Michigan Nurse
Protect our jobs! Protect our voice!
03.01.2012
Workers stand up against attacks on our collective bargaining rights
The choice couldn’t be simpler:
Do we want to be a Michigan where employers have all the power and can pay nurses, carpenters and other workers the lowest wages possible and deny them decent benefits while shipping jobs to Mexico and China?
Or do we want to be a Michigan where workers have a voice and can bargain for fair wages, good benefits and a safe workplace – a state where we can stand up for ourselves and the middle class that made our state great?
The choice is clear to RN and MNA member John Armelagos – and so is the need to act.
After watching Lansing Republicans pass one anti-worker bill after another, Armelagos volunteered to help lead a campaign to permanently protect the right to collective bargaining by putting it in the Michigan Constitution.
"Now more than ever, workers need the right to speak up to protect our wages, our benefits, and our voice," said John Armelagos, RN and treasurer of the "Protect Our Jobs" campaign. "Without collective bargaining rights, we have no way of standing up to our employers."
The "Protect Our Jobs" campaign, run by a broad coalition of labor groups and advocates of working families, needs to gather 322,609 petition signatures by July 9 to get the constitutional amendment on the November ballot.
A lot of misinformation is being spread about the "Protect Our Jobs" campaign by the deep-pocketed backers of so-called "Right-to-Work" legislation trying to justify giving corporations unfair advantages, said MNA Executive Director John Karebian. That includes misleading polls.
"The ‘Protect Our Jobs’ campaign is simply about guaranteeing Michigan workers a voice in their wages, benefits and working conditions – nothing more, nothing less," Karebian said. "Collective bargaining is a basic human right that the majority of Michigan citizens understand and strongly support. I’m proud to see our members, along with hundreds of thousands of other Michigan workers, responding to the need to permanently protect collective bargaining rights today and for future generations."
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We are mobilizing members to gather signatures in their hometowns |
Why do you support the "Protect Our Jobs" campaign?
"By dismantling collective bargaining piece by piece, legislators are trying to silence the voices of nurses, teachers, firefighters, autoworkers and others who built the middle class. The ‘Protect Our Jobs’ effort goes hand in hand with our Main Street Contract to create a government that protects working families, not corporations and campaign donors." – Jeff Breslin, RN and President of MNA
"To rebuild our economy, we need our elected leaders to protect our jobs, wages and benefits to build a thriving middle class. Michigan workers helped create the middle class, and now we need to protect our collective bargaining rights." – Ashley Forsberg, RN; Sparrow Hospital in Lansing
"Michigan workers have to protect our voices now, before they are taken away from us altogether. We have to stop Lansing politicians from destroying our basic rights just so they can score points with their corporate friends and increase the salaries of CEOs." – Felicia Kieme, RN; University of Michigan Health System
