Beacon Center’s Justin Owen Urges Voters: Don’t Skip It, Vote ‘Yes’ on Amendment 1

Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Beacon Center CEO Justin Owen to the newsmaker line to make a call to action and urge listeners not to skip the vote for Amendment 1, written to protect Tennessee’s right to work and maintain economic growth and freedom.

Leahy: Now we have on our newsmaker line Justin Owen, from the Beacon Center. Good morning, Justin.

Owen: Good morning, Michael. Thank you for having me on.

Leahy: We’re delighted, as always, to have you on, Justin, and, of course, the Beacon Center, the leading light of liberty and nonprofit here in Tennessee. What’s on your mind this morning, Justin?

Owen: We’re just over a week away from early voting, and so I’m out there trying to do everything I can to educate voters about Amendment 1 that will be on the ballot starting next week.

Leahy: That is a classically conservative amendment. It’s called the right-to-work amendment. Tell us a little bit about that and why it’s needed since we are a right-to-work state right now under the statute.

Owen: Yeah, you’re right. We’ve been a right-to-work state for 75 years, so much so that you’re kind of taking it for granted. But when we started hearing Joe Biden, when he was running for president in 2020, we started to hear talk about banning the right to work.

He campaigned for banning the right to work while at the state level. And it wasn’t too surprising to hear him say this, because in states that don’t protect the right to work, like California and Illinois, essentially, you can be forced to pay union dues in order to keep your job. Guess what those unions do with that money?

They turn around and give it to politicians like Joe Biden. And so he knows that if he can ban state right-to-work laws, he can get more money for politicians like him. And so when we started to hear that, we knew that this was going to become a big problem.

And the best way to protect against that would be to put this in our state constitution. During this process, it takes two votes of the state legislature and then, of course, starting next week, a vote of the people in order to amend our constitution.

Just earlier this year, as we’re going through this process, there are Democrats in our own state legislature who proposed a bill to roll back our right-to-work protection. And so it’s not just the federal attacks.

We actually are witnessing attacks on the right to work here at the state level and believe that in order to protect and hedge against these attacks, we need to make this a constitutional right.

Leahy: Yes, which makes an awful lot of sense. And I think the key point here to me, Justin, for all of our listeners, is this is the conservative position to take when it comes to employment rights in a state. You shouldn’t have to be forced to join a union to get a job. That’s the bottom line.

Owen: No, of course not. This is about freedom of association. We do not force people in this state to join and be part of something to pay their hard-earned money for something that they don’t believe in.

And you can either stand with Joe Biden and believe that we should force people into participating in unions and paying union dues so that they get more money in their coffers, or you can protect that freedom of association and say that we believe in Tennessee, that you should be able to work without having to join and pay union dues, and we believe so strongly in it that we’re going to make it a fundamental constitutional right.

It’s that important to our economy. We’ve seen the economic benefit of right to work. If you look at studies, states that protect the right to work have higher income growth and they have higher job growth. That is very clear.

The protection of this fundamental right really has led to our economic success as a state. And just compare us to those states like California and Illinois. You want to talk about how much debt they have and how much taxes they impose on people, so much of that is driven by union policies around right to work.

And so it’s a stark difference between states that protect the right to work, conservative states like Tennessee, and liberal states like California and Illinois that don’t. And so the vote is that important next week.

You can either stand with Joe Biden and vote against the right to work and vote for forcing people to have to join and pay union dues in order to get or keep their job. Or you can vote to continue this Tennessee tradition and say this is so important that we’re going to put it in our state constitution.

Leahy: There are two pillars, I think, of state economic growth and freedom. One is no state income tax, which we now have no state income tax on anything here in Tennessee. And then the other is the right to work, not to be forced to join a union.

And if you have those two pillars, you are going to have – and those are the two most conservative elements of a state’s economic growth to exist – if you have those two elements, you’re going to have success as a state.

Now let me ask you this, Justin. How will people know how to vote “yes” on 1? Where does it appear on the ballot?

Owen: That’s a good question, Michael. It is right behind the vote for governor. So it’s towards the top of the ballot. So you’ll have to vote for governor, for Congress, for your state legislature on the ballot this coming election. This is the second thing. Right after the race for governor, you’ll have Amendment 1.

There are four total amendments. This we believe is the most important. A couple of the others are cleanup amendments. But this is Amendment 1, right behind the race for governor. So what we’re telling people is just make sure whatever you do, don’t skip it.

Leahy: Yes, that’s the key. And it’s important to cast your vote “yes” on 1, because the way they determine passage is it’s based upon the percentage of those votes cast in the governor’s race.

Owen: Right.

Leahy: It’s a mistake, if you’re a conservative and you vote for governor – which, obviously the Republican candidate is governor Bill Lee, but you’ve got to do kind of both at the same time.

You’ve got to vote for Bill Lee as governor, and you have to vote “yes” on 1. Because if you vote for Governor Bill Lee but you don’t vote “yes” on 1, that’s going to limit the likelihood of the passage of “yes” on 1. Do I have that right, Justin?

Owen: In fact, if you vote in the governor’s race and skip the amendment, it counts as a “no” vote because of the way that this is calculated. So that’s what we’re doing with the Yes on 1 Committee, is doing everything we can both to make the case for right to work, which we don’t think we have to do as much among conservatives because they know [if] Joe Biden is against this, then we should be for it. It’s pretty much that simple.

But the biggest and most important thing among conservatives is just to know the impact of skipping it. If you do skip it, then you are essentially voting “no” in terms of how this is counted [Amendment] 1.

So don’t skip it. Vote “yes” on Amendment 1. Let’s put this in the constitution and make it a fundamental constitutional right, and fight against these attacks on the right to work.

Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:

– – –

Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Justin Owen” by Beacon Center of Tennessee. Background Photo “Voting Sign” by Lorie Shaull. CC BY-SA 2.0.