SEIU sent out a press release on the situation, titled, Workers With No Healthcare Protecting Kaiser Facilities, Security Contractor May Be Misleading California's Largest Healthcare Provider. In summary, the security guards at Kaiser are supposed to be provided with individual healthcare after working for 90 days, but it turns out that many are not. The security contractor Inter-Con Security has found a way around the promise: they classify workers as "on-call" instead of permanent.

As more and more workers report that Inter-Con is keeping workers on temporary or "on-call" status for months or years, it's still unclear whether Inter-Con is misleading Kaiser or if Kaiser is simply turning a blind eye to these tactics which short-change workers.

So here we are with a company finding ways around a promise by changing the classification of the workers to "on-call." This points out yet one more problem of workplaces that do not have unions. How many people are classified as "temporary" or "contractors"? This is one of the bigger scams that is going on these days. One reason companies do this is because if someone is not an employee the employer doesn't have to pay their share of the Social Security payroll tax. (There are other reasons as well, including avoiding paying promised benefits.)

How do you know if you should be called an employee or an independent contractor? For a quick guideline, let's go to the IRS. They say that by-and-large you are an employee,

if the organization can control what will be done and how it will be done. This is so even if the organization gives the employee freedom of action. What matters is that the organization has the right to control the details of how the services are performed.

Companies are not supposed to do this to us, but here's the thing: What can you do about it? You and I are individuals, alone. But corporations have the ability to amass immense power and wealth and influence. You and I as individuals must stand alone against this power and wealth. What can you or I or anyone else do on our own? The average person in our society has very little ability to stand up against this kind of power and wealth.

Over time people discovered that there are some things they can do that will work. One of these has been to form unions. By joining together the workers in a company can amass some power of their own. The company needs the workers in order to function so the workers -- if they stick together -- have the ability to make the corporation obey employee/employer laws, provide decent pay, and all the other benefits that the unions have brought us. This is why they are also call "organized labor." By organizing into a union and sticking together people have the ability to demand respect and compensation for their work.

This is what the security guards at Kaiser are trying to do. This is what you should do.

I encourage you to visit StandForSecurity.org.

I am proud to be helping SEIU spread the word about this strike.

So when do you think the corporate media will start running these scary preacher tapes over and over?

Talking about Catholics:

I was talking to someone today who says he can't vote for Obama because of "the people he chooses to associate with" like Rev. Wright.
Imagine of these were played over and over...

You can read articles with details about what happened with the strike yesterday here and here. (There is close to zero coverage of this strike in newspapers. But you wouldn't expect a corporate-owned media to provide information about labor, now would you?)

Please visit the site Stand for Security for background and details about the security guards' fight to form a union.

While this strike is about violations of workers' rights, there are very good reasons for their three-year effort to form a union.

In Oregon, the state just north of California, Kaiser Permanente security guards are employed by Kaiser, not by a contractor. They are unionized and here is a short chart of just some of the difference this makes.

	In-House Union (ILWU) Kaiser Security Officers	Inter-Con Officers at Kaiser
Wages	$15 - $18 per hour (Oregon has a much lower cost of living)	As little as $10.40 per hour
Raises	$.70 - $1.45/hour annually, depending on seniority (Guaranteed in writing!)	No schedule, no guarantee
Free Family Health Care	YES	NO
Health Insurance Elegibility	20 hours worked	“Full-time”, which for many officers means 1-2 years of working 40 hours a week before qualifying for health insurance.
Bereavement Pay	3 days paid time off	none
Sick Leave	1.6 hours per pay period (Time accrues)	none
Jury Duty	Paid off as needed	none
Pension	YES	none
Grievance Procedure	YES	none
Shift Differential	$.90/hour evenings $1.25/hour nights	none

This chart is an example of the difference that a union makes. The column on the left -- the one with better pay, health care, sick days, pension and other benefits -- is the workers who are in a union. The column on the right is these security guards. So this is why these security guards have been fighting for three years to join a union. The employer, Inter-Con Security won't even give sick days! For people working in hospitals! What are these workers supposed to do? And they won't even pay when the workers have jury duty! (Shouldn't a company be concerned about the greater public good, like a court system that works?)

But this chart is also representative of other workplaces, showing the difference that forming a union can make for other workers. How else are workers going to get back their rights, get health care, get pensions, and get paid? If you see a better idea out there, please let us all know because this strike and the things happening to these security guards shows that it is very very difficult to form a union. In today's environment where workers are afraid of employers moving their jobs overseas - or even just laying them off and telling everyone else to work harder - and then giving their pay out as raises to the executives and multi-million-dollar bonuses to the CEO, this is a very brave action to take.

On top of that, the Republican government has stacked the labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board to side with the big corporations. So it is even harder to form a union than ever. Which is, of course, why wages are stagnating and CEO pay is off the charts.

This is why these workers are striking -- to demand that their civil rights be honored and to demand that their right to form a union be honored. These security guards are placing everything on the line -- and doing this for all of us. If they win this fight, all of us are a step further toward our rights being honored, and toward our own jobs paying more and giving benefits.

I am proud to be helping SEIU spread the word about this strike.

Substitute Teacher Says Wizardry Accusation Cost Him Job

She told Piculas there had been a complaint about his performance at Rushe Middle School in Land O' Lakes.

He asked what she meant.

"She said, 'You've been accused of wizardry,' " Piculas said.

He said the statement seemed bizarre to him, like something out of Harry Potter.

Piculas said he replied, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

He said he also told Sinclair, "It's not black magic. It's a toothpick."

It was estimated that this law would prevent approx. 43,000 people from voting. Here is an example of the law's effect: Indiana nuns lacking ID denied at poll,

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place ... because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

. . . The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one [ID] but came to the precinct anyway.

. . . Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.

They weren't given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. "You have to remember that some of these ladies don't walk well. They're in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts."

See Digby, too.

Here is some background:

Rather than directly employ security guards Kaiser contracts with a company called Inter-Con Security Systems, Inc. Inter-Con hires and manages the security guards for Kaiser, paying them very little and giving them few benefits - not even sick leave. So these security guards, even though they work at Kaiser, (some for many years), are paid far less than other security guards at Kaiser facilities in other states, and receive few benefits. Kaiser is one of the more responsible, unionized companies for its workers, which makes this situation even worse for these workers.

Yee-Ha, the wingnuts are going to go ... well they already are nuts! Can they go more nuts than they are?

Go read!

Some of you know that Sun Ra is the official Arkestra from Mars of Seeing the Forest. So the vision is spreading!

And for fun, Pink Elephants:

Now that you have been introduced, here's Sun Ra: (Sun Ra was not born. Sun Ra arrived.)

Beautiful, beautiful.

Employers cut far fewer jobs in April than in recent months and the unemployment rate dropped to 5 percent, a better-than-expected showing that nonetheless reveals strains in the nation's labor market.

Remember, since the 2001 recession they say we have had remarkably low unemployment. But we also know that most of the lost jobs never returned, and most new jobs pay much less. Most of the people I know who were laid off in the dot-bomb crash never found similar jobs, and are all making a lot less -- some never found ANY job. (Some work as bloggers, making $60 a month.)

So read this, about the screwy statistics: April Jobs - Another Report From Bizarro World,

Once again the BLS should be embarrassed to report this data. Its model suggests that there was 45,000 jobs coming from new construction businesses, 72,000 jobs coming from professional services, and a whopping 267,000 jobs in total coming from net new business creation.

. . . Repeating what I said last month, virtually no one can possibly believe this data. The data is so bad, I doubt those at the BLS even believe it. But that is what their model says so that is what they report. Just as there is mark to model in the investment world, there is mark to model in the BLS world.

. . . With housing falling like a rock and commercial real estate now following suit, the BLS is assuming that 45,000 new jobs were added in construction. With lenders blowing up and countless self employed real estate professional exiting the business the BLS is assuming 8,000 new jobs were added in financial activities and 72,000 jobs from professional and business services. The total number of jobs added in April by such absurd assumptions was 267,000 jobs.

The Way Our World Ends - HUMAN EVENTS,

In 1950, whites were 28 percent of world population and Africans 9 percent, a ratio of three-to-one. In 2060, the ratio will remain the same. But the colors will be reversed. People of African ancestry will be 25 percent of the world's population. People of European descent will have fallen to 9.8 percent.

More arresting is that the white population is shrinking not only in relative but in real terms. Two hundred million white people, one in every six on earth -- a number equal to the entire population of France, Britain, Holland and Germany -- will vanish by 2060.

The Caucasian race is going the way of the Mohicans.

And be sure to scan the comments:

What have YOU been doing for the white race?

I never heard whether you are married. Are you, and do you have any children?

I think maybe 70% of the public thinks Bush actually flew the plane and landed it on the carrier. (120% of FOX viewers, of course.)

Bush was a passenger. He didn't fly the plane. He isn't allowed to fly planes. Back in his National Guard days he had to stop flying when he refused to take a drug test, and then stopped showing up for duty entirely, even though there was a war going on.