Washington State Labor Council

Now we will hear from the opposition.

Joining me is April Sims, president of the Washington State Labor Council and an opponent of Initiative 645.

Thank you for your time today.

To start this segment off here, what's your primary argument for why voters should reject this initiative?

Uh, let's do the pensions one first, Nicole.

So, uh, it was, uh, former Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler, who has been a spokesperson for I645, and April Sims, who's the president of the Washington State Labor Council.

Here they are on the pension issue.

There is no scenario in which a retiree will ever earn more than $84,000 a month and have to pay this millionaires tax.

Voters are rejecting Initiative 645, and if I were working on a wildly unpopular initiative, I would probably resort to scare tactics too.

Look, it's just a fact.

What's shocking about this is she's, again, the president of the Washington State Labor Council, and if, if this was just a technicality, why would they not have told their members about it? "Hey, FYI, don't worry about this, but we have to put it in there for X and X reasons." No, they're acting like it's not in there at all.

Like, you don't have these, these protections for pensions that have been in place for 100 years that all of a sudden are no longer in place anymore, and now it's scaring the hell out of union members And it should, 'cause you just wanna believe them that their intentions are in the right spot when it comes to your hard-earned pension.

We're gonna start with the no campaign and its case against Initiative 645 with spokesperson April Sims.

Sims is president of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, Washington's largest labor organization, representing more than half a million union members.

The Labor Council is part of the coalition opposing I645, and Sims is helping make the case.

April Sims, thanks a lot for joining us here on Straight Talk.

And that's why voters are voting no in November and rejecting Initiative 645.

Yep, and the voters will have that chance on November 3rd, uh, to vote on this and other things on their ballot.

April Sims, president of the Washington State Labor Council, thanks a lot for your time.

We appreciate it.

You can get going tonight with a debate over Washington's so-called millionaires tax, one of a few initiatives on your ballot this November.

Former US Rep. Jamie Herrera Butler will argue in favor of the initiative, and April Sims, president of the Washington State Labor Council, will argue against it.

The debate will be live-streamed on The Seattle Times website and on King 5 affiliate KONG-TV.

It all starts at 8:00 PM.