Workers Bill of Rights

What WV Can’t Wait For We will make West Virginia the best place in America for workers--not the best place for exploiting them. Here’s our Workers Bill of Rights.

What We’re Up Against

“Don’t make us go West Virginia on you.”

Working class struggle runs through our veins. Our ancestors waged the bloodiest labor conflict in American history right here in these hills, over the right to unionize. At Blair Mountain, thousands of mineworkers--Black, white, and immigrant--marched together against company rule. They wore red bandanas to identify themselves in battle. 100 years later, teachers, school service personnel, and communications workers donned those same red bandannas to lead the country’s unions in a national strike wave. Thank goodness.

When workers win, everyone benefits. Who’s responsible for the 40-hour work week, employer health insurance, child labor laws, and paid sick days? Union workers. When did we have the strongest middle class? When union participation was at its highest.

With union membership gutted, it is no surprise that our state now faces historic levels of inequality and child poverty. Compared to our parents generation, jobs now are harder to get and harder to keep. They also pay less. It used to be that parents could raise their kids on the wages from one salary, just a generation ago. Now it can take three jobs, just to get by.

Bottom line: workers have become more and more productive, but we have received a smaller and smaller share of the pie. And you can feel it.

This story is true for so many of us. And things are even worse for the women who were out front in this recent strike wave: in most professions, women are compensated less than men for the same job. For Black and brown women, compensation is even worse. Solidarity means equal pay for equal work, no matter who you are.

The Good Old Boys at the Capitol want to blame us for the state of the economy--Jim Justice tells us that we just have to work harder, that we have to want a better economy more. We want it plenty. The truth is, the reason so many of us are struggling to get by is that more and more of our wealth--the wealth that we make--gets shipped out-of-state to CEOs, shareholders, and corporate executives.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

We will run the most pro-labor campaign in West Virginia history, on the side of all working people. That means we will fight to reverse so-called “Right to Work” and restore the Prevailing Wage. But it also means going farther. Every other state in the country is chasing the Amazons and Wal-Marts of the world, aiming to make their states the most welcoming to CEOs and the shareholders of out-of-state corporations. Our state has tried that.

Wal-Mart is the second largest employer in West Virginia, and our people are still piecing our incomes together. The way we create an economy that works in our favor is not by chasing those same companies who keep extracting our wealth, but by playing by our own rules and putting workers and local businesses first.