Anti-worker bills are beginning to move through the committee process in Jefferson City today.  Rep. Guernsey's HB34 will be heard in the House Workforce Development and Workplace Safety committee, and Sen. Parson's SB71 will be heard in the Senate  Governmental Accountability committee.  

Though some of the technical details may change in the various anti-worker bills, the sponsors' goals and effective arguments for defeating them do not.  Progress Missouri will be posting research-based guidance for how to communicate about these bills -- and more -- at www.MOLeg.org throughout the session.  We'll also be emailing and texting highlights at key moments.  If you have colleagues who would like to receive these alerts, please let us know!  

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WHAT MISSOURIANS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ANTI-PREVAILING WAGE BILLS

• Anti-prevailing wage bills are all about politics. They won’t create jobs and they won’t get our state’s economy back on track. The bill will benefit the same greedy CEOs and corporations that have been outsourcing jobs at the expense of middle class Missouri workers.

• Eliminating prevailing wage laws for school construction would mean that school district construction projects will be more likely to be built by cut-rate contractors, regardless of quality or loss of Missouri jobs. Suspending or eliminating prevailing wage protections would put the interests of shady out-of-state contractors ahead of the businesses large and small that are the backbone of our state’s economy.

• Without prevailing wage rules, out-of-state, low wage workers will displace local workers and wage standards. Out-of-state contractors will undercut local contractors with their low-wage  workers, pocketing the wage difference in profits and driving local contractors out of business. Missouri’s construction workers should get the jobs their taxes pay for.

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WHAT MISSOURIANS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PAYCHECK DECEPTION BILLS

• These bills are about politics -- not economics. Paycheck Deception bills are designed by politicians to hurt their political opponents by eliminating public employee unions.  Politicians want more power over the middle class workers, so they are stripping workers of their rights.

• Paycheck deception bills are all about giving billionaires even more power to write their own rules. All of the paycheck deception proposals would make it even easier for billionaire businessmen and corporate special interests to rig the system and write their own rules to help themselves.

• Extremist politicians are trying to weaken the voices of everyday heroes. This means cops, firefighters, nurses and teachers have less of a voice on things that matter to all of us.

• Paycheck deception bills would have negative consequences for all of us. Tilting power in  favor of big money special interests will create an even more unbalanced system where regular people have even less power in the political process.