By
Austin Jenkins
February
5, 2017
Washington Senate Republicans
are taking aim at organized labor. They’ve scheduled a series of public
hearings beginning Monday on measures designed to reduce the influence of labor
unions.
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One of the proposed bills
would prohibit unions that collectively bargain with the governor’s office from
making political contributions to gubernatorial candidates. The sponsor, state
Sen. Dino Rossi, said it’s about eliminating any “appearance of corruption.”
On Wednesday, Republicans will
hold a public hearing on a so-called right-to-work bill to make union
membership and dues not compulsory.
Nationally the right-to-work
movement has momentum in Republican states like Kentucky and most recently
Missouri. This is from KSDK TV in St. Louis:
“After
years of trying to pass right-to-work legislation through Jeff City, a
Republican supermajority finally has what it needed, a Republican in the
governor’s mansion.” In Washington, Democrats still
control the state House and the governor’s office. They are sure to block
efforts to reduce the power of unions.
A spokesman for the state’s
largest public employee union said Republicans here want to make Washington
like Wisconsin -- where in 2011 Republican Gov. Scott Walker rolled back
collective bargaining for public employees. Wisconsin also later became a right-to-work
state, although that law has been the subject of ongoing legal challenges.
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