Ensure freedom to be poor

As a longtime union ironworker I have worked in all the West Coast states and many other state from here in Everett to the Mississippi River. Some of the states I worked in had the right-to-work law and some did not. The main difference I saw was states with the right-to-work law had much lower wages both for union members and non-union workers. It looked to me like the main purpose of the law was to lower wages and weaken unions. In fact in many states the biggest opponents of the right-to-work law were non-union worker states, like Kentucky for one.

Both political parties have been saying the continual lowering of the American standard of living can’t keep going down but they try to make these laws sound like it is a matter of freedom. Freedom to be poor I guess. I can see from some of the letters to the editor in our local paper that the campaign to make the right-to-work law more palatable has already started. People who don’t want to be in a union don’t have to join. There are many non-union companies around. I feel fortunate that I was able to be in a good union, with good benefits and wages. It really helped when I was raising a family.

Mike Miller

Everett