For 100 years, Massachusetts has had a special relationship with the Savings Bank Life Insurance company so that basic life insurance policies were available to people of all income levels.   That special relationship is no longer regulated under this new statute which has been signed by the Lieutenant Governor  (acting on behalf of the Governor while the Governor was out of state).

The final bill not only wipes out the “gender neutrality” requirements that have been characteristic for over twenty years, but wipes out the requirement that the company fulfill  “special responsibilities,” such as the regulations that guarantee that the company provide low amount life insurance policies.  (The Governor’s Office says the company has promised to continue offering these same policies; JALSA and other organizations will monitor.)
Notwithstanding the special responsibilities,  this company has enjoyed great profits for the sale of this insurance in Massachusetts.

We thank the many individuals and organizations that worked to the last moment urging the Governor’s staff to recommend a veto.  Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful.   As on many other occasions, equity for women was sacrificed for other goals.

Read  our letter to the Governor.

This no-cost proposal will help save resources by preventing the public safety hazards that surround foreclosed properties, stabilizing property values, and preventing the housing instability that unnecessary evictions cause.

Foreclosures are devastating our communities in Massachusetts – The Federal Reserve reports that more than 33,300 Massachusetts homeowners are delinquent on their home loans due to a combination of high unemployment, negative property equity, (where the homeowner owes more than the value of the home) and risky lending.  As of February, 2010, an additional 30,700 Massachusetts homes were already bank-owned or in the foreclosure process.
The Warren Group, an independent publisher of real estate data, said there were 1,283 foreclosure deeds filed in Massachusetts last month, up nearly 120 percent from the previous year. Through the first five months of 2010, the number of completed foreclosures was nearly double last year’s pace.
A Foreclosure Bill (H. 4595) is in the House Ways and Means Committeethat will help tenants and homeowners. It has already passed the Senate unanimously. This no-cost proposal will help save resources by preventing the public safety hazards that surround foreclosed properties, stabilizing property values, and preventing the housing instability that unnecessary evictions cause. The Bill does the following: 1)      Provides eviction protections to tenants in foreclosed properties who are in good standing and continue to pay rent. 2) Establishes a framework for negotiations between lenders and homeowners to work together to create a mutually-acceptable loan modification. Participating in loan modification negotiations would be voluntary but lenders that do not participate will have to wait 150 days to foreclose on the property (up from current 90 day right to cure).  This provision sunsets in 2016. 3)  Creates an abandoned and foreclosed property registry to track distressed properties. 4) Encourages redevelopment of foreclosed properties by providing a local option to exclude nonprofits from property taxes during the term that the nonprofit rehabilitates the home and converts it into affordable housing. 5)  Criminalizes mortgage fraud. 6)  Requires counseling in order to receive a reverse mortgage.  A reverse mortgage is where a senior homeowner receives a loan on their home equity and the loan is paid back when the homeowner sell the home or passes away.

JALSA thanks CHAPA andd MAAPL for their continuing leadership on this legislation.

For more information on the bill, click on Fact Sheet

Immediate Action Needed – Friday July 9
Important civil rights issue in Senate Ways and Means
Please call members of Senate Ways and Means and Senate leadership about Senate 726 – An Employee Protection Act
In recent years, we’ve seen new efforts to eliminate various workplace protections.  One of these techniques is to require employees to sign waivers, as they start a job, promising to put all workplace disagreements to arbitration panels of the employer’s discretion.  Of greatest concern are waivers that have not been previously discussed in the job interviews, ones that are not part of negotiated agreements between employers and employees — that suddenly show up the first day on the job – sandwiched in between the health insurance documents and other office policies.
Many workers would not assume that such waivers could mean giving up their basic job rights, such as the right to make a discrimination claim before the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.
A bill to prevent such prospective waivers from being enforced in relation to claims of discrimination, retaliation, harassment, or violations of public policy, is now pending and is in the Senate Committee on Ways and Means.  JALSA e-mail readers are asked to contact Senate leadership and members of the Ways and Means Committee and ask their own Senators to speak to members of the Committee, indicating the importance of this legislation.
The bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Tollman.

JALSA Task Force on Environmental Justice:

Green Jobs: the Big Picture.  Making the Connection between Jobs and Training

Recent issues pertaining to the qualifications necessary for solar jobs have highlighted the need for getting the big picture about green jobs.  What training is required for all the positions that a green economy could generate, considering the entire supply chain involved?  Creating the training that’s needed is part of creating the infrastructure that brings green companies to this area, as well as enhancing the chances that green jobs will play a role in revitalizing local economies.

We met with:

Greg Watson, Senior Advisor for Clean Energy Technology, Commonwealth of Massachusetts; and

Travis Watson, whose work with the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative is to bring local residents and trade unions together to work out ways that the goals of unions and local residents seeking jobs can mesh.

As you probably have read, the Massachusetts Senate passed drastically anti-immigrant language during the consideration of the budget  (a 20 minute debate), that is likely to deny many immigrants and their children access to health care, education opportunities, and housing.  It promotes a watchdog culture encouraging citizens to call in to an anonymous hot-line to report on potentially undocumented workers.

This legislation is misguided and inhumane.  Current laws already limit services to undocumented persons.  These provisions will likely increase the number of people who are not able to get services.  They are likely to increase public health risks by decreasing our ability to contain the spread of illnesses.  These provisions also promote racial profiling.

As you might know these provisions were eventually eliminated from the final budget. Thank You to all who let your legislator know of your concern.

From Sheila Decter – May 25

It is crunch time at the State House.  Committees are obligated to release bills with their recommendations, although we understand that there are over 800 bills that have “extensions” and are still in committee.

We need to expand continued energy to get those bills we care about passed.  So, please understand if you get several messages over the next few weeks.

For more information go to  JALSA Pages:   Crunch Time Details

Call House on Paid Sick Leave

Call Senate on discriminatory provision on Savings Bank Life Insurance

CORI reform vote —Passed House by 138 to 17 vote> next step is merging House and Senate Bills.

Restore Dental funding

Full-funding for METCO

Support Shaw’s Fired Workers   Let Shaw’s Markets know you won’t shop until they return to the Bargaining  Table

National Popular Vote for President (Agreement by state governments that would allow the national popular vote to elect the President) – Passed House – next step is Senate.

Encourage a vote on Transgender Protection.

Embrace Transparency in Budget Considerations

Thank Governor Patrick for the newly required Civil Rights Impact Assessment

Important weeks in the legislative session.  Committees were to release bills.  State House News tells us that 900 bills were given “extensions” which means the committees have not been willing to support, reject, or send them to “study” (effectively killing them for the year).

Paid Sick Leave is in the House Ways and Means Committee. Contact all members of that committee and the House Leadership, Speaker Robert DeLeo  ( 617-722-2500) and House Ways and Means Chairman, Charles Murphy of Burlington of Winthrop (617-722-2990);  Barbara L’Italian of Andover of Boston – Vice Chair (617-722-2380);  Stephen Kulik of Worthington of Franklin – Assistant Vice-Chair   (617-722-2380).

Urge 15 of your friends to call, as well.   Telephone numbers for all on State House Website

Scaccia of Boston            Fox of Boston                 Koczera of New Bedford
Canavan of Brockton    Fagan of Taunton          Quinn of Dartmouth
Garry of Dracut              Creedon of Brockton    Rodrigues of Westport
Balser of Newton           Timilty of Milton            Kane of Holyoke

Donelan of Orange        Rush of Boston       Driscoll of Braintree  

Guyer of Dalton             Sciortino of Medford     Sannicandro of Ashland

Welch of West Springfield     Speranzo of Pittsfield   Rice of Gardner

Conroy of Wayland       deMacedo of Plymouth   Hargraves of Groton

Perry of Sandwich         Polito of Shrewsbury         Smola of Palmer

Webster of Pembroke

For a script for telephone calls, see our Paid Sick Leave page.

Savings Bank Life Insurance

For 20 years, the SBLI company has sold insurance in the Commonwealth with a provision in the statutes prohibiting discriminatory provisions in rate setting by gender.  Now, the company wants to be able to establish different rates for men and women.  Please contact your senator.  The company has been profitable for many years without discriminating.  Whatever small savings women might achieve by discriminatory rate setting, they will lose more in the long run in the insurance field.  Just last year, Massachusetts was finally able to end discrimination in annuities.  Now SBLI wants to turn the clock back.

Contact your senator immediately.  Urge they not take this discriminatory action.

Transgender Civil Rights Bill 1728

Once again the Massachusetts legislature is dragging its heels on civil rights legislation.   A bill to add transgender identity to the state’s civil rights statutes is still pending, notwithstanding that a majority of the legislators have indicated their support.

Write the leadership.  Urge that this bill be released from the Judiciary Committee for floor debate and a vote.

JALSA  congratulates the members of the Boston City Council, who have unanimously expressed their outrage at the un-American actions of the State of Arizona.  In a triumph of ignorance and bigotry, that state’s legislature and governor have created a discriminatory system of interrogation and arrest for the offense of not having your passport or your birth certificate with you while looking like a foreigner.  We are all immigrants, some recent, some generations or millennia in the past, but all with the potential to look strange to somebody.  Encouraging local law enforcement to demand “papers” from suspicious-looking strangers comes right out of the totalitarian play book– a scene from Casablanca.   The City Council gets it, and has spoken up for all of us.  Perhaps if enough voices like theirs are raised, the misguided folks in Arizona will get it too.

– Also See Jewish Community Condemns Arizona Law signed by JALSA

To the Editors:

Joe Lieberman and our new Massachusetts US Senator, Scott Brown, have introduced in the Senate a bill that would strip the citizenship from anyone “accused” of aiding terrorism, of joining a terrorist organization or of being a terrorist.  The defects in this brainstorm are readily apparent: it reverses the presumption of innocence and is otherwise unconstitutional on a number of grounds.  It panders to unreasoned panic, and demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of its sponsors.  It will have no deterrent effect on terrorism but raises the specter of widespread injustice.  Sadly, our history is peppered with this sort of over-reaction, from the Alien & Sedition Acts to the Palmer Raids to the internment of the Japanese to the blacklist; sooner or later we wake up with a national hangover.

But this particular assault should have a special resonance for the Jewish community.  In the 1930’s and 40’s, the Stern Gang, the Irgun, and even more moderate Zionist organizations were widely perceived as terrorists, certainly by the British who ruled Palestine.  Let us recall that Menachim Begin surmounted his part in the destruction of the King David Hotel to become prime minister of Israel.  If the proposed law, and the State Department’s list of suspected terrorist organizations, had been around when World War II began, how many native-born Jewish-Americans could have been denaturalized and deported for joining or donating to a Jewish charity with murky connections?  If great uncle Max were careless in his Zionist activities, he could have wound up back in Mielec, Poland just in time to be gassed.  And it wouldn’t matter that he was born in New Jersey.

Joel Eigerman, Chairman

Committee on Law and Social Action, JALSA