Under economic analysis, right-to-work laws and the states that employ them provide evidence that the only effect of these laws is to destroy unions’ ability to organize and collectively bargain effectively.

This ability provides benefits to all workers, both union and nonunion. These contracts are agreed upon by the employers and the employees represented. Collectively bargained agreements are used also by employers to grant employment packages to nonunion employees that are similar yet cost less and provide less in wages and benefits.

Right-to-work legislation prohibits employers and employees from negotiating a union security clause. Unions have a legal duty to provide “fair representation,” which requires them to represent all workers within a bargaining unit fairly and equally, whether they are members or nonmembers of the union.

Sponsors of this type of legislation enjoy creating an environment in the work force that allows some not to pay their fair share while those who choose to be members pay the bills for all. This divide-and-conquer philosophy has an effect that creates disharmony in the work force and weakens the union. As this is accomplished, the results are lower wages, reduced working conditions and less benefits for all workers.

The statistics show free-bargaining states have a higher percentage of unionized workers, higher average and median wages and lower poverty rates. Right-to-work states lead in two areas: a 50 percent higher rate of workplace fatalities and 20 percent higher rate of infant mortality.

Timothy G. Bickford
Fairfield 

Environmentalists doing damage to state’s economy 

An article titled “Challenges to LePage mobilized” in the Feb. 13 Telegram intrigued me. It was about a meeting held at the Old Goat Pub (how fitting) in which rabid environmentalists vowed to fight any “rollback” of current Maine laws.

Brownie Carson, self-anointed president-for-life of the far-left environmental movement in Maine, justified Maine’s stricter-than-national laws as necessary because “we don’t want our rivers catching on fire.”

Can Carson point out even one river in the United States that complies with current national standards that has caught fire?

Warming to his subject, he said, “We don’t want our asthmatic children choking on bad air.”

So Carson is saying Maine Republicans will pass laws that will prevent children from breathing? All the asthmatic children will die?

Do you really believe that, Mr. Carson? If you are so concerned about our air quality, why don’t you travel west of Maine and tell coal power generators in Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc., to stop? What we do in Maine has negligible effect on our air quality.

It is heartening to read Carson is continuing his over-the-top rhetoric and making a fool of himself and his movement.

Mainers have put up with decades of his idiocy, and it’s time to assess where it has gotten us — ranked 50th of 50 states in friendliness to business.

Does that mean that the children in the other 49 states are dying in droves? Certainly not. Are the rivers in say, New Hampshire, catching fire? No.

Maine’s environmental movement has done two things for us: First, it has driven businesses out of Maine. Hundreds if not thousands of Mainers have lost their jobs in the name of environmentalism. Second, many, many businesses have chosen to expand elsewhere due to our reputation as rabid-beyond-all-reason environmentalists.

So the question is, does Carson lie awake at night thinking of all the jobs and all the families he and his movement have destroyed here in Maine? He should.

Harry White
Scarborough 

Government health care offers long-term solutions 

After reading Dr. Mark Aranson’s letter to the editor on Feb. 20 with regard to health care in Maine, I feel it is important to express a different opinion.

I am an internist. Contrary to Dr. Aronson’s negative feelings about Medicare and Medicaid, our hospital and my group would not be present in Norway without these two programs.

Medicare is an excellent insurance program for our senior citizens. Many would not be able to afford health care if Medicare did not exist.

Medicare also provides funds for physician training. Medicaid provides reimbursement for our citizens who cannot afford health care. Funding for both of these programs is a large burden on our society.

However, it is important to recognize that one of the major costs is money lost to fraud by health care providers including doctors.

Also, escalating costs are due to the many industries that reap huge profits from the health care industry, and this includes private health insurance companies.

We as health care providers need to go back to the basic premise that medicine is a social job and our mission is to deliver care to all of our citizens in an affordable, competent way.

As a country we need desperately to address the shortage of primary care physicians. I would advocate the most important element of health care is the cheapest — the doctor-patient relationship.

As health care reform moves forward, we need to be careful about statements like Dr. Aranson’s that people in their 80s would not be able to have a ruptured aneurysm repaired if we had universal insurance.

There is no role for scare tactics in this very important time of trying to improve the health care system.

At the present time, we have a health care reform act as a beginning and the only approach that survived the political debate in Washington.

It is time for health care providers to stop whining about incomes and the flaws in our existing system and begin to work together to cut the costs and provide high quality care to all of our citizens.

William L. Medd, M.D.
Norway 

Social Security not reason for federal budget deficits 

Following the right-wing party line, the Feb. 20 Washington bureau’s report about the deficit (“Politicians don’t always want what they seek”) blames Social Security and Medicare.

Medicare does need cost controls on health care providers, but Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. It is a self-sustaining program paid for by employers and employees, not the federal government.

With minor tweaking, like removing the absurd cap on taxable earnings, Social Security will be solvent forever. Unfortunately, conservatives cannot stomach a successful government program; Wall Street would love to get its dirty hands on all the money in the fund.

Obama has already taken the first step toward undermining Social Security, lessening individual contributions in the act giving tax breaks to billionaires. The cuts are supposed to be temporary, but will they be restored next year?

Working people will pay dearly in the future for the extra dollars in their paychecks now. When the cuts reduce the size of the Social Security trust fund, then the right-wingers can wring their hands about the poor fiscal state of the program, preparing the next step in their elimination scheme. Clever, and entirely conscienceless.

Social Security is not an “entitlement.” It is old age and survivors benefits paid for during a lifetime of employment. Retirees deserve what they get now, and more.

Eliminate the income cap, and everyone could be paid double what they get now, aligning us with what workers in civilized countries receive — approximately 60 percent of wages, versus our 30 percent.

Let’s hope the Wisconsin protests spread. Government must stop trying to balance the budget on the backs of the working poor.

How about reducing our insanely bloated military budget? Or collecting taxes on corporations? (Some of the largest pay nothing at all, while receiving our tax dollars in subsidies.)

Judith Hopkins
Pownal 

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