Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson
Former All-Star NBA point guard Kevin Johnson is now the mayor of Sacramento, California—and the destroyer of the 40-year-old National Conference of Black Mayors. At Deadspin, Dave McKenna details how Johnson
first tried to take over the group, and then, when that failed, went to war against it while starting his own black mayors group, the African American Mayors Association. So why am I writing about this as a labor issue? Because Johnson, who is married to corporate education reform star Michelle Rhee, was trying to use the NCBM to promote charter schools:
[East Orange, New Jersey, Mayor Robert] Bowser says that Johnson, before his coup, had proposed a resolution saying NCBM endorsed the charter-school movement.
“We took a vote and said, ‘Hell no!’ to his resolution,” Bowser says. “The black mayors are not buying the charter schools, period.”
During his takeover attempt of the NCBM, Johnson also tried to turn a civil rights event, the commemoration of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, into a charter-boosting event.
Then there’s Ballard Spahr. During the takeover, Valarie J. Allen, a partner in Ballard Spahr’s Philadelphia offices, sent a missive to the NCBM’s general counsel, Sue Winchester, threatening to report her to “the California Bar” if she didn’t comply with Johnson’s dictates. It turns out that Allen’s prime role with the firm is to run its charter school portfolio. And that’s a big job. “In the past 10 years, Ballard Spahr has helped more than 60 charter schools ... secure more than $676 million in tax-exempt bond funding,” reads the sales pitch Allen makes to charter schools operators on the firm’s website. Allen goes on to boast that Ballard Spahr handles “more than 10 percent” of all charter-school financing nationwide.
Surprise, surprise, Johnson's new African American Mayors Association is holding a charter-dominated education panel at its convention this year.
Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's labor and education news.
A fair day's wage
- Employers get away with a lot of discrimination against pregnant workers (which is why congressional Republicans need to stop blocking the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act), but it's really illegal to be as blatant about it as United Bible Fellowship Ministries, Inc.:
The organization has had a “no pregnancy in the workplace” policy in place that meant it fired anyone who became pregnant and refused to hire anyone applying for a position while pregnant. It admitted that the former employee, Sharmira Johnson, performed her job as a resource technician providing care to residents well and didn’t have any medical restrictions that would keep her from carrying out her duties. Yet it fired her, arguing it was justifiable in order to ensure her safety, that of her unborn baby, and the safety of its clients.
Johnson is supposed to get $75,000 in back pay and damages.
- The Belabored podcast looks at graduate student unionism.
- Mark Bittman: Not just about amazing recipes (though seriously, his recipes are amazing):
And what does it say that you can buy a can of tuna guaranteed to be dolphin-safe but can’t guarantee that its human producers — fishers, processors, transporters, packers, sales representatives — haven’t been abused?
- Gawker Media staff are having a union vote soon, and they're talking publicly, on Gawker, about how they're voting on the union, and why. It's a fascinating discussion.
- Jimmy Johns is the worst, at least on how it treats its workers. I wouldn't know about the sandwiches.
- GAO report: 40 percent of U.S. workforce made up of contingent workers.
- How do you organize and build power among workers who don't speak the same language?
- This is just a great deep dive on how restaurants in the Bay Area are adapting to minimum wage increases.
- Public sector jobs vanish, hitting blacks hard. The fact that public sector jobs have historically been a route to the middle class not just for African Americans but for women and other discriminated-against groups is something to keep in mind when you see Republicans attacking public sector workers.
- Workers Independent News on a stimulus package that makes sense:
Education
