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Sanchez: "Right To Work" Mailer "A Smokescreen" For Failed Policies

Senate Majority Leader Michael S. Sanchez (D-29- Bernalillo & Valencia).

  Santa Fe, NM – Senate Democrats are hearing from voters who have received misleading mail sent by an organization, ‘Jobs for All New Mexicans’, claiming that so-called right-to-work legislation will improve New Mexico’s failing economy. Gov. Susana Martinez’s allies are pushing this issue to distract the attention of New Mexicans from her failed economic policies over the last four years and the worst economic performance since the Great Depression. The mail is funded by out-of-state billionaires, including the Koch brothers, who seek to impose an extreme anti-worker agenda and increase their own profits.

“The so-called right-to-work messages in the mail are simply a smokescreen for the fact that Gov. Martinez has failed completely to get our economy moving or to create any jobs for the last four years,” said Sen. Michael S. Sanchez (D-29-Bernalillo & Valencia). “The latest national rankings show New Mexico has lost ground in terms of jobs and the economy.”

Workers make on average $7,000 less each year in states that enact laws being pushed by Gov. Martinez and her out-of-state sponsors than workers in states that protect workers’ economic security. Quality of life is worse for all working people in those states, too: higher poverty levels, fewer people with health insurance through their employers, and public education funding is weaker. Working people in New Mexico already have some of the lowest median incomes in the nation – the experience of other states proves that wages here would decline even further if anti-worker legislation was passed.

“Unlike these symbolic bills that create no jobs, Senate Democrats have a legislative jobs package to create 73,000 new jobs and stimulate economic growth. Gov. Martinez wants to distract people’s attention by talking about everything except her failed jobs record, and the way her Administration destroyed the state’s behavioral health system after alleging fraud that two years later still has not been found, and the $100 million of tax payer money that is missing under her watch,” added Sen. Michael S. Sanchez.

Senate Democrats’ priority is their ‘Ready to Work’ Jobs Package. It contains more than 40 bills addressing the need for more employment and economic activity in urban and rural areas of the state, across a broad range of occupations.

On Sunday the Senate Public Affairs Committee will hear the Gov. Martinez’s anti-worker bills.