By RYAN ROSS, Teacher

As a teacher, New Mexico families trust me with our state’s most precious resource: their children. Out-of-state corporate billionaires don’t see them as our nation’s future, they tend to see them as profit machines.

Right-to-work laws now being considered by New Mexico legislators are destructive, unnecessary, and a distraction. They threaten to take away my voice. I didn’t enter the teaching profession to work at a for-profit corporate education machine, I signed up to work for New Mexico’s kids.  

Today, I have a voice allowing me to speak up for our children. That voice is supported by a strong union, but right now, the New Mexico legislature is considering a law deceptively titled, “right-to-work” that will take away my ability to stand up and advocate for New Mexico’s kids.

Right to Work is simply a distraction that divides our state and takes time away from the real and important issues our state leaders should be focusing on, like continuing to improve our economy, creating 21^st century jobs, investing in our schools and strengthening our middle class. There’s so much good that can be done for our state, I would like to see our Legislators put in the effort where it will really count for New Mexico working families.

But instead of focusing on all the productive, positive legislation that our state needs, certain elected officials are bent on pushing an unnecessary and divisive fight on Right to Work, a proposal backed by out-of-state billionaires and corporate special interests. These same people who are against increasing the minimum wage and have been shipping American jobs overseas now expect us to believe that their Right to Work bills are the harbinger of jobs and worker rights?

This is simply legislation that New Mexico working families don’t need.

Right to Work laws hurt the middle class. Workers in unions are able to put upward pressure on wages by helping to raise the bar on pay and benefits in their industries, but Right to Work laws diminish that power. Wages for the average worker in Right to Work states are 12.2 percent lower than wages in states without those laws. Worker safety also suffers in Right to Work States where the rate of deaths on the job is 54.4 percent higher. Why are lawmakers trying to push this destructive bill when we already have workplace health and safety issues to resolve? New Mexico is already a low-wage state. Right to work laws promise to lower wages even further by attacking unions. But, if low wages worked to attract jobs and manufacturers, they’d already be here. Are some of our state leaders wanting to drive wages of New Mexicans even lower?

The fact of the matter is that people are already free to work wherever they want, and to join a union or not. You already have the freedom and right to work wherever you want, and no one has to join a union to get a job — that’s the law. 

Right to work is wrong for New Mexico.