ALEC at work in Arizona and elsewhere

Along with South Carolina’s Nikki Haley and Indiana’s Mitch Daniels, Arizona’s Jan Brewer, not content with making her state the least friendly to immigrants and people of color, has decided to get in on the union-busting action as well, introducing a bill that makes Walker’s and Kasich’s attacks on public workers look mild. ...Salon

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Two days after Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected Gov. John Kasich’s anti-labor agenda by 61 percent to 39 percent in a referendum, the nation’s primary proponent of the war on worker rights opened a new front. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker jetted to Arizona, where he huddled with policymakers at the Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale. After a series of closed-door sessions, he briefed a thousand Arizona conservatives on how they could attack “the big-government union bosses.”

“We need to make big, fundamental, permanent structural changes. It’s why we did what we did in Wisconsin,” declared Walker, who at the annual dinner of the right-wing Goldwater Institute said that compromising with unions was “bogus.” ...CapTimes, Madison, WI

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Labor unions are scheduled to rally in front of the Arizona State Capitol Thursday afternoon to protest four bills quickly moving through the state legislature that could make last year's Wisconsin labor laws look modest by comparison.

Three of the four bills restrict the way unions collect dues and the way workers get paid for union activities. The fourth bans collective bargaining between governments and government workers: state and local. Unlike Wisconsin, it affects all government employees, including police and firefighters.

"It seems as though those employees or at least the unions that represent them don't care what the burden is on the taxpayer as long as they get theirs," says state Sen. Rick Murphy, a Republican who is sponsoring the bills. ...NPR

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The Arizona Legislature is considering a tort-reform measure that supporters say could make the state more attractive to manufacturers and opponents say will protect companies whose products hurt or kill.

Senate Bill 1336 exempts a manufacturer from lawsuits for punitive damages if the manufacturer followed all federal, state or agency standards for creating a product. There are exceptions for manufacturers that, for example, sold a product after its effective date or paid off a government official to get product approval.

Such a law could have, for example, protected Subaru from the lawsuit Phoenix resident Ashleigh Justice filed after the roof of her 1992 Legacy caved in during a rollover. She was paralyzed. ...

...The bill, sponsored by Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, is based on model legislation developed by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council. Several other states have passed similar laws.

ALEC, which consists of corporations and mostly Republican lawmakers from across the country, has for years pushed for various tort-reform measures.

Several state chamber-of-commerce groups support the bill. ...Tucson Citizen