Recognize workers’ rights

While The Spokesman-Review got it right that all qualifying citizens’ initiatives should make it onto the ballot, the editorial board continues to get it wrong on corporate rights.

The Worker Bill of Rights that will appear on the November ballot, after the mayor’s illegal effort to throw it off, provides only that large corporations won’t be able to use corporate “rights” to avoid paying a family wage or to justify firing employees without just cause; and that no corporation will be able to use corporate “rights” to avoid providing equal pay for equal work.

Too often, as evidenced recently with the Citizens United and Hobby Lobby decisions, corporations have successfully used the courts to avoid compliance with local, state and federal laws. Those decisions have now created a caste system; one set of laws for us, another for those who can afford to evade them.

Spokane deserves a raise. It’s time to not only recognize the rights of people who work here, but to make sure that those laws can’t be evaded. For those reasons, I’ll be voting “yes” to the Worker Bill of Rights initiative this November.

Thomas Linzey

Spokane