Bashas Uses Citizen’s Arrest to Break up Labor Organizing
I received an interesting press release which I reproduce here in its entirety and without independent fact checking. The release is from the UFCW. There is some poor quality phonecam video of the incident available, too:
(May
21, 2006 Phoenix, AZ) Two women were arrested Sunday morning as part of
the Bashas corporation ongoing effort to silence worker concern over
unprecedented increases in health insurance premiums.The two women, Sarah Gresoski, 23, and Teresa D¹Asaro, 39, both members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, were meeting with employees at the Basha-owned A.J.s at Uptown Plaza in Phoenix. Such meetings are allowed and protected under federal law.
The A.J.¹s store manager made a "citizens arrest" of the two women apparently after consultation with unnamed company officials. Phoenix Police Officers then were called to take the women into custody and charged them with "criminal trespassing.
Following the arrests upwards of 60 employees and union members launched a picket line in front of the A.J.s store chanting slogans like "Eddie keep your promise, your workers deserve better" and "Eddie, Eddie you can¹t hide you just showed your greedy side.
For the past three days UFCW members have been meeting with employees at Bashas-owned stores across the Valley including Bashas, A.J.s, and FoodCity.
While Bashas has a history of labor problems, most notably at FoodCity, the health insurance issue is companywide affecting virtually all of Bashas 10,000 employees.
On June 1st, workers at Bashas-owned stores are being hit with dramatic cost increases in their health insurance premiums and forces them well below the industry standard.
Last year Bashas trailed only Wal-Mart and McDonald¹s in taxpayer funded health insurance "subsidies" paid by the State of Arizona. An estimated 5-percent of Bashas employees were forced to turn to public assistance for health care according to published reports in 2005.
By loading more of the health care burden on already strained households, Bashas is only going to be sending more and more of employees to Arizona¹s taxpayers for their health care," said UFCW Local 99 President James McLaughlin.
Senate Progress on Immigration Compromise
I got a very interesting mailing from the Democratic Party’s National Immigration Forum and Dean’s new outreach center, the American Majority Partnership, the other day. I reproduce it here entirely. It outlines the amendments to the Senate compromise that have been offered, those under consideration, and those likely to be considered in the near future.
Chairman Dean has made our position on immigration reform clear: We
support comprehensive immigration reform that strengthens our borders,
protects U.S. workers and their wages, reunites families, and allows
those who pay taxes and obey the law to earn the opportunity to apply
for the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
These are the right policies and the right values. Democrats may not be polling with a majorities on every single issue we support on immigration, but we are standing for what’s right and principled, and that is more important to building an enduring consensus of principle, than to tack with every gust of the political winds.
Massacre in Iraq: Haditha is Arabic for Mi Lai
Tort Reform™ is an Attack on Constitutional Rights
I wrote yesterday on damage compensation caps, marketed under the trade name Tort Reform™ by the GOP, and the damage it does to those harmed by medical and other negligence. But the ideas behind Tort Reform™ also raise serious and fundamental challenges to the role of the jury in the administration of justice and protecting American freedoms.
I’m not alone in this opinion. James Madison said that trial by jury “is as essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of the pre-eminent rights of nature.” Yet the right to have the facts of a civil dispute, including compensation, decided by a lay jury, is so offensive to corporate interests that they would have you believe that our best and brightest are unable to design safe products, deliver quality medical care, or perform a host of other activities unless we gut one particular of our Bill of Rights – the Amendment VII, which reads:
”In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved…”
The right of access to jury to determine the facts is a basic human right that goes back to the Magna Carta in our own culture’s immediate history, and back to the Greeks and the Romans during some of the earliest civilized periods of human history. For all that time citizenship has included the unimpaired right to have the facts of your plight, including the necessary remedies, decided by a sample of your peers. “Juries represent the layman’s common sense and thus keep the law in accord with the wishes and feelings of the community,” said USSC Chief Justice Rehnquist (in one of the few instances that I agree with him wholeheartedly).
Frameshop: Compensation Caps, aka Medical Malpractice Tort Reform
This is a rewrite of an earlier editorial length article on
the subject of ‘tort reform.’ In the prior version, I
stayed within the framing of those seeking to limit the liability of
doctors and insurers. By challenging the frame, I think the argument
becomes more powerful. The facts don’t struggle against the opposing frame, they
support the new one. Rhetorical figures become more powerful and invested with
clearer values. This is not however a complete reframing of the issue; it is only a negative frame. It creates an alternative way to view the opposing policy, but it does not create a solution. The packaging of the right way to approach medical malpractice policy awaits another day. That framing excercise is harder because the policy package is not simplistic – rather it is a complex package of reforms which is difficult to summarize. The reason I’m republishing this article, is a Harvard School of Public Health study of malpractice claims was just published that demonstrates very clearly that the problem of unmertiorious claims is vastly overstated, and is not addressed by arbitrary award caps. Also, I was adding some material to Utah Senate candidate Pete Ashdown’s wiki on health care, and was thinking about the issue of ‘tort reform’.
The medical malpractice (med-mal) insurance industry, some politicians, and even some misguided doctors, have of late been misleading the public about the efficacy of caps on med-mal awards, a.k.a. ‘tort reform,’ to contain healthcare costs. These people have generated a deluge of coordinated letters to editor and public relations events in Arizona recently. They are telling the public that med-mal awards are driving the high inflation rates in the health care sector we’ve seen over the past several years. But the truth is that their so-called ‘tort reform’ is just a free ride for insurers and incompetent doctors on the backs of seriously injured patients.
‘Tort Reform’ is really nothing more than arbitrary compensation caps protecting doctors who harm or kill their patients and the companies who insure them. Policy makers actually interested in reforming the torts process would advocate for ways to remove non-meritorious claims from the system, not for placing a strict limit on the compensation a jury can award to victims of malpractice. The cost of caring for a child paralyzed or otherwise disabled for a lifetime by malpractice can run into the millions, yet these so-called ‘reformers’ want to cap all awards at a low level, regardless of the facts of the case. That’s not justice, that’s risk management, and it’s not what our court system is based upon. Why is a legislator, who may be getting campaign contributions from the insurance industry, better qualified to put a price on a lifetime of pain than a fellow citizen who is disinterested but knows the facts of the case?
My United States Travel Map
