Iowa labor leader: “Right to Work is Wrong”

Statement by Ken Sagar,President Iowa Federation of Labor:

Right to work is wrong. It strips all workers of our fundamental right to join together and stick together to have a meaningful voice in the workplace. It lowers wages for all families. It makes work places unsafe for all workers. Right to work is wrong, and hurts our economy. Everyone who lives in Right to Work states (such as Iowa) make up to $5,000 less per year than workers who do the same job in non-right to work states. Even the National Right to Work Committee stated that, “We’re not purporting to prove that right-to-work produces superior economic performance.”

Yesterday in Wisconsin the GOP Senate Labor Chair shut down a hearing over Right to Work legislation out of a “threat” – that “threat” was a line of over 100 people waiting in line to testify against a bill that would strip workers of their freedoms. What they call a threat, we call democracy. Governor Walker and the GOP are making it clear that our voice, our rights, our freedoms, our lives do not matter to them.

Right to work is an attack on all working families, both union and non-union. It is an attempt by Wall Street billionaires and political extremists to strip our freedoms in order to line their pockets. These are same people are moving workers into part-time positions, off-shoring profits, shipping our jobs to countries with subpar working conditions, support gutting laws that protect our health and safety on the job. Right to work is about taking our freedoms so that the wealthiest people in the nation can further maximize profits.

Right to work is a distraction from what the people of Wisconsin sent their elected officials to Madison to do: balance the budget, create good jobs, and healthy communities, not play political games with unnecessary and deceptive right to work legislation.