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| South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley |
At a time when 21.6 million Americans remain unemployed or underemployed, it’s hard to believe anyone would say no to good-paying, secure jobs. But sometimes, fact is stranger than fiction.
Meet South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
The Tea-Party Republican has been putting down unions for most of her political career, but Haley took her anti-worker rhetoric to another level in a recent interview with The Greenville (SC) News, saying she actively discourages companies with union-represented workforces from bringing jobs to South Carolina.
“It’s not something we want to see happen,” Haley told the newspaper after speaking at an automotive conference in downtown Greenville. “We discourage any companies that have unions from wanting to come to South Carolina because we don’t want to taint the water.”
Only 3.7 percent of South Carolina’s workforce belongs to a union, the third-lowest in the nation. It’s something Haley’s proud of, and she boasts that her state doesn’t have many of its people in unions, “because we don’t need unions.” Her job as governor, she says, is “to make sure I keep kicking [unions] out.”
She’s done her job. Now let’s look at the results:
Union jobs could help.
Among full-time and salary workers, union members earned $200 more per week than their non-union counterparts in 2013. Union workers are also more likely to have job-related health coverage and a guaranteed pension than non-union employees.
Click here to read The Greenville News’ article on Haley’s most recent anti-union tirade, and watch the video interview at the top of the story.
