The Indiana Opportunity Fund is a “front group” for the national right-to-work committee. They are the country’s oldest organization dedicated solely to destroying unions.

Its network consists of four organizations that share leadership, offices, resources and staff, all with the common goal of undermining workers’ freedom of association. To carry out this mission, the National Right to Work Committee employs more than 200 staff to lobby, fundraise, distribute propaganda and interfere with workers’ union-organizing efforts. The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation employs nearly 50 staff for its litigation efforts.

They are funded by U.S. big businesses, CEOs, billionaires and millionaires from around the world, all of which want to continue the greed responsible for the condition the U.S. economy is in today. They answer to no one but the high-dollar, high-powered money machine that feeds it.

Since the Citizens United ruling in the Supreme Court, groups such as the “Indiana Opportunity Fund” have cropped up all over. Outside of destroying unions, the national right-to-work committee also works to take the voice of the people out of the 2012 elections. They do not have to declare who contributes to them, and there are no limits to the amount anybody or group can contribute to these “front groups.”

Right to work and its supporters in Indiana are playing cynical politics as they attempt to crush the electorate and play with people’s lives. Right to work will hurt this generation, but more than that, the generation of workers who are in middle school today. Stripped of a voice in the workplace, they are the ones who will suffer. Right to work will lower their income, benefits and opportunities for that voice to be heard in the future.

MARK G. GEVAART

Fort Wayne