HILL: Union busting for the plutocrats. Soiree

State Sen. Joyce Elliott took to social media last night to critique the record and rhetoric of U.S. Rep. French Hill. 

Elliott, the longtime local lawmaker and former public school teacher challenging the incumbent Republican this November, took exception to Hill’s Chamber of Commerce boilerplate attack on unions.

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Hill exemplifies the classic American success story: From silver spoon to lobbyist largesse. The millionaire former banker has been an unrelenting foot soldier for the interests of plutocrats since his election to Congress, one of Wall Street’s biggest buddies.

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Here’s Elliott’s response (issued in a series of tweets) to Hill’s comment above in full:

It is one thing to be lucky enough to have been born into a family in which your every need was taken care of. No worries. The luck of birth, Rep. Hill, obviously spared you from understanding what it’s like to go to work every day, work long hours, sacrifice time with family, have only a vague idea of what leisure time even feels like and still barely get by or not at all.

You might have been spared, but that’s no reason to remain willfully ignorant of the daily lives of your constituents. We support you and others who benefit from the the 1 trillion tax break you voted for, through which, by the way, we are forced to propagate your ideas and your wealth. To cite Thomas Jefferson as your “role model,” a man who owned humans and compelled them to furnish free labor to propagate his wealth is a fitting choice, I suppose, since he, too, was against his laborers having a voice.

You are a Chamber of Commerce guy. What is the Chamber of Commerce but a collection of folks organized for their members’ benefit? That’s not a bad thing, except you wish to deny organizing for working people by throwing up barriers to their ability to do so. You tout the pretty sounding name “right to work” protects workers. The truth is that’s the exact opposite meaning of that term. It is nothing more than code for “right to work for less” because workers have no organized power without a union.

I have been a union member in Arkansas all but three years of my adult working life. There is no doubt about the difference unions made in my pay, benefits and dignity as a working person. All of that time unions were (and still are) under attack as a bunch of ingrates.

You have spent a great deal of your time in Washington making sure banking interests are taken care of. I have spent a lifetime in Arkansas doing all I can to help make sure working folks get a break, have healthcare coverage, family-supporting wages, and doing what I can to make sure the deck is not stacked against them.

If you want working people to have livelihoods that give them a chance to have a piece of the American dream, you will support them in their quest to do so on their own terms, with dignity. Throwing up red herrings about forced union dues is a distraction designed to keep workers in their places. Working folks deserve better from you, Congressman.

 

Brian Chilson
ELLIOTT, THE LONGTIME UNION MEMBER CHALLENGING HILL: “You have spent a great deal of your time in Washington  making sure banking interests are taken care of. I have spent a lifetime in Arkansas doing all I can to help make sure working folks get a break.”

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