In celebration of Beacon’s 20th Anniversary, Beacon President and CEO Justin Owen wrote a book called Modern Davids: Celebrating 20 Years with 20 Stories of Everyday Tennesseans Fighting Big Government. We will be sharing an excerpt from the book each month to tell you more about our heroes. The book is out now! You can secure your copy by clicking here.
In late 2019, Beacon was approached by a state senator urging us to consider starting the process of placing right-to-work in the Tennessee Constitution. We knew that right-to-work was increasingly coming under attack in other states, and then-presidential candidate Joe Biden had begun calling on Congress to outright ban state right-to-work protections so that unions could force workers to pay union dues even if they chose not to join a union.
Although amending the state constitution is no easy—or short—feat, we took on the challenge. We built a coalition of business leaders and convinced Gov. Bill Lee to support our efforts. Our advocacy partner Beacon Impact led the charge to pass the constitutional amendment through the legislature, which took two votes in two separate years, the second by a two-thirds majority. We then worked to educate voters that right-to-work was not only critical to our economic success as a state, but that it was truly the only way to protect worker freedom.
Unions can bully even the toughest of workers to remain silent with threats and intimidation. Yet, two workers from Vireo Systems, a holistic pet and people product manufacturer, spoke up for their fellow workers in a Tennessean opinion article just days before voters took to the polls.
Tad Franklin and Suzanne Heneghan discussed how right-to-work is neutral on unions, protecting one worker’s right to join a union and pay dues as much as it protects another’s right not to join a union. They argued the claim that right-to-work is anti-union “shows little concern for the individual thoughts, rights, and wallet of the average Tennessee worker.”
“Some employees may choose not to join a union because they don’t want to pay unions that may be using that money to fund political campaigns and other projects with which they don’t agree,” they warned. “Others simply don’t want five percent of each paycheck going toward a union for which they see no personal benefit.”
Tad and Suzanne asked workers to stand with them to maintain their ability to choose whether or not to join a union by enshrining it in our state constitution. And workers across the state answered the call.
On November 8, 2022, Tennessee became just the tenth state to make right-to-work a constitutional right when 1.14 million Tennesseans, or seventy percent of voters, cast their ballots in favor of Amendment 1.
While we knew how important this victory was for workers and our strong economy, it wasn’t until the next day that it became abundantly clear why we spent more than three years making it happen. In that same election, Democrats took control of both chambers of the Michigan legislature for the first time in over forty years. They pledged—and ultimately followed through with their promise—to repeal the state’s right-towork law, which can happen by a simple majority vote of the legislature.
With the passage of Amendment 1, we have ensured that will never happen in Tennessee.