Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 8, 1991                   TAG: 9104090491
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A/8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

RIGHT TO WORK ALSO INVOLVES SAFETY, FAIR WAGES

Incorrect. Every person has a right to work in a safe environment, with fair treatment and for a decent wage. Slaves and sweatshop workers have the right to work.

Apparently, Mr. Kilpatrick is enjoying what my amended statement says. It gives him the luxury to be anti-union. But he can thank the presence and the principles of unions that create that necessary balance between the power of industry and the rights of workers.

Workers have always had more to lose than the rich companies they serve. The loss of a week's pay is far greater to the wage-earner with a family to raise and with rent and bills to pay than it would ever be to a company that can easily hire out work or even get replacement workers.

What a frightening thing to us all, union and non-union, that a group of workers can be treated in any manner desired by a perhaps tyrannical company. The right to strike is the final recourse after much negotiating.

In a letter in the same issue, Jack Taylor writes in response to your March 7 editorial that the market-economy philosophy is at the core of the present economic problem. This philosophy, in place for more than 10 years, is also responsible for the deterioration of workers' rights and for anti-union legislation. It is obvious that what jobs have not gone overseas resemble work done under the conditions of the early industrial revolution.

What internal troubles there are with unions are minimal compared with those of large companies and industries that have brought us everything from hostile takeovers to S&L scams.

MARY ELLEN PLITT

CLIFTON FORGE