NEW YORK, NY (August 8, 2018) — The Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) celebrates with the courageous people of Missouri who stood up to wealthy special interests by voting NO on Proposition A, defeating a coordinated corporate campaign to make Missouri the nation’s newest so-called “right-to-work” state. If passed, the ballot measure would have decimated wages, benefits, and rights in Missouri’s workplaces—while failing to deliver on its proponents’ promises of more jobs, higher wages, and more freedom for workers. Though the fully-fledged corporate assault on working people’s rights marches onward, we applaud the everyday Missourians who turned out to vote against this disastrous policy, which threatened to reverse the gains in wages, benefits, and rights that were fought for and won by workers committed to fairer, safer and more equal workplaces.

Only public employees in states with full collective bargaining make as much as their private-sector peers, according to a new report from EPI. Their counterparts in “right-to-work” states and states that prohibit collective bargaining earn lower wages and compensation than their private-sector peers.

In Eliminating Fair Share Fees and Making Public Employment “Right-to-Work” Would Increase the Pay Penalty for Working in State and Local Government, Jeffrey H. Keefe, a professor emeritus  in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University, examines the effects of collective bargaining and union security on public employees’ wages and compensation.