News

Dems block ban on mandatory union fees after impassioned debate

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New Mexico will not become the nation’s 29th “right-to-work” state, at least not this year. After testimony Saturday from a long line of union members and nearly two hours of debate, Democrats on a committee of the state House of Representatives killed a Republican bill that would have prohibited unions from imposing mandatory fees on workers. Republicans argue such policies take money from workers who do not wish to join a union. Republican lawmakers also say banning compulsory union fees would create a better business environment, drawing investors and boosting employment. Opponents counter that such a law would push down wages and unfairly require labor unions to represent workers for free.

Election 2016

GOP targets key seat in Rio Rancho in bid to take control of Senate

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One of the key districts New Mexico Republicans need to take the state Senate back sits just north of Albuquerque in Rio Rancho, where incumbent Democrat John Sapien faces GOP challenger Diego Espinoza. Sapien, an insurance salesman who is running for his third term, won both the 2008 and 2012 elections on narrow margins—by just 121 votes and 161 votes respectively. Sapien’s latest challenger, Espinoza, has so far outstripped him in fundraising, gathering roughly $153,000 as of press time compared to Sapien’s $126,000. Both speak of job creation as the top priority of their candidacies. But each have different solutions.

2016 Legislative Session

Right-to-work dies in first committee

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A controversial bill that took many hours of debate last year saw an accelerated but long and heated debate before dying this time. Five Democrats in Senate Public Affairs Committee voted to table what supporters call “right-to-work” legislation Tuesday evening, overriding the four Republicans who voted to keep the bill alive. The bill would have barred “fair share” union payments, which can be required in some jobs for nonunion employees who work in a collective bargaining unit. Unlike union dues, fair share fees pay for the negotiating a union does on the collective bargaining unit’s behalf. Brian Condit, a political coordinator for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, testified that fair share fees can’t include “nonchargeable” union activities like organizing, political activity and union education.

2016 Legislative Session

Another clueless and dishonest “kindergarten” attack on right to work

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Paul Gessing is the president of the Rio Grande Foundation, a libertarian non-profit based in New Mexico. Tamara Kay and Gorden Lafer re-hashed many of their arguments against the Rio Grande Foundation and its work in support of “right to work” in New Mexico. These two use a bunch of fancy rhetoric to attack our research as “unscientific,” but fail to embrace simple logic. As a sign of their alleged statistical prowess – with no relevance whatsoever to “right to work” — the “dynamic duo” claim that supporters of right to work are doing the equivalent of arguing that “because people with larger shoe sizes are more likely to have heart attacks, big shoes must cause heart attacks.”

I scoured the Internet for something, anything, to verify the statement that people with big feet are at greater risk for heart attacks. Interestingly, Kay and Lafer are flat-wrong even about this silly non-sequiter: according to a 2015 CBS News story, compared with a 6-foot-tall person, someone who is 5 feet tall could have a 60 percent higher risk for coronary heart disease.

Community Voices

The return of ‘Kindergarten math’ in battle over right-to-work

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Tamara Kay is an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico. Gordon Lafer is an associate professor at the University of Oregon. Despite being dealt a death blow in the state Senate at the final hour during the last legislative session, proponents of right-to-work laws are at it again. What was most alarming about last year’s debate was how lobbyists manipulated facts to propel their pet bills through the legislature. The head of the Rio Grande Foundation (RGF), Paul Gessing, promoted bogus research reports to legislators and the public that no credible statistician or social scientist would ever put their name on, suggesting that right-to-work laws increase economic growth, jobs and personal income.

NM Legislature

Fired up Sanchez criticizes media, governor

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Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen, responded to Gov. Susana Martinez’ State of the State address earlier on Tuesday afternoon with heated words. And he didn’t save all of his frustration for Republicans. See Also: Gov. Susana Martinez’s State of the State Address

“Once again, for the news media, especially the television news media, let me make it clear once and for all: You don’t need a passport to get on an airplane in the state of New Mexico,” Sanchez said to members of the media. “That’s false, and those reporters who report that are wrong.”

Sanchez then referred to how an official from the federal Department of Homeland Security wrote a letter to the editor in response to a November Albuquerque Journal editorial that stated New Mexicans would not be able to use a state driver’s license to board commercial flights “later next year” because of the state’s noncompliance with the federal Real ID Act. The federal government, at that point, had not provided a deadline for when New Mexico driver’s licenses would stop being valid in airports.

News

Guv changes tone on DL debate, will push ‘right to work’ this session

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Gov. Susana Martinez pledged Thursday to put at least two non-budget items on the call this coming legislative session. Speaking on a panel with members of the local business community, Martinez said she will allow legislators to introduce bills on changing driver’s licenses and barring mandatory union agency fees as a condition of work, sometimes called right to work. Martinez has made ending New Mexico’s practice of allowing driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants one of her top priorities for five years. But she took a notable shift in her rhetoric about the issue in her comments at the Hyatt Regency Albuquerque, saying for the first time that she’d support a two-tiered system that still allows driver’s permits for undocumented immigrants. “An illegal immigrant should not receive a driver’s license that looks like mine or yours,” Martinez said.

Right to Work

First responder unions talk ‘fair share’

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Following a memorial for those lost in the attacks of September 11, union members gathered for a press conference to address issues regarding first responders and collective bargaining. The union members gathered in a conference room in an Albuquerque hotel on Friday afternoon. At issue was a case set to go before the U.S. Supreme Court. Friedrichs v. California Teachers concerns whether union employees are required to pay “fair share.” These are payments from non-union personnel who would benefit from union bargaining. Public sector union members and their supporters have argued that first responders will suffer without a strong collective bargaining unit.

Community Voices

How education fared in the 2015 legislative session | by Betty Patterson

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[box type=”info” style=”rounded”]BETTY PATTERSON is President of the National Education Association, New Mexico, a statewide union for educators.[/box]

Several of the Governor’s highest priorities for this recently completed legislative session were on education issues.   We agree emphasizing public education is appropriate.   It is the single issue  with the greatest impact on New Mexico’s overall future: public education.   We wonder why education is given short shrift in coverage of legislative outcomes. Promoters of the wrongly-labeled “right to work” bills distracted legislators from the important work at hand to improve our schools.  If passed, it would have increased the impact of poverty on the readiness of many students to learn, and it would have lessened the impact of teachers and other educators when raising our collective voice on education issues.   Teachers and other education professionals should be heard. We applaud legislative champions who defeated the  “Right to Work” bill, and laud those who made strengthening public schools their top priority in the  first session of the 52nd New Mexico State Legislature.  If next year’s session is also distracted by such unneeded and harmful legislation, we will rise again. Elections have serious consequences; the loss of a pro-public education majority in the House meant a great deal of effort defeating other very bad ideas  such as vouchers and a budget that falls short. The budget has no salary increase for school employees other than new teachers and merit pay for teachers tied to the highly-flawed PED evaluation system.   When teachers compete with each other for higher test-score results this hurts students in many ways.  These negative impacts are compounded when schools are also “graded” based on standardized tests.  Unfortunately, the Merit Pay plan remains in the budget.

Community Voices

Governor should sign “Ready To Work” plan | by Sen. Michael Padilla

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[box type=”info” style=”rounded”]MICHAEL PADILLA is a Democratic state senator representing District  14 (Bernalillo) and currently serves as the Majority Whip for New Mexico’s state senate.[/box]

The 2015 Legislative Session now has less than a week to finish all its work, but there is still plenty of time to address the most pressing need in New Mexico today: more jobs. Early in this 60-day meeting of the legislature, Senate Democrats laid out our priorities through an ambitious ‘Ready to Work’ Jobs Plan. The plan creates 73,000 jobs over the next five years and stimulates greater economic activity across New Mexico.  The plan is comprised of more than 50 bills introduced in the current session that promise new employment and economic activity in urban and rural areas of the state, across a broad range of occupations. Our plan also meets two significant challenges.