agreements has plunged steeply downward. The destructive consequences – not only for workers, but for local communities and for America in general – are all too clear. The divide between rich and poor now rivals that of the Gilded Age, the middle class is disappearing or in distress, and the economy as a whole is in deep trouble.

Of course people can differ in their views about the rights of workers and about the importance of collective bargaining for the health of our democracy. However, having an honest disagreement is one thing, launching a disinformation campaign that misleads and confuses the public is another. We have looked at some of the U.S. Chamber’s claims about this proposed legislation, and we have read some of the literature that the U.S. Chamber is publishing about labor unions. We have seen how grossly the U.S. Chamber is twisting the facts in an attempt to obscure the reality of present-day power dynamics in the workplace and to deny the degree of fear felt by workers when faced with employer hostility.

We are outraged at these cynical distortions and misrepresentations. Such a campaign does nothing to strengthen the U.S. economy or to build up the economic health of local communities like Knoxville. Instead it represents more of the same big business assault on working people that has produced the economic mess that now afflicts the nation and is hitting so many families and small businesses in our area so hard.

For all these reasons, we are here to ask you to disassociate yourself from the divisive campaign of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. As an organization with local roots, the Knox Chamber should appreciate that these kinds of extreme attacks on workers and on their ability to join unions is a threat to everyone’s economic security. The U.S. Chamber’s offensive against moderate efforts to level the playing field in workers’ dealings with management is an approach that will benefit Wall Street, not the businesses of Main Street whose interests the Knox Chamber says it represents.

Further, as the beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of dollars of local taxpayers’ money given to your organization each year by the Knoxville and Knox County governments, it seems especially appropriate that your organization should refrain from joining national corporate elites in their attacks on working people. It does not advance your announced mission to allow yourself to be recruited into the efforts of national power brokers to defend rules that are stacked unconscionably in their favor. Accordingly, we hope that you and the Knox Chamber will take a stand against the squandering of millions of dollars on this campaign of disinformation or, at the very least, declare neutrality on the issue.