Politico reported Simpson County on Tuesday joined two others -- Warren and Fulton -- to advance a local right-to-work measure.
Kentucky’s highest court already ruled right-to-work laws can only be made at the state level. These local ordinances are illegal.
They also aren't what they seem. Grossly misnamed right-to-work laws actually decrease wages, lower median household income, increase poverty, and undermine workplace safety in the county.
CEOs and billionaires want to push wages down, ship jobs overseas, and take away freedoms at work in order to make even more obscene profit and exercise even more power over workers' lives.
Sometimes right-to-work supporters actually admit what they're up to. The sponsor of a right-to-work bill in Missouri actually said that wages may drop by 'two to three dollars an hour' if right to work passes.
And in Wisconsin, a spokesman for the National Right to Work Committee admitted right to work laws don't create jobs. He said, 'we’re not purporting to prove that right-to-work produces superior economic performance.'
Instead of passing frivolous, illegal ordinances that only benefit the rich and powerful, Kentucky officeholders should be solving the problems of falling wages and rising joblessness.
Politico has more details about the out-of-state special interest that's still trying to push a radical out-of-state agenda in Kentucky:
...a new offshoot of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) called the American City Council Exchange (ACCE) recently joined forces with the Heritage Foundation to press cities and counties to pass right-to-work legislation at the local level. The groups targeted Kentucky in particular because of what one attorney who works with ACCE termed its “favorable demographics.” It’s not clear these ordinances will pass legal muster, however, because the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which enabled states to pass right-to-work laws, refers only to a “state or territory.” Kentucky is not a right-to-work state (though it would have likely become one had Democrats lost control of the Kentucky House in the midterms).
In all three counties, right-to-work passed a first “reading,” or vote, and must pass a second to become law. In Warren County (which includes Bowling Green’s UAW-organized Corvette plant) the final reading will be Dec. 19. In Fulton County, the final reading is Dec. 29, and in Simpson County the final reading is Dec. 30.
