Political agenda focused on ending workers' rights, not creating jobs

[dajoki]

Viewpoint: Political agenda focused on ending workers' rights, not creating jobs
Published: Monday, September 05, 2011, 7:37 AM
By The Muskegon Chronicle
http://www.mlive.com/opinion/muskegon/index.ssf/2011/09/viewpoint_political_agenda_foc.html

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This Labor Day something else is happening in America, too. Certain politicians and corporate lobbyists will use this occasion of remembrance to push a political agenda. You will likely find them talking today about a proposal they call "Right to Work." What you need to know is that
despite the name RTW doesn't guarantee any new jobs, but it will weaken many of the rights you now take for granted.

This is, unfortunately, just more politics as usual. The party in power is trying to punish the other side's supporters. We saw it in Wisconsin and other state capitols earlier this year. Union members from teachers to firefighters, prison guards to police officers were targeted and punished, not for any rational reason, but simply as payback because they had dared to support the other candidate. Americans are tired of this petty power struggle. It's time we worked together on real solutions creating new jobs, not settling political scores.

Under current law, no worker is required to join a union, and no union member's dues are ever used for political purposes. This has been the law of the land since the Taft-Harley Act of 1947. Those are the facts.

The goal of the RTW proposal is to weaken employees' ability to bargain for fair wages, health and safety standards. This is done by stripping unions of any effective way to collect dues from workers yet still legally requiring the unions to bear the expense of representing those workers regardless of their never having paid dues. One is forced to wonder, could any business survive if forced to continually render services to people who chose not to pay? Weakening workers by putting their unions in this financially unsustainable position is precisely what RTW laws are designed to do.

Among the world's democratic nations, America is already one of the most difficult for workers to form a union. Legal hurdles are numerous and management intimidation and illegal firings go virtually unpunished. As a result, the U.S. has one of the lowest rates of union membership. We need reforms like the federal Employee Free Choice Act that would protect employees' rights to freely decide whether or not to form a union by enacting meaningful penalties for retaliatory firings, and other coercive tactics. RTW, on the other hand, won't stop any of these abuses.

The economic promises of RTW backers are sky high, but the actual results are less inspiring. Twenty-two states already have RTW laws. (On a map, they bear a striking resemblance to the old slave-holding confederacy). Workers in these states make an average of $5,.333 less a year than other Americans. According to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate of workplace deaths is 51 percent higher in RTW states than other states. Twenty-one percent more people lack health insurance there than elsewhere. Poverty rates are higher. Infant mortality is higher. In fact, they lag in most every measure of societal well being.

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