'There's no quit in these Union members!'
EDITOR'S NOTE: Click here to listen to the Mizzou Tigers fight song.
By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
Last night, our Missouri brothers and sisters were tweeting like gleeful bluebirds, the official Show-Me state fowl.
(I could nearly hear them. I live in deepest western Kentucky and can almost see Missouri from my house.)
Tom Platten @TPlatten 10h10 hours ago
So happy to stand with the working men and women of Missouri tonight! We overwhelmingly defeated an attack on working families in Missouri! The work continues. #WeVotedNoOnPropA
We, as working people all over the state, knew that Prop A was wrong all along, and tonight we showed up and made our voices heard. Thank you to everyone who volunteered, donated, and voted! #WeVotedNoOnPropA
STL Labor Council @greaterlaborSTL
Thank you! We did it! #WeVotedNoOnPropA
The polls were still open when this tweet popped:
Quitting is for quitters. There's no quit in these Union members! They're calling, until the polls close, urging fellow members to defeat right to work by voting NO on Prop A! Get out and vote Missouri labor! Every vote counts! @AFLCIO @MOAFLCIO @UFCW655 @UFCW @IBEWLocal1
Never had voters nixed a "right to work" law. Missourians did yesterday, and by a thumping margin.
All told, 937,241 voters turned thumbs down on Proposition A. Only 452,075 voted the other way.
That's a 67.5 to 32.5 spread.
Prop A lost nearly everywhere in the home state of President Harry Truman. "Give 'Em Hell Harry" would have been proud.
The Democrat vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, a Republican measure that upheld the power of states to enact RTW laws. The GOP Congress overrode him.
Prop A lost almost everywhere--in rural and urban areas, from St. Louis all the way west to Kansas City. Only 15 of Missouri's 114 counties, mostly in the state's deeply conservative southwest corner, were for RTW.
In southeast Missouri, Cape Girardeau County, home of right-wing radio's Rush Limbaugh, endorsed Prop A, but by only 127 votes.
Like in Kentucky, anti-union groups in Missouri had been pushing RTW for years. Both states went RTW in 2017 with Republican governors and Republican legislatures teaming up to pass the anti-union legislation.
But Missouri unions successfully organized a petition drive to put RTW on the ballot.
Anyway, deep-sixing RTW might have seemed like mission impossible to non-Missourians. President Trump, who is pro-RTW, won more than 57 percent of the state's vote and carried all but three counties.
Jeff Wiggins, Kentucky State AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, wasn't surprised that Prop A got clobbered. "There are a lot of strong labor unions in Missouri," he said. "The working people got a chance to voice their opinion and they made it loud and clear that they didn't want 'right to work.'"
State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan agreed.
"'Right to work' laws are passed by Republican legislators," he said. "The results in Missouri prove that when the facts about 'right to work' are put before the citizens for a vote, they overwhelmingly reject it."
Londrigan said the Missouri outcome was the second setback at the polls for RTW proponents since November, 2016, when Virginians rejected a ballot proposal that would have enshrined the state’s RTW status in the state constitution.
Meanwhile, Bluegrass State unions have sued to stop the Kentucky RTW law, arguing that the measure violates the state's constitution. The case is before the Kentucky Supreme Court.