The Temu Trump of Dollar Store Gilead, “Jersey Pat” Morrisey held a “ceremonial bill signing” on Wednesday. It was ceremonial because the bill had become law back in June, but I guess Jersey Pat needed to get in the news somehow; after all, he’s Temu Trump for a reason.
I wouldn’t have even noticed it except that one of the Koch serfs who infest the fringes of WV politics posted about how “honored” she was to be there, which made it clear that whatever was going on was pure bullshit:
On paper portable benefits sound great as they are a way for independent contractors to accrue some of the same benefits like medical insurance coverage, vacation and sick time, retirement savings, etc., as direct employees, and these benefits travel with them from contract to contract. And the legislation allows these workers to take any employer-contributed funds when they leave.
The reality is of course different. First anyone can set up a retirement account, or buy health insurance, etc., without this law. Second, virtually no companies are contributing to these accounts on the part of employers. So why would a state need to pass this law?
Now one thing is true—lots of independent contractors, or as the Pew Center calls them “nontraditional workers”, don’t have access to workplace retirement plans or defined contribution plans. And in response states have already stepped up with auto-IRA programs to help those workers save for retirement. But not West Virginia. Hmmm.
You may remember back in 1998 Microsoft lost a case regarding its freelance employees who were found to be direct employees who were not treated as such. In a previous life I had spent some time working in HR after this decision and its effects are still with us today and are now seen in these portable benefits laws, and more specifically in WV. And these portable benefits laws are meant in part to shield employers who want to contribute to these plans from similar lawsuits.
And let’s face it: it’s an easy thing to do in that area since we all know that employers aren’t going to suddenly decide to give independent contractors benefit contributions. The entire business establishment didn’t wholeheartedly move to the academic adjunct model for without a reason.
So given that WV doesn’t actually care if independent contractors have retirement plans and that these employer-based contributions really don’t exist, what is going on? Well, the first clue I had was that my state senator Patricia Rucker was the bill’s sponsor. Rucker is a complete wingnut who thinks that federal workers coming for training at a facility in Jefferson County, WV are registering to vote while they’re here for a few weeks and then coming back and interfering in county elections. Yes.
So when I saw she was part of this nonsense, along with the praise from the Koch fiefdom workers, and Jersey Pat had to spend taxpayer money so he could make a fuss over the signing the bill, it because clear that the real purpose of this legislation was to benefit the out-of-state millionaires who own the WV GOP.
The other clue is that the legislation’s language comes from a template from the Independent Women’s Forum. The roots of the IWF are the group called “Women for Clarence Thomas”. Do I even need to say more? Well, I do. Turns out that the IWF and the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity are in cahoots:
And guess what? The Cardinal Institute, which Dobrinsky works for, is a Koch-supported organization with close ties to AFP-WV, and ALEC, and the State Policy Network—all Koch supported. It was a family reunion.
Turns out that these portable benefit programs are, you guessed it, union busters in disguise. First, since these independent contractors receiving these unicorn benefits are legally shut out from being classified as direct employees, they cannot organize an union. And that is exactly what the out-of-state millionaires who own the WV GOP want.
So there is no money in WV for kids who need clothes for school or for clean drinking water, but there is money to spend on writing meaningless legislation, paying state workers to design, implement, and track a program that virtually no one is going to participate in, and making signs and transporting the governor to a fake signing of a bill that is already law so Jersey Pat can grovel for Trump’s attention.
Then again, using taxpayer money for stuff no one wants *is* Jersey Pat’s specialty.
I’ll leave you with this:
During his brother’s presidency, the good Robert F. Kennedy, so the story goes, spent time in some of the poorest environs of the nation, including West Virginia, and came out a changed man. The same man who had worked for Sen. Joseph McCarthy matured into the man who publicly quoted George Bernard Shaw, “Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.”
The Democrats need a latter-day good Bobby Kennedy to go to West Virginia and spotlight the corruption of the state’s political power structure. Not just for a few months, but a years-long commitment to live with the people who are shafted on a constant multi-front basis by their own government. Get West Virginians to demand that their state government serve its own citizens the way it now serves the wealthy and the elite. Transform the political environment so that the most vulnerable citizens expect better from their government than a constant barrage of further injuries and insults.
i agree but no one is coming to save any of us. we all need to be the good Bobby and do what we can.