St. Louis activists who aren’t in a coma know that there’s a big rally in front of Roy Blunt’s Clayton office this Thursday from 4:30 to 5:30. I have the backstory that explains how important this rally is.

The short answer is that it is part of a campaign to change the course of the debt ceiling brouhaha, a campaign that mirrors a stunningly successful state effort in Missouri last spring and that, at a national level, is already paying dividends in the way Democrats in Washington are starting to stand up in the debt ceiling negotiations.

Let me explain that statewide campaign, and then I’ll show you how it applies to Roy Blunt and to Congress.

Jobs with Justice and Pro-Vote coordinated a labor campaign last spring that stopped dead in the lege every anti-labor bill. Their success at cutting cold the progress on Right-to-Work-for-Less and Paycheck Protection Deception was inspiring. The campaign succeeded because ALL the labor stakeholders in the state, including the MNEA, signed on and coordinated their efforts, even to the point of a nightly conference call. The unions targeted districts where the Republican legislator might be swayed, arranging phone banks and door to door canvasses. We don’t have Republican money, but we have the values people like, if we get out there and communicate with the voters. And that’s what the labor unions, unified as never before, did.

At first, the effort was to stop Right-to-Work-for-Less; but mid-session, the Republicans gave that up and pushed Paycheck Deception. A moment of panic set in when the switch was recognized, but the campaign simply changed targets, using the same strategy and tactics. I wrote about a union man, Bryan Wucher, who took eight weeks off from his job at Dierberg’s to canvass. Here’s my understanding from him of the two components of Paycheck Deception:

First, it would have levied a fee against every member of a public employee union. The unions would have had to pay, for each member, a sum that was a percentage of the employee’s dues or else $8, depending on which was less. AND, just so you know that this was not about raising revenues for the state but about punishing unions, note that the unions would have been forbidden to raise their dues by $8 per member to compensate for the loss. The point was to deplete political action funds for those unions.

(…….)

[T]he second problem with Paycheck Deception was that it required public employee union members, every year, to reauthorize the use of their dues for political purposes. What you do, if you’re a Republican legislator, is just keep chipping away at people’s rights: whether it has to do with unions, abortion, or voting. Set up barriers and institute bureaucratic red tape. Freedom my sweet patootie. They are not about freedom.

Consider that only about a third of the state reps are Democrats and yet that every anti-labor bill, including Paycheck Deception, was stopped, and you get a sense of how impressive that coordinated campaign was. One Republican rep called the campaigners and complained that his office couldn’t handle any more phone calls from disgruntled constituents. Call off your dogs, he said; I’ll vote against the bill.

Now let’s see how that same strategy is being applied at the national level. Four to six weeks ago, Claire McCaskill was asserting that there was no way raising tax revenues could be part of the discussion. Now she’s changed her mind. She wants tax revenues on the table. She’s one vivid example of the shift in Democratic rhetoric. President Obama and the Democratic leadership is now insisting that some new tax revenue must be part of the negotiations. Their stance has shifted.

Why did Claire see the light? Part of the reason is that two hundred people showed up at her office for a rally last month urging her to protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and to protect the jobs of the most vulnerable. That was a goodly number, and they made enough noise to impress Claire, as Rabbi Susan Talve reported when she emerged from the meeting inside:

Claire can’t do this by herself. She needs us out here raising our voices. When we were sitting in there and we heard you out here chanting, the whole room lifted up. And you know what? She got energized. We could hear her saying, “Yes, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the jobs of the most vulnerable workers. I will protect those.”

This is all part of a grassroots effort, sometimes obvious as in the case of the June rally, sometimes happening with quieter pressure. And we must also put pressure on Republicans as well, just as Jobs with Justice and Pro-Vote did last spring over the anti-labor bills. Roy Blunt is less an ideologue than a pragmatist, and he needs to feel some heat, baby.

So I’m not just urging you to get to 7700 Bonhomme at 4:30–or whenever you can get there from work–on Thursday. Yes, do that. And do one more little thing: Find. Five. Friends. Be there with your friends to shout that he should stop giving us a raw deal, supporting as he does tax breaks for the very rich and for corporations.

We need way more than 200 people for this one.

Several groups are sponsoring a rally.

Rally at Senator

McCaskill’s office

regarding federal budget

Friday, June 17th, 4p.m.-5p.m.

5850 Delmar, Suite A

St. Louis, MO 63112

Here’s the message Jobs with Justice sent out:

We are rallying to persuade Senator McCaskill to meet with community stakeholders regarding the current proposed federal budget.

The current proposed federal budget has massive cuts to vital federal public services, programs including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and to public employee wages. We must fight to protect critical health and retirement programs.

This event is sponsored by Missouri Jobs with Justice, American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), Missouri Health Care for All, Missouri Pro-Vote, The Missouri Budget Project, and Metropolitan Congregations United.

We will ask Senator McCaskill to oppose any legislation that will continue tax breaks for the very rich and big corporations at the expense of federal workers and the services they provide. Missouri’s veterans, farmers, and working families depend on government services, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and others. A cut to the federal budget and workforce is a cut to Missouri! Join us in asking Senator McCaskill to stand strong against the proposed cuts to Federal Services!

Bring your friends, neighbors, family and co-workers – people you know who benefit from Federal programs

If you can’t attend this rally, send Senator McCaskill a note asking her to meet with community stakeholders and public workers before she cuts a deal on the budget!

RSVP to Amy Smoucha at 314-608-3917, or email her at Amy@mojwj.org.

I’ll be there to film it and write about it. Brave a bit of heat to put some heat on Claire.

Geez, I hate to bad mouth the Red Cross. It may not be a perfect organization, but its aims are noble. And Joan Suarez of Jobs with Justice, had similar reservations when a Red Cross worker came to her with information about problems that Red Cross workers had been suffering. Indeed, the worker himself hesitated, despite serious concerns that he’d had for a couple of years.

He was a truck driver who approached the Jobs with Justice Workers’ Rights Board because of concerns about blood donor safety. He convinced Suarez to attend a meeting in Columbia of union members from across the nation employed by the Red Cross. There she heard his concerns echoed by workers from every corner of the country.

To make sense of their concerns, you have to understand that the Red Cross has two branches. The business side collects blood, sells it to hospitals, and uses the proceeds to fun its disaster relief activities, as well as to contribute to a variety of non-profit agencies. Union members have been slow to report problems they see in the blood collection business partly out of fear of being fired and partly because of reticence about harming the reputation of the Red Cross.

What they complained about was that the organization has cut down on using nurses and phlebotomists to collect blood and substituted other employees–like the truck driver who approached Suarez–giving them only cursory training. Then it requires long work days and insufficient breaks, which leads to fatigue and mistakes. And by the way, Suarez pointed out, those collecting blood, though they may not be licensed, are still given badges to wear that say “Nursing Staff.”

Teresa Cavazos, a phlebotomist of 11 years with the Red Cross in Tucson, Ariz., says she sometimes works 16- or 18-hour days.

Sometimes, you don’t get a break, if it’s that busy. They’ll give it to you at the end; they’ll say take 10 minutes before you clean up and put things away. That’s where I find it questionable on the part of the Red Cross. You’re not able to concentrate as clearly as you would, so you tend to make mistakes. It’s not safe for you; not safe for the donor.

It’s not just the Red Cross employees who have noticed the problems. The organization has been the subject of a consent decree about its safe handling of blood and has had to pay $21 million in fines for not obeying the decree promptly. Nor is the blood collection issue the only contentious one.

In recent years, the organization has been plagued with bad publicity, including fundraising and sex scandals, criticism over its Hurricane Katrina relief efforts and a revolving door in the executive suite that has seen 10 chief executives in 12 years.

One last black mark for the Red Cross is that it is determined to keep unions at bay.

Ten unions represent only 2,500 of the 35,000 Red Cross employees. The organization was hit with 212 unfair labor practices charges by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) between 1996 and 2007. Contracts at seven locations have expired as long as 11 months ago with no new agreement.

It is only natural in these circumstances to wonder whether the employees who are raising a stink are just trying to influence labor negotiations. They point out, though, that there have been no strikes, that they have been more than patient with their employer and only want to see the Red Cross business practices improved.

Once Joan Suarez became aware of the problems at the Red Cross and convinced that the workers were not reporting them as part of a ploy in union negotiations, she assembled a five person panel of respected community figures to hold hearings in St. Louis. They reached the same conclusions as she had and so set about finding a credible way of disseminating the news. They settled on asking retired Post-Dispatch labor reporter Philip Dine to investigate. His first question–the expected one–was whether these complaints were part of a bargaining strategy. Once he was convinced that such was not the motivation, he agreed to research the situation and issue a report. He interviewed the panel members and the workers. He tried to interview the Red Cross, but executives there refused to take his calls.

Dine’s twenty page report reached this conclusion:

Few national institutions have a prouder name or a more storied history than the American Red Cross. But many frontline blood workers see the Red Cross as an employer that is increasingly determined to cut expenses and increase revenues, even to the potential detriment of donor safety, employee wellbeing and the security of the nation’s blood supply.

Be aware that the Red Cross CEO is appointed by the president. The current CEO, Gail McGovern, is a Bush appointee. Suarez aims, for the present, to conduct a campaign asking people to contact McGovern to put pressure on her to improve the business practices at the Red Cross. If that campaign doesn’t get results, then perhaps down the line Jobs with Justice will start pressuring President Obama to replace McGovern.

We will hope it doesn’t come to that. First, let’s start with an e-mail campaign to the Red Cross itself. Click here (and then click in the right hand column where it says “Click here to take action as another user”). Or tweet a message here.