Dear Governor Greitens,
During the 2016 governor’s race, I campaigned for you. I shared information to friends and family through multiple media sources. I engaged in thoughtful conversations as to why I believed you would make a great governor for the people of Missouri. We live in Crestwood, MO, home to your former campaign headquarters. I lived next door to Amy Herbert, sister to Veteran Tim Smith. I am a former co-worker of Laura Beckert, who worked on your campaign. I heard nothing but great and positive things about your character, leadership, and vision, and I believe them.
My union-working husband, was excited about your experience and philosophies for bringing change to politics in our state, until he found out your top priority as the governor of Missouri would be implementing “Right to Work”.
I’m sure you’ve heard from thousands of voices across our state that oppose Right To Work. Whether it be phone calls, emails, letters, or news articles. This is the first letter I have personally drafted to a politician. I wonder, how many voices of Missourians, the hard working, tax paying, middle and lower class Missourians, have called on you in favor of Right to Work? I suspect very few, certainly less, if any at all. Only the voices of wealthy and greedy business owners that will benefit by paying their workers less, providing worse or no healthcare coverage at all, supporting less to nothing on education, and being allowed to provide harsher working conditions. I have heard zero arguments supporting Right To Work. I’ve yet to find any statistics that show growth and benefits in states where right to work has become a law. In fact, the statistics show less favorable conditions across the board for workers and their families in states with right to work legislation.
This is troubling on so many levels. I really want to believe your statements that you got into politics as an “outsider” and that there would be “no more politics as usual”, but I can only see how you’d benefit by making your wealthy supporters wealthier if Right To Work passes.
I hope it’s worth it. I did not write this letter to argue statistics and politics. I wrote it so that you would know the names and faces of the children who will be directly impacted by the Right To Work legislation.
My son Benjamin is 8 years old and dreams of becoming a doctor, teacher or a fire-fighter. He has asthma and allergies and I am so grateful for the health benefits the Local 1 IBEW Union provides for him so that we have access to great doctors and medicine that allows him to stay healthy and play sports that he loves: baseball, basketball and soccer.
My middle son, Nolan is 5 years old. He too has asthma, and depends on expensive inhalers to get us through the ever changing weather and continuous viruses children encounter in Missouri. When Nolan has an attack, he coughs throughout the night so hard that it sounds like he’s straining a lung and so we use the inhalers to get it under control, every time. This medicine would not be affordable without the health insurance my husband works so hard to maintain for our family. Nolan also enjoys the same sports that his big brother, Benjamin does: basketball, baseball and soccer.
Our youngest child, Adelynn is a sweet and spunky 3 year old. During her first year of life, she had one infection after another, was hospitalized twice, and we made more than a dozen E.R. trips by the time she was just 7 months old. At 11 months old she had surgery. Currently, she too has a medicine that has finally seemed to make her chronic, recurrent croup manageable. I do not know how our family would afford this life saving medicine, and not to mention, all of the doctor office visits, E.R visits, and hospital stays without our great union health benefits.
I know too many families trying to get by because his/her or their spouses jobs do not provide quality, affordable health insurance, and so their children often go without medicines, dentists cleanings, and well check-ups.
If you truly have the men, women and children of Missouri’s best interests in mind, then you would think twice before signing the legislation to pass Right To Work in Missouri. If it passes, most families, the middle working class and lower class, will be the ones that suffer, and the upper class business owners and politicians will benefit, including you. Passing a law as your first order of business as the governor of Missouri for your own self-gain is so disappointing on so many levels.
Enclosed is a photo of my three children. I hope you’ll see their faces in your mind when you sign this law. I hope you’ll think of their health and how it will be limited, and their futures and education that will be greatly impacted by this law. And my three children are just a few of the many families in our state that will suffer at the expense of Right to Work.
Sincerely,
Cassie Rickard
P.S. “These three children are great-grandchildren of a man who worked hard and long to earn the benefits and decent salary and to improve working conditions for the working class. To erase all of that with a stroke of your pen is such a crime. Please reconsider your decision.” ~ Great Aunt to Ben, Nolan, and Addie, Celeste Wilson
trilliumtransformation.com 
Amen! What a thoughtful approach to a terrible bit of legislation. Are you sending directly or should we post to FB for “viral” power?
Thank you, Jennifer! And to answer your question, both! Please share for that viral power! I am mailing a hard copy to the governor as well.
Governor, you say you goal is to have more higher paying jobs in this state for workers. This is what unions have been doing through out history. They have supplied skilled worker for all those years. Skilled , reliable workers is what union have supplied through out their history. Why would you want legislation to hamper or destroy all the good unions have done.
My husband has worked for a non-union company for nearly 32 years. He has been treated extremely well, with excellent family health care benefits completely EMPLOYER paid. In contrast, his firm often works on jobs with people from union businesses. Union workers behave childishly, by unplugging non-union equipment while they are up on scaffolding working, and trying to sabotage their work. It is frustrating. At my former job, I saw silly work rules which imposed extra cost on the company for no reason. At one time unions were a need. If you feel you need a union, by all means, pay dues and have a union. But if your employer treats you well, don’t let your union bosses scare you into believing that you will lose everything without them. Maybe they are simply trying to protect their pocketbooks!
Your husband is very fortunate to have this kind of job with such a generous employer, what a blessing! I would hope though, that a negative experience with one or two people would not cause a person to stereotype/categorize all union people as immature as the experience you mentioned. I would say for the workers mentioned above, that was a personal character flaw for them, not a general characteristic for all union workers. My husband, a union worker for 14 years, takes his job to the utmost level of professionalism and seriousness because lives are at stake otherwise. Of course sharing your opinion based on your spouse’s experience is appreciated. But I would encourage you to inform yourself with verified statistics, data and numbers comparing states with Right to Work versus stated without Right to Work laws. Numbers are unbiased and do not lie. Wages are 12.1% lower in right to work states, poverty is higher and infant mortality is 12.4% higher in right to work states; right to work states spend 32.5% less per pupil on elementary and secondary education than non right to work states; and workplace fatalities are 49% higher in right to work states. Right to work might not impact every single employee/person in a state, but it certainly impacts/hurts the majority of workers and their families.