New Hampshire Senate Approves Bill Curbing Unions

The latest battle front over limitations on unions has opened in New Hampshire, where a law is expected to be adopted that would prohibit unions from collecting mandatory fees and disallow collective bargaining agreements that require employees to join a labor union.

The State Senate passed the bill Wednesday — by a veto-proof vote of 16 to 8 — that would make New Hampshire the 23rd right-to-work state, and the first in the Northeast. The House passed a similar bill in February.

“I thought it was simply a freedom-of-choice issue,” said State Senator Raymond White, a Republican who supported the bill. “At the end of the day it’s simply a bill about does a person have to pay union dues?”

The two houses of the Legislature must work out a compromise bill that will be sent to Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, who has said he will veto it. The bill will then return to the Legislature for an expected override vote, at which point it will become law.

“The governor has been clear he would veto this legislation,” Colin Manning, a spokesman for Mr. Lynch, said in an e-mail. “The governor does not believe the state should be passing laws dictating the terms of contracts between private employers and workers.”

The battle over the legislation has been especially rancorous for New Hampshire. Protests were held at the Capitol in Concord last week, unusually loud and vitriolic events in a state where only 11 percent of employees are union members.

“We see this as an attack, really, on the middle class and working people and on our ability to negotiate,” said Mark MacKenzie, president of the New Hampshire A.F.L.-C.I.O. “Our economy is doing better than most. There is no public outcry for right-to-work in the state.”

The vote illustrates the major political shift that occurred in November, when conservative Republicans took a majority of the House and swept into the Senate, replacing the moderate bloc.

“These are not your typical New England moderate Republicans,” said Dante J. Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. “They’re more libertarian-minded Republicans that think unions should be out of the question in a contract between employee and employer.”

Like Republicans in other states, supporters in New Hampshire say the legislation is a way to improve a business climate in which there is competition with businesses in neighboring states.

“Right to work means more economic growth and more jobs here in New Hampshire, plain and simple,” House Speaker William O’Brien and the majority leader, David Bettencourt, said in a statement.

Labor groups plan to mobilize for the veto fight with rallies this weekend and calls to legislators.

“The antiworker group has taken control of the State Capitol,” Mr. MacKenzie said. “This is a street fight now.”

 

Hungarian Parliament Approves New Constitution

BERLIN — Despite criticism by the European Union and even the United Nations about the lack of sufficient checks and balances between the executive and legislative powers, Hungary’s Parliament approved a new Constitution on Monday, just halfway through the country’s term in holding the E.U.’s rotating presidency.

One of the most disputed provisions curbs the powers of the constitutional court on budget and tax matters and allows the president to dissolve Parliament if a budget is not approved.

The center-right party Fidesz, which swept into power last year with a two-thirds majority, was the only party that voted for the Constitution in the 262-to-44 vote. The decision by the main opposition Socialists and liberal parties to boycott the vote reflected the controversy not just over the contents of the Constitution, but also the way it was drafted and the political polarization that has continued ever since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990 and its satellites moved toward democracy.

But Janos Lazar, leader of Fidesz’s parliamentary faction, told Parliament before the vote that the Constitution represented something fundamental: a break with Hungary’s communist past.

The Constitution served to repay “those Hungarians who changed the regime and the political players who took part in shaping political life,” he said. “We are trying to settle that debt.”

As soon as he was elected last year, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was once a leading dissident, said he would move quickly to write and pass a new Constitution that he claimed would complete Hungary’s transition to a full-fledged democracy.

The opposition parties, however, withdrew from a commission that was established last year to draft a written Constitution, the first in Hungary’s turbulent history.

“They withdrew for political reasons,” Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi said in an interview Friday in Berlin. “We wanted them to participate. We kept asking them to come back. It was a big mistake that they did not rejoin the commission.”

The opposition claimed it would not have been listened to even had it remained in the commission.

Mr. Martonyi denied such allegations and mentioned that the Greens party had been involved but had also dropped out. Nevertheless, he said the Greens’ concerns about sustainable development were reflected in the Constitution, he said.

Mr. Martonyi went on a diplomatic offensive last week to explain why the Constitution would complete Hungary’s transition from a communist state to a democratic society.

Even so, the contents of the Constitution, which will go into effect in January, did not satisfy the Venice Commission, the E.U.’s constitutional law advisory body. Last week, it questioned the transparency of the process in addition to the powers Parliament will have to curb the constitutional court’s judges, especially over budgetary and other financial matters.

The constitutional court’s restrictions with regard to financial issues will be lifted only once the public debt sinks below 50 percent of gross domestic product.

Laszlo Solyom, a former president as well as a former head of the constitutional court, criticized the curbs on the court and the way the Constitution was drawn up.

“The drafting process had lost its dignity by descending to the level of common parliamentary wrangling,” he said in excerpts of an article to be published in the Thursday edition of the weekly Heti Valasz. Still, he said, “Hungary will stay among the European democracies even under the new Constitution.”

 

US DoJ approves Google's acquisition of ITA, but not without stipulations

 By Darren Murph posted Apr 8th 2011 5:06PM The United States government may be dissolved tomorrow, but it's certainly taking care of one final piece of business before going into shutdown: this. If you'll recall, Google announced its intentions to acquire ITA for $700 million in July of last year, and as we cruise into the start of America's summer travel season, all signals are go. Today, the US Department of Justice approved Google's request to move forward with the buy, but rather than having the entire travel search market under its wing, El Goog's going to have to make a smattering of concessions in order to get the right signatures. For starters, the search monolith will allow ITA's existing client contracts to extend into 2016, and it'll let both current and new customers license ITA's QPX software on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms." No one's saying when the integration will be complete (or start, for that matter), but we're desperately anxious to see just how Kayak and Bing Travel react after this launches in earnest. Power to the searchers, as it were.

 

US DoJ approves Google's acquisition of ITA, but not without stipulations

 By Darren Murph posted Apr 8th 2011 5:06PM The United States government may be dissolved tomorrow, but it's certainly taking care of one final piece of business before going into shutdown: this. If you'll recall, Google announced its intentions to acquire ITA for $700 million in July of last year, and as we cruise into the start of America's summer travel season, all signals are go. Today, the US Department of Justice approved Google's request to move forward with the buy, but rather than having the entire travel search market under its wing, El Goog's going to have to make a smattering of concessions in order to get the right signatures. For starters, the search monolith will allow ITA's existing client contracts to extend into 2016, and it'll let both current and new customers license ITA's QPX software on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms." No one's saying when the integration will be complete (or start, for that matter), but we're desperately anxious to see just how Kayak and Bing Travel react after this launches in earnest. Power to the searchers, as it were.

 

US DoJ approves Google's acquisition of ITA, but not without stipulations

 By Darren Murph posted Apr 8th 2011 5:06PM The United States government may be dissolved tomorrow, but it's certainly taking care of one final piece of business before going into shutdown: this. If you'll recall, Google announced its intentions to acquire ITA for $700 million in July of last year, and as we cruise into the start of America's summer travel season, all signals are go. Today, the US Department of Justice approved Google's request to move forward with the buy, but rather than having the entire travel search market under its wing, El Goog's going to have to make a smattering of concessions in order to get the right signatures. For starters, the search monolith will allow ITA's existing client contracts to extend into 2016, and it'll let both current and new customers license ITA's QPX software on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms." No one's saying when the integration will be complete (or start, for that matter), but we're desperately anxious to see just how Kayak and Bing Travel react after this launches in earnest. Power to the searchers, as it were.