Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
At the close of the Iowa legislative session about a month ago, perhaps no constituency felt more shafted than organized Labor. Labor had raised a lot of money for Democratic candidates with the promise that a Fair Share bill would be passed, which would have allowed public employee unions to charge fees for services given to non-union workers. Fair Share failed, one Democrat became a Republican, and Labor learned a valuable political lesson,Buzz Malone, president of Laborers' Local Union 566, said by phone Friday.
Malone has been president of Local 566 based in Ottumwa, Iowa, since its inception last year; previously, he had been a lead organizer for the Great Plains Laborers District Council working throughout Iowa and South Dakota.
In the past Iowa legislative session, “Labor in general was pushing very hard for fair share. And in general, everyone’s a little upset about that,” he said. “Actually they’re a lot of upset about that.” Malone said the only labor winner in the last legislative session was the teachers’ union, whichsaw teachers’ salaries go up.
Malone said for the laborers, “As being in construction, Fair Share was actually our No. 2 priority,” behind a prevailing wage bill that would ensure that skilled construction workers were paid at least the wages that “prevailed” in their local communities so they could afford to live their communities. Malone said the prevailing wage bill was tabled with the promise from Democratic leaders that it would be addressed after Fair Share. But Fair Share never got past the House.
Malone also protested accusations that labor had been trying to unfairly force legislators’ hands, as some critics charged. “It wasn’t like labor came out and beat up these poor House Democrats,” he said. “The reality of the situation was all the folks that we gave money to sat across from us and said, yes, we’ll support fair share, and we’ll support prevailing wage … The House was in very poor order. The governor and the Senate did a stellar job,but it all came coming back to the House.”
The task ahead, Malone said, was to build a better House. “We lost one of our House members over to the Republican Party, which was a shame … actually no it wasn’t,” he said. “She was a Republican anyway.” But the last session at least could be counted as a learning experience. “I would look for everyone in Labor to give … a lot more scrutiny over where their money’s going next time,” he said. “I’m not saying the taps are going to be turned off, but they’re going to be tightened.”
Malone said he did not expect his union to make an endorsement in the 2008 presidential race. Local unions do not endorse on the federal level he said, and he did not think the Laborers on the international stage would make an endorsement either. “I would look to my union to probably not make an endorsement before the primary because we have so many good friends in the Democrats that are running right now,” he said. “When you have several sitting senators and governors involved, nobody is going to make a rush to an endorsement.”
He did say, however, that individuals are encouraged to get involved and that he had chosen his horse: Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Malone, who is on Obama’s Iowa steering committee, said he took a liking to Obama after working in Illinois a few years ago. “Beyond that, I was very impressed with him after I read his books,” he said. Malone said that after reading those books (he liked "The Audacity of Hope better than "Dreams from My Father"), he knew that Obama had “an incredible amount of respect for the founding documents that our current president couldn’t spell, let alone explain,” he said. Obama, he noted, formerly taught constitutional law.
Malone said he thinks Obama is “the type of centered candidate that can really bring the country back together again” and that as a union organizer, he was impressed that Obama had been a community organizer. Malone said that Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war was not the deciding factor for him. “[It was] not a negative by any means, but that wasn’t a major issue for me, and I know I’m a little out of the norm,” he said. “My main issue was really about the working-classfolks of this country and getting things back in order for them. And I think this guy’s capable of doing it.”
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