Bernie Sanders’ Big Lie About Standing Up for Workers

Lori Amos, VA’s Director for the Veterans Point of Service Program, Senator Bernard Sanders (I-Vermont) (left), Chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, and Dr. Robert A. Petzel, Under Secretary for Health (center). Photo courtesy of the VA, July 30, 2013.

Senator Bernie Sanders would have you believe he is a champion of workers’ rights, but it turns out that’s a big lie. The only thing Sanders seems interested in is the neverending flow of union political donations.

Sanders has actually begun targeting workers’ rights as part of his campaign, with a new barrage aimed at the right to work. If you’re not familiar with right to work laws, they allow Americans to hold a job without having to pay to join a union they don’t want to or pay for political speech they disagree with. This goes right to the heart of the First Amendment’s assembly clause, but apparently, Sanders has little time for the constitution. Paul Steinhauser reports at Fox News:

Sanders, who is making his second straight bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, vowed “that war will come to an end when I am president. If we are serious about rebuilding the middle class in America, we have got to rebuild, strengthen and expand the trade union movement in America.”

Sanders said if elected, he would aim to double union membership by the end of his first term in the White House in January 2025.  His plan also calls for ending so-called “right to work” laws favored by Republicans and decried by organized labor for weakening a union’s ability to negotiate contracts.

Twenty-seven states currently have such laws, which prevent unions from insisting workers become union members as a work requirement.

Sanders’ proposal would also give every union worker the right to strike and ban the replacement of striking workers. And the progressive senator also pledged to sign an executive order to prevent large corporations from engaging in union-busting and outsourcing jobs, while preventing companies that pay workers less than $15 per hour from obtaining federal contracts.

Read more about the Right to Work here: