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Politically Speaking: Rep. Doug Beck on bid to repeal right-to-work law in Missouri

Rep. Doug Beck
Jason Rosenbaum I St. Louis Public Radio
Rep. Doug Beck

On the latest edition of the Politically Speaking podcast, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies talk with state Rep. Doug Beck about the effort to repeal Missouri’s recently passed right-to-work law.

The Affton Democrat has worked as a union pipefitter for more than 30 years. He was first elected in 2016 to represent a south St. Louis County-based district where voters favored the GOP nominee for president,  Donald Trump. Beck is also a member of the Affton School Board.

Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, signed legislation in February instituting a right-to-work law, which bars unions and employers from requiring workers to pay union dues. In response, unions across the state began gathering signatures to have voters decide next year whether the law should stand.

St. Louis Public Radio's Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies talk about the bid to repeal Missouri's right-to-work law — and talk with state Rep. Doug Beck, D-Affton.

Ultimately, right-to-work opponents ended up collecting more than 310,000 signatures – more than enough to prevent the law from going into effect. Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft should announce in a few weeks whether voters will have a say over the issue.

Proponents of the law say it will make Missouri more attractive for businesses. But detractors, such as Beck, say the policy’s real goal is to weaken labor unions – and lower wages for workers.

Union members and supporters gathered at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Hall this month to notarize and count petition signatures seeking to block Missouri's new right-to-work law.
Credit File photo I Carolina Hidalgo | St. Louis Public Radio
Union members and supporters gathered at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Hall this month to notarize and count petition signatures seeking to block Missouri's new right-to-work law.

  • Beck expects right-to-work opponents and proponents will spend millions of dollars on next year’s referendum. “I’m sure we’re going to have to put money in, absolutely. We’re fighting for our lives and the lives of all the Missouri workers,” Beck said. “That’s what it’s going to be. It’s not like this is my choice. It’s not like this is labor’s choice to have this fight.”
  • He isn’t sure if organized labor’s focus on reversing the law will affect other ballot initiatives that depend on union money, such bids to increase the minimum wage or overhaul the state’s ethics laws. Beck expects proponents of both of those measures to be creative. “It’s going to be more people power than anything else,” he said. “It’s going to be going door-to-door and explaining what things are – and that’s what we’re going to have to do as labor. And that’s what we’re good at.”
  • Beck doesn’t agree that Missouri voters ratified the right-to-work law last year when they elected Greitens as governor. “People voted for change, they didn’t vote for one issue,” he said.
  • Like other House Democrats, Beck hopes that legislators override Greitens’ veto of a plan reversing cuts to in-home care services for about 8,000 low-income elderly and the disabled. Greitens called the plan a “gimmick” and a short-term solution to a long-term problem.


Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter: @jrosenbaum

Follow Jo Mannies on Twitter: @jmannies

Follow Doug Beck on Twitter: @dougbeck562

Music: “Fly on the Windscreen” and “Stripped” by Depeche Mode, and “Working for the Weekend” by Loverboy

Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit St. Louis Public Radio.

Since entering the world of professional journalism in 2006, Jason Rosenbaum dove head first into the world of politics, policy and even rock and roll music. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Rosenbaum spent more than four years in the Missouri State Capitol writing for the Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri Lawyers Media and the St. Louis Beacon.
Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.