SEARCH
Another Win for Workers—Kentucky Says Right to Work for Less Is Wrong |
|
Nearly 5,000 Kentucky workers gathered on the Capitol steps in Frankfort March 7 to celebrate the defeat of so-called right to work legislation and rejection of a bill to repeal the state prevailing wage law.
Both bills, said rally participants, would benefit only wealthy corporations and low wage contractors.
A bipartisan 11–2 majority of the state House Labor and Industry Committee on March 7 killed the anti-worker legislation, pet projects of Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) and the extremist groups.
The Kentucky victory was the second recent success for working families: Indiana working families also successfully mobilized to kill right to work legislation, which the House rejected on Feb. 28.
The Kentucky panel also killed an attempt to repeal the state’s prevailing wage law that requires contractors on state-funded construction projects to pay workers the prevailing wage in the region. Prevailing wage laws ensure contractors on state projects don’t exploit workers by paying low wages to win state contracts.
“I wish old Ernie was looking out the window,” national AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka said at the rally. “I’d tell him to look at this crowd and see what he’s done by trying to destroy our prevailing wage law and jam through a ‘right-to-work-for-less’ legislation’….Your selfish strategy has boomeranged and you have united the labor movement like we’ve never been united before.”
Republican union member Reba Burris, a sewing machine operator, carried a sign that read “Republicans Support Unions, Too.”
She told the Associated Press, “I think Gov. Fletcher should have known better than this. I think the feeling within the Republican Party is that unions are getting weaker and weaker and weaker and that he had a good shot at it. He found out today that he doesn’t.”
In states with right to work laws, the average pay for workers is 15 percent less than in states where workers have rights to bargain contracts (including wages and benefits).
(Right to work laws were given that catchy but misleading name by Big Business—but in fact they don’t guarantee workers any rights. What they really do is weaken unions and employee bargaining and destroy the best job security protection that exists: the union contract. Meanwhile, they allow some workers to pay nothing and get all the benefits of a union membership.)
Looks like Fletcher didn’t get much of a return on the $10,000 in taxpayers’ money he spent for an old recycled report on the benefits of right to work legislation.
Check out www.kyaflcio.org for more information on the rally.
No Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
