December 6, 2012 - 5:53 pm
Michigan is about to become the 24th right-to-work state in the United States. This afternoon its House passed right-to-work legislation 57-50. The Senate followed suit and passed it 22-16. Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is expected to sign the bills into law, as right-to-work was one of his highest priorities of the legislative session.
President Barack Obama, naturally, opposed the bill, which makes it illegal for unions to skim the paychecks of non-union workers in the state. Otherwise, right-to-work has no effect on collective bargaining rights. The president’s opposition is all about supporting Big Labor’s agenda against the interests of workers.
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Remember, Kasich won it in Ohio too, for awhile. If you think WI was Hell on Earth, wait til you see MI. This is a truly existential battle. The auto industry was a very hard nut for organized labor to crack; listen to old Woody Guthrie “walkin’ blues” songs about the ’41 sit down at Ford. Most of the early challenges to the National Labor Relations Act were from GM, beleive it or not. Organized labor and the rest of the left will not go gently into this good night.
Since the passage of the Taft-Hartley Amendments in ’48 that established the “right-to-work” states, to the best of my recollection, NO union state has ever gone RTW. There’ve been a few waiverers, e.g., Montana, Colorado, Missouri, that have been back and forth, but no “union state” as that came to be defined in the late ’40s, early ’50s, has EVER gone back. The real victory here will be if the people who passed this legislation are still in power after the next general election. If the Republicans are serious, they will Nationalize this and not leave MI on its own as they did in CA when Swartznegger challenged the unions and found himself without a friend in the World.
Observations:
1. Some left-wing judge will throw this out as soon as it’s signed.
2. In the end: conservatism always loses/evil always triumphs. At least that’s how it seems right now.
I certainly agree with the governor in all his talking points on TV after the passage. I hope it passes any forthcoming tests and wish all states had right to work laws. However, in reality, it does little to deter the labor unions. They are able to intimidate employers of non union shops. All the larger companies yeild to the unions and pay union scale and provide a great portion of traditional union demanded benefits. So, the labor unions may lose revenue, but they still win on the labor issues side. Even Walmart, I believe, has some components of their operations that yeild and pay union scale and benefits.
Any more of this and we’ll have to stop referring to it as the state of Michiganistan.
“…makes it illegal for unions to skim the paychecks of non-union workers in the state.”
They are NOT non-union. Their co-workers voted for unionization. Thus, the union will continue to negotiate for their salaries and benefits. It’s THEY who are skimming the paychecks of their dues paying co-workers.
Not surprising, though. All authoritarian regimes make unions a prime target.
SOME of their co-workers at some time or another voted for the union in an election that may or may not have been fairly and democratically conducted. In the case of public sector unionization, unions rarely actually organize the workforce, they “organize” the legislature to give them a bargaining bill and then the government just parcels out the employees to whichever union has the most chits.
If unions really were concerned with “free riders,” they would have an honest agency fee system in which the objectors would pay for the collective bargaining services provided by the union but not for the “social, fraternal, and political” activities of the union; you know; like the courts have told them since the ’80s but there isn’t a single union in the Country that could pass Constitutional muster with their dues and fees schemes if anybody seriously peeked under their skirts.
Hmmm… now you can work in MI without paying extortion to some union shop capo crimini. This is a good thing!