Right-to-work editorial is ultimate disconnect
By Dave Van Curen
Friday, August 22, 2003 8:29 AM PDT
Printable version
E-mail this articleThe Daily News becomes more detached from its subscribers by the day. Promoting right-to-work laws and suggesting that unions are the cause of our state's economic doldrums and lack of competitiveness (Aug. 15 editorial) might just be the ultimate disconnect.
I hope readers realize that when any corporate interest (The Daily News included) advocates competitiveness for job creation, it is a con-game. No corporate spokesman wants to create jobs. They want to create profits for which they can claim credit and from which they can extract increased personal benefits and gain higher position within the corporation. Jobs are an unwanted but necessary by product.
The Daily News has recently advocated lower benefits for injured workers, lower benefits for unemployed workers and abolishing ergonomics rules. Now it advocates "right-to-work laws" to destroy unions and lower wages for its subscribers. What a wonderful vision it has for our state.
Despite the drone of big business about competitiveness, worker protections and benefits are not to blame for high unemployment and our primary competition for jobs is not with right-to-work states but third world countries.
If you want to see job loss, drive over the Rainier Bridge and view the Weyerhaeuser log yard exporting jobs daily, just as it has for decades. The aluminum industry in this state is not shut down because of high labor costs but because of under-regulated corporate corruption.
This state has actually been listed by the conservative Tax Foundation as the eighth most competitive in the nation, but you didn't read that in The Daily News, until now. Any subscribers desiring to read about the other side of almost any workplace-related issue The Daily News raises can visit the Washington State Labor Council website at www.wslc.org.
Specifically take note of the 2003 Legislative Report and voting records.
Speaking of competitiveness, does The Daily News think it would be competitive if there were a competitor in town that didn't scorn its subscribers as The Daily News has been doing lately? At least one citizen in this struggling community finds it somewhat offensive to listen to a corporation with a local monopoly preach about competitiveness.
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