It was just two months ago that House failed to override Gov. Lynch’s veto of right-to-work legislation and the union busting law went down to defeat.
Today, the House Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services Committee meets to hear testimony on House Bill 1677, a similar bill that would prohibit collective bargaining agreements from requiring non-union employees to pay union fees and would eliminate the requirement that public unions represent non-union members.
House Speaker Bill O’Brien continues to pursue his white whale and has, once again, made the anti-union legislation his highest priority. He claims passage would grow our economy and attract manufacturers — despite all evidence to the contrary. New Hampshire AFL-CIO President Mark MacKenzie disagrees.
“We should be talking about the condition of our secondary roads, our crumbling schools and bridges and expanding I-93, to finish that project,” he said. “We should be investing in New Hampshire and its infrastructure so we can be the kind of state we want to be and provide opportunities going forward. That’s what our focus should be.” [Union Leader, February 8, 2012]
Protect New Hampshire Families has organized a Grassroots Lobby Day to push back against this politically-motivated attack on New Hampshire’s middle class. The fun starts with a pre-hearing briefing at noon at America Votes in Room 302 at 4 Park Street in Concord.
Mark MacKenzie, president of the New Hampshire AFL-CIO, reminds legislators that “working families are our real advantage.”
Granite Staters went to the polls last November with a mandate to create jobs and keep our economy strong. But instead of delivering on their promises, many of our legislators launched a relentless series of attacks on working people.
Instead of creating jobs, legislators disenfranchised students and seniors, cut Medicaid for seniors and the disabled, and passed a budget that eliminated nine thousand jobs. …
That’s why the working people of New Hampshire are asking their representatives to commemorate Labor Day by setting a new course for the upcoming legislative session. We ask our lawmakers to create jobs, instead of slandering the people looking for one. We ask for concrete proposals to spend our state dollars smarter. And we ask our lawmakers to work to protect good middle class jobs, to ensure a better future for our children.
The people behind this protest, Judy Stadtman, Zandra Rice Hawkins and Mark MacKenzie, are radical operatives hired with George Soros’s money to turn New Hampshire into another socialist haven like Massachusetts, which can barely support its own weight. These radical activists should be taken about as seriously as if Karl Marx himself was handing petitions to the House Speaker.
— Rep. Andrew Manuse, on the “No Jobs Fair” Statehouse rally
“If Governor Romney had once in his tenure as governor of Massachusetts even suggested that his state become a right to work for less state, he may have a shred of credibility on this issue. But to come into our state and pander to the extremist far right by joining them in attacking middle class working families here, when he never made it an issue in the state he governed is unconscionable, even for the foremost political chameleon in recent memory.”
— Mark MacKenzie, president of the New Hampshire AFL-CIO, on Mitt Romney’s support for right-to-work legislation.
