Missouri Union Boss ‘Disappointed’ That Captive Workers Voted Against a Candidate He Forced Them to Support Financially

As regular readers of the National Right to Work Committee web site already know, on November 8 freedom-loving Missouri voters removed the last major obstacle preventing passage of a Show-Me State Right to Work law when they elected GOP gubernatorial candidate, an avowed opponent of compulsory unionism, to replace term-limited Big Labor Democrat incumbent Jay Nixon.  Greitens defeated union-backed Democrat nominee Chris Koster by a decisive six percentage-point margin.

Both chambers of the Missouri Legislature have already recently voted in favor of Right to Work legislation by substantial majorities. Up to now, however, Big Labor has been able to rely on Mr. Nixon’s veto to preserve its compulsory-unionism privileges.  But once Greitens is inaugurated, it’s hard to see how Big Labor will be able to stop Right to Work legislation from reaching the governor’s desk and being signed.  (See the news story below for more information.)

Moreover, union bosses are well aware of the fact that Greitens and many other pro-Right to Work candidates in Missouri owe their electoral success in part to many unionized employees who voted for them.

Thumbing their noses at rank and file unionists who supported Greitens and likeminded legislative candidates, in many cases, without a doubt, specifically because these candidates are pro-Right to Work, union bosses like Pat White, the head of the Greater St. Louis Labor Council (an AFL-CIO subsidiary), spent massive amounts of workers’ forced-dues money on get-out-the-vote drives and phone banks set up to elect Koster. Of course, the forced-dues money came from workers who voted for Greitens, or didn’t vote at all, as well as from workers who supported Big Labor’s gubernatorial candidate.

Ordinary Americans recognize that many captive Missouri workers have a legitimate beef with the union brass for diverting their forced-dues money into the campaigns of candidates they didn’t support.

Incredibly, though, White seems to think it is the forced dues-paying workers who voted against candidates whom he and other union bosses forced them to bankroll who are in the wrong.  The day after the election, KSDK-TV in St. Louis quoted White as saying he was “disappointed” that “so many” unionized workers had “voted for Right to Work candidates!”

Apparently, White’s sense of entitlement is so great that he thinks he ought to be able to control how workers vote as well as which candidates they support financially. His reaction to the election returns perfectly illustrates why a Missouri Right to Work law can’t come too soon.

Governor-elect Greitens likely to make Missouri a right-to-work state