Everyone taking an honest look at the current system for organizing a union in America must recognize the system is broken. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), passed in 1935, sought to introduce “industrial democracy” into an economy racked by the Great Depression. Workers were given a mechanism to create their own economic power. For more than two generations, the NLRA model succeeded. Working class folks were able to negotiate directly with employers and to no one’s surprise, more of the employers’ profits were distributed to the people producing the profits. The American middle class was born as a direct result of the right to form a union.

The country is now facing another economic crisis. A bill that could aid us in getting out of the current economic morass is the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The bill, which President-elect Barack Obama supported during his campaign, has the chance to be the greatest piece of anti-poverty legislation since the Great Society. Despite assertions by critics, EFCA puts power back into the hands of workers to reset the imbalance created in the last 30 years.

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WASHINGTON – Insurers offering Medicare Advantage plans made $1.3 billion more in profits in 2006 than their own bids projected, a new Government Accountability Office report shows, a finding likely to bolster Congressional Democrats’ efforts to rein in the program.

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The number of home foreclosures in Rhode Island has gotten so bad that several groups are calling for a complete moratorium on them.

Peter Asen, associate director of Ocean State Action, says more than two-thirds of the foreclosures going on right now in Rhode Island are on multi-family homes, often where the tenants have no control over whether mortgage payments are made by landlords, and therefore cannot stop their own evictions.

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RHODE ISLAND’S state budget got a mid-fiscal-year checkup last month at the Caseload and Revenue Estimating Conference and the prognosis is not good. The state is facing a current year budget shortfall of more than $350 million — 11 percent of the general fund — the largest mid-year budget gap of the 31 states reporting shortfalls.

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At the conclusion of its 2008 session, the General Assembly passed a bill that would have reformed state criminal justice procedure for probationers charged with new crimes. The current law imposes lengthy prison sentences for such people even if their new charges are dismissed or if they are found innocent.

A precondition for state inmates' release to probation is their promise to "preserve the peace and be of good behavior." The mere accusation or suspicion of a new offense, therefore, is enough for the judge at a violation hearing — which occurs before the trial for a new charge — to send an individual back to the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) for the length of their original sentence.

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PROVIDENCE - House Speaker William J. Murphy will not rule out tax increases as a way to help balance the state's budget deficit amid a global economic downturn. 

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PROVIDENCE -- Most of Rhode Island's elected leaders have never faced anything like this.

"The state is in severe economic distress," House Fiscal Adviser Michael O'Keefe said yesterday during a rare off-session meeting of the House Finance Committee, the General Assembly's most powerful panel. "This current-year deficit is probably the biggest challenge anyone has faced in 17 years."

For the vast majority of Rhode Islanders — the insured — health-care is something you get when you need it. Feeling sick? Call the doctor. Slip and fall? Go to the emergency room or an urgent-care center. Need surgery? It's not fun, but it's covered.

But for more than 100,000 uninsured Ocean Staters, seeing a doctor can cost $150 or more, an ER visit can easily top $1000, and a hospitalization can lead to bankruptcy.

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In a time of widespread layoffs, decimated retirement accounts, and uncertainty about the fallout of the ongoing fiscal crisis, downsized requests for help are a sign of the times.

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