Welcome to a new BERN (Bernie Election and Revolution News). The BERN diaries are a collaborative effort of the Daily Kos group, The Political Revolution. We are not affiliated with the campaign, except as volunteers. Numerous group members have contributed to this series in affirmation of Bernie’s campaign motto “Not me. Us.”
I posted a new BERN a couple days ago. I had not intended to post two BERNs in one week, but when I looked over the draft for that diary I realized it was way too long and would be better if I shortened it a bit.
So I removed three sections I’d intended to include: a section about Bernie Sanders’ Workplace Democracy plan, a section on his Justice And Safety For All plan, and a section on his Medicare For All plan. The diary was still quite long, but not quite as long.
Here, then, are the three sections I cut out of Part 1. There are already a number of other things I’d like to add, but I’ll wait until a future BERN to do that.
Workplace Democracy
If a company engages in job outsourcing, union busting or pays poverty wages, they will not get a dime in federal contracts from a Sanders administration.
That’s one part of Bernie Sanders’ Workplace Democracy plan.
It was the trade union movement that built the middle class in this country, and it is the trade union movement that is going to rebuild the middle class in America once again.
In order to strengthen America’s middle class, a Bernie Sanders administration will make it a priority to restore workers’ rights to bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. That is what the Workplace Democracy plan is all about.
Here are some of the things the plan will do. It’s a long list!
- Provide unions the ability to organize through a majority sign up process....
- Enact “first contract” provisions to ensure companies cannot prevent a union from forming by denying a first contract...
That second item refers to a trick some companies use to delay or prevent a union from forming. As this 2009 law review article explains, Refusing to bargain for a first contract is a powerful weapon in the arsenal of employers determined to remain union-free, as it prevents a nascent union from ever getting off the ground. While employers can and do thwart the statutory rights of employees simply by refusing ever to agree to a contract, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or "Board") lacks the power to remedy even the most egregious cases of refusal to bargain in good faith, except to order the recalcitrant party to bargain more.
Here’s how Sanders’ plan addresses that:
… Employers would be required to begin negotiating within 10 days of receiving a request from a new union. If no agreement is reached after 90 days of negotiation, the parties can request to enter a compulsory mediation process. If no first contract is reached after 30 more days of mediation, the parties would have a contract settlement through binding arbitration.
All right, getting back to the list of things the plan covers:
- Eliminate the “Right to Work for Less” …
That’s a reference to the so-called “Right to Work” laws Republicans love to pass. And here’s how the Workplace Democracy plan addresses that:
Bernie’s plan would repeal Section 14(b) of the Taft Hartley Act, which has allowed 28 states to pass legislation that eliminates the ability of unions to collect dues from those who benefit from union contracts and activities, undermining the unions’ representation of workers.
Getting back to the list again
- ... companies will no longer be able to ruthlessly exploit workers by misclassifying them as independent contractors or deny them overtime by falsely calling them a “supervisor” …
- Make sure that employers can no longer use franchisee or contractor arrangements to avoid responsibility and liability for workers….
- Give federal workers the right to strike….
- Make sure every public sector union in America has the freedom to negotiate….
- Require companies that merge to honor existing union contracts...
- Deny federal contracts to employers that pay poverty wages, outsource jobs overseas, engage in union busting, deny good benefits and pay CEOs outrageous compensation packages…
Apologies for bolding, but I really like that one and wanted to call special attention to it. The usual practice for the awarding of federal contracts throughout my lifetime, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, has seemed to be a you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours arrangement. The contractors make billions in excess profits and share the wealth with politicians who help them get the contracts.
The change Bernie Sanders is proposing in this section of the plan is a very good one which is long overdue. It’s also one which I think the voting public will respond to very positively once they hear about it and realize Sanders is serious about this. And the more that people understand that this is the kind of thing Democrats stand for and actually intend to do, the more people there will be who are not just willing to vote for Democrats but eager to vote for Democrats. This is how we regain strong majorities in the house and senate and get things done again.
- Ban the permanent replacement of striking workers...
- Protect the pensions of workers...
How does the plan protect pensions? Glad you asked!
… Because of a 2014 change in law instituted in the dead of night and against the strong opposition of Senator Sanders, it is now legal to cut the earned pension benefits of more than 1.5 million workers and retirees in multi-employer pension plans. As president, Bernie will sign an executive order to impose a moratorium on future pension cuts and would reverse the cuts to retirement benefits that have already been made. In addition, President Sanders will fight to implement the Keep Our Pension Promises Act he first introduced in 2015 to prevent the pensions of up to 10 million Americans from being cut...
We return now to our list, already in progress.
- Stop corporations from forcing workers to attend mandatory anti-union meetings as a condition of continued employment...
- Establish federal protections against the firing of workers for any reason other than “just cause.”
- Create a sectoral collective bargaining system with wage boards to set minimum standards across industries...
- Guarantee the right to unionize for all workers...
This is another provision I’d like to call special attention to. It addresses a large problem which much of the voting public is not really fully aware of.
Bernie will ensure farm workers and domestic workers, historically excluded from labor protections, are afforded the same standards as all workers, including the right to overtime pay and to join a union…
This is something I feel very strongly about. I am very glad Bernie Sanders is addressing this and making it an important part of the Workplace Democracy plan.
Okay, back to the list!
- Allow for secondary boycotts...
- Expand and update the persuader rule...
The persuader rule? What’s that?
Basically, a law was passed back in 1959 covering relations between employers and employees. One provision of the law was if employers hired consultants to try to persuade employees not to form unions they had to file a report disclosing this information.
But there were a number of loopholes employers used to get away with hiring people to help them discourage employees from forming unions without disclosing what they were doing. So in March 2016 Barack Obama tried to establish what was called the persuader rule which would have closed a key loophole. Implementation of the rule was blocked by legal challenges, and Donald Trump went on to repeal the rule entirely. Sanders wants to restore the rule:
This plan would require companies to disclose anti-union information they disseminate to workers and provide for equal time for organizing agents…
All clear? Then back to the list. One more item left on it:
- A fair transition to Medicare for All...
And that’s another good one to explain in a little more detail:
Bernie Sanders will require that resulting healthcare savings from union-negotiated plans result in wage increases and additional benefits for workers during the transition to Medicare for All.
When Medicare for All is signed into law, companies with union negotiated health care plans would be required to enter into new contract negotiations overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. Under this plan, all company savings that result from reduced health care contributions from Medicare for All will accrue equitably to workers in the form of increased wages or other benefits.
Furthermore, the plan will ensure that union-sponsored clinics and other providers are integrated within the Medicare for All system, and kept available for members. Unions will still be able to negotiate for and provide wrap-around services and other coverage not duplicative of the benefits established under Medicare for All.
Justice and Safety For All
The criminal justice system is rigged. The United States has a criminal justice system that is built to put the profit interests of billion-dollar industries like the bail bondsman over the interests of everyday, working people. It’s time to tell the bail industry, and the private prison industry, and the private probation industry, and anyone who profits from incarceration, that we are going to put the well-being of the people first. But that’s not enough. The size of your bank account too often determines the quality of representation that a person will receive. If you cannot afford to pay fines and fees associated with criminal justice involvement, you can end up in a spiraling cycle of debt, with a suspended driver’s license, or even locked up in a modern debtor’s prison. We need a system that works equally well for the workers and the wealthy.
~ Bernie Sanders
And last month, on August 18th, Bernie Sanders announced:
Today I am proud to be releasing the most comprehensive and progressive criminal justice platform of any candidate for president.
We have a criminal justice system that is racist and broken, and working together we're going to fundamentally transform it…
He has also said:
Corporations should not profit off suffering of incarcerated people and their families. My Justice and Safety for All plan is going to end that disgraceful profiteering.
As the introduction to Bernie Sanders’ Justice and Safety for All plan explains:
For most of our history as a country, the United States incarcerated people at about the same rates as other western democracies do today. In the early 1970s we had the same low crime rate as today, but we now have an incarceration rate five times higher. Indeed, America is now the world’s leading jailer. We lock up more than 2 million people in America, which is more of our own people than any country on Earth. And that does not include another 5 million people who are under the supervision of the correctional system.
Hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people in America have not been convicted of a crime and are solely in jail because they can’t afford their bail. We are criminalizing poverty.
Due to the historical legacy of institutional racism in this country, mass incarceration disproportionately falls on the shoulders of black and brown people in America. In fact, black Americans are incarcerated at five times the rate of white Americans, and even though people use drugs like marijuana at roughly the same rates across all races, black Americans are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white Americans. These disparities pervade every aspect of the criminal justice system. Black Americans, and especially young black men, are more likely to be stopped by the police, subjected to excessive force, arrested, and jailed than whites.
When Bernie Sanders is president, we will finally make the deep and structural investments to rebuild the communities that mass incarceration continues to decimate.
We must move away from an overly-punitive approach to public safety and start focusing on how to safeguard our communities, prevent the conditions that lead to arrests, and rehabilitate people who have made mistakes.
One of the key things the plan will do is end profiteering in our criminal justice system:
We must end the practice of corporations profiting off the suffering of incarcerated people and their families…
Corporations and police departments rake in billions in fines and fees from disadvantaged communities. The prison phone industry, for example, is a monopoly business worth more than $1 billion a year, with companies charging sky-high fees for telephone calls that many families can’t afford to pay to keep in touch with their loved ones...
Corporations and cities alike rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and fees off the backs of our most vulnerable communities. But it should not be this way. Everyday people who already are struggling to get by should not be made to subsidize the criminal justice system...
Here are some of the ways the plan will do that:
- Ban for-profit prisons.
- Make prison phone calls and other communications such as video chats free of charge.
- Audit the practices of commissaries and use regulatory authority to end price gouging and exorbitant fees.
- Incentivize states and localities to end police departments’ reliance on fines and fees for revenue.
- Remove the profit motive from our re-entry system and diversion, community supervision, or treatment programs, and ensure people leaving incarceration or participating in diversion, community supervision, or treatment programs can do so free of charge.
Let me say a little more about prison phone calls. When we lock people in jails, prisons, or “detention centers”, we separate them from their friends and family, from their neighbors, from society, and we put them into a new society which in general does not encourage good social interactions.
One thing prisoners are often told is “Do your own time” — meaning, if you see guards or other inmates abusing another prisoner, keep your eyes down, don’t interfere, don’t get involved, it’s none of your business. Instead of a healthy attitude of helping those around us, prisoners are encouraged only to look out for themselves. Prison discourages the kind of social skills which help people be healthy members of society, which is one reason US prisons have such a high recidivism rate.
A much better system is to encourage people who are locked up to maintain good communication and healthy emotional involvement with their friends and families through letters, phone calls and visits. Prisons and jails make all of these difficult. And the exorbitant fees currently charged by private for-profit prisons are one of the most disgusting ways this is done. I strongly applaud Bernie Sanders for including making prison phone calls free as part of this plan. And I hope our next president will also work to make it easier and more pleasant for families to be able to visit their loved ones who are locked up, rather than the difficult and often humiliating experience many prisons currently make it.
The Justice and Safety for All plan also includes ending cash bail:
Right now, hundreds of thousands of people without a criminal conviction are in jail simply because they could not afford bail. Young people can spend hundreds of days in jail, only to be acquitted — yet the severe damage to their lives cannot be undone. This is why Bernie introduced the No Money Bail Act of 2018 to end cash bail and to end the criminalization of poverty in America.
As president, Bernie Sanders intends to:
- End the use of secured bonds in federal criminal proceedings.
- Provide grants to states to reduce their pretrial detention populations, which are particularly high at the county level, and require states to report on outcomes as a condition of renewing their funding.
- Withhold funding from states that continue the use of cash bail systems.
- Ensure that alternatives to cash bail are not leading to disparities in the system.
Another major part of the Justice and Safety for All plan is transforming the way we police communities.
The people who serve our country as police officers deserve our gratitude and respect. As a country, though, we are asking them to do far too much…
In America, we have not made the necessary investments to secure a strong enough social fabric to ensure that people’s basic needs are met. So, in lieu of addressing problems directly, we ask police officers to address every societal issue that results from the tears in the fabric, whether it be mental illness, addiction, homelessness, or poverty. We ask these overstressed police officers to fill roles they are not trained or equipped for — doubling as social workers, conflict negotiators, and medical responders. Last year, more police officers died of suicide than in the line of duty. We need to shift our emphasis toward solving problems in ways that don't rely on policing and incarceration as a first option by supporting alternative strategies to make individuals and communities safer and healthier.
In other ways, we must hold our police and sheriff’s departments to a higher standard. And we must end harmful policing practices like racial profiling, stop and frisk, oppressive “broken windows” policing, and the militarization of police forces — all of which actively undermine public safety and community trust in law enforcement. Widespread use of excessive force, including deadly shootings of unarmed civilians, undermine the integrity of and public trust in the police. Violence and brutality of any kind, particularly at the hands of the police meant to protect and serve our communities, must not be tolerated.
And related to that, the plan addresses the very important area of putting in place much better oversight and accountability than we now have for police and prosecutors. Some of the ways it will do this include:
- Ensuring accountability, strict guidelines and independent oversight for all federal funds used by police departments.
- Ending federal programs that provide military equipment to local police forces.
- Creating a federally managed database of police use of deadly force.
- Providing grants for states and cities to establish civilian oversight agencies with enforceable accountability mechanisms.
- Establishing federal standards for the use of body cameras, including establishing third-party agencies to oversee the storage and release of police videos.
- Mandating criminal liability for civil rights violations resulting from police misconduct.
- Limiting the use of “qualified immunity” to address the lack of criminal liability for civil rights violations resulting from police misconduct.
- Conducting a U.S. Attorney General's investigation whenever someone is killed in police custody.
- Creating a registry of disreputable federal law enforcement officers and establishing a no-call list to keep these officers from being called as witnesses, so that testimony from untrustworthy sources does not lead to criminal convictions as it too often has in the past.
Those are just some of the things this plan covers and how it attempts to achieve these goals. This is a very detailed and comprehensive plan for making major changes in a system which desperately needs major changes. I encourage people when you have time to read the entire plan, and to encourage other Democrats to join in speaking out and supporting the policies in it.
Medicare For All
Our dysfunctional health care system is unaffordable.
Today, the United States has the most expensive, inefficient, and bureaucratic health care system in the world. Despite the fact that we are the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care for all -- and have 34 million Americans who are uninsured and even more who are under-insured -- we now spend more than twice as much per capita on health care as the average developed country.
According to a recent study, 45 percent of Americans are worried a major illness could leave them bankrupt, 1 out of 4 Americans skipped needed medical care because they could not afford it, and 77 percent are concerned rising health costs will cause significant and lasting damage to our economy.
~ Bernie Sanders
The ongoing failure of our health care system is directly attributable to the fact that — unique among major nations — it is primarily designed not to provide quality care to all in a cost-effective way, but to maximize profits for health insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry and medical equipment suppliers.
While thousands of Americans die each year because they cannot get the health care they desperately need, the top five health insurance companies last year made nearly $21 billion in profits, led by United Health which made almost $12 billion alone...
~ Bernie Sanders
Our dysfunctional health care system and what we can do to fix it is a subject Bernie Sanders often speaks out about. For instance, Bernie Sanders was in Kentucky last month and here’s part of what he said:
Today I say here in Kentucky to senator McConnell: stop your cowardice. You don't have the right to stop democracy in the United States senate. Today here in Louisville I say to senator McConnell: stop worrying about your billionaire friends. They're doing just fine. Start worrying about the working families of your state and around this country who are struggling to keep their heads above water…
Now I think the question that a lot of people are asking is: Why does senator McConnell do what he does? Why does he oppose virtually every piece of legislation that protects working families while supporting legislation that gives huge tax breaks to billionaires?
And the answer is not complicated. Follow the money! Over the course of his long career senator McConnell has received huge amounts of campaign contributions from Wall Street companies, the health care industry, the fossil fuel industry, and of course the NRA.
Mitch McConnell is obstructing, obstructing, and obstructing. We say to senator McConnell, we are going to do what every other major country on earth does -- guarantee health care to all people through a Medicare For All single payer program ...
If you’d like (and if embedded tweets show up for you on Daily Kos) you can hear him say that for yourself:
Bernie Sanders has made the issue of health care a major part of his presidential campaign. But this is not something new for Sanders; this has been a major concern of his for more than 30 years.
There a good article about this in Monday’s New York Times. It’s a long article, but here a a few key paragraphs to get you started:
In July 1987, Bernie Sanders, then the mayor of Burlington, Vt., arrived in Ottawa convinced he was about to see the future of health care.
Years earlier, as his mother’s health declined and his family struggled to pay for medical treatment, he was spending more time attending to her than in classes at Brooklyn College, suffering through what his brother called “a wrecked year’’ leading to her death. Over time, he had come to believe that the American health care system was flawed and inherently unfair. In Canada, he wanted to observe firsthand the government-backed, universal model that he strongly suspected was better.
Amid tours of community centers and meetings with health care providers, Mr. Sanders more than liked what he saw.
“He was thrilled,” recalled Beth Mintz, a professor of sociology at the University of Vermont and a member of a task force that accompanied Mr. Sanders. “It gave him much more confidence in the possibility of the single-payer system as a solution.”
Decades before “Medicare for all” would propel his presidential campaigns, Mr. Sanders’s expedition to Ottawa helped forge his determination to transform the American health care system. His views burst onto the national political scene during his 2016 presidential run, when he championed a single-payer program alongside many other liberal policy ideas. Now, as he seeks the Democratic presidential nomination for a second time, he has made “Medicare for all” the most important issue of his campaign and set the agenda for the ideological discussion in the primary...
This is a subject Bernie Sanders speaks and tweets about regularly. Here are a few of the things he’s said recently:
Under a Medicare for All system, we are going to guarantee health care to all people as a human right. Working people should not have to search around for coupons or risk going into bankruptcy to afford their medical care.
Ways you can lose health coverage under our corporate-run system:
- Change jobs
- Turn 26
- Move to another state
- Have a pre-existing condition
- Start a business
- Get laid off
- Get divorced
- Retire early
Ways you can lose health coverage under Medicare for All:
[And yes, that’s the complete tweet. It’s empty following the second colon, and that’s exactly the point.]
No one in America should die because they can't afford their medication. I can't believe we have to say that.
Here’s one more thing Bernie Sanders said concerning health care which I absolutely had to include!
You’re probably not going to see the key quote from this video in the New York Times or Washington Post, so watch the video! It’s a great quote, and I would have used it in the diary title if I could, but that would be in violation of Daily Kos rules.
(The video runs 2 minutes and 22 seconds, but the quote I’m referring to occurs in the first 9 seconds.)
A Few Other Things Bernie Sanders Has Said Recently
I don’t want to make this BERN too long, but it’s hard to resist posting a few more quotes.
Why do we have people working 40 hours a week and can’t afford to feed their kids? The answer is pretty simple: wages in America are too damn low.
I know what it's like to grow up in a family that lives paycheck to paycheck. That is something I will never forget.
Are you truly free if you work three jobs because you can’t find one with a decent wage?
Are you free if health care is unaffordable?
Are you free if you can't afford an education?
There is no freedom without economic freedom.
Imagine what your life would be like if your health care was guaranteed, your wages were fair, and an emergency wouldn't mean bankruptcy.
What if you weren't up at night worrying about taking care of your family?
All Americans deserve to feel that security, not just the rich.
This is not a time for a middle ground approach. This is a time to take on powerful special interests that control our political and economic life, and finally build a country that works for working people.
If anyone would like to donate
to Bernie Sanders’ campaign,
here’s a link to the secure ActBlue site
which will let you do so.