 That Nourage covered a variety of EPI related issues at the National Journal, and many of his blogs have been featured and highly regarded on the Atlantic. Nourage will lead the discussion after Gordon commences, and you'll hear more about our other panelists, Virginia delegate Patrick Hope, who represents Arlington, Virginia. So with that, I'll turn it over to Ross Eisenberg. Thank you, Kristen, and good morning, everybody. I'm just gonna say a word about Gordon before I make my remarks. He, many years ago, wrote a book. Gordon is a associate professor at Oregon's Labor Education and Research Center. But he's been associated with EPI for a very long time and early in his career, I think with help from the Economic Policy Institute. He wrote a book that I highly recommend, it's called the Job Training Charade. And it told a very unfortunate and unfortunately still unlearned set of truths about how much our job training system underperforms. How it doesn't really serve the people that it purports to serve very well. But I'm going to talk a little bit about the national view before Gordon talks about his state by state examination of what's happening to labor standards. Everybody should know the following facts about the US economy. Wages in income, for most of the workforce over the last 35 years have stagnated even while total national wealth and national income grew steadily. Workers are more productive and the economy creates more wealth than ever before. But the typical male worker actually earns lower wages after adjusting for inflation than 35 years ago. Income inequality overall is at pre-new deal levels. The top 1% takes 22% of national income. And then EPI puts out every two years a very important document called the State of Working America, which can be a very depressing read. But in a collection of very tough statistics, the one that I found most astonishing is that from 1983 to 2010, the bottom 60% of Americans actually lost wealth. They're actually poorer in 2010 than in 1983. The overall economy grew, national wealth grew, people were more productive than ever before. But the bottom 60% on average was poorer than 27 years before. That is a remarkable indictment, I think, of how the economy is not working for everybody. CEO Pay, as you might know, has skyrocketed from being 20 times the average worker's wage to 273 times the average worker's wage. And while all this is happening and a cause of all of this union density was declining from its peak of about 35% to what's now 11% for the share of the population covered by collective bargaining agreements. So the $64,000 question is why? Why is this that working people aren't sharing in the nation's ever-growing wealth? Why are so many people poorer than their less well-educated counterparts who were 30 years ago? Is it globalization? Is it technological change? Is it government over regulation? You know, what is responsible for this? We know, we believe, we know most of the major causes of these problems. They have nothing to do with the skills of the workforce or their education, both of which are greater today than they were 35 years ago. We have a far higher share of the workforce with a college education, a four-year college education, and more high school graduates as a share of the economy than we had 35 years ago. So it's not that the US workforce is undereducated and it isn't over regulation either. Rather, the causes, and there are many of them, I'm just going to list a few that we have been examining and that we will be examining in the year ahead in a project that we're undertaking. One very big cause is bad trade agreements and currency policy that have decimated US manufacturing, or US manufacturing employment, I should say. A weakened National Labor Relations Act that excludes vast numbers of workers from its protections, fails to deter or punish employer interference with union organizing, fails to protect striking workers against being permanently replaced and removes key issues from bargaining where people have the right to bargain. The deregulation of a number of industries, airlines and buses, communications, energy and trucking, led to steep declines in wages, both for the previously unionized workforce and interestingly for the non-union workers in those industries as well. An inadequate minimum wage, inadequate federal minimum wage, and eroding overtime protections. The threshold salary below which a salaried worker is guaranteed overtime pay, time and a half pay, is now less than half what it was in 1975. So somebody now who is making just a little bit more than a poverty level wage can be considered an exempt executive or professional or administrator and denied overtime pay. Excessively high unemployment is another big cause. Wages tend to rise as unemployment falls. Corporate restructurings that separate the true economic employer from the legal employment relationship. And widespread cheating, and this is something that Gordon will get into by employers and a reduced federal enforcement effort so that wage theft and illegal misclassification of employees as independent contractors is now rampant throughout the economy. Each of these problems for working families is actually the explicit legislative goal of various national lobbying organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the National Restaurant Association. They lobby for lower minimum wages and weaker overtime standards. They lobby for trade deals like NAFTA that cost the U.S. more than 600,000 good manufacturing jobs. They've tried to shut down the National Labor Relations Board and actually did that in effect over the last year and prevent any law that would make union organizing more possible. They support deregulation and a downsized government. They pursue deficit reduction during the recovery at the time that we needed stimulus and government spending more than ever. And even as a majority of economists, conservatives, as well as liberal economists, found that counterproductive and job killing. So each of these factors contributing to wage stagnation is an explicit federal government policy choice. But as you'll hear soon, these trends are being exacerbated by laws at the state level. Every law that sets decent labor standards, that increases the bargaining power of average workers or that protects institutions that can advocate for the employment rights of workers, is a potential target of corporations and right-wing politicians who share a goal of deregulating the labor market and leaving workers to fend for themselves against the power of employers. And that's what Gordon is going to describe in some detail soon now. So I'll turn it over to Gordon Laker, professor at the Associate Professor's University Award. So this is a long report. I'm going to try to give you the short version or at least some of the highlights to start with. As Ross described, we're in the middle of a crisis of hugely growing inequality in the country and hugely growing difficulty for normal working families, not non-professionals, not to get rich, but just to make it decent living and to be able to support their families. And it's a big economy. There's more than one cause of things. The trade treaties have an impact. Technology has an impact. But it turns out that one of the major impacts is that the most powerful political actors in the country, the most powerful corporate lobbies in the country, are working across the country in every state legislature. And on almost every dimension of the labor market, to lower wages and benefits and make it harder for people to make it decent living. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but just to say, the Citizens United decision in 2010 that allowed corporate spending on politics has mostly been talked about at the federal level, but also had a tremendous impact at state politics as well. The legislation that I'm going to describe here, which is all laws that were passed or advanced in 2011 and 2012, is a product of the first state legislators that were elected in November of 2010, elected under those new rules. And partly what we're seeing is the impact of unlimited corporate spending and where that leads. There's a variety of groups here. The most important of which I would say is the American Legislative Exchange Council. And again, I'm going to go briefly through things. Many people here probably know a lot about Alec. This is a partial list of the companies that are member companies active in Alec. What I do want to stress is a couple things. All of the bills described in this report are bills that were advanced with the support of Alec or the Chamber of Commerce or the Restaurant Association or the other major corporate lobbies. There is nothing here that is the idea of a sole loan legislature that has a particular ideological bet. The aim of this report is to say, what is the direction that the most powerful corporate lobbies are trying to push in terms of economic and employment policy? This is the first time that there's a report that has a comprehensive overview of the last two years across all 50 state legislatures of the bills that either most of them passed or came close to passing with the support of the major corporate lobbies. Two of the things that you see, there's been a lot written that a lot of people have experienced individual ones of these fights. And I think when you're engaged in looking at any one of these policy battles in a state, it feels like it's particular to that state. Are there going to abolish minimum wage in New Hampshire? It feels like that comes from some legislator in New Hampshire, and it's a response to the particular economic conditions of New Hampshire. And one of the things you see when you pull back is that none of this comes from individual legislators. All of this is coming out of DC or New York or someplace out of national corporate lobbies who are rolling out bills in more or less cookie cutter fashion. And so I think one of the things that's important in the report is to see the extent to which this is coordinated and national and not local. And another thing that's important, I think, is to see the combination of bills, the breadth of the agenda. So for instance, people who may have been involved in battling over one of these issues. When you see, for instance, that the same lobbies are simultaneously trying to abolish minimum wages, to cut wages for waiters and waitresses, to deny the right to sick leave, to replace adult labor with teenagers, and to deny even the ability to collect money that everybody agrees you're owed. When you see all of those pieces come together, the vision of what the direction is that we're being pushed in is much clearer. I mean, much starker, much scarier, in a way. But I think for their analytical and political purposes, most importantly, much clearer. Alec and the other lobbies run a lot of bills that are designed to benefit the bottom line of particular member companies. But they also advocate a lot of bills that are not about any particular company's profits, but are about changing the overall balance of power between working people and employer associations in the country. And I want to give you just a few examples of that today. And I want to specifically focus on things that are not about labor unions, because there's been a lot written and a lot paid attention to the attacks on labor unions, and those have been huge and very important. But often, the attacks on public employee unions are presented as if the people doing the attacks are acting on behalf of the hard-working taxpayers in the non-union private sector. And what most of this report looks at is, well, what are those same lobbies doing, actually, for the hard-union taxpayers in the non-union private sector? And I think what becomes clear in the report is that the attacks on labor unions are just one part of a much broader attempt, a very ambitious attempt, to fundamentally remake the ability to make a living in America. So I'm just going to go through some of the issues. To talk about first, minimum wage. Minimum wage is a very simple thing, but it's also one of the single most important things if you say, how are we going to enable people to make a decent living, especially in those industries that are profitable enough to pay decently and that are not in danger of being shipped abroad? The minimum wage is now significantly below the level where it was in 1968. Right now, more than one out of five people in the private sector in the United States are working for less than a 1968 minimum wage. The success of corporate lobbies, as you can see, both Alec and the Chamber of Commerce, reject completely the idea that there should be a minimum wage. The success of the corporate lobbies in repressing minimum wage or not having a link to inflation means that every year, tens of billions of dollars that would be in the pockets of workers if the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation are instead in the pocket of employers. And yet, this is not just the policy of these lobbies, but actively working to push this in state legislatures. And in the last two years, there are four different states that restricted or repealed minimum wage. New Hampshire repealed its state minimum wage. South Dakota essentially exempted its tourism industry, saying any recreational establishment that's open for less than seven months a year is exempt from minimum wage. Indiana adopted model, Alec legislation that said that no city within Indiana can adopt its own minimum wage that's higher than the states. So we've seen attempts and some degree of success at limiting or repealing minimum wage. Some of you may know the minimum wage for people who work for tips for waiters and waitresses is even much, much less than the regular minimum wage. The federal minimum wage, if you're a waiter or waitress, is $2.13 an hour. There are almost 3 and 1 half million waiters and waitresses in the country, mostly adult women. What this map shows is in the blue states, if you're a waiter or waitress or bartender, you get paid the regular minimum wage. In the states shaded in red, you get paid $2.13 an hour. And in the green states, you get paid something in between. And this has a direct impact on poverty rates. The poverty rate for waiters and waitresses as a whole is 2 and 1 half times what it is for the general population. But you can see just if you categorize it by the states where you get the full minimum wage, where you get $2.13, or where you get something in between, has a direct impact on poverty. And yet, again, the concerted, and you can see this in model legislation from Alec, you can see it in what the Chamber of Commerce endorses, you can see it in what the Restaurant Association does, is bills in many states trying to cut all of these, sorry, I'm going the wrong way. All of these green states and blue states to turn them red to make everybody earn only $2.13 an hour. In Florida, the Restaurant Association pushed a bill that would have cut that state's tip minimum wage that's now $4.65 an hour down to $2.13. Which just to say the obvious thing means $2.52 every hour, every day for every waiter and waitress in the state gets transferred from workers to owners just by the act of power politics. The Florida Restaurant Association complained that $4.65 was, quote, just very unfair. It's just gonna be a matter of time before the back of this industry breaks. Minimum wage is killing it. This despite the fact that the National Restaurant Association says Florida's growing very well. Maine passed a bill that says that service charges no longer count as tips, which means that management can keep the service charge and they're under no obligation to let people in the restaurant know about that. So if you pay a service charge, you figure if you paid your tip, you're not gonna leave a big tip on top of that. But that money in fact now goes to the owners. Four states expanded the use of child labor. Some of you may remember that Newt Gingrich in the presidential debates famously called child labor law stupid and specifically called for school custodians to be replaced by kids. Idaho was the first state to make Gingrich's vision reality. It adopted a law allowing kids as young as 12 to be employed for up to 10 hours a week doing custodial work in their schools. One of the districts there touted the program as saying it's save them money because they don't have to hire adults and it teach kids the valuable skills that, quote, you have to be on time, you have to do what you're asked, what your supervisor is telling you. Both Wisconsin and Michigan lifted the number of hours a week that high school kids can work during the school week. Wisconsin abolished all limits. In Michigan, at a time when there was 10.6% unemployment, the restaurant association came into the legislature and said, quote, many restaurants cannot find enough adult labor to fill available positions and needed teenagers. And so they raised from 15 to 24 the number of hours that kids, teenagers can work during the school week. And it's, you know, there are many hypocrisies and contradictions. Alec has multiple bills arguing against minimum wage. One of its bills arguing against minimum wage increase says, you shouldn't increase the minimum wage because if you do, it creates incentive for high school kids to work more. And studies have shown that that leads to higher dropout rates and it's bad for their education. And then the restaurant association, which is a major player and backer of Alec says, no, it's good because it teaches them good, like, you know, job service skills. Let me talk about something that many of you may be less acquainted with, which is wage theft, which is to say money where there is absolutely no question that you earned it. This has nothing to do with unions. This is people not being paid minimum wage, not being paid overtime or just not being paid at all. Somebody high as you says, hey, I want you to work on this construction project for a month and at the end of the month, you're not paid. This is an enormous epidemic. What this chart shows is there is far more than twice as much money stolen out of American workers' paychecks every year than a combined total of money stolen in all of the nation's bank robberies, gas station robberies, and convenience store robberies combined. And yet the enforcement resources devoted to this are almost nothing. The chance of an employer being audited by the US Department of Labor for a child labor or overtime or anything is 1 1,000th of 1% on average, which is to say a company would have to be in business for 1,000 years to have even a 1% chance of being audited. And because of this, states and cities have started creating their own way of dealing with wage theft. And the most important battle around this came in Florida. Florida abolished its State Department of Labor in 2002. So there are zero state labor inspectors in Florida. The attorney general has not filed a case about wage theft in recent memory. So the only recourse you have is to go to Legal Aid, which is an all-volunteer organization. In 2010, Miami-Dade County responded to this by creating one of the model wage theft ordinances. It's very streamlined. It works kind of like small claims court. And the employer pays the administrative cost, so there's no cost to tax payers. In the first year, they prosecuted 600 claims of stolen wages and recovered almost $2 million in stolen wages. And in response, the Chamber of Commerce, the Retail Federation, this includes Disney, Office Depot, Macy's, PetSmart, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, went into the legislature and pushed a bill that has not yet passed, but passed the House, died in the Senate so far, they're still pushing. That would overturn the Miami-Dade County and make it illegal for any other locality to do something similar. This is the exact language of their bill, says, quote, a county municipality or political subdivision of the state may not adopt or maintain in effect any law ordinance or rule that creates requirements, regulations, or processes for the purpose of addressing wage theft. So for me, I feel like every time I feel like, OK, but this low, they can't go. And then it turns out that they can't. So even when there is no question of what you've earned or what you should be earning, there's no question that the money is earned, excuse me, is owed, they're working to try to make it impossible to collect on that. The very last thing I want to talk about is the right to sick leave. There are nearly 40 million Americans, almost 40% of the private sector work force who have no right to even a single day of paid sick leave. This is very, like many of these issues, there's very bipartisan support for this, depending on which poll you believe. This is Gallup said 57% of registered Republicans support the idea that there should be a law that employers are required to offer a certain minimum number of paid sick days. San Francisco was the first city to adopt an ordinance like that in 2006. There are now six cities, so I live in Oregon, Portland a few months ago, established a right where you have a right to at least five paid sick days as a minimum. And the response, and I think this is telling because there are a number of these issues where there's very broad support on the issue. Across conservatives, Republicans, it's not a partisan split and it's not a liberal conservative split. The response of the business lobbies of the Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Restaurant Association has been to try to deny people the right to vote on this. So in 10 states, and all of these bills introduced by alloc-affiliated legislators, all with the backing of the Chamber of Commerce and other business lobbies, passed laws saying, it's illegal for you to do what people in Portland did and people in San Francisco and people in New York and Jersey City did. You don't have the right to vote about this. So what we see simultaneously is a massive effort to directly cut down wages and benefits, to take away rights like the right to collect on wages or certainly the right to collective bargaining, but also in a way to shrink democracy, to shrink the number of things, the amount of the economy that citizens have the right to vote about. So I guess in conclusion, I would just say when you pull all of this together, and this was just the last two years, what you see is when we think about, what are we going to do about the crisis of inequality? How are we going to have an economic recovery that is broad? How are there's no economists that predicts that more than 30% of the jobs in America are going to require a college degree anytime within our lifetimes? So in policy questions, the question is not, how is everybody going to become college educated professionals? The question is, how are people not going to get rich but make a minimally decent living for themselves and their family? When we confront that question, we have to confront, if we're honest and with eyes open, that one of the major impediments to that is that the most powerful political forces in the country are working day and night and in every state in the country to do the opposite on every dimension of this issue that they can. So let me stop there, and I'll be happy after hearing from Assemblyman Hope to answer any questions people may have. So again, my name is Hiraj. I'm a recorder of most. I cover state and local policy. Now you're good. Great. Again, Niraj of The Washington Post, we cover state and local policy for a blog called Coffee. Before I introduce Dalgit Hope, I actually wanted to note two things, two broader context. One, in particular I know about because I wrote about it this morning, which is that on Tuesday, New Jersey's voting on amending New Jersey voters will be faced with a ballot question to amend their state constitution, to increase minimum wage by a dollar, and index it to inflation every year subsequently. One thing that I think is interesting is, as Gordon was just talking about, there is this disconnect between what voters want and what bills have been passed. And this is, I think, a great example. Two polls that came out in late September, one from raw peers and one from a private pollster, both showed that support for amending the New Jersey constitution was more than 50 points greater than support against it. So it was something like 74 to 22 and 66 to 12. So there's that context. I think the other context is the trust in institutions, I think, has sort of facilitated a lot of this. The decline of the past 30 years, if you look at the Gallup polls, people used to be the case that about 40% have faith in Congress and 10% have not. And that's totally inverted. And the same is true of unions, public schools, and unfortunately, newspapers. But all that said, I want to introduce Delegate Hope. But by the way, we're passing out some cards for questions if people want to start filling them out. We'll collect them, and I'll ask some of the panelists. Delegate Hope is a member of the Virginia General Assembly. He has served two terms and is up for re-election on Tuesday. So wish him good luck. Vote for him. Vote for him if you love that, I guess. And he is the co-chairman of the Virginia Progressive Caucus. He's also a health care lawyer and is Director of Legislative Policy at the American College of Cardiology and an edge-up professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School in McKellan. Thank you, Delegate Hope. Thanks to EPI for inviting me here this morning. It's a pleasure to be here. I have spoken extensively about Alec and the input it has in Virginia. And I always come to these types of events with a little bit of trepidation, because our speaker of the House is very much ingrained with Alec. And he has communicated with me his displeasure of me speaking negatively about Alec. And of course, in most states out in Virginia is unique to this, the speaker controls your committee assignments. So I'm taking some risk in being here, but this is a really important issue because it's about how we govern. Virginia has always prided itself on being a conservatively governed state, but one that is a good place to do business and keep that minimum our regulations. But I think it's a fair question to ask, taking a step back, is have we gone too far in doing that? And so let me just talk to you a little bit about, quickly, about some of the things that are happening in Virginia that I've seen the influence that Alec has had. The membership in Alec is not just comprised of corporation. It's also made up of over 2,000 state legislators from across the country. And there are many legislators in Virginia that count themselves as members. And if you've ever gone to one of these meetings, I've not gone, I've not been invited, but if you go to these meetings, I understand they break out into committees. Committees have names like healthcare, telecommunications, product liability. And members of the committee are legislators and the corporation and their lobbyists. And so they have a direct opportunity to influence the legislation that comes out of those committees or the recommendations. So there's some direct interaction in those committees about what bills Alec would like to see introduced in the state. And of course, these are legislators that are in the committee from all over the country. So you get a nice little lobby and opportunity to influence legislation in the states. It's pretty convenient. Between 2001 and 2010 in Virginia, this is the Commonwealth of Virginia in the state, has spent over $230,000 to send legislators to these Alec conferences. Typically when we go to these conferences, the speaker or the Senate majority leader approves our requests to go and taxpayers are paying for this. As governor, our governor Bob McDonnell has requested the introduction of at least three pieces of Alec legislation. Some examples of this, and this was what we used to at least stop the Obamacare from being implemented in Virginia. We had a bill that was introduced to restrict access to healthcare. In other words, it was Alec written legislation that did pass in Virginia to prohibit anyone being forced to purchase healthcare. And that's what our attorney general used to defend the case that we filed against the Global Care Act. Restrict voting rights, lower taxes on the tobacco industry. We can labor unions, if you're from this area, one of the most massive projects in fact in the country is the construction of the silver line. We passed a law saying that anyone who grants a contract cannot consider whether you're affiliated with a labor union for the contract to build the silver line. I'm not making that up. Defend, defund public schools through vouchers and tax credits. Probably the most famous of Alec's legislation that's gotten a whole lot of attention in the last couple of years is the so-called Castle Doctrine. That legislation was pushed through Virginia. In fact, it did pass the House, a similar version passed the Senate, and it died in a conference committee, but only because we were really faced with some other bills like the Transvaginal Alderstein Bill that they decided that maybe that was going too far. But the points I want to make is this. I don't have any problem at all with a corporation or a lobbyist coming to talk to a legislator. That happens all the time. I meet with, my door's always open. I meet with anyone and everyone who has an interest before Virginia. My concern is, is that this is lobbying, but it's not reported as lobbying, and that is troubling to me. Also, I mentioned that the Commonwealth taxpayers have spent $230,000 to send legislators to these conferences. I don't think that's a good use of taxpayer dollars. And I think if people want to go, they should pay for it as their own account. And finally, I would just say that we ought to have an effort where we disclose where these bills come from. All this information is not public. You try to avoid any of these meetings and what was discussed and decided. That is blocked. That's not allowed even though the legislators go there. That information should be made available to the public. It is not. I do think that any time a bill is introduced, we should know who's backing it. Who's the one that wrote the bill? And that should be available for the public because I think that's a good deal. So let me go ahead and stop there and just pass it on to Mr. Lump. Great. Thank you. And again, there should be some class voting around. If you have any questions, feel free to write them down. Corwin, one thing, you talk a lot about specifics. Can you summarize us a little bit? You talked about the broad context. How many states have passed wage bills, some of the other issues? And I have your favorite, let's do that one. I think that was the slide I skipped over. Yeah, four states passed minimum wage bills, 16 states cut unemployment insurance benefits or keep minimum wage bills. Thank you. 16 states either cut unemployment insurance or made it so that people who are unemployed have to take jobs at lower and lower wages compared to the jobs that they lost. Do you see this slide here? This is an easy one since I can see this slide. Can states pass laws restricting the right of citizens to vote to create a right to sick leave? Four states pass laws, expanding the use of child labor. And so there is the, and these are just the laws that passed, right? Of course, if you look at where were bills introduced, the number is much greater. If we look at, and this is 2011 and 12, what happens in 2013, I mean, there's the scope of where this happening and there are things like the wage theft bill that I described in Florida which has not yet passed, but first didn't pass any house, then passed a lot of house and then passed the house and got stuff in the Senate. And these are the most powerful lobbies in the country so we should expect more of this and we should expect passing a more state. So there is the scope of what's in the report of what passed in the last two years and then there's understanding and we'll expect more of this and expect those numbers to keep going up in the absence of real pushback. And that incremental approach, that's something we talked about as well in the report. Can you talk about the sort of multiple versions of the bills and the way that? Sure, I mean, if you look at, for instance, that ALEC legislation, ALEC has maybe six different bills on minimum wage that I think are essentially calibrated to try to figure out what is passable in any given state at a given moment, right? So their real goal is to completely abolish minimum wage and they have a bill like that, minimum wage repeal. So well, if you won't go for that, just don't link it to the CPI. Don't have your minimum wage increased by inflation. And if you won't go for that, well, you can have a one-time increase but don't link it to the CPI or don't have a one-time increase or have an exception for kids. There are many different versions that essentially, this is also something I think that comes out when you look at the broad picture that is not obvious when you're engaged in one fight or if you have a fight and all the bill is about saying, let's not link the minimum wage to the CPI here. You need to know, well, what the real agenda is of the organization's pushing is eventually is to abolish the minimum wage altogether. And when you see in construction then saying, construction is again, is one of the most important industries for many communities. When you say where are non-professional people going to make a decent living in an industry that is profitable and can't be shipped to China or Vietnam or Mexico, construction is one of the key industries. So when you look at the combination of things in construction, which is eliminating prevailing wage, banning project labor agreements such as were, could have been on the silver line, wanting to do away with licensing for electricians and plumbers, which is part of Alex's model legislation. And then in many cases, at the federal level, a lot of these same organizations, including the construction industry and restaurant industry, are lobbying for a version of guest worker legislation where people would come in not with a visa to the United States, but with a visa to a single employer or a couple of employers where they would remain in a situation of such vulnerability that they would drive down wages because they'd be too scared to ever complain about mistreatment. When you put all those things together, you see a vision, oh, here's the vision of what wants to be done to the construction industry and to other industries that is much starker than any individual pieces of those. And I think Alec at each stage and the chamber at each stage know that they're smart, but I think they calibrate what can pass this session in this state. But we need to know, by seeing the big picture, where is that really leading to and what is the end goal? Ross, can you sort of give us a sense of sort of the federal backdrop here, kind of what the trends have been recently and what things are trying to stand out? Well, the minimum wage, as Gordon said, the federal minimum wage is below the level that it was in 1968. And if you think about it, minimum wage workers are more productive. The whole economy is richer. You'd think that they would be paid more today, not less. So there is an effort, Senator Harkin's staff is here. He is trying to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, but of course, there's no interest in the leadership in the House of Representatives in doing that at all. And his bill also addresses the tip minimum wage issue, but that will be blocked by the House of Representatives. What they are trying to do and they're successfully doing is effectively deregulating by cutting the budgets of the enforcement agencies. The National Labor Relations Board was actually virtually shut down. They couldn't have members. The Senate was blocking any ability of the president to add members to the board so that they couldn't decide cases and they couldn't get injunctions. They couldn't ask for courts for injunctions to intervene in especially egregious cases. They were shackling the board, but there and with the Department of Labor, they're also cutting discretionary spending in a way that means that Gordon's figure of one chance in a million of being visited by an auditor from the Department of Labor will get even worse. I mean, there will be effectively no enforcement of our labor laws. And I think it's worth noting, one of the motives for creating my blog in August was the fact that the federal government is a lot less active than it used to be. And so there's been a lot of focus on states are innovating in a lot of different ways, trying to address a problem that they're facing in the turn of the recovery. But as a result, that means that there's a lot of opportunity at states to change policy. Right, and so having frozen the federal government from making progress or doing anything, these lobbies, as Gordon says, have turned their sights to the states to make sure that there isn't the kind of progress that people might try to find here. And then, Patrick, can you talk a little bit about sort of the response to this sort of, whether it's perceived or real, this agenda of deregulation? Well, I mean, I think in Virginia, I mean, you look at the map of there, Virginia is already such a great place to do business. You don't see a lot of this stuff because maybe they already have it in Virginia. But the response, I think, has initially, when some of these pro-business bills, because I've seen some of the people I'm co-chair of the Virginia Progressive Caucus, I see some of our own members introducing some of these bills that are considered to be pro-business. And you don't have to take a look back and say, what were they thinking? And because they've come in with this model, thinking, well, this is just a pro-business bill. We haven't heard the other side of how this might impact the workers and employees. And so, I think that we need to look closer to that. But Virginia and I agree with what was said earlier. The states are such a great place to do these things. Access is at an all-time high to legislators. And we don't have the staff. We don't know what we don't know. And if we're only hearing one side, these are good lobbyists, and they only present you one side, it's easy to get caught and not realize what you're doing. And these bills move so quickly through the legislature we're in our longest session, a 60-day session. I can introduce a bill in mid-January, and it could become law by the end of the month. And you won't even know what hit you. I mean, probably before you even found out what this bill would do, the governor's already signed it, and it's already the law. So I think that the state's already an easy place to go to, the folks see this as just a pro-business bill, and it goes right through, and you don't have enough people standing up and telling you the other side just what impact this will have. So it is due favorably because we just don't realize the consequences of what we're passing. And I can pose this question out here, Patrick or Gordon. Are there considered efforts to sort of counter this? Are there other groups that are on the left that are trying to promote the opposite? Yeah, there are certainly groups that are trying to promote the opposite agenda. I think, you know, you have to think legislatively, there's only a couple of places, not in California and Minnesota, maybe, where the politics are right to pass a lot of things, actually. The Connecticut, as a state, established a right to pay sick leave last year. But I think one of the key things, and you alluded to this, is the disconnect between, on some of the issues, between the way legislatures vote and the way the population would vote if given a chance or the way the population does vote when given a chance. And you know, to some extent, because the federal government has been stuck, a lot of the corporate money has shifted to the states. And in state legislatures, I mean, obviously there are legislators who work hard for their constituents and get elected on the basis of that. But in many, many places, it's cheap to buy a state legislature race, right, for 50,000 bucks, because nobody knows who their state legislator is. It's much cheaper than in the federal government. And so we see things that pass through state legislators, through the state legislatures, that are then rejected by voters, by the referendum, to give just one example. Florida had, in its constitution, very good class-sized caps for how small classes had to be in elementary school. And in 2010, the legislature wanted to do away with them. And so they put us in the constitution. So it had to go to the voters. They put a referral to the ballot, which 65% of the legislature said, yes, we wanna get rid of the constitutional caps we have. And 65% of the voters rejected it. Now, this was in 2010, when they elected Rick Scott. It's the Tea Party wave election. They elected a Tea Party legislature, which I think means a chunk of people went to the polls thinking something like, I hate Democrats, I hate government, I hate taxes, I hate unions, but I want my kid in small classes. And there are a number of issues like this, sick leave, minimum wage, a number of things that we've been talking about, where the legislators vote one way, and the citizens, when given a chance through statewide ballot initiatives or through local ballot initiatives, or you just see it in polling, feel a different way. So, I mean, like I said, there's an economic crisis, but there's also a political question about the wave of money that is trying to buy up state legislators and even use that influence to deny people the right to vote on these issues. And I'm gonna go to some of the questions. And this one I think is important, and it's an issue that people may have some trouble understanding. Can you describe what wage theft is and how exactly it works? Yes. Wage theft is, you know, you go to work someplace and you're not paid for part, we're all of your hours, and the amounts are shocking. There was a study done, multi cities, the most comprehensive study we have was done in 2009, multi city study. They found that 64% of low-wage workers, which is, I believe they define this, about 20% of low-wage workers, had some amount of money not paid to them every week out of their paycheck. That's three quarters of people who were due over time have some or all of their overtime wages not paid. So a lot of it, and you can imagine a lot of it, particularly in the more informal parts of the economy among day laborers. Somebody's hired off the street corner for a day, I'll pay you this much for the day at the end of the day. Oh, I don't have it, I'll pay you next week and you're never paid. And the volume of this in the low-wage economy is enormous and was shocked because I don't live in that part of the economy was shocked into me when I read about it. But then the fact, so essentially that's what wage theft is. The, I believe it's wage theft. Legally, unfortunately, it is not a crime. And so there's not criminal prosecution for employers who don't pay wages. And civilly, there's very little enforcement in most states. Of course, that actually depends on the locality. There are some places where it is a crime. Another example is, and there was a great TV program where I saw a short video about a restaurant. An owner had two restaurants, he shut one down, didn't pay the wages for the last two weeks at work to the workers where he shut down the restaurant. He was operating, continuing to operate, but just didn't pay them at all. And this was in Florida, so they would be able to use the Miami-Dade special procedure like small claims court to go in and get justice. But as Gordon said, there's an effort to prevent any kind of special process that would help workers in a situation like that. And this next question is good one, it's about states. And it actually reminds me, there's an important piece of context here, which is that we're at historically high levels of all one party legislatures. And historically, I mean, in the past 50 years, in North Carolina, for example, I think that's probably the most obvious example. The Republican Party, a single party, has controlled the first time in over 100 years. And that's, it's the case in a lot of states. It makes it very easy to pass laws. So one question here is which states you kind of see as being possible for changing this or for passing legislation that is more middle of the road? Well, I live in Oregon, which is a ballot initiative state. And not every state is. In states where it is, that are ballot initiative states, I think there's a lot of thought and make sense to think about running things on ballot initiatives because there are many of these issues where there's a strong bipartisan consensus on them, but you won't be able to get into the legislature. When you look at where legislatively, could you get minimum wage increases or good wage legislation or something like that through? It's quite limited. I mean, there are a handful of states, but there's not many of them. And there is, as you said, it does, in 2010, there were 11 states that newly became all Republican. Republican control both of the governor's mansion and of both houses of the legislature. And a lot of what we've seen is in those states and particularly in the run of states that are traditionally strong union and political swing states that goes Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan. I think that there were, it's a big country. There's a coalition of actors behind this. Some people wanted to attack unions just because they think unions fund Democrats and we wanna defund the Democrats. So if we can do it in Michigan and Wisconsin and these strong places, it'll have a lasting impact. So we have seen a lot of the action in those states and a lot of the action in states that already were wall-to-wall Republican. But again, even in those states, even in the deepest red states in terms of the politicians elected, when you pull the population or when there are ballot initiatives, the population goes the other way on key issues. So I don't wanna overstate the extent to which this is a partisan issue. There is a partisan dimension to it, but it's really bigger than that. And to your point on the ballot initiatives in New Jersey, the Democratic Legislature passed the minimum wage increase earlier this year. But Governor Christie Vito made a counter-offer and rather than taking up a counter-offer or trying to override the veto, the Democrat Legislature put the question into the voters, which they'll be going on to today. Right, so there are a lot of, by polls, there are a lot of people who are gonna vote for Chris Christie and are gonna vote for the minimum wage bill that he vetoed, right? And one thing I would say is that moderate Republicans have been under attack by the amount of corporate money. And if we look at how did the right to work pass in Michigan, one of the ways it passed was by moderate Republicans being called up and being told, somebody with a lot of money is gonna fund a primary point for you if you don't vote for this. And that is enabled by Citizens United and this is one of the ways also, which it's not just partisan. And we really need to look behind the elected officials even to the money behind that that is driving this and even is driving quite a number of moderate Republicans to vote for things that they might not vote for just based on their own conscience. And on that point actually, earlier this week I had to write about another report on judicial spending. And they're seeing the same sorts of problems where I forget to write the report, but the problem is that as spending has gone up in judicial elections, justices, state Supreme Court justices have been voting favor or against criminals way more, in some cases 20% more in two years. And so very influenced by negative ads. I just wanna point something out because you mentioned Citizens United and I don't want this just to be a criticism of what Alec and some of the corporations are doing. Virginia has a cloud over it right now because there is a guy representing star scientific Johnny Williams thought that he could buy government. And this is right in line with what other corporations think that they can do is buy laws, they can buy government. But this guy decided to write a $150,000 check to the governor and his family. And because of the ethics laws or the lack thereof, he was able to cash those without any type of trace or trail at all. And so if you ask me what I think our number one bill will be this year, it'll probably be to put a cap on some of these gifts that you're able to see. However, if you have this big loophole that is still wide open, this guy thought he could buy government. But if you cut off that gift, that check that he could write, he's gonna write that check to your campaign and can still do it legally under Virginia laws. And let me tell you something, you may get a $150,000 check that you can't use personally but you are the most popular kid on the playground with $150,000 to give out to your friends in their campaigns. And this is from a corporation that we'll find out this is under investigation. We'll find out if there are promises made to that individual exchange for that money. And I'm sure that the FBI is looking at this. But this is just one example of corporations who think that they can buy government. And I think it's something that is so right in the state legislatures that we really need to follow the money and take a look at who's given writing these checks and what types of promises will be made in exchange for these checks. Tell me, Hope, do you have a sense of, and Gordon, you can answer this too, I've seen, is there a broad pushback against these corporations? I mean, there are a couple of questions here about sort of the brand. Do people know? Are people upset? Are there? You know, there has been an effort, I think, to put a lot of pressure on some of these out businesses to pull out. And there has been over the last year or so some types of protests and people not wanting to patronage some of these establishments. And so people have pulled out a ballot. Even Alec has responded, particularly with the old Standing Brown fiasco, that they've decided to eliminate that committee that decides to look at public safety, which I don't know what the corporate interest is. I still don't know what the corporate interest is in Standing Brown and Castle Doctrine. But aside from that, they've pulled out of that committee and some groups have responded that way. But I think just people need to be vigilant and just start monitoring these bills and see who's behind each and every one of them. So first of all, I think there is popular pushback against the role of corporations in government. And one of the places that struck me is Montana, which last fall voted 55% for Romney and 75% to say that corporations are not people and should not be able to spend money in politics. So a whole lot of people voted for Romney and said corporations are not people on the ballot. But the road between Montana and a few other states voting like that and changing the law is long, arduous and unlikely. But so I think that we see pushback, but really, I mean, if we're talking to a room full of people who are journalists, I think that part of what needs to happen is for journalists to help people connect the dots between who is behind certain pieces of legislation and how are they connected to a broader agenda? And that's part of the hope of what this report that almost nobody's gonna read the whole report, but that what it can be mined for to do. And I don't wanna put in the fog for the report. Even if you disagree with the idea that there's this agenda, it's a really great overview of a lot of recent state policy changes. And so this question actually occurred to me too and I don't know if you can speak to it, maybe not, but so as Delegate Hope said, a lot of groups have dropped their membership of a public over the past year. I shouldn't say a lot, but a few notable ones. I know Coke has a few other big corporations, but I saw there was a, the Gates Foundation was on that list. And so someone asked this, and I was curious to see that too. Do you have any sense of what their role is, why they were? First I would say this. Many people dropped out of Alec after Trayvon Martin was killed and out of embarrassment and the shame around that murder. But then have been slowly kind of leaking back in. The, I believe the Speaker of the House of Wisconsin, either Speaker of the House of the Senate or the majority leader just rejoined. Walmart dropped, but the Walton Family Foundation stayed in. And I don't think we should fool ourselves about economic agenda, which is that even companies that were embarrassed to be pushing the standard ground law that ended up with Trayvon Martin being killed, were not embarrassed at all to be against minimum wage and all the things that were done right here. This is not what drove them away. They will continue to find a channel to do that. The Gates Foundation is very active in privatization of K-12 education and the substitution of digital and online technology for person-to-person teaching. So that's part of what they're involved in through Alec. And then we spoke about this a little earlier, but tell me a little bit. You know, part of the problem here is that a lot of state legislators don't have, don't work full time, they have other jobs, and it's hard to write legislation. And so they turn to outside organizations for help. Are there, what other resources are there for a state legislator who wants to pass a bill, you know, on, let's say minimum wage or on labor standards and is looking for a resource of legislative language? Yeah, we, you know, it's harder for us on this side because there's not a lot of established groups, but there are, you know, a few that will like EPI and others that we'll hear from or progress Virginia or Virginia organizing, people that do represent workers and employees of some unions, of course, you know, we have an active, you know, unions are found upon in Virginia, we have a right to work law. There still are unions in Virginia, and so we do hear from them very actively. And so we do rely on whatever we can get information we can receive that what some of these bills will do if they're passed in law. When you get someone coming in there that just gives you only one side, it's hard to know what the unintended consequences might be. So we really need the information, and so it's hard to find groups that are vigilant can tell us the other side of the story. It's all hard to say. And Gordon, you know, we talked about preemption laws earlier, thank you. Can you talk a little bit more about sort of what the justification is for preemption? This is the idea that you want to prohibit cities and counties from passing their own laws on these issues. Right, so in many states, there are cities that are more politically to the left, more politically progressive than a state is as a whole. As of last year, I think there were 120 different cities or counties that had a higher minimum wage or prevailing wage than what their state was, which is partly because of the politics and also partly because often you can afford to pay more in the big cities than you can in rural parts of the state. And the response by Alec and the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers and almost all of the, supported by almost all of the big corporate lobbies, has been to use their clout at the state legislature, this is the place where they have found in many states to be the place where they have maximum control to snuff out the ability of people to vote for laws like that. And they're pushing what they call preemption laws on a wide range of issues. They're pushing a lot to say, no city within a state can have a minimum wage that's higher than the state, which they passed in Indiana. They're passing these sick leave preemption laws, which in Wisconsin's case was not just preemption, but actually overturned the right to pay sick leave, which voters in Milwaukee had established by 63%, I think, in 2008 in a popular referendum, said, no, that's illegal now. They're passing, they're pushing laws to say you can't have a living wage, to say you can't have prevailing wage, to try to use the power at the state legislature to take away from the right, to take away the right of citizens at the local level to vote on all kinds of things. So I think this is both, you know, the hopeful sign is why is this happening? The reason this is happening is because when this agenda is known issue by issue, it is so unpopular that they're scared that they're gonna lose votes in all these cities. And we're not just talking about San Francisco and Boston. I mean, you look at the map of states, they're afraid that people in Texas are gonna vote for a right to pay to pay sick leave because they would, right? So the hopeful sign is what this tells us about where the population is really at, the difficult question obviously is like, what to do about it, how to reverse this and how to insist that we still have a right to vote on, to have some more democratic control over the terms of the economy and the terms of the labor market. I'd add, Nourage, that Tennessee actually passed the wage theft prohibition that Florida was working on. That's now law in Tennessee and it uses the exact same language that Gordon read to you. It uses no processes, no wage theft law can be passed if it's really remarkable. And I just had one other thing. Sometimes the arguments of the business lobbyist is we can't have these different laws passed at the local level because then we have a chaotic Mishmash of different competing laws. But they're all uniformly and vigorously opposed to passing a state law that would establish a uniform standard across the state for any of these things. So it's really a kind of red herring to say, oh, we would have different laws in different cities and that would be chaos in the economy. Ross, those questions for you. So in a lot of these cases where when you're investigating wage theft or there are other similar violations, the fee is often considered a loss of doing business. What are some options, I guess, say how else can you combat this? Let's talk from the other side. Well, one way is to pass, to get your local legislature to pass something that makes it a crime to fail to pay for work that's been done. I see an attorney here who's firm, representative employees who were contract employees at Georgetown University. And they engaged a sort of consumer campaign, a public campaign of embarrassment to put pressure on the university to put pressure on the contractor to do the right thing, and in addition to suing the contractor. But it's hard, it takes attorneys who are willing to work for much less than the average attorney demands for his or her time. Since these are often $300, small amounts of money that are at issue and there won't be a return for the lawyer for his or her time. So what Miami-Dade put into place is exactly what's needed. I think it's a small claims procedure where someone can go in and represent him or herself and say, here are my hours, I can show you my hours. The employer can't show that the employer paid me and get a decision and a judgment from the court quickly. Something that won't leave them starving while they litigate for two years in a circuit court. And then Gordon, one thing we haven't talked a lot about is how the state of the economy is being used as justification for a lot of these policy changes. And in your paper, you talk about the fight against unions and at Wisconsin, for example, there was a push on pensions where their pension in 2010 and 2011 was almost 100% funded. So can you talk a little bit about sort of the context and the issue of the economy? Sure, I mean one thing is when you look at where the pattern of legislation was passed, it's clear that it was passed where it was politically possible and not where it was economically necessary. So for instance, the most extreme rollbacks of pension rights did not occur in the states that had the biggest unfunded liabilities. The most extreme attacks on teachers' collective bargaining did not occur in the states that had the highest high school dropout rates or the lowest reading and math rates. Even the biggest cutbacks in layoffs of public employees and cutbacks in public services don't correlate to places where the budget deficits were biggest. So we see the idea of the economy being used for this but in a way it would be used inappropriately. I also think when we talk about the private sector almost every right for workers is met by the business lobby saying this over-regulation is gonna kill us and in the end it's gonna hurt the workers. Now one thing to know is this is what the Chamber of Commerce has been saying for about 100 years. This is what they said about the first minimum wage. This is what they said about the eight hour day and if we had listened to that we would still have 10 year old kids working 14 hour days and the evidence is no stronger here. So for instance, for tip credit, Virginia, I was just looking at the map, Virginia I think has a lower wage than Maryland does for tipped employees. So for everybody here in DC or you can do your own research like drive around to an IHOP or Waffle House or Starbucks and see like well are there really fewer people working in the Maryland ones than the Virginia ones because they can't afford to hire people because they have to pay something closer to the regular minimum wage. I've done this between Georgia and Idaho and other places and all looks the same to me except that the people are making more money and the money is going into the pockets of the workers instead of the employer. So there are many, many arguments made to say, I mean this is what the Chamber of Commerce said about wage theft. At this time of the struggling economy the last thing we need is more regulations on business. Now when you think really and especially for small business who depend above all on people having disposable income in their pockets at this time of the struggling economy the last thing we need is people not getting paid what they earned and then not having that money to spend in the local economy. But so that argument is invoked over and over and over again but I think with decreasing credibility. And that's sort of, it's sort of interesting to bring that up because I don't know if people remember but there was an internal Walmart memo leak earlier this year in which they acknowledged that the payroll tax, the elimination of the payroll tax guide was gonna hurt that because they were gonna lose consumers who had, they were gonna lose consumers with money. And is there, I mean are there some, are human being made here that I mean they, it's in their interest to have people have more money? I mean, where does that, where does that fall? You know, actually other economists at EPI not myself calculated a rough rule of thumb earlier this year that for every million dollars in wage cuts in addition to what it does to the people whose wages are cuts it takes another six jobs out of the economy. Those jobs are not all necessarily local if you're buying stuff from China or wherever you're buying stuff from but you know particularly when we think about the big industries that are not moving all of small business, retail, healthcare, education, construction, tourism all these things are not moving and they do depend overwhelmingly on people having money in their pockets to spend and people at the bottom of the economy spend more on the local economy than anyone else because they spend everything they have on food and rent and clothes and local needs that tend to be in the local economy. So there in particular it makes sense but what it seems like is that every corporation and every corporate lobbying organization wants it to be somebody else's responsibility to make sure that people have money in their pockets and they want to cut the wages of their own employees. And Ross, I'm nodding there. Did you, can you speak a little bit to that? Well there actually are divides I think as an overall matter there's a sort of class interest among employers in reducing the rights of employees. Most employers don't want to be sued they don't want the possibility of being sued. They can say I would never do that and it's really not an issue for me but I can imagine that someone would be sued inappropriately so that they would and as a group they do. They lobby together to reduce rights and access to the courts and to administrative procedures but there are divides sometimes between employers so for example you have employers fighting against misclassification. Employers who are paying their employees property treating them as employees paying for their workers' compensation are sometimes will go to a legislature and say we need to do something about all of these other employers who are not. So there can be, they're not a monolith that they can be appealed to in Washington, D.C. Andy Chalal is very vocal about saying we should raise the minimum wage. People need to be able to pay to go to restaurants. They have to have their money in their pockets so it isn't monolithic but when you get to the level of these national lobbying organizations they always lobby at the least common denominator. It's unfortunate they always are on the side of reducing the rights of employees. And Delgado, can you speak to that? How do you raise awareness around these issues? How do you get people, I mean if there's a bill that progressive would find disturbing, what do you do to it, let's hear it. I mean, the workers don't have a lobbyist in most cases and so it's really hard and we do struggle with trying to get that kind of information to hear how these things are the impact of workers and if you notice we have a race for governor going on right now and it was mentioned earlier about these single party rule. I mean we've had for the last couple of years, for the last three or four years, we've had single party rule in Virginia and that's where a lot of these Alec sponsored legislation has just been ramped right through Republicans that control all levels of government and that appears to be changing right now. It looks like the Senate might flip over to Democrats and it looks like for the first time in a number of years they're gonna have a democratic governor that is the opposite of what's in the White House and so I think you're seeing sort of a shift in here and so we need to take a look at, and I think we've probably hit that tipping point of Virginia being too good of a place for business by keeping regulation too low and taxes too low at the expense of the workers. We talk about you seeing these commercials trying to create more jobs, it's probably better we say we're gonna create good-paying jobs and we're gonna bring up everyone and I think that needs to be more of a tension paid to those kinds of things. One thing on that in terms of voice for workers, of course it's true, in most places there is no voice but I do think that when you look at the attack on labor unions and you think in a place like Wisconsin, when you look at the list of companies that are Alec-numbered companies, there's an obvious question and I think whose answer is not so clear which is why are big private corporations spending a lot of time, money and energy attacking public employee unions? I don't think it's because they want to lower their tax bill on Wisconsin or Ohio and I think part of the reason is that even in its shrunken and weakened state the labor movement is the only significant political counterweight to things like lowering the minimum wage and expanding child labor. These are not union issues per se, they have union members have their hours and sick leave and everything covered in a contract and if you ask the union what are your top 10 issues it probably wouldn't be those things, it would be things more directly related to the union members and even so when you say what stands in the way of Alec or the Chamber of Commerce having a completely free hand to remake the economy and rewrite child labor laws and rewrite and privatize social security and do all the rest of this is the labor movement more than anything. So in a way the argument that we've heard so much over the last couple years that the labor movement problem with unions is that they're selfish and they only care about their members in some ways if only unions were more selfish and said all we care about is our members and our wages and benefits and screw everybody else they would be less in the crosshairs of political attack they're in the crosshairs of political attack partly to get them out of the way so that the rest of this agenda for the 93% of the private sector that does not have a union can move forward unimpeded. And we have a few minutes left. I can ask some more questions but if you guys have any closing comments I'm happy to turn it to you guys as well. Yeah. The only thing I'll say is I feel like I should introduce a bill that would require to have this redress for whenever you don't get paid and you know I have no doubt that the bill will be killed right away but I'd like to see the Chamber and NFIB come in there and defend those deadbeat lawyers and hear how they defend those kinds of raiders. Great idea. And the NPI will be there to testify. All right, good. We'll help however we can. Well then I can ask one more question. There's a question here about privatization and you talked about it a little in the paper we haven't talked about it much today. Where does privatization and outsourcing fit into this agenda? So we've also been witnessing a huge way of privatization of everything from school systems to social welfare agencies to highways to prisons to wastewater treatment. A lot of that is done through Alec. Again, a lot of it is direct benefit to corporations. Corrections Corporation of America is the largest private prison company in the country. Is a major player in Alec and lobbies for legislation where they will privatize prisons and part of the privatization is that the state has to guarantee a 90% occupancy rate in the prison so they also lobby for tougher laws on locking up immigrants and for making it harder to get parole and things like that because they're in the business of having vents filled. But in general privatization, apart from scandalous things like that, tends to lower the wages and benefits of people who do the services. And the other thing is that in many, many cities in the country public employment is the single biggest employer in the local labor market. And when that happens, that has a positive effect on non-union employers. So to give you an example, Ireland and Eugene, Oregon, the biggest employers, University of Oregon and then the hospital, and they're both organized. So if secretaries of the University of Oregon get health insurance, it increases pressure on non-union employers if they want the best secretaries to offer not necessarily exactly union terms but to come close to that. And by contrast, when the public sector gets cut down, it has a negative spillover effect for non-union workers in the local economy. I think the last thing to say is that all attacks on privatization have a particular, in general, have a particularly harmful impact on African-American middle class because of the history of race discrimination in the labor market, public employment has been a critical source of employment, especially for African-Americans. And when privatization happens, that takes a, Steve Pitz, who's an academic at the University of Berkeley, has studied this and published some on this, maybe even with EPI, that takes a particularly strong hit on the African-American middle class. Well, I think we're just not done. So I want to thank everyone for coming. I thank you guys for a really fascinating conversation. Thank you. And remember, everyone, the paper is available at www.epi.org. It is our nod to the environment that we didn't provide copies for all of you today. But we encourage you to read it. It is a good read, even though it is long.