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That's AFLAC - which is an insurance company. ALEC is a lobbying group that tries to pass laws in the states. They are the ones responsible for many of the voting rights restrictions that are slowly being ruled unconstitutional by the courts because they are designed to discriminate.
I think right to work laws improve consumer and patient rights. Get rid of the ones not doing their job.
The so-called "right to work" laws actually make it hard/impossible for people to unionize. Remember your history... it was the unions that gave us the 5-day/40-hour work week, paid vacations, paid sick leave, and a host of fair labor laws that we consider commonplace today. Unions have also been responsible for getting fair wages for their workers. Without the unions, most workers would still be working for the likes of Ebanezer Scrooge.
I don't speak for the OP, but I'm disgusted that AARP would fund an organization that espouses so many policies that make life harder and cost money to seniors, especially those on fixed incomes.
ALEC writes what they call "model" bills and puts them in the hands of legislators they fund through campaign donations. Most of the time these bills go right to the floor of state legislatures for votes with no appreciable changes. The vast majority of ALEC's funders are large corporations who want laws that favor the needs of corporations and the 1%. Not senior citizens.
In 2012, ALEC disbanded its arm that promoted things like Florida's Stand Your Ground law, Arizona's SB1070 anti-immigration law, various voter suppression bills, and laws requiring inmates to serve full sentences without ANY options for parole or supervised release. Public outrage led to pressure on the corporations funding ALEC and ALEC responded by eliminating their work in this area.
They are still, however, promoting bills that are bad for voters, bad for hourly workers, bad for public education, bad for consumers, bad for women, bad for immigrants, bad for LGBTQ people, bad for the planet, bad for low-income bank customers, bad for the National Park Service, etc., etc. While many of ALEC's meeting are open to the public, all of its bill-drafting is done behind closed doors and is very secretive.
Who LIKES ALEC? The Koch brothers; ExxonMobil and other oil companies; the pharmaceutical industry; the big banks and predatory lenders; the insurance industry; telecommunications companies that want you to pay through the roof for phones, TV, and internet access; Walmart; other groups that want to cut back on a minimum wage for hourly workers; politicians who want to block certain segments of our citizenry from voting; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the NRA; the private prison industry; the crowd that wants the government to accompany women to their doctor's appointments; the crowd that wants to investigate who's in public restrooms.
Who has benefitted from ALEC? Most dramatically Republican governors. People like Sam Brownback of Kansas, Mary Fallin of Oklahoma, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Pence of Indiana, Jan Brewer and later Doug Ducey of Arizona, Rick Snyder of Michigan, Nikki Haley of South Carolina, and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. ALEC is behind most of the things they claim as major accomplishments.
The Bush Administration might have been the heyday of ALEC with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John ********, and Tom DeLay all strongly tied to ALEC. ALEC gave long-time supporter and former Gov. Rich Perry of Texas its Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award in 2010. Gov. Fallin got it last year.
In some states, one of them being my state of Arizona, as many as 150 ALEC-provided "model" bills are proposed before state legislature each year. This organization is quietly making laws throughout our land. In 2012, the pressure for corporations to disengage from ALEC became so intense, literally hundreds of corporations with strong ties to the group — Shell Oil, State Farm and Blue Cross, Walmart, McDonalds, Google, Microsoft, etc., etc. — claim to have "dropped their memberships." But given ALEC has an annual budget estimated at $7 million annually, and the "model bills" keep rolling out, they're getting support from somewhere.
Excellent summary of how ALEC has been undermining the laws of our country. Makes me wonder how all these state legislators got their positions -- either they don't read these "model bills" before they vote, or they are just don't care about how people who are not like them will be affected, or they have no capacity to think for themselves.
Right to work laws mean right to fire without cause.... and right to discriminate.
Figures that the right wing would support that.
That's a common misconception. You're confusing "right-to-work" with "at-will employment." Right-to-work laws/states have absolutely nothing to do with an employer's ability to terminate someone with or without cause.
Simply stated, right-to-work pertains to how an employee may be hired; at-will employment pertains to how an employee may be fired.
The so-called "right to work" laws actually make it hard/impossible for people to unionize. Remember your history... it was the unions that gave us the 5-day/40-hour work week, paid vacations, paid sick leave, and a host of fair labor laws that we consider commonplace today. Unions have also been responsible for getting fair wages for their workers. Without the unions, most workers would still be working for the likes of Ebanezer Scrooge.
While you can't dispute ansible's list of union accomplishments, the litany would not be complete without mentioning what the Auto Worker's Union did to the US Auto Industry. There's a reason that South Carolina (Right to Work State) has 3 new auto assembly plants for BMW, Mercedes, and Volvo, while Detroit is having trouble keeping the lights on.
We should also cite what the NY/NJ Unions did to the cost of building the new MetLife Stadium in North Jersey. When you think of Tony Soprano's No-Show, No-Work jobs -- this is Exhibit A. Jerry Jones built a Palace in Dallas for under a Billion. MetLife is the drabbest pile of concrete and steel on earth, and it cost $1.6 Billion Bucks.
I'm sure we could cite other Union foibles, those are just 2 in my immediate experience. If not for the early Unionizing efforts, we'd still be working 6.5 days a week for a dollar a day. But Union Management is all for Union Management's benefit, and the Workers can just as easily find themselves priced out of a job.
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