PRO-Worker, PRO-Alaska

Eighty-six years ago, the Roosevelt administration paid for 203 families to settle the Matanuska Colony in Palmer, and our Mat-Su Valley has been growing rapidly ever since. In the same year, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), recognizing and protecting individual’s freedom to form and participate in labor unions. President Reagan would go on to call the right to unionize a “universal human right.” Today that universal right is under assault by special interest lobbyists, and we Alaskans need Congress to return to the original intent of the NLRA by passing the PRO Act.

Alaska’s history demonstrates the importance of labor unions in building our middle class. Our state laws have supported and recognized collective bargaining since the early days of statehood, and unions helped train and dispatch workers to build the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and just about every other significant piece of infrastructure in this state. While many other resource-rich states are trapped in a cycle of poverty—look at places like West Virginia or Louisiana—Alaska has a strong middle class because unions have ensured the benefits of development are widely shared. Unions aren’t just good for their members. They advocate for projects and development that benefit the whole state, and unions were critical in getting Congressional approval of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, ANWR exploration, and many smaller projects like the forthcoming Willow development.

Many Alaskans take our labor unions for granted, but let’s consider how powerful they are in advancing the public good. Alaska is in the top five states for union membership per capita. If you’re a construction worker, teacher, truck driver, state employee, firefighter, nurse, or police officer, you’re probably a union member. As our economy has evolved and changed with an aging population and diversifying economy, our unions have ensured workers in industries like health, services, and long term care have good wages and middle class benefits. Compare the wages and benefits of our union nurses and long term care providers to non-union positions in the Lower 48. In Alaska, we do it better by building and sustaining the middle class with unions.

Unfortunately, corporate lobbyists have been trying to undermine our collective bargaining rights for decades, and in the Lower 48 they’ve mostly succeeded. In the Lower 48, CEOs get huge paydays while most workers fall farther and farther behind. There’s a simple and powerful way to correct this trend: Senators Murkowski and Sullivan should join Congressman Young in supporting the PRO Act. The PRO Act returns to the original intent of the National Labor Relations Act, closing loopholes that lobbyists have used to gut this important law. The PRO Act would protect our individual liberty to unionize and earn the benefits of hard work.

Strong unions, strong middle class. It’s the Alaska way, and if other states followed our lead they’d have a stronger middle class. There is no more important law Congress is considering than the PRO Act. I urge Senators Murkowski and Sullivan to get it to the Senate floor for a vote—a minority of anti-worker Senators shouldn’t be able to block passage of this critical piece of legislation.

Scott Davis is a 3rd generation construction worker living in Palmer Alaska