer can fill us in.
Jack
I’ll keep this short:
There’s a bill up for a vote in the House right now, H.97, which would allow child care providers in Vermont the right to form a union. This doesn’t force them to form a union, put them in a union or otherwise make them do anything they don’t wish to do. It just gives them the option to choose to do so, if they so desire.
So I have an extremely simple question:
why hasn’t this passed yet?
It’s not something that should be even remotely controversial. It’s simple, obvious, and clear: while other states are attempting to dismantle collective bargaining, why isn’t Vermont jumping at the chance to show how different we are?
To be clear: I expect Republicans to vote against this. But in a state with Republicans in a fairly extreme minority, why is this not something that just breezed through the House and Senate without a notice? Between Progressives and Democrats, this should have already passed the Senate. As it stands, it’s ready for a vote in the House this week, but won’t even make it to the Senate until next session.
Have Republicans successfully shifted the debate to the point where we’re suddenly scared of the right to form a union? Are child care providers somehow threatening to us? Do legislators picture small children luring people into a back alley where women wait to whack them in the knees with roller pins if they don’t pay protection money?
I even had one legislator e-mail me about this who complained that someone affiliated with the union drive was pissing people off, which is why it became less likely to pass. Seriously? Is that what we’re dealing with? Egos so fragile that they are incapable of supporting child care providers because they think someone was mean to them?
This is absurd. I get that out of state groups are spending a considerable amount of money to fight this thing, but when have we, as a state, ever cared what out of state groups are doing or let them influence our policy decisions?
This should be a no-brainer. But clearly, even that’s too much for some.
Do you have a moment to call and ask?
It is difficult to identify this movement as “a right to form a union.” This is much more a movement designed to allow a variety of child care providers to negoitate collectively with the state the economic issues related to state subsidies. These providers are not employees of the state, thus they will not be negotiating with their employer. Consequently this is not a union movement, but rather a collective organization movement. Maybe the movement would be more acceptable to some if it was called what it is?
…we were back in the days of Eugene Debs and the Robber Barons. IT’S F”N’ 2011, fer Chrissake! Of course it’s a no brainer. OF COURSE, it’s their right–and our right too as a people who have been through all this before. What I guess we need to see in 2012 is a radical candidate stumping the country on The Red Express (see Debs).
If this shit keeps up, we’ll be going back to the right of the cafe owner to have ‘segregated’ sections and bathrooms for blacks, gays, etc. Or maybe they’ll start this with the state workers first, since it seems like they’ve become the target to ‘test out’ revisionism and repression.
unfortunate in that it started out as an effort to help providers, but seemed to grow into a christmas tree of profit sharing.
No Union that I have ever seen includes the boss, owner and employee in the same group. Wages are provided by the boss, where the boss gets the money isnt really material here. But it does take the issue of collective bargaining out of the discussion.
Bottom line is that if it had kept to representing workers and not gone after the golden goose of mandatory membership and mandatory due payment, which only drains an already weak pool of money further, it would have had more support. Unions support workers, trade groups support industry groups. Read the last version of the bill as PROPOSED before coming out of the committee in the house. The water is not as clear as it seems.