Card check union election authorizations can elevate both DSP and the #PwDs they serve as HCBS neighbors

   Although bright spots of some organizing exist the effects of banning required fees or dues paid by workers to unions weakens labor organizing to the point that it only remains where workers are either desperately trying to keep the living standard they have or have been pushed to the ‘breaking point’ by, in some cases, 70 years of corporate funded anti worker laws.   The laws date back to the Taft Hartley Act in 1947 that started the ‘right to work (for less)’ law  movement by pre-civil-rights era Dixiecrat Democratic Governor William Tuck in Virginia where worker rights were pitted against the commonwealth retaining a AAA bond rating to reduce recurring budget deficits caused by higher interest rates.  The retelling of the 2017 primary issue difference between Ralph Northam and Tom Perriello, by WRVA fiscal conservative Republican commentator Norman Leahy for the benefit of owners of Virginia Talk Radio Network radio stations, among other businesses, exploits Democratic moderation on worker rights that cost them working class support nationally.  

  Card check bills were written, like the 2009 EFCA, to fix a part of the 1947 Taft Hartley Act to allow workers to authorize union elections.

  Future President John F Kennedy’s brother Ted tried to correct the Taft Hartley Act after then-50 years of slow union busting




It has been a decade since Sen. Ted Kennedy first filed the Employee Free Choice Act.
He filed the bill on Friday, November 21, 2003 – almost exactly 40 years after the death of President John F. Kennedy.
A coincidence? Not likely. Here’s the back story:
The Employee Free Choice Act would restore union organizing rights that were taken away by the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. John F. Kennedy was a member of the Congress that passed Taft-Hartley.
“The first thing I did in Congress was to become the junior Democrat on the labor committee. At the time we were considering the Taft-Hartley Bill. I was against it, and one day in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I debated the bill with a junior Republican on that committee who was for it . . . his name was Richard Nixon.” [from a 1960 recording of President Kennedy reflecting on his career]

 to allow forming unions more easily than having at least 2 elections.  Supporters of the secret ballot election process to authorize a union have made false attacks on card check alternative to a secret ballot. 
  Inclusion's enemy isn’t union workers 

 "Best outcome is a closed institution with better paid workers providing care in home and community based settings supporting #PwDs earning higher minimum wage"


 in institutions. The enemy of social and economic inclusion for #PwDs is taxpayer (local property taxes paying for the state part of medicaid) and private insurance company greed that cuts labor costs.  That greed of inadequate HCBS funding, and fears for resale and rental value growth expressed by owners of existing homes who resist permits for group homes in municipal and county zoning plans, created the institutions in the first place. 

  It isn’t only group homes low income/affordable housing is also resisted in the same local zoning plans if it’s planned near market-rate existing single family housing.  Group homes get conflated because people with disabilities generally have lower incomes
particularly if they need to live in group homes instead of finding individual roommates or living alone. 


  The owners of existing homes and commercial landlords fear that the proximity of poorer people to richer people will lead to at least one horrific crime that will stigmatize the area for 10 years or more until ‘redevelopment’ AKA gentrification and displacement.  Failings of group homes in communities are also the result of not enough money to hire support staff (direct service providers) with enough judgment and discretion to allow more individual autonomy.  


  Homes are paid for with private donations from families of residents, SSI or SSDI of residents and medicaid waivers that austerity and income inequality cut.   Which funding stream should be a target to demand increasing by activists/self-advocates likely with inclusive rhetoric for exclusive benefit that fails to equitably help autistics without intellectual disability at a higher risk of suicide?  @DragSyndrome show reporting demanding the same freedom in personal lives for group home residents with ID (Down syndrome/trisomy 21) was simply elevating a few people empowered with judgment and discretion.  That discretion can only be replicated everywhere by explaining how more people with ID/DD, like Down Syndrome, can avoid their support staff stealing money from people with ID and DD as well as the greater danger of staff on patient sexual assaults.