UFCW’s Perrone: Ready to rollback your wages, living standards?

By ED FINKELSTEIN

Publisher

You have to decide if you want to roll back your own wages and your living standards because that’s what will happen in Missouri if working families become complacent and don’t turn out to vote for Chris Koster for governor Nov. 8, a concerned Marc Perrone told canvassers at a recent early morning Saturday as they prepared to hit the streets and knock on union members’ doors.

Perrone, international president of United Food & Commercial Workers Union, was in St. Louis Oct. 8 to caution Missouri workers that is exactly what will happen because so-called “right-to-work” will be law “by the end of January unless Koster is there as governor to veto it.

“Convincing our members that this will happen is critical to every family’s future,” Perrone stressed. He praised Koster for his common-sense approach to the challenges facing working families, noting that “I have not met a more sincere and honest person than Chris Koster” who can be relied on to work on behalf of working families once he’s elected governor.

“Politicians feel it’s ok today to flip back and forth, but not this man,” Perrone said. “He’s a man of integrity, that’s why he switched from being a Republican to a Democrat – he stood for issues that impact working families, and that’s why the Republicans have gone after him.”

The audience of almost 100 volunteers was ready to knock on doors for Missouri House candidates, Dist. 113’s Karen Settlemoir-Berg (a UFCW Local 655 union representative) and Dist. 94’s Vicky Englund and Missouri Senate’s 1st Dist. incumbent Scott Sifton.

INDIANA VOTERS SCAMMED

In thanking the volunteers for their efforts to have already knocked on 33,000 union members’ doors, Koster said candidly, “But there’s a lot of work yet to be done.”

In talking about the phony “right-to-work” Koster pointed out that Carrier Heating & Cooling, who recently moved to Mexico destroying some 2,000 lives, was already located in “right-to-work” Indiana. After taking millions of dollars in state incentives with the promise to create more Indiana jobs, they just decided instead of paying workers $21 an hour, they could pay $18 a DAY to Mexicans.

“The business community told Indiana workers during the ‘right-to-work’ fight in 2012 that if you give up your collective bargaining rights, and trust us with your health care and future pensions, your jobs will be secure. Even after they took away the workers’ security (when RTW passed), look what happened, Carrier still moved to Mexico anyway,” Koster said.

“My job as your governor – your job as voters and concerned workers – is to educate everyone you know (about how phony “right-to-work” really is) so that Missouri doesn’t make that same foolish mistake.”

IT’S OUR FUTURE, OUR JOBS AT STAKE

An energetic Stuart Appelbaum, executive vice president of the UFCW International Union, made the point clearly:

“This is about your future, your jobs, your security. We need an economy that works for all of us, not just the privileged few. That’s our job for the next month, to talk to everyone about the importance of this election.”

Chairing the meeting held at Operating Engineers Local 148’s hall in south St. Louis County was Meat, Deli & Seafood Local 88 President Dan Telle. Introducing Perrone was UFCW Local 655 President David Cook.