Rick Santorum - Unions
Fox News / Google Debate
On September of 2011, Senator Santorum participated in the Fox News / Google debate. He stated in that debate that he would support legislation against unions for federal workers.
MEGYN KELLY, FOX NEWS: Senator Santorum, next question is for you. This map from Google depicts 22 states in the U.S. are right-to-work states. In the other 28, if a business is a union shop, you have to join the union if you want to work there. Now, this next question is one of the top-voted questions online, and it comes to us via YouTube from Yates Wilburn of Hilton Head, South Carolina.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: With unemployment numbers remaining above 9 percent, union issues, such as the National Labor Relations Board lawsuit against Boeing and several union battles in state legislatures across the country have become incredibly relevant to the national discussion. For all the candidates, would you support some form of a federal right-to-work law, allowing all workers to choose whether or not to join a union?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(APPLAUSE)
KELLY: That's for you, Senator Santorum.
FORMER SEN. RICK SANTORUM, R-PA.: I -- I think the most important area that we have to focus in on when it comes to unions is public employee unions. That's the area of unionization that's growing the fastest and it's costing us the most money.
We've seen these battles on the state level, where unions have -- have really bankrupted states from pension plans to here on the federal level, for example, 30 percent to 40 percent union -- union employees make above their private-sector equivalents.
I do not believe that -- that state, federal or local workers, unions, should be involved in unions. And I would actually support a bill that says that we should not have public employee unions for the purposes of wages and benefits to be negotiated.
Sponsored and Cosponsored Legislation
This representative has not been identified as sponsoring or cosponsoring significant legislation related to this title.