HR 785, the National Right-to-Work Act, 115th U.S. Congress (2017-2018), would remove certain sections of the National Labor Relations Act. The effect would be to force labor unions throughout the United States to offer their services for free. And their members will have to compete directly with the most desperate and vulnerable individual workers the employer can find. The act will empower employers and reduce workers to powerless victims of a system that will eventually condemn them to poverty wages. The goal is to destroy unions.
The sponsors of this bill and corresponding state laws are well aware of this. They’ve seen and loved the effects in “right to work” states: low wages, long hours, unsafe working conditions, lost benefits and insecurity for workers, all to produce higher profits. The more-than-100 sponsors of this bill, every one of them Republican, should be ashamed of themselves. Absurdly, they claim that concern for workers’ rights is their motivation. But the astonishingly disingenuous “right to work” title reveals complete disrespect for workers. And these are the people who ask us to trust that their proposed tax reforms will benefit working people. If that isn’t adding insult to injury, I don’t know what is.
To their credit, so far none of Washington state’s Republican representatives have co-sponsored HR 785. I hope they won’t. But State Sen. Michael Baumgartner (6th District, near Spokane) never fails to introduce a Washington state “right to work” bill, currently SB 5692. Can you guess his party affiliation?
Ken Dammand
Tulalip
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