This week in the war on workers: House GOP budget attacks working people. Again.

Daily Kos Staff

Saturday April 02, 2016 · 3:56 PM PDT

2016/04/02 · 15:56

The House Republican budget is extremely unlikely to become law, but it’s still worth taking a look at where their priorities are—and what Republicans would be doing if they controlled all of government. The plan:

… would cut programs for low- and moderate-income people by about $3.7 trillion over the next decade. In 2026, it would cut such programs overall by 42 percent — causing tens of millions of people to lose health coverage and millions to lose basic food or other support.

In addition, the plan would secure 62 percent of its budget cuts from low-income programs even though they account for just 28 percent of total non-defense program spending (and just 24 percent of total program spending, including defense).

While cutting supports and services severely for Americans of lesser means, the budget would secure no deficit reduction at all from the more than $1 trillion a year in tax credits, deductions, and other preferences, collectively known as “tax expenditures” — which disproportionately benefit high-income households ...

That’s $2.9 trillion in healthcare cuts by repealing Obamacare’s subsidies and Medicaid expansion, more than $150 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, cuts to Pell Grants and the Child Tax Credit … all while letting the wealthy continue to reap tax benefits.

A fair day’s wage

● Minnesota Republicans are following the big Republican trend with attacks on public unions.

● With "gigs" instead of jobs, workers bear new burdens.

● These workers are fighting to keep your North Face jacket from being made for poverty wages.

● Josh Eidelson looks at how a $15 minimum wage went from fringe to mainstream:

By 2020 there will be a $15 minimum wage in effect for fast-food workers in New York City, for employees of large companies in Seattle, and for all workers in Los Angeles. On March 28, California Governor Jerry Brown announced a deal to make the $15 wage standard throughout the state by 2022. Last year, Democrats in Congress proposed making it the national starting wage, replacing the $7.25 federal minimum that prevails today.

None of that would have been possible without the union-conceived Fight for $15, a four-year-old effort that’s been organized labor’s most effective political campaign in recent memory. “On the political level, it’s definitely working,” says Vincent Vernuccio, who directs labor policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan-based free-market think tank. The Fight for $15 was the brainchild of the Service Employees International Union, the second-largest in the U.S., many of whose 1.9 million members work for local or state government or in taxpayer-funded health-care jobs. Since 2012, SEIU has sunk millions of dollars into the Fight for $15 to pressure fast-food corporations to allow unionization, lobby elected officials to pass higher wage laws, and support worker walkouts and mass demonstrations.

● This story about the sock business in Fort Payne, Alabama, is close to my heart, because I’ve spent a lot of time in Fort Payne, even living there for a summer, and know someone who used to own a sock mill. But it’s also a fascinating story about American manufacturing and globalization.

Education

● How interesting:

Just several years after its glitzy launch, StudentsFirst, the Sacramento-based education group started by former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, is merging with another education advocacy organization, 50Can.

● One family’s epic struggle to opt their seventh-grader out of the PARCC test despite harassment from charter school administrators.

● Why did Chicago teachers strike on April 1? Also, what one teacher said about her decision.

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