Recently President Cook, in collaboration with other UFCW leaders in Missouri, sent a letter to every member of the Missouri General Assembly clarifying our Union’s stance with regards to abortion. Your Local Union does not, and will not take a position of any kind on this issue.
Find below a .pdf copy of the letter, followed by the text of the letter.
Dear XXXX
For decades, we have fought to improve the lives of all hard-working men and women across our state of Missouri. Our defining mission is to provide better economic opportunities, wages, benefits and lives for countless workers – it is not to engage in divisive politics or agendas that do not reflect our values or the values of our members.
As such, and we want to be very clear about this, we unequivocally oppose any attempt to imply or conclude that our UFCW Missouri Locals support or endorse abortion. We Are NOT taking a position on social issues such as abortion. We DO NOT believe that organized labor, no matter who they represent or which state they reside in, has any reason to ever weigh in on such an issue.
Furthermore, we fundamentally disagree with any interpretation of AFL-CIO President Trumka’s recent statements or actions by a prior International UFCW president that suggests that we, our members, or our unions endorse abortion. Our Missouri Locals speak for ourselves, and we do not and will not ever take a position on abortion.
Just as we would never hold you accountable for every position your national party has taken. We would hope you would not hold us accountable for every position our International or the National AFL-CIO takes. Moreover, we would hope we can all agree that the issue of abortion and women’s health is far too sacred to be used as wedge issue to influence votes on our Missouri right-to-work struggle.
As responsible labor leaders, we will always work with every party and every elected leader to improve the lives of hard-working families. In fact, we are singularly focused on advocating on labor issues that affect working Missourians. We want to improve the standard of living and economic prosperity for ALL Missourians. That’s who we are, and that is exactly what the fight over HB 116 (the right-to-work bill) is all about. HB116 will tear down those standards by making it more difficult for working families to achieve the American dream.
For the sake of the better Missouri we all believe in, we urge you to stand with hard working families and uphold the governor’s veto.
Let us stand together and do what is right for Missouri – without regard to partisanship or the interests of any group or leader outside Missouri.
Sincerely,
Tom Price President UFCW Local 2 Kansas City tprice@ufcw2.org, Steven Straher President UFCW Local 88 (St. Louis) sstraher@ufcw88.org, David Cook, President UFCW Local 655 (St. Louis) dcook@ufcw655.org and Steve Gelios President UFCW Local 2008 (Little Rock) of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union sgelios-ufcw@swbell.net
