Honorable Members;
I am a small man from a relatively small town asking my legislators of both parties to support the Right to Work legislation.
Quite frankly, as a former -- but brief, thankfully -- member of the UAW, I watched my union dues being squandered on paid activists sent to aid the Sandinista Regime in Nicaragua, where one group brought in the harvest while another cadre dug hundreds of seven foot by three-foot-by-six-foot deep holes for "agricultural" purposes, I was told by a proud fellow traveler.
Additionally my dues were also spent on the lavish, to the extreme, lifestyle, enjoyed by the VP's, the VIP's, and all who traveled and lived large under the ever watchful eye of then UAW President, Douglas Fraser and his cronies, whose enormous political donations, again of my dues, are of legend.
While I don't begrudge the possible need for unions and the protections afforded workers during the age of the "Robber Barrons", today's arch economic criminals like Bernie Madoff and Marc Rich no longer require unions to hector them.
In fact, today, at 12 or 13 % of the current work force, unions are all but extinct, though their leadership continues to spend the dues of their membership like there's no tomorrow and with the makeup of the current NLRB, we can rest assured that there's little or no oversight into their machinations.
For NH, which I proudly call my home for the longest period in my life, to prosper in this dim economic period seemingly without an end, the individual must be given the right to make his or her choices in the workplace in a Right to Work State.
The time is long past for the "New Robber Barrons", the splendiferous union moguls and potentates, to rule over the working man like a Persian satrap or a tinhorn dictator. And this latter and unseemly state of affairs must not be allowed to flourish in our Live Free or Die state, for which it is anathema.
John Burtis
Derry, NH
