The fundamental injustice of the tax system grows clearer as tax day looms ominously over working people and a few horde more and more of the nation’s wealth. Short of a total collapse of capitalism, the primary redistributive remedy for this would be progressive taxation. But our tax policy gets it exactly backward, and its about to get a bit worse. And as with so many wars of attrition against the working class, this one begins by shafting disenfranchised communities, especially immigrants.

While the rich are rolling in tax giveaways, a few credits actually give poor folks a break. One of these, the refundable child tax credit (CTC), applies to middle-class and poor parents alike and was claimed by some 21 million taxpayers in 2011, “which averaged about $676 per child and totaled $26.1 billion,” according to Politico. For poor families, the CTC, together with its big sister the Earned Income Tax Credit, provides a lifeline to keep them from plunging below the poverty line.

Now some lawmakers advocate cutting off the child tax credit for tax filers who lack of Social Security number. The move is unabashedly aimed at making life harder for undocumented workers, even taxpaying ones, specifically by punishing their children.

Obama administration argued decision 'would critically undermine' Americans With Disabilities Act

In a unanimous ruling last month, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld for the first time a “ministerial exception” limiting the rights of some employees under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In the case, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a church-run elementary school asserted that such an exception protected its decision to fire "called teacher" Cheryl Perich following her medical leave and threat to file an ADA lawsuit. Prominent organizations weighed in on both sides: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the American Jewish Committee, and the Muslim-American Public Affairs Council were among those filing briefs backing Hosanna-Tabor; the NAACP, People for the American Way, and the Anti-Defamation League backed Perich.

Perich's conflict with the Lutheran Church and School began in January 2005, when she told her principal that she was ready to return to work following a medical leave for narcolepsy. The principal questioned whether Perich was healthy enough to work, and told her that she had already been replaced. The church’s congregation, which is vested with decision-making powers, offered to pay a portion of Perich’s health insurance costs if she would voluntarily resign.

Perich declined the offer, and instead showed up at the school on the first day her medical leave was over, declaring she wouldn’t leave without a note documenting that she had shown up ready to work. According to the Supreme Court, when her principal told Perich the school was likely to fire her, “Perich responded that she had spoken with an attorney and intended to assert her legal rights.” A letter from the School Board Chairman to Perich charged that her “insubordination and disruptive behavior,” and “threatening to take legal action” had “damaged, beyond repair, [her] working relationship” with Hosanna-Tabor. Perich’s status as a “called teacher” was withdrawn in a congregational vote, and the school fired her.

Tomorrow (February 8), Chicago residents will promenade into Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office with the golden toilet that many credit for the announcement last week by the CME Group that it will forgo $33 million in tax increment financing (TIF) funds awarded by the city in 2010 to rehab bathrooms and build a fitness center at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

The labor-community group coalition Stand Up! Chicago and the Grassroots Collaborative, which is organizing tomorrow’s march, count it as a victory that the CME Group will not collect the funds, which a CME spokesman said were never actually accepted or received. Now residents are demanding that the $33 million be spent on creating jobs and community services in the low-income and working-class neighborhoods that the TIF program was meant to serve.

Emanuel has pledged to increase accountability and transparency in the use of TIF funds; former Mayor Richard M. Daley was widely criticized for allocating TIF funds to some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods and large corporations or politically-connected developers. As Mike Elk reported here last fall, United Airlines and Miller-Coors both received millions in TIF funds to convince them to locate corporate headquarters in Chicago.

The Grassroots Collaborative—which includes the Chicago Teachers Union and the Service Employees International Union—is also asking Emanuel to impose a moratorium on TIF funds spent in the LaSalle TIF district, a downtown area home to some of the city’s wealthiest businesses and residents. 

In a very rare move last Thursday, a group of 120 nonunion Bronx-based cable technicians walked off the job in a wildcat strike. The workers, Corbell Installations employees who work as subcontractors for Cablevision, were demanding that the company not impose a 30 percent wage cut. The workers are also demanding that they be recognized by their employers as members of the Communication Workers of America (CWA).

Last December, a majority of workers voted against joining the electrical workers union (IBEW) in an election that the IBEW is challenging with the National Labor Relations Board. The workers were inspired to join the IBEW as a result of a unionization campaign by 282 Brooklyn-based Cablevision workers, who successfully voted to join CWA in late January in a heavily publicized campaign as I recently reported on for In These Times.

“We'll stay out until they recognize we are somebody, that we as a people have rights,” employee Omar Hutchinson told Crain’s New York. “That's the whole idea. I might lose my job, but that's the whole idea.”

If you scan the resumes of corporate executives on LinkedIn, you can identify who has attended General Electric’s union avoidance courses. GE's  Union Avoidance Department, headed by Mark Guthrie, is known to be one of the most effective anti-labor departments in American. Unions almost never win elections at the company.

So it's surprising that a group of workers at GE Transportation in Kansas City, Mo., recently voted 44-41 to join IBEW Local 1464. It was the first time that a union had organized a GE bargaining unit in 10 years; the last was a small service shop in Florida containing a dozen workers. According to the IBEW, it was the first time anyone has organized a large-scale GE facility in 20 years.

The key to this success seems to be workers' perseverance. Despite three previous failed attempts in four years to organize the plant, workers strategically countered the talking points of GE’s anti-union campaign. In 2010, workers at the Kansas City plant attempted to organize a union with IBEW after seeing a worker die on the job in a horrific accident. But in a December 2010 election, pro-union workers lost by a mere 11 votes. 

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Last week, in a small victory for guest workers activists, the State Department announced that it had debarred guest workers recruiter Council for Educational Travel USA (CETUSA) from the J-1 cultural exchange guest worker visa program. CETUSA had provided student guestworkers to work in Hershey warehouses in Palmyra, Penn. As I reported last summer, these workers went out on strike with the help of local unions to protest being paid only $20-$40 per week after having pay deducted for high rent and other services.

“The State Department’s ban on CETUSA is a big win for the students, and a blow against the larger trend of labor recruiters and companies using guestworkers to hollow out industries and undercut wages and conditions all over America," National Guest Worker Alliance (NGA) Director Saket Soni said. “Corporations like Hershey’s and labor recruiters like CETUSA have turned the J-1 cultural exchange program into the country’s largest guest worker program, and profited from captive workers earning low wage.”

The debarment of CETUSA is a small victory for NGA, as there are many other recruiters still operating in the J-1 guest worker visa program that abuse workers, according to the organization. Advocates say that in order to stop further abuses of guestworkers the J-1 program needs to be reformed to provide greater rights to guest workers and more oversight of recruiters and companies using guest workers.

"I hope this sends a clear message to other recruiters like CETUSA: we will NOT be your captive workers,” said Harika Duygu Ozer, an NGA member and former J-1 student worker  at the Hershey’s plant from Turkey. “Now the State Department needs to make laws so that the next group of workers that are made captive by recruiters don’t have to risk being fired and deported or go on strike, just to get their basic rights respected."

Every weekend, Working In These Times highlights a few labor struggles and protests that contributors weren't able to cover during the preceding week.

CNA and NUHW picket unfair contract negotiations in Bay Area

Nurses at Kaiser Permanente in California walked off the job Tuesday, expressing solidarity with optical workers and mental health specialists in the midst of contract negotiations.

Union representatives argue that recent proposals would slash workers' benefits significantly and render staffing levels insufficient.

The California Nurses Association (CNA) said that the walk-off is the largest the HMO has ever seen. The National Union of Healthcare Workers, the union responsibe for the negotiations, coordinated the strikes with CNA. There are three Kaiser facilities in San Mateo County—San Mateo, Redwood City and San Francisco.

According to Dr. Spencer Gross, Kaiser executives' recent proposals betray a predilection for greed: "What it boils down to is Kaiser top executives putting profits before patient care."

Warehouse workers from Wal-Mart distribution centers in metropolitan Chicago and southern California took two big steps this week toward enforcing laws on working conditions and wages, fighting retaliatory firings, and ultimately forcing Wal-Mart to live up to its responsibilities as an employer.

Working through Warehouse Workers for Justice, workers at the Elwood, Il, distibution center—reputedly Wal-Mart's largest with 3 million square feet of space—filed suit against Eclipse Advantage and Schneider Logistics for firing roughly 65 workers on December 29. In November, some of these workers had sued the two companies for violating state and federal wage and hour laws, such as not paying a minimum wage or premium pay for overtime in many cases.

The new amendment to that suit filed on February 1 claims that Schneider and Eclipse as "joint employers" failed to give the required 60-day notice of a mass layoff required by the federal WARN Act.

Although Wal-Mart owns the building, according to WWJ organizer Mark Meinster, Schneider contracts to operate the warehouse and sub-contracts with staffing agencies like Eclipse to provide part of the workforce, and Eclipse or other firms may further subcontract for supply of labor. Beyond trying to maximize its flexibility, "it's a shell game to avoid responsibility," Meinster says. 

“Wisconsin on steroids” –a sweeping set of anti-union laws even more severe than those passed in Madison last March over massive public outcry—is now on the legislative agenda in Arizona. Arizona Republicans seek to ban local unions of teachers, firefighters, police, and other public servants from collective bargaining, and would even prohibit local officials from conferring with unions. These and other proposals set a new low in proposed restrictions on union rights.

The draconian package of bills includes:

1. A ban on local officials from bargaining with unions. It would even ban state and local units of government from conferring with unions. 
2. Public employees could no longer have their dues deducted from their paychecks.
3. Enforcement of a “paycheck protection” plan making it harder for unions to get contributions for pro-labor candidates.
4. Prohibit local governments from granting release time for union activities, so that union leaders would have to use personal time to resolve issues with management.

“We consider this even worse than the [anti-public union] legislation that Gov. Walker pushed in Wisconsin, “said AFL-CIO Executive Director Rebeka Friend. She believes the new wave of legislation is aimed at preventing union members from speaking out against the privatization of public services in Arizona.

Privatization has long been a central goal of both the American Legislative Exchange Council (see here and here), a national group funded heavily by the billionaire Koch brothers that drafts and promotes state legislation, and the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, an ALEC affiliate.

It appears as if the long and sometimes violent dispute between the International Longshore and Warehouse Workers Union and the operators of a port in Washington state is fnally coming to an end.  

On Wednesday, the Export Grain Terminal (EGT) in Longview, Wash., recognized ILWU Local 21 as the sole union representing workers at the port. EGT and ILWU are expected to negotiate a contract in the coming days to settle the dispute, which would brings to an end one of the most most high-profile and bloody labor disputes in years. The settlement also stops EGT from opening the first nonunion port on the West Coast, which ILWU agressively opposed.

Last year, EGT opened a grain terminal in Longview, Wash., using a variety of nonunion labor in skilled positions and labor provided by the Operating Engineers union in less-skilled positions. The use of nonunion and non-ILWU labor at the Port of Longview resulted in a series of confrontational showdowns between protesting union members and the facility. On one occasion last July, more than 100 union members were arrested for breaking down a fence and invading the grain terminal in an effort to shut it down.

Later, hundreds of ILWU members blocked railroad tracks to prevent goods from moving;  on another occasion unionists vandalized trains carrying grain to the port. Throughout the confrontations, more than 125 protesters were arrested.