Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), whose disdain for working people is no secret, last month told state Labor Department hearing officers, who decide unemployment benefit appeals, that they better start deciding more of those cases in favor of employers who want those benefits denied, the Maine Sun Journal reports.  

At that gathering, LePage scolded about eight administrative hearing officers and their supervisors, complaining that too many cases on appeal from the Bureau of Unemployment were being decided in favor of employees. He said the officers were doing their jobs poorly, sources said.

Tristan Jackson and eight other Maine lobstermen traveled to Hollywood, Md., in February to get the training and knowledge they need to start forming a union, which they say will give them unprecedented clout when dealing with the state legislature and the businesses that buy the lobsters they catch. The lobstermen met with representatives of the Machinists (IAM) and left the meeting geared up to recruit others and launch their local union.

The Maine labor history mural that finally was returned to public display this month after Gov. Paul LePage (R) ordered it removed from the state Department of Labor in 2011 is attracting a steady stream of visitors at its new home. Go to the full story to see all 11 panels.

Not quite two years ago, Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) ordered the removal of an 11-panel, 36-foot mural depicting the state’s labor history from the Department of Labor. LePage, who supports “right to work” for less laws and has pushed to weaken child labor laws, claimed the mural was anti-business and akin to North Korean propaganda. But it is back on public display after the state Department of Labor and Maine State Museum reached an agreement to display the mural for three years at the Augusta Museum.

A federal appeals court ruled that Maine Gov. Paul LePage was within his rights when he took down a mural depicting labor history in a building that housed the state's Department of Labor. 

In Maine, state employees are being forced to pay more in contributions for their pensions, but one isn’t: Gov. Paul LePage. He exempted himself from the new pension formula, reports Mike Tipping in the Kennebec Journal.

While anti-worker bills in state capitols across the country still threaten middle-class families, Republican state legislatures are beginning to second guess whether to continue pursuing their extreme agenda attacking working families.

Yesterday morning, the Republican-controlled New Hampshire Senate tabled HB 1677, the so-called “right to work” bill.  This bill is the pet of Speaker Bill O’Brien, dubbed by a recent Concord Monitor editorial as a “self-drawn caricature of vindictiveness and power run [amok].”  “Right to work” failed last year, and so far this year it has failed to muster a veto-proof majority.

Just over a year ago, the 2010 midterm elections saw Republicans seize control of both branches of the legislatures in 11 states. Then, while talking up the notion of job creation, they set about cutting their state and local public workforces with a ferocity unseen in decades.  The most recent numbers, according to the Roosevelt Institute, are stark.

The 11 states are Alabama, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Together, they eliminated 87,900 state and local public jobs—more than 40 percent of the total cut.

Across the country, voters in a number of states will face obstacles to casting ballots in the 2012 elections, in large part because of model legislation drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the organization backed by, among others, billionaires Charles and David Koch. It was ALEC’s draft legislation that inspired a spate of recently passed voter ID laws that, if allowed to stand, are expected to marginalize the impact of students and people of color at the polls in Texas, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Kansas. (Under the Texas law, for example, a college ID is not an acceptable form of identification for voting, but a military ID is.)

Jeffrey Neil Young, an attorney representing (pro bono) the artists suing Maine to reinstall the mural to the state’s Department of Labor, writes today in the Portland [Maine] Press Herald that the now-removed panels depicted are vital reminders of what unions have achieved. Below is an excerpt from his op-ed. If you’re in Washington, D.C., stop by the AFL-CIO where reproductions of the mural are now on display.

Six months ago, Gov. [Paul] LePage ordered the removal of a labor history mural from the lobby of the Department of Labor. Until then, the mural was largely unknown to most Mainers, including LePage himself.