Washington, D.C.
In state legislatures all across the country new and energized majorities of Republican lawmakers are launching so-called "right-to-work" attacks on working people. Bills have been introduced, or are shortly expected to be introduced, in Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and West Virginia. These legislative manuevers are obviously coordinated by leading corporate interests; similar to the way in which a growing list of Republican governors have placed union busting consultants on state payrolls in order to plan a comprehensive anti-union and anti-worker series of attacks in each state. Movement of these bills will be determined by the situation in each state legislature, but will be primarily influenced by the degree and level of resistance and opposition that organized and unorganized labor alike generate in the coming months.
What exactly is "Right-to-Work"? First of all, these bills have absolutely nothing to do with any workers "right to work", or a right to a job or employment in any way. As workers already know, if you are not covered by a union contract the boss can fire you for any reason, or no reason, period. It happens every day, sadly. Right-to-Work is instead a Madison Avenue marketing slogan dreamed up by big business in the late 1940's to describe what is essentially a frontal assault on a union which already represents a workforce and collects unions dues in order to conduct its affairs. One of the notorious Taft-Hartley amendments (1947) to the National Labor Relations Act gave permission to individual states to pass so-called "right-to-work" laws, making membership in a union completely voluntary. It allows states to nullify the "union shop" or "agency shop" clauses of union contracts, which compel everyone in a unionized "bargaining unit" to either pay union dues or a service fee so the union can properly represent everyone -- as required by law. Once Taft-Hartley went into effect there was a rush of mostly southern and some western states to pass these laws. Unions in these states were already weak, the working populations were largely poverty stricken, and corporate and outright racist interests ruled these states and gladly rushed through implementation of the new anti-worker scheme. Today, 22 states are in the right-to-work column. They are overwhelmingly states where workers earn on average $5,000 per year less than counterparts in non right-to-work states. None of the 22 states have wage and salary levels above the national average. All feature the lowest levels of health care and pension coverage for workers also.
The right to work attack was at its inception, and remains today, nothing more than the first stage of a complete de-unionization process. Pushers of the legislation and employers deny this, which would be good for a laugh were the stakes not so high for workers and union members. Employers work the scheme like this; First, bosses make union membership voluntary by getting Republican lawmakers to convert the state to "right-to-work" status by passing a right-to-work bill. Then the boss pushes and probes to get workers to drop out of the union, or never join in the first place. They conveniently get freeloaders to run around the workplace and remind everyone that they'll still get all the benefits of the union even if they drop out. Then, compel the union to represent all the non-members anyway, spending precious union resources to process grievances and arbitrations, among other things. (Yes, this is the law. The union is forced to represent everyone whether they contribute anything or not, and non-members also receive all the wages and benefit improvements in negotiated unions contracts, too.) They make sure these freeloaders file charges against the union when they lose a grievance or arbitration, no matter the reason. This further debilitates and divides the union and demoralizes and exhausts the stewards and active union supporters. When the contract renegotiation cycle finally rolls around, and the unity of the local union is severely weakened, the boss then gets his yes-men and yes-women to circulate a petition to throw the union out. If it works, and the union is ousted, then the union contract is out the window and the boss is free again to do anything they want -- and "anything" means anything. No more union representation or grievances. No final arbitration if treated unfairly. No more negotiating anything. Nothing left to do but keep your head down while the boss takes away everything your union has worked so hard to build over the years -- or even decades.
This is the real thrust of the right-to-work attack. It's sole goal is to weaken and destroy unions in the workplace and restore complete and unchallenged control of everything to the employer. For workers who lack union membership this may not be any change at all. These readers should visit the Organize! section of our web page and get busy trying to form union. But for UE members and all union members the reality of the dangers associated with right-to-work should not be minimized. Everything we have is at stake; our wages, health insurance, pensions, working conditions, our very ability to earn a living, our hope to defend what we have -- and improve upon what we can in the future.
UE members are advised to ramp-up preparations for the right-to-work attacks which will begin shortly. Our union intends to resist the right-to-work attack in every way possible, as vigorously as possible. We do not intend to sit by while bosses and Republican politicians -- and probably even some Democrats -- hide behind nonsense about "It's just not fair to make anyone pay dues against their will, etc." This fight is not about fairness or union dues or any other anti-labor song-and-dance; it's about a corporate and political plan to destroy unions and reduce working people to a degraded and hopeless existence.
The first step is to make sure you and your co-workers know exactly who your state lawmakers are, and how you can contact them.
Once you have the information, contact all of them and tell them to oppose and vote "no!" on any right-to-work scam that comes before them. Send them the link to this article; then they will know that you are wise to the right-to-work scam. And stay tuned to the UE web page for updates on the unfolding battle which looms.