Wel­come to Bal­lot Watch. Today is the first in the series of arti­cles on the upcom­ing bal­lot ini­tia­tives and some key local elec­tions. Some of these will cover top­ics in com­mon with mul­ti­ple states, while oth­ers will look at a state level.

What bet­ter time to kick off the Bal­lot Watch series then on Labor Day, when we can take a look at some of the state bal­lot ini­tia­tives that will affect work­ers this com­ing November.

MADISON, WI - FEBRUARY 18: National AFL-CIO P...

National AFL-​​CIO Pres­i­dent Richard Trumka speaks in Wisconsin.

Idaho has three attempts to repeal new edu­ca­tion reform laws which shifted to merit pay, elim­i­nated tenure, and removed class size from col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing. South Dakota has a sim­i­lar repeal mea­sure on the bal­lot. Illi­nois has a ques­tion intended to limit increases in pen­sion ben­e­fits for pub­lic work­ers. Michi­gan has a bal­lot ques­tion that would allow home health care providers to union­ize, and another that would repeal the state’s Emer­gency Man­ager pro­gram. North Car­olina has an ini­tia­tive that would make it harder for work­places to unionize.

Let’s look briefly at each of these bal­lot ini­tia­tives. How do you feel about them? Do you think any of them will affect voter turnout? Some of them are in pres­i­den­tial swing states — might they affect the Pres­i­den­tial election?

Idaho

Propo­si­tions 1 and 2 (known as the Idaho Teach­ers’ Col­lec­tive Bar­gain­ing Veto Ref­er­en­dums) seek to repeal two related laws that restrict teach­ers’ col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments. Propo­si­tion 3 was filed after a third, previously-​​pending education-​​related law was signed into effect. All three seek to repeal recent Idaho laws.

The three laws are col­lec­tively known as the “Stu­dents Come First” laws (have you ever noticed the skill Repub­li­cans have in nam­ing laws?) or the “Luna laws,” named after school Super­in­ten­dent Tom Luna. These laws stripped many col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights from Idaho’s teach­ers, estab­lished a performance-​​based bonus pay sys­tem for teach­ers, and imposed what it called “21st cen­tury tech­nol­ogy” mea­sures to phase in lap­top com­put­ers for all high school stu­dents and to require future grad­u­ates to earn at least two course cred­its online (thus reduc­ing the need for teachers).

Mike Lanza of Boise, who chairs the “No” cam­paign and co-​​founded Idaho Par­ents and Teach­ers Together, said, “We do not believe the best way to try to teach kids is to replace a teacher with a com­puter and a requirement.”

South Dakota

In South Dakota, the Teach­ers Union Veto Ref­er­en­dum, Referred Law 16, would block a bill that was signed into law and sup­ported by South Dakota Gov­er­nor Den­nis Dau­gaard. Accord­ing to the text of the bill, it would:

estab­lish a teacher schol­ar­ship pro­gram; cre­ate a pro­gram for math and sci­ence teacher bonuses; cre­ate a pro­gram for teacher merit bonuses; man­date a uni­form teacher and prin­ci­ple eval­u­a­tion sys­tem; and elim­i­nate state require­ments for teacher tenure.

South Dakota’s edu­ca­tors are opposed to the intru­sion of the leg­is­la­ture into state schools and the way they are run. The veto ref­er­en­dum effort against the bill was orga­nized by the South Dakota Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion. The SDEA’s Amanda Mack said, “This bill is not the solu­tion to the prob­lems fac­ing edu­ca­tion in South Dakota. If we were able to fund the [state edu­ca­tion] for­mula prop­erly and able to give schools the resources that they need to deter­mine what teach­ers to hire, what text­books they need, what sup­plies they need we’d be in a much bet­ter posi­tion than we are.”

Illi­nois

The bal­lot mea­sure in Illi­nois is not a repeal of exist­ing laws as in Idaho and South Dakota, but an attempt to enact Con­sti­tu­tional Amend­ment 49, which would require a three-​​fifths vote by the Gen­eral Assem­bly before the leg­is­la­ture could approve pen­sion ben­e­fit increases for state employ­ees. Appar­ently, “major­ity rules” is not good enough for Illi­nois (as with the US Sen­ate, it must be “super­ma­jor­ity rules”). Nor do the cur­rent Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors trust mere laws to reg­u­late state pen­sion­ers, but must enact those reg­u­la­tions through Con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment, in order to make it much harder to change later.

Thus we have three states attempt­ing to demo­nize pub­lic employee unions — and most par­tic­u­larly, teach­ers, the peo­ple with whom we trust the minds and edu­ca­tion of our children.

Michi­gan

There are two bal­lot ini­tia­tives of inter­est to labor in Michi­gan. One would allow union­iza­tion of work­ers who pro­vide home health care for elderly and dis­abled per­sons. This amend­ment would alter reg­u­la­tions for safety and train­ing for home care work­ers, and guar­an­tee those work­ers’ collective-​​bargaining rights. Sup­port­ers of the mea­sure say it would give home health care patients and their fam­i­lies access to more infor­ma­tion about work­ers’ back­grounds, and would allow more of those who need care to remain in their own homes.

Dohn Hoyle, exec­u­tive direc­tor of The Arc (a statewide asso­ci­a­tion of health care work­ers) and co-​​chairman of the bal­lot pro­posal cam­paign, stresses that the mea­sure would estab­lish a reg­istry of home health care work­ers, this pro­vid­ing “a sim­ple, straight­for­ward way to select care.”

Crit­ics of the pro­posal say it is an attempt by the Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tional Union (SEIU) to turn home health work­ers into pub­lic sec­tor union mem­bers in order to “skim” union dues from their wages. In other words, the crit­ics are oppos­ing the amend­ment through demo­niza­tion of pub­lic worker unions.

The other labor-​​related Michi­gan bal­lot mea­sure deals with an attempt to block Michigan’s Pub­lic Act 4, the “Emer­gency Man­ager” law. This law allows the Gov­er­nor (or, more prop­erly, the Sec­re­tary of State) to uni­lat­er­ally assume direct con­trol of any Michi­gan city gov­ern­ment or school sys­tem, fire pub­lic work­ers, void pub­lic employee con­tracts, fire elected offi­cials, and appoint a man­ager to run the seized city by exec­u­tive com­mand. (I pre­vi­ously wrote about the Emer­gency Man­ager law, among other ongo­ing Michi­gan shenani­gans.)

The peti­tion drive to put a repeal of the law on the Novem­ber bal­lot eas­ily col­lected enough sig­na­tures, but was ini­tially blocked by the Republican-​​controlled leg­is­la­ture because the printed peti­tions sup­pos­edly used the wrong font. (I’m not jok­ing.) It took a deci­sion by the Michi­gan Supreme Court to get the peti­tions approved and to get the mea­sure on the ballot.

To be clear on what’s hap­pen­ing here: The Republican-​​controlled Gov­er­nor and leg­is­la­ture of Michi­gan (you know Repub­li­cans, the guys who insist that all things Amer­i­can should be under local con­trol) are try­ing to sus­pend local democ­racy by allow­ing the gov­er­nor to appoint petty dic­ta­tors to munic­i­pal fief­doms, while depos­ing the duly-​​elected local gov­ern­ments. This ref­er­en­dum will give the vot­ers of Michi­gan a chance to approve or dis­ap­prove of this power.

Note that the law has already been used to oust the gov­ern­ments of the cities Flint, Pon­tiac, Ben­ton Har­bor, and Ecorse, and the offi­cials in the pub­lic school sys­tems of Detroit and High­land Park, all places with high con­cen­tra­tions of minori­ties and union workers.

North Car­olina

Another Republican-​​sponsored anti-​​union Con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment is on the bal­lot in North Car­olina. This one would pre­vent work­places from union­iz­ing though the process of hav­ing a major­ity of work­ers sign a union card, a process that has come to be known as “card check”. Instead, this Amend­ment would require secret bal­lots for the for­ma­tion of a union at a workplace.

The “card check” pro­ce­dure makes it eas­ier to estab­lish a union, because the process does not involve employ­ers, and indeed can hap­pen with­out the knowl­edge or inter­ven­tion of an employer. As a rule, employ­ers don’t like it for this rea­son. It is harder for employ­ers to interfere.

Pro­po­nents of the pro­posed Amend­ment in North Car­olina claim that a secret bal­lot to estab­lish a union would allow work­ers to be “free from union boss intim­i­da­tion” (an argu­ment which is, itself, a form of manip­u­la­tive intim­i­da­tion). Tra­di­tion­ally, how­ever, the process of run­ning and mon­i­tor­ing a secret bal­lot allows employ­ers to engage in their own intim­i­da­tion, includ­ing employe “edu­ca­tion” pro­grams (involv­ing such things as threats of down­siz­ing or plant clos­ings in the event of a union becom­ing estab­lished) and post­ing of anti-​​union mes­sag­ing through­out the workplace.

State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tim Mof­fitt of Asheville, NC, said, “What we’re look­ing to is to do is amend our state con­sti­tu­tion to pro­hibit card check from ever becom­ing a real­ity in our state.” MaryBe McMil­lan, Secretary-​​Treasurer of the North Car­olina AFL-​​CIO, coun­tered by say­ing the Amend­ment is “unnec­es­sary and could poten­tially cost our state and our tax­pay­ers a lot of money in lit­i­ga­tion,” and it “would essen­tially rewrite the fed­eral National Labor Rela­tions Act.”

In terms of the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, these ini­tia­tives are unlikely to have an appre­cia­ble impact. While Michi­gan and North Car­olina are, to vary­ing degrees, bat­tle­ground states, the ini­tia­tives tend to be divi­sive enough that they lead to increased turnout from both sides of the issue. As a result, it’s hard to see how their pres­ence on the bal­lot would help either Pres­i­dent Barack Obama or his chal­lenger, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov­er­nor Mitt Romney.

The ini­tia­tives are wor­thy of our con­sid­er­a­tion nonethe­less. On this Labor Day, it would be use­ful to reflect on these upcom­ing bal­lot mea­sures, and whether they sig­nal any sort of trend, a pos­si­ble assault on the rights and power of Amer­i­can workers.

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