We all know what we want to happen in the November election. In Missouri, we want to cause red-to-blue flips in suburban Congressional seats like MO-02 and to keep our Democratic Senator, Claire McCaskill in Washington for another six years. We also want to grow our increasingly progressive minorities in the General Assembly and State Senate while building party strength and resisting and pushing back against Trump’s GOP wherever they may be found.
But, three months before the November General Election, on August 7 in Missouri, primary elections will not simply sort out who will contend for those Congressional and legislative seats in November. The primary election will additionally be anchored by a divisive wedge issue, forced onto the ballot by Missouri’s labor unions, in order to fight back against GOP schemes to gut workers’ rights in the Show Me State. When the returns come in after August 7, the result may serve in much the same way that many state and congressional special elections have done since Donald Trump’s election, that is, as a bellwhether signaling burgeoning support for Democratic candidates and progressive issues.
The issue, carefully and deceptively framed by the GOP and its oligarch enablers as Right to Work, actually amounts to state sanctioned theft of services, calculated to weaken the political voice of labor unions while also tilting the playing field unfairly against unions in the fight, against exploitive employers, for worker rights.
The rallying cry for Missouri Democrats is Vote NO on Prop A. The back story involves almost half a century of GOP exploiter-class depredation against Missouri workers, with workers now, in this August election, finally hanging onto the very last knot on the end of the rope. Click through for more of that story.
From the St. Louis American —
Missouri voters soundly defeated the referendum in 1978, yet RTW kept raising its ugly head throughout the last 40 years in the state House. Democratic forces in the General Assembly were able to beat back proposed bills with the promise of a veto by the Democratic governor should the legislation reach his desk.
In 2017 Missouri’s Republican-dominated Legislature and now dethroned Governor Eric Greitens were finally able to pass and sign into law the referendum to make Missouri the 28th state to adopt laws that favor the greedy corporations and anti-worker traps.
RTW has always been shrouded in deception – starting with the name – to further its opponent’s strategy to take the country back to a time when employers could work people to death (literally), including children. Companies set the wages and hours and paid little attention to unsafe working conditions. Benefits like the 40-hour week, health care, medical leave and vacation days were non-existent. Those standards that we now take for granted were the results of struggles by workers organized by the labor movement.
Once Missouri lost our firewall in the Governor’s office, stopping the march of the GOP to make Missouri a Right to Work for Less state might have seemed impossible. Until the impossible happened. After the state legislature passed and now deposed, utterly corrupt former Governor Eric Greitens signed into law, a Right to Work law called Senate Bill 19, labor unions and other right thinking Missourians won a petition drive, forcing the corrupt law to a vote of the people before taking effect —
Missouri's long-anticipated vote could be the next step in a nationwide march toward right-to-work — or it could be a chance to refute the policy passed by the Missouri General Assembly. It's been on hold since a coalition of opponents gathered enough signatures to put a referendum on the ballot.
The vote comes on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that imposed a policy like right-to-work on public-sector unions nationally. State-level right-to-work policies that would also affect the private sector have been gaining steam, with five other states adopting the policy since 2012, including union-heavy Michigan. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, most right-to-work laws were adopted before 1960 and only one state adopted the policy each decade from the 1970s to the early 2000s.
Plenty of voices are ringing out to raise interest on both sides, but the unions and their supporters have run a very strong campaign and other than a bit of feeble media appearances, and free press. In the sparsely populated hinterland of the State voices like this lend their weak tea support with empty promises and tired rhetoric —
Ray McCarty is president/CEO of Associated Industries of Missouri, an organization that supports “Right to Work,” partly because he said some companies require a state to be “Right to Work” before they will consider locating their operations in that state.
“If we are a ‘Right to Work’ state, we will be eligible to compete for the jobs provided by such companies,” McCarty said. “We all know Mexico, Missouri, has a long and deep history of manufacturing shoes and bricks, all of which have left town. (Right to Work) would allow Missouri, and Mexico, to compete for some jobs that are passing on Missouri now because we are not a ‘Right to Work’ state.”
But in our very blue, more strongly unionized and more densely populated cities, like St. Louis, the message is different —
We Are Missouri, the anti-right-to-work group, began running its second round of statewide television ads in late June.
The ad features St. Louis business owner Tim Wies discussing his choice to be a union contractor, employing more than 200 people in the construction business.
We Are Missouri’s message is that right to work will drive down wages.
“The people pushing Proposition A want to spread falsehoods. The truth is that we know families in states that have passed policies like Proposition A earn less,” said Erin Schrimpf, We Are Missouri spokesperson.
The take away from this is that our side is finally learning a few tricks that the GOP has been playing on us for a long, long time. As an example, for many years the GOP used wedge propositions and constitutional amendments, such as measures opposing same-sex marriage, in order to drive red voters to the poles. Right to Work in Missouri is being flogged by both sides to try and drive voters to the polls. But, the Democrats and the unions seem to have the better of it, so far.
To be sure, nothing that happens on August 7 has any direct bearing on what happens in November at the polls, in Missouri. But we stand an excellent chance on August 7 of obtaining a very good reading on the voter enthusiasm gap in Missouri, a factor that could prove pivotal 90 days later. Watch Missouri carefully in August to see a test drive of relative red and blue enthusiasm, forged around an issue designed to rile up both sides. If Prop A bites the dust by large margins in this rather reddish state, prepare for a Blue Tsunami in November.