Appeals court reverses ruling striking down county’s right-to-work ordinance
NC GAZETTE / WBRT RADIO
STAFF REPORT
Friday, Nov. 18, 2016, 4:30 p.m. — The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Friday reversed an earlier ruling by the U.S. District Court in Louisville striking down Hardin County’s right-to-work ordinance.
“The court upheld the ability of local governments to pass economic development legislation that will benefit their citizens – just as the Kentucky General Assembly desired when it passed the County Home Rule Statute in 1978,” Bluegrass Institute president Jim Waters said about the ruling. “The court affirmed what we believed all along – that counties are creations of the state, are not pre-empted by federal and have never been prohibited from passing their own right-to-work ordinances.”
- Click here to download the Court of Appeals ruling (22 page pdf document will open in a new window).
Hardin County was one of 12 Kentucky counties to pass local right-to-work ordinances. Warren County became the first county in Kentucky and the nation to pass such an ordinance in December 2014. Simpson, Fulton, Todd, Cumberland, Whitley, Butler, Logan, Rockcastle, Boone and Monroe counties also passed right-to-work ordinances.
Right-to-work policies allow individuals to choose not to pay union dues without losing their jobs.
“Right-to-work policies make real differences in the ability of states to attract the best and highest-paying jobs in the manufacturing sector,” Waters said. “This ruling will open wide the door for real and sustained growth in the commonwealth, especially considering there hasn’t been an automotive manufacturing plant built in a non-right-to-work state since Toyota came to Georgetown in the 1980s.”
But even if the economic indicators weren’t as strong as they are, Waters says this also is about individual liberty.
“No one has the right to deny unions the ability to organize, but neither should hard-working Kentuckians be denied the right to forego union membership and spend their hard-earned money in the way they see fit,” Waters said.
With the outcome of last week’s election, right-to-work is on the roll in Kentucky, he added.
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