Does ALEC Want You to Work Even if You’re Sick?

[marmar]

Does ALEC Want You to Work Even if You’re Sick?

June 28, 2013
by Laura Macomber, Okapi Productions


On Friday, June 14, Governor Rick Scott struck a double blow when he signed into law a bill suppressing “living wage” and paid sick-leave policies for Florida workers. While Gov. Scott’s negative opinion of government-sponsored health care and state taxes remain no secret in Florida, what’s less known is that a national group called ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is behind the effort to place this latest anti-worker bill into the governor’s hands.

ALEC is an organization made up of state legislators and private-sector members who come together to promote corporate friendly legislation. While the group purports to exist for “educational” purposes and claims to do no lobbying, ALEC has come under scrutiny for its “model legislation” — bills crafted to reflect the special interests of ALEC’s corporate members, that then frequently find their way into the statehouses of ALEC’s legislative members. So-called “Stand Your Ground” laws, discriminatory voter ID requirements and anti-union “right to work” laws are just a few of the policies cultivated by ALEC.

Florida House Bill 655 clearly borrows from an ALEC model bill, the “Living Wage Mandate Preemption Act,” which seeks to repeal or prohibit any “living wage” mandates or ordinances set by local city and town councils.

But ALEC manages to exert major ideological influence even beyond its own model legislation. The new Florida bill is one of a number of preemption laws to have cropped up in state after state since 2011. That’s no coincidence. The same year, Wisconsin passed the country’s first anti-paid sick-leave law. According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s Mary Bottari and Brendan Fischer, who have tracked ALEC extensively over the past few years, the Wisconsin bill was distributed to ALEC members during a 2011 conference in New Orleans, where it was the sole point of discussion during a meeting of ALEC’s Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee. (The ALEC subcommittee was co-chaired at that time by YUM! Brands, Inc., the company that owns Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell.) ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://billmoyers.com/2013/06/28/does-alec-want-you-to-work-even-if-youre-sick/

[hobbit709]

1. They want you to work until you drop, just like every other slave in history.