Judge blocks new Idaho union law

By JOHN MILLER of the Associated Press | Posted: Wednesday, July 6, 2011 12:00 am

BOISE - A federal judge has blocked a new state law that sought to strip labor unions of power, ruling the measure passed this year in the Idaho Legislature likely conflicts with federal law.

The law passed with heavy Republican support during the 2011 session, despite an opinion from the Idaho Attorney General that it was illegal. Had it gone into effect July 1, it would have prohibited unions from using the dues they collect to subsidize members' wages as part of efforts to help union contractors submit winning bids on projects.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction on Friday after unions sued, agreeing they had a good chance of succeeding. The unions argued the state law forbidding so-called "job-targeting programs" using union dues was unconstitutional because Idaho sought to pre-empt matters already governed by the federal National Labor Relations Board.

"This creates a risk of conflicting rulings from the state court and the Board, and threatens state interference with the NLRB's enforcement of national labor relations policy," Winmill wrote in his decision. "This Court has found that there exists a significant risk of overlapping jurisdiction between Idaho state courts and the National Labor Relations Board if the Fairness in Contracting Act becomes effective."

Winmill's decision was a natural consequence of an overreach by lawmakers intent on hamstringing Idaho unions further, regardless of whether it would withstand court muster, attorney James Piotrowski told The Associated Press.

"Congress designed the NLRB to resolve the legality of job targeting programs, not state legislatures," said Piotrowski, who represented the Idaho Building and Construction Trades Council AFL-CIO and Southwest Idaho Building and Construction Trades Council AFL-CIO. "There was a broad, anti-federal sentiment in the Legislature this year that was expressed a lot of ways, one of which was in this law, which even the attorney general told them was going to problematic because it conflicted with federal law."

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Lawrence Wasden's office said staff was reviewing Winmill's decision. Sen. John Goedde, R-Coeur d'Alene and the law's sponsor, didn't return a call.

On Jan. 25, when the anti-union measure was making its way through the Idaho Legislature, the Idaho attorney general's office concluded it stood on shaky legal ground.

"The draft legislation carries with it a significant possibility for successful challenge," wrote Assistant Chief Deputy Brian Kane at the time. "The United States Supreme Court has made clear in a series of decisions that where conduct is 'actually' permitted by the LMRA, application of state laws regulating such conduct ... are pre-empted."

Just one Republican in the Idaho Senate opposed the measure, while three GOP legislators voted against it in the House.

Last month in Winmill's court, the attorney general, among other things, argued the injunction bid should be rejected because the U.S. Supreme Court in at least two other cases has found circumstances in which state law is not pre-empted, even if the conduct at issue is arguably protected or prohibited by the federal National Labor Relations Act.

Those exceptions, however, apply only if the alleged conduct is of "peripheral concern" to the federal law, something Winmill wrote Idaho's law clearly wasn't.

"It is evident that the Court could not characterize the conduct the Legislature seeks to regulate with the Fairness in Contract Act as a mere 'peripheral concern' to the NLRA because it involves activities that lie at the core of NLRA concerns: union activities seeking to protect employees' jobs and wages," the judge wrote.

The unions are also challenging the portion of the state law that prohibits so-called "project labor agreements" that require contractors to forge pacts with unionized workers as a condition of winning a government construction job. They have not asked Winmill to block that portion of the new law with a preliminary injunction.

Steelworkers To Presidential Hopefuls: Get Specific On Trade

By Mark Gruenberg, PAI Staff Writer

PITTSBURGH (PAI)--Steelworkers President Leo Gerard is telling the three remaining presidential hopefuls, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.), to get specific on trade.

The price they pay for vagueness, he adds, is they may lose Pennsylvania in the April 22 primary or November’s general election.  There are 175,000 active and retired Steel Workers--not counting family members--in the Keystone State , Gerard said.

Trade was a key issue in the Ohio primary, which Clinton won by casting doubt on Obama’s promise to renegotiate NAFTA, the controversial U.S.-Mexico-Canada “free trade” pact pushed through the then-Democratic Congress by Clinton ’s husband, former President Bill Clinton (D). McCain had won the GOP nomination by then.  

NAFTA led the Teamsters and, later, Change to Win to endorse Obama rather than Clinton.  It also led the Steel Workers to endorse former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), who is now out of the race.  It remains a key issue for workers, Gerard warned.

Clinton favors a “timeout” on future trade pacts that lack labor rights, as NAFTA does.  She has not repudiated it.  McCain voted for NAFTA and following pacts that lack labor rights, including the GOP Bush regime’s Central American Free Agreement.

In letters March 20 to the two Democrats and presumed GOP nominee McCain, Gerard listed trade issues he wanted them to address by April 1, and in specifics: 

·       How to reduce the nation’s staggering trade deficit.

·       Challenging China ’s currency manipulation.  China now runs the biggest trade surplus with the U.S.

·       Enforcement of fair trade laws already on the books.  Unions have often pointed out the anti-worker GOP Bush regime fails to enforce current U.S. trade laws, even while negotiating more trade pacts without worker rights.

·       How to toughen food and product safety standards, including supporting liability insurance for importers.  Millions of imported toys and tons of imported food from China have had to be recalled due to unacceptably lethal levels of lead, among other things.

·       “Demonstrating a commitment to protect human rights by opposing the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.”  Bush is pushing that trade pact despite the murders of 2,500-plus unionists there in the last 15 years--and the lack of prosecution of the Right Wing paramilitary perpetrators, who sometimes receive “protection” pay from U.S.-based multinationals, to target unionists.

·       A commitment to “stop unfair practices such as illegal logging that are costing U.S. workers their jobs and harming the environment.”

“More than 3.3 million manufacturing workers have lost jobs and more than 40,000 facilities have closed since 2000 because of failed trade policies,” Gerard wrote the three contenders.  And a $2 billion daily trade deficit is “an unsustainable imbalance that is mortgaging our economic future,” he added.

While the candidates debated NAFTA in Ohio , Gerard said, trade encompasses a lot more than that.  It includes a proposed ban on sweatshop imports, and a halt to worker exploitation that costs U.S. workers their jobs and leaves foreign workers ill-paid, unpaid and without rights.

“Workers in this country making $15 per hour--barely $30,000 per year--simply cannot compete with workers in the developing world making 40 cents an hour,” Gerard wrote to the three senators. “We will never have a level playing field until our leaders deal with this tremendous gap.  Exploitation of workers around the world must be stopped.  The standards of living of most of the developing countries must be raised.”

Gerard’s demands for specifics on trade go far beyond what the candidates have pledged, either on the stump or on their websites:

Clinton , in her economic policy address in Cedar Rapids , Iowa , early this year, promised to “ensure trade policies work for average Americans.

“Trade policy must raise our standard of living, and they must have strong protections for workers and the environment,” she said.  Her specifics then included increased enforcement of present trade pacts.  She adopted the “timeout” idea, from the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, later.

Obama has repeatedly promised he would call the Mexican president and Canadian prime minister and tell them NAFTA must be renegotiated to halt the hemorrhaging of U.S. jobs.  Clinton dented that commitment in Ohio , however, by quoting an unpaid Obama trade advisor as telling Canada ’s consul general in Chicago that the phrase was just political rhetoric.

On his website, Obama also promises to “fight for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs. He will use trade agreements to spread good labor and environmental standards around the world and stand firm against agreements like the Central American Free Trade Agreement that fail to live up to those important benchmarks.”  It also says Obama “will pressure the World Trade Organization (WTO) to enforce trade agreements and stop countries from continuing unfair government subsidies to foreign exporters and non-tariff barriers on U.S. exports.” 

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