Voters Killed “Right to Work” in Missouri!
Voters Just Killed Right to Work in Missouri,
Proving Labor Still Has Power Under Janus
BY Jeff Schuhrke - 8/7/ 18
After a string of victories across the country in recent years—including this summer’s Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court ruling—the anti-union “right-to-work” movement has met its match in Missouri.
In Tuesday’s primary election, Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejected Proposition A, a ballot measure that would have made state the 28th in the nation to adopt a “right-to-work” (RTW) law. Designed to bankrupt organized labor, the deceptively named legislation would have prohibited private sector unions from collecting fair share fees from workers they are legally required to represent.
With the defeat of Prop A in Missouri, the U.S. labor movement has passed its first major test since the Janus decision in June, in which the Supreme Court’s conservative majority essentially imposed “right-to-work” on the nation’s entire public sector.
“The timing of this is essential. I think everyone wants to write the labor movement’s obituary,” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler recently said. “It’s going to energize and activate us and show that we fight back.”
“It’s going to be the shot heard round the world,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said last month, anticipating Prop A would lose. “It’ll make waves in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Ohio and Washington D.C. And it will provide a powerful rebuke of the Supreme Court’s disgraceful ruling in Janus.”
To read the entire article:
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21366/missouri_right_to_work_janus_prop_a_election
Jeff Schuhrke is a Working In These Times contributor based in Chicago. He has a Master's in Labor Studies from UMass Amherst and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in labor history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was a summer 2013 editorial intern at In These Times. Follow him on Twitter: @JeffSchuhrke.