By: MISTY POE • Times West Virginian
I am pleased about one aspect of the “right to work” bill that passed late last week.
It’s that “right to work” is always placed in quotation marks. I imagine someone saying the words “right to work” and using their fingers to make those obnoxious quotation marks in the air.
Sometimes when you use quotation marks, it’s an obvious attempt to immediately say in a nonverbal way “these are not my words; they are someone else’s.” And they are someone else’s words.
This bill doesn’t give anyone the right to work. This bill gives companies the ability to bust up a union one member at a time.
What this proposed law will do is decrease the wages of employees in traditional union trades — on average of $5,500 — as well as decrease workplace safety.
Lawmakers in favor of the bill have called union members “free riders,” but the reality is that if passed and if it becomes law, the free riders will be the people who choose not to pay union fees but who take advantage of the wages, the benefits, the vacation and sicks days, and the protection that the union offers its employees against unfair treatment.
And with fewer dues-paying members, unions will have to cut back on expenses and services available to employees.
