“Raising the minimum wage,” Bill Clinton said last week, “is very important to a lot of us, and more importantly, it’s very important to millions and millions of working Americans.” He also described the Team Act a Dole measure that would allow employers to bargain with their employees independent of the union shop steward — as a “poison pill . . . that will undermine workers’ rights.” But only a few years ago Gov. Bill Clinton was selling his state as a pro-business paradise with workers just ripe for exploitation.
The governor was aggressive in promoting Arkansas’s status as a nonunion, ” right to work” state. The governor’s office even sent glossy brochures with Clinton’s picture on the front boasting of Arkansas’s low worker wages and right-to-work laws: “An amendment to our state’s constitution guarantees that Arkansas is a right to work state. . . . Arkansas ranks among the five lowest states in the nation on average hourly earnings of manufacturing workers.” Governor Clinton, meet President Clinton.
