Right to Work is not what it seems
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a letter to the editor of the Spencer Magnet, a newspaper in Taylorsville, where Pullium lives. "River City Views" is his column that appears regularly on the website.
By SCOTT PULLIAM
The headline reads Right to Work in KY. The print size is easily twice as large as any other article, is in bold type and absolutely dominates the page. Unfortunately, the substance of the text just doesn’t live up to the hype. The simple fact is that “right to work” has absolutely nothing to do with anyone’s right to work; in Kentucky or anywhere in the United States. And the man who wrote the article knows it!
The opinion page piece published in last week’s Spencer Magnet actually left out a lot of information that readers should have when determining whether or not a so-called “right to work” law is something that would be beneficial for Kentucky.
To begin with, there are no factual data to back up any of the misleading statements made by the author. As a matter of fact, there is no information provided about the writer, Mr. Jim Waters. So perhaps a few pertinent facts about Mr. Waters would be in order.
He is currently the president, CEO and executive director of the conservative Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions (BIPPS). BIPPS is registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. According to the IRS, such an entity is to be one of the following: “Religious, Educational, Charitable, Scientific, Literary, Testing for Public Safety, to Foster National or International Amateur Sports Competition, or Prevention of Cruelty to Children or Animals Organizations.” With the possible exception of some educational functions, Mr. Waters has spent most of the last two years almost exclusively pushing the “right to work” (RTW) agenda which is blatantly political in nature. Anyone who has followed the issue knows this to be true. Or you can go to http://www.bipps.org and look at all the “right to work” propaganda for yourself. I, personally, question whether it is categorized correctly by the IRS but that is a subject to be dealt with by others.
In his article, Jim Waters states, “Kentucky stood still while several states, including neighboring Indiana and West Virginia, moved forward with right to work policies, which protect employees from being forced to pay union dues in order to keep their jobs.” The allegation of “forced unionism” and/or payment of dues is a common lie used in promoting RTW. And contrary to his assertion, Kentucky has not stood still! This can be easily verified by looking at the results of annual business competitions conducted by highly regarded Site Selection Magazine in which Kentucky finished way ahead of Indiana and West Virginia. In fact, in its Governor’s Cup selections, Kentucky has finished number one per capita for 2015 and 2014 and numbers 5 and 6 respectively overall in comparison to the 49 other states. It is worth noting that this was accomplished before Matt Bevin became governor and without the benefit of a “right to work” law! It’s also worth noting that while Indiana finally cracked the top 10 by coming in 10th overall in 2015, it’s still way behind Kentucky.
But please don’t take my word for it.
I encourage you to see for yourself by going to http://siteselection.com/issues/2016/mar/cover.cfm. The claim that businesses won’t locate or expand here because there is no “right to work” law has been proven repeatedly over time to be false as there is nowhere to be found any evidence to support it. It’s another deliberate lie that people such as Jim Waters tell to promote their corporate, right wing agenda.
He goes on to say, “...12 counties representing more than 600,000 Kentuckians have already endorsed right to work...” In this particular case, it’s what he didn’t say that’s pertinent to the discussion. He didn’t say that the political makeup of those 12 fiscal courts is mostly Republican! He also didn’t say that those 12 (out of 120) county governmental bodies, were pushed to adopt a local ordinance by another blatantly political organization based in Tampa, Florida, calling itself Protect My Check, Inc.(PMC) that promised to pay any legal expenses the counties might possibly incur in resulting litigation.
According to the KY Secretary of State website, Protect My Check was incorporated April 15, 2015 as a non-profit, foreign corporation and is now in bad standing. Its authority to operate in Kentucky was revoked October 1, 2016. By its own admission, its overriding mission is promoting “right to work.” Yet it is listed as a 501(c)(4) entity, which falls into one of the following categories: Civic leagues, social welfare organizations, and local associations of employees. It kind of begs the question, why was a political organization posing as one of the above, based in Florida, whose officers are all residents of Tampa, expending its own (?) funds to pass “right to work” legislation in Kentucky? The next logical question is, of course, where does that money come from? Oddly enough, I couldn’t find that information on the Internet but not for lack of trying!
So-called “right to work” laws serve only to dry up the only source of revenue unions have, dues payments.
Subsequently if unions have no financial resources they would no longer have the ability to represent their members. When unions can no longer provide their members benefits they will simply cease to be. It’s a simple tactic employed by Republicans at every level of government. I believe they refer to it as “starving the beast”.
There is much more factual information I could (and would love to) share, but I seriously doubt Mr. Shindlebower would grant me the space to do so.