Shame on those who fall for right-to-work charade

A lot has been made about union versus nonunion labor in the aftermath of Lincolnshire passing a Right to Work ordinance tied to Bruce Rauner's Turnaround Agenda. But the painful culmination will be - pending a lawsuit opposing the legality of the ordinance - the financial ramifications for ALL working men and women, local businesses and a community that depends on revenue and a solid tax base to survive.

Gov. Rauner's idea of "business friendly" makes the working class the sacrificial lambs, and his "right to work" game plan is a misnomer politically designed to depress wages and hurt workers and their families.

A Pew Research report released this month further reinforced the steady decline in middle-class households, which constituted 61 percent of all households in 1971 but just less than 50 percent in 2015.

Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies' biennial report on rental housing concluded that between 2005 and 2015, the U.S. added about 9 million new renter households-the largest gain in any 10-year period on record - and that U.S. households that rent rose from 31 percent to 37 percent, the highest level since the mid-1960s.

These increases highlight the extent to which the growth in rental housing costs is increasingly straining the budgets of middle-income households. While the average annual corporate CEO compensation is $16 million, working families can't afford homes and our governor wants to beat them down further.

Under the guise of creating a friendlier business climate, Rauner, the venture capitalist who earned $58 million in 2014, has incessantly attacked unions. But by harpooning union-earned collectively bargained wages and benefits ultimately realized and enjoyed by all workers, Rauner seeks to unleash oligarchical strength that feeds corporate friends and further oppresses the middle class and its workers.

Shame on Lincolnshire for buying in to the charade.

Don Scott

Chicago