In a historic vote today, Thursday January 19, 2017, the Missouri House passed Right to Work with 100 Aye and 59 No votes. I spoke in support of the bill today when it came to the floor to be third read. I stated that I was proud to be able to vote to free our hardworking citizens from the mandate to join a union in our state as a condition of employment. I also expressed my gratitude to the voters of Missouri who went to the polls and actually made this vote possible.
I know that there are many (certainly not a majority) of people in the state who will be disappointed about this new direction for our state. To those individuals I said that I hoped that union members would take some comfort in knowing that the unions will now have to work harder to provide improved services and benefits to the membership since union members will no longer be a captive audience.
In voting for Right to Work, I do not believe that I was expressing any disapproval of the function of unions, but rather just protecting our citizens from being forced to join an organization as a condition of employment. If a union is serving a good purpose, and the members are happy with it, they will continue to support the union and pay their dues, but if a worker does not see the value in membership, he or she will now be free to use the money that previously had to go to the union for some other purpose.
The opposition today during debate referred to those who choose not to join a union as "free riders", while the bill sponsor referred to those same individuals are "captive riders". If a union chooses only to represent union members, they are certainly free to do so, though they seldom choose that option.
I also stated in my brief remarks (brevity and succinctness can be powerful in their own right); I stated that I perceived an upbeat and optimistic mood in our state and our country, as opposed to the general mood over the last several years.
In my opinion that is due in a large measure to the fact that citizens see that the will of the people is being recognized and enacted and new provisions such as Right to Work are becoming reality.
You, the people of the state of Missouri did this at the ballot box, and those you elected, like me, are doing what you sent us here to do.
I also noted that the galleries and hallways were not congested with opponents of Right to Work this year, since those groups realize that the people have spoken and this bill is destined to become the law in Missouri. A historic landmark, and now on to the Senate and then the Governor's desk.
4 comments:
This is terrific !! We were never going to grow with any outside industry as long as we denied people their basic right to make a living.
These people work hard for their money, it's not fair for some organization to skim off the top!
Well, were catching up with the rest of the free world. There was only one state touching us that did not afford workers their right to work
Harvey Hutchinson 303-522-6622 voice&text 24/7
@ Crazy Harvey & Others interested in truth
Nobody in Missouri has ever been denied their basic right to make a living!
Harvey is aware of the Taft-Hartley Act passed in 1947, which stated anyone could work for a union company, and if they didn't want to become a member, then they didn't have to. They still had to pay the "dues" equivalent of a fee for working for a company that offered better wages and training. The loophole to that law which is now being exploited as "Right to Work" laws, allows that that fee no longer applies. In other words, our legislators are encouraging "Right to Freeload" laws. There have been no union members complaining of our representation "skimming of the top".
I retired from the union with a pension, insurance, and have no complaints about my representation. For a business man such as Harvey Hutchinson to suggest such nonsense cannot be dismissed as ignorance. I can only assume his misrepresentation has darker motivations. Tell us Harvey, how many employees do you work at Arvada Technologies, what do you pay those employees per hour? What will you do if they seek representation? I wonder about a business owner that makes numerous false statements on this blog, is business that slow that you have time to deceive people. I'm posting a link by a recognized conservative business called Forbes, far smarter, and far more accomplished than Harvey Hutchinson. You decide...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/12/11/right-to-work-laws-explained-debunked-demystified/
https://lawcha.org/wordpress/2017/01/12/origins-right-work-vance-muse-anti-semitism-maintenance-jim-crow-labor-relations/
As Kentucky legislators pass a measure outlawing the union shop and Missouri’s General Assembly contemplates doing the same, it is worth remembering that so-called Right-to-Work laws originated as means to maintain Jim Crow labor relations and to beat back what was seen as a Jewish cabal to foment a revolution. No one was more important in placing Right-to-Work on the conservatives’ political agenda than Vance Muse of the Christian American Association, a larger-than-life Texan whose own grandson described him as “a white supremacist, an anti-Semite, and a Communist-baiter, a man who beat on labor unions not on behalf of working people, as he said, but because he was paid to do so.”
The idea for Right-to-Work laws did not originate with Muse. Rather it came from Dallas Morning News editorial writer William Ruggles, who on Labor Day 1941 called for the passage of a United States Constitution amendment prohibiting the closed or union shop. Muse visited Ruggles soon thereafter and secured the writer’s blessing for the Christian American Association’s campaign to outlaw contracts that required employees to belong to unions. Ruggles even suggested to Muse the name for such legislation—Right-to-Work.
Muse had long made a lucrative living lobbying throughout the South on behalf of conservative and corporate interests or, in the words of one of his critics, “playing rich industrialists as suckers.” Over the course of his career, he fought women’s suffrage, worked to defeat the constitutional amendment prohibiting child labor, lobbied for high tariffs, and sought to repeal the eight-hour day law for railroaders. He was also active in the Committee for the Americanization of the Supreme Court, which targeted Justice Felix Frankfurter, a Vienna-born Jewish man, for his votes in labor cases.
But Muse first attracted national attention through his work with Texas lumberman John Henry Kirby in the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution, which sought to deny Roosevelt’s re-nomination in 1936 on grounds that the New Deal threatened the South’s racial order. Despite its name, the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution received funding from prominent northern anti-New Deal industrialists and financiers including John Jacob Raskob, Alfred P. Sloan, and brothers Lammot, Irénée, and Pierre du Pont. Among Muse’s activities on behalf of the Southern Committee was the distribution of what Time called “cheap pamphlets containing blurred photographs of the Roosevelts consorting with Negroes” accompanied by “blatant text proclaiming them ardent Negrophiles.” Muse later defended the action and the use of its most provocative photograph: “I am a Southerner and for white supremacy . . . . It was a picture of Mrs. Roosevelt going to some nigger meeting with two escorts, niggers, on each arm.”
Harvey,
If you wish to debate this privately to avoid further damage to your credibility as an "honest" businessman you can feel free to email me at the address listed below. I will not post my phone number, as I have no desire to speak to a sniveling business owner who tries to deceive the public. You migh want to read the link, as it has anecdotal evidence of how going "Right to Freeload" laws has damaged Oklahoma's economy.
Ben.field@mail.com
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