 |
| Two major anti-worker bills failed to pass the Missouri legislature this year. |
Two major anti-worker bills failed to pass the Missouri legislature this year.
Outgoing House Speaker Tim Jones made right-to-work-for-less and paycheck deception his top legislative priorities at the beginning of the year. He received strong support from Washington, D.C. – based right-wing organizations like Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and the Koch brothers-funded FreedomWorks, which organized a lobbying campaign in support of the legislation.
Right-to-work fell short in April, when lawmakers failed to garner enough votes to send their bill – which would have placed the question on the ballot for voters – to the state Senate.
“Huge win for working families,” House Minority Leader (and St. Louis Local 1 member) Jacob Hummel tweeted after it failed. “They couldn’t get a constitutional majority to move right-to-work out of the House!”
Nineteen members of the House Republican caucus broke with their party over the bill, including GOP Rep. Anne Zerr.
“As a Republican and pro-business, you might think that I would be anti-labor, but you know what? Working with labor is good business,” she told attendees at a rally against right-to-work.
Paycheck deception – which restricts the ability of public-sector unions to use dues money for political purposes – failed after the Senate declined to take up the bill, which was passed in the house.
Pro-working family activists credit the strong grassroots mobilization by the Missouri labor movement and its allies – including rallies and phone calls to lawmakers – in helping to defeat Jones’ legislation.
As St. Louis Local 1’s blog Powercast wrote:
Says International President Edwin D. Hill:
Home page photo used under a Creative Commons License from Flickr user Marco Fieber.
