{"id":1863,"date":"2010-12-28T23:52:26","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T04:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/?p=1863"},"modified":"2018-08-16T15:52:08","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T20:52:08","slug":"springfield-democrats-out-to-weaken-labors-right-to-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/?p=1863","title":{"rendered":"Springfield out to weaken collective bargaining rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

The war on the middle class continues to be waged on both sides of the aisle.\u00a0 This is less of a comprehensive blog about the topic and more of a call to action.\u00a0 After America more or less lost our manufacturing base and moved to a service economy that exports bad debt as our main source of GDP, Wall Street types decided to start making profits off of government services.\u00a0 In Illinois, this means that the fight to protect our education system from Wall Street profiteers is on.\u00a0 An Oregon-based organization is pushing legislation that will deter the best and brigthest from teaching and ultimately\u00a0enter Illinois’ schools into the race to the bottom.<\/p>\n

State Representative Keith Farnham, an Elgin Democrat, is holding a town hall forum at the Gail Borden Public Library (270 N. Grove St., Elgin, IL) on Wednesday, Dec. 29th at 7:00 p.m.<\/p>\n

Representative Farnham is on the education committee and it is important that he hear from teachers, parents and community activists before returning to Springfield in January.\u00a0 It is believed that this legislation is being put together in a hurry and that it is part of a backroom deal (Republicans will get a large part of their anti-middle class agenda in exchange for a tax increase).\u00a0 It is expected to pass before January 11th, 2011 (when the new assembly takes office).<\/p>\n

This bill does not have an official number yet, but here is a screen capture of part of the\u00a0copy that I obtained<\/a>.\u00a0 Click the pic to read the most significant part.\u00a0 Click the link to read the entire bill.<\/p>\n \n\t\t

\n\t\t\t \t\n \"Legislation\n \t<\/a>\n\t\t <\/div>\n \n

<\/p>\n

The bill is an anti-union piece of legislation that a wealthy, Oregon-based organization named “Stand for Children” is pushing.\u00a0 The organization should be named, “Stand for Billionaires who want to turn schools into for-profit institutions.”\u00a0 Honestly, they are dropping some serious coin into Illinois political races.\u00a0 Representative Farnham is one of the top recipients of the Oregon-based campaign cash.\u00a0 According to the Illinois State Board of Elections Website, Farnham received a $50,000 contribution of from the organization and another $50,000 from the organization’s CEO.\u00a0 Here are screen captures from the Illinois State Board of Elections Website.<\/p>\n \n\t\t

\n\t\t\t \t\n \"farnham-contribution-1\"\n\n \t<\/a>\n\t\t <\/div>\n \n \n\t\t
\n\t\t\t \t\n \"farnham-contribution-2\"\n\n \t<\/a>\n\t\t <\/div>\n \n

This is symptomatic of the broken pay-to-play political system that we have in Illinois.\u00a0 As legislators play the continuous “re-election game” and balance legislative choices between wealthy contributors and the electorate, it is important that we show up and let them know where the electorate stands.<\/p>\n

The fact that an Oregon-based front group can seemingly buy an Illinois State Representative should be alarming to all of us.\u00a0 What kind of lesson does this send to our children?\u00a0 More importantly, what impact will this legislation have on Illinois children?\u00a0 I found an assessment on the Chicago Teachers Union website and I think it is fairly accurate.<\/p>\n

“SFC plans to steamroll us, and will mow down students and families in the way.\u00a0 This is a formula for turning our schools into low-wage, high-turnover places of employment.\u00a0 SFC\u2019s agenda hurts children on many levels.\u00a0 Few of us will want to be career teachers.\u00a0 Families will no longer be able to bond with teachers over decades and students will no longer have teachers invested in them or the community.\u00a0 This system would squelch innovation and motivate teachers to teach to the test rather than encourage creative, critical thinking. We need to stop them (SFC) and push for REAL reform.”<\/p>\n

I am doing this as part of the Living Wage for Illinois Coalition.\u00a0 Our second action to support labor’s right to collectively bargain for fair wages will be a trip to Springfield to lobby all of our state legislators on this legislation.\u00a0 While no date is set yet, we are looking at the first week of January.\u00a0 Let me know if you want to come with us by calling 630.878.7454.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The war on the middle class continues to be waged on both sides of the aisle.\u00a0 This is less of a comprehensive blog about the topic and more of a call to action.\u00a0 After America more or less lost our manufacturing base and moved to a service economy that exports bad debt as our main […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[78],"tags":[487,2869,141,483,10,139,45,488,486],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1863"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1863"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7167,"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1863\/revisions\/7167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}