(Future AU Senator??) Julian Assange

Head Wikileaker and house arrestee Julian Assange has been pondering a run for the Australian Senate. Before you even quirk an eyebrow at the prospect of a "Senator Assange," note that a recent survey by Australian Labor Party pollsters indicates Mr. Assange could garner nearly 25% of the vote. Agence France-Presse reports members of "the left-wing Greens party were most likely to be pro-Assange, with 39 percent saying they would vote for him."

In a sampling of 1,000 potential voters, nearly equal percentages of Labor and conservative supporters also indicated they might vote for Mr. Assange, who is currently on bail in England after being  accused of "sexual molestation" in Sweden.

Mr. Assange is essentially under house arrest while he waits to see if he'll be extradited but that hasn't stopped him from launching a TV show in addition to exploring a future in politics. His World Tomorrow airs on RT and has featured guests such as Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hebollah and Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa.

Agence France-Presse also reports that Wikileaks, as an organization, is prepared to field a candidate against Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2013.

Correction: An earlier version of this post said Mr. Assange was "charged with" sexual molestation. At this point he has not been officially charged.

Sotheby's and its art handlers' union have yet to close a deal, nearly a month after their previous agreement expired.

Nearly a month after the contract between Sotheby's and its art handlers' union, Teamsters Local 814, expired, the two sides have yet to reach a deal on a new agreement. Union leaders have floated the possibility of a strike, but are holding back on acting on that threat for now.

The Teamsters union has demanded that the auction house not ask for any cuts in headcount or salary, since it has realized record sales in recent years, according to a report in today's Independent. Last year, auction sales at the publicly traded house totaled an all-time high of $4.3 billion, a $2.1 billion increase over its 2009 performance.

The Wall Street Journal noted earlier this month that Sotheby's privately held rival, Christie's, reached a four-year agreement with the union in May that increased union handlers from 46 to 49, with two more scheduled to be hired by March 2012, and the group may hoping to strike a similarly favorable deal here.

"We're dealing with a company that's wildly profitable and not in any trouble,” Jason Ide, the president of Local 814, told Crain's. “It looks to me like they're trying to take advantage of the climate,” referring to setbacks that labor groups have suffered in recent months.

Sotheby's has said it will continue to negotiate with the workers, issuing a statement that reads, in part: "Sotheby's has a long history of a constructive and cooperative relationship with the unions that represent our employees, and has reached fair and equitable contracts in the past."

Spitzer, around the 5:50 mark:

"I disagree with Governor Walker...the right to bargain together is one of those fundamental rights we all believe individuals across the society should have. I agree with him that the givebacks are necessary in terms of pensions, in terms of contributions to pensions, to health care costs and even at the wage level."

In negotiating with unions in New York, Cuomo hasn't touched collective bargaining rights, but he has called for shared sacrifice and - as some critics would say - painful givebacks.

In short, the administration is saying teacher evaluations will now be part of the layoff process, rather than only the nine categories initially outlined in the bill. The amendments also speaks to much of what Governor Cuomo said he wanted his bill to do.

Earlier this week, Christine Quinn announced that a hearing would be held on the matter next month, but backers of the bill are determined not to allow this measure to fall by the wayside, as happened with their last legislative push--paid sick leave, which, despite a majority of the Council's support was not brought to the floor for a vote.

That Liu is kicking off this push is significant. He is strong supporter of the measure and backers say they are counting him on to use his bully pulpit on the matter. 

"Liu is absolutely critical," said one union official. "He is in a very unique position. He has a long history on living wage issues from when he was in the Council. He is in some ways the most critical ally to have, and the fact of the matter is he now has a citywide perch to push for reform."

While in the Council Liu helped push a living wage law for service contractors.

"The concept is simple--that the city ought to have standards in terms of the quality of jobs created," Liu said. "I do believe that it is not in the interest of city taxpayers to give away large subsidies without certain standards."

The bill in question would require that all large city projects which receive taxpayer subsidies pay a living wage.  Although since Liu is no longer in the Council he would not have a vote on the bill, if the measure passes it would give the Comptroller's office enforcement power of the city's Economic Development Council to insure that the law is carried out. Liu has made oversight of EDC a central plank of his tenure in the Comptroller's office.

Liu is also a potential 2013 mayoral candidate, and backers of the measure hope that by spotlighting the issue he is able to force Quinn, also a 2013 possibility, into supporting it.

Supporters of the measure also see a far more involved effort in this campaigned compared with the paid sick bill push. Not only are the Progressive Caucus and the Black, Latino and Asian caucus making it a major priority, but the bill has the support of the Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz and the Bronx delegation of the City Council. Plus, area church leaders have indicated that the bill is a major priority for them, and they have told Council members that they intend to hold them accountable for their votes.

If contract terms or labor laws from years past no longer make sense, we the people should renegotiate — or legislate — changes. Benefits agreed to 35 years ago that now are unaffordable should be reduced. Similarly, work rules that made sense 70 years ago but are now antiquated should be changed. [skip] To the extent that collective bargaining agreements or state laws are no longer serving the public, we should change them. That is what democracy is all about — and that is our responsibility. The job of labor leaders is to get the best deal for their members. The job of elected officials is to get the best deal for all citizens. Rather than declare war on unions, we should demand a new deal with them — one that reflects today’s economic realities and workplace conditions, not those of a century ago.

"Now the government says you can't have unpaid interns, that it's exploitation. Can you believe that?" he says. "I built my career on unpaid interns! My staff is almost all former interns. What ever happened to two adults entering an agreement together?"

So: unpaid internships are OK because the unpaid interns consent, i.e. are not forced into indentured servitude or similar. We guess this is positive.

Fashionista reports that Lady Gaga has "applied to intern" for milliner Philip Treacy, which a Treacy spokesmilliner confirms.

Surely this is a proud day for interns everywhere. Rejoice, unpaid workers! Gaga is your sister in resume-building and experiential learning.

“You’re basically saying that the city is going to subsidize a project that basically is going to have jobs that are not even committed to paying the minimum poverty level,” said Councilman Robert Jackson, one of at least seven consecutive members to bring up the wage issue.

This all came as very welcome, if not unexpected, news to Stuart Appelbaum, the politically connected president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, who has been relentlessly pushing the Council on the living-wage issue.

“I was pleased with every single one of the members of the committee who were there today,” he said. “The city is putting so many resources into the armory that I think we have the right to ask for something specific in return.”

Recession be damned. New construction may be scarce in New York, but now many a union is viewing the present as a prime time to win new labor concessions at economic development projects overseen by the city, raising wages and opening the door for easier union organizing.

A collection of unions has been ratcheting up pressure in the past few years on a resistant Bloomberg administration over development issues, extracting concessions on individual large-scale projects such as Willets Point in Queens. Given the help, both organizational and financial, that they provided this past election season, labor leaders hope the political scene is ripe for spreading the policies they’ve been pushing. After all, unions and the labor-heavy Working Families Party won numerous victories in Council races this past fall, and the two citywide office winners other than the mayor, John Liu as public advocate and Bill de Blasio as city comptroller, were both backed by many unions.

THIS GOES WELL beyond the Kingsbridge Armory.

On Monday, a bill was introduced in the Council, pushed by the building service workers union SEIU 32BJ, that would require nearly every economic development project receiving city subsidies to guarantee prevailing wages—typically well above minimum wage—for the service employees. The hotel workers’ union, which backed Mayor Bloomberg, as well as Messrs. Liu and de Blasio and the majority of new council members, has been pushing to require Council approval on new hotel development, an area the union presumably wants to continue and expand.

For the labor initiatives, the rhetoric is similarly caustic, ridiculing policies that give subsidies without wage guarantees. “Tax dollars shouldn’t create poverty jobs,” said Mike Fishman, president of 32BJ.

“Incumbents and new members of the Council are all people we’ve had relationships with, and most of them people we’ve worked with and helped,” he said of the bill, introduced by Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito. “I don’t know what the percentage will be, but I think we’ll be able to get to a majority and pass it.”

The situation at Kingsbridge is illustrative of the broader issues: Had the planned giant mall gone before the Council a few years ago, the retail workers’ union likely would not have put such considerable pressure on the council, content instead to take whatever union jobs might be created on their own as opposed to trying to kill the whole project.

(Indeed they haven’t: Numerous mall projects have been approved by the Council in recent years without living-wage guarantees, including one by the same developer in the same borough: Related’s Bronx Terminal Market.)

“We’re taking a new approach to dealing with economic development, as it relates to retail workers,” Mr. Appelbaum said.

Indeed. Mr. Appelbaum and his retail union, as well as others, are trying to get the Council to kill the Kingsbridge mall over the living wage, about $10 an hour for this project. Related says it will walk away from the project if living wage is required.

IN A SENSE, it’s surprising New York doesn’t have many of these wage restrictions already. Despite a comparatively robust labor movement locally, unions in numerous other cities—Oakland, Minneapolis, San Antonio—have been more successful in forcing laws requiring higher wages for employers that receive city subsidies.

Perhaps it’s due to New York having two successive Republican mayors, or perhaps it’s a testament to the power of the city’s real estate industry, which would surely resist such measures.

Either way, for labor, their goals remain little more than aspirations, and having a few more labor-friendly elected officials in City Hall hardly guarantees success on issues generally resisted by the Bloomberg administration and the business community.

City officials have, with varying degrees of success, pushed back against labor on wage requirements in development projects, saying such restrictions will scare away investment.

Mayor Bloomberg addressed the issue Tuesday morning, coming down against the unions in the context of Kingsbridge, saying the city “shouldn’t be” guaranteeing wages in private building.

And then there’s the issue of the economy, the fall of which has flattened development citywide. Any added burdens would change the economics of developments, meaning either that developers would need to take on more risk or seek more subsidy. Thus the real estate industry can surely be counted on to oppose any broader union push.

Particularly with regard to Kingsbridge, the living-wage issue seems to be a frustrating one for the administration, which wants to see it disappear. Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Bob Lieber, deputy mayor for economic development, became agitated after repeated questions from reporters about living wages, which followed an hour of questions from the Council. “Mandatory wage requirements,” he said bluntly, “Scare. Tenants. Away.”

ebrown@observer.com

In describing the impact of Paterson’s proposal, Bloomberg said, “That’s an awful lot of city employees.” In fact, he said, “that’s 12,000-odd city employees."

Bloomberg said “this city’s budget is fundamentally a labor budget.”

When asked if he was predicting layoffs if the legislature passed the governor’s budget, Bloomberg replied “I’m not saying that at all. I was just pointing out that we don’t print money” and “there’s few things the city can do at this point to reduce its expenses other than reduce its labor costs.”