Workers forced to attend Romney rally -- without being paid.

[LuckyTheDog]

Coal miners lost pay when Mitt Romney visited their mine to promote coal jobs

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney visited an Ohio coal mine this month to promote jobs in the coal industry, workers who appeared with him at the rally lost pay because their mine was shut down.

The Pepper Pike company that owns the Century Mine told workers that attending the Aug. 14 Romney event would be both mandatory and unpaid, a top company official said Monday morning in a West Virginia radio interview.

A group of employees who feared they'd be fired if they didn't attend the campaign rally in Beallsville, Ohio, complained about it to WWVA radio station talk show host David Blomquist. Blomquist discussed their beefs on the air Monday with Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore.

Moore told Blomquist that managers "communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend." He said the company did not penalize no-shows.

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2012/08/coal_miners_lost_pay_when_mitt.html

[Blue Meany]

1. Wow, if a Democrat did that it would be all over the news...n/t

[malaise]

2. There is no employer in the world who could make me attend a political rally

I'd see them in court after they fired me.

[Brickbat]

3. Yes, they are certainly standing on their own feet without having to bow down to any union.

[jorno67]

4. WOW!!!!!

"attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend."

What the fuck do they think mandatory means?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

[Posteritatis]

6. I figured they meant physically forced or something. (nt)

[leveymg]

5. Aren't these guys unionized? Isn't there some UMW bar to forced attendance at political events?

This would seem to argue in favor of unionizing that company.

[Brickbat]

8. This mine is non-union.

[leveymg]

11. That explains it.

[sad sally]

13. Have you seen this ruling? Democracy shredded.

GOP Federal Election Commissioners: Corporations Can Compel Employees To Campaign For Political Candidates

By Igor Volsky on Aug 25, 2012 at 11:09 am

Three Republican Federal Election Commissioners have found that unions or corporations can compel employees to campaign for political candidates in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.

In a Statement of Reasons memorandum signed on August 21, 2012, the commissioners contend that the United Public Workers union (UPW) was within its legal right to require employees to “provide support for Hawaii Fist Congressional District candidate Colleen Hanabusa’s candidacy in a special congressional election on May 22, 2010.” The case stemmed from a complaint in wich two employees alleged that they were fired after refusing “to comply with a UPW request to sign-wave, phone bank, canvass, and contribute to Hanabusa’s campaign.” The GOP commissioners found that current law and regulations do not prohibit employers from requiring participation:

UPW’s independent use of its paid workforce to campaign for a federal candidate post-Citizen’s United was not contemplated by Congress and, consequently, is not prohibited by either the Act or Commission regulations…. Requiring employees to work on independent expenditures for either the union or a non-connected political committee is not a violation of the Act or Commission regulations.
The Commission ultimately found that UPW “failed to report independent expenditures” which resulted from the employee participation in Hanabusa’s campaign, but concluded that the union did not coerce employees to make contributions. UPW has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $5,500 for “failing to report independent expenditures in support of a federal candidate.”

In a separate Statement of Reasons memorandum, the three Democratic FEC commissioners argued that UPW did in fact coerce “employees to participate in the union’s political activities” in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. “After Citizens United, UPW had every right to expressly advocate for its chosen candidate and against her opponent,” they wrote. “Nothing in Citizens United suggests, however, that the Court intended to expand the rights of corporations and unions at the expense of their employees’ longstanding rights to be free from coercion and to express or to decline to express their own political views.”

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/08/25/744961/republican-federal-election-commission-members-say-corporations-can-compel-employees-to-campaign-for-political-candidates/

[leveymg]

14. OK, ok. I'm finally convinced. The GOP really is the Italian Fascist Party, reborn.

[lpbk2713]

7. Just like BushCo

Attendance was an order when Shit-for-Brains
had a photo-op gig at military establishments.

[MADem]

9. K/R--this needs to be spread far and wide. nt

[Mtndreamer]

10. Republicans: you can force employees to campaign for a candidate..

Three Republican commissioners contend that the United Public Workers union (UPW) was within its legal right to require employees to “provide support for Hawaii Fist Congressional District candidate Colleen Hanabusa’s candidacy in a special congressional election on May 22, 2010.” The case stemmed from a complaint when two employees alleged that they were fired after refusing “to comply with a UPW request to sign-wave, phone bank, canvass, and contribute to Hanabusa’s campaign.” The GOP commissioners found that current law and regulations do not prohibit employers from requiring participation.

http://eqs.nictusa.com/eqsdocsMUR/12044320562.pdf

[Jim__]

12. We need a TV ad blasting this information out there!

[HopeHoops]

15. And then they were outsourced to China.