Unions And The Right To Work
Posted 06:45 PM ET
Labor: If unions were formed to protect workers from employer abuse, right-to-work laws were created to protect taxpayers and workers from union abuse. States with such laws enjoy higher growth and purchasing power.
With Wisconsin still under siege by the "angry mobs" of bused-in union workers, the Ohio of GOP Gov. John Kasich is the next target of those opposed to restricting the collective bargaining rights of public-sector unions that have bankrupted state after state. Ohio's SB5 also aims to address a similar Buckeye budget deficit in the billions and the anchor of state-funded union pension obligations.
Bills in the Indiana House by Republicans who gained a majority in November would go both Wisconsin and Ohio one better by making Indiana a right-to-work state, removing the requirement that workers pay union dues.
Those who have assembled the mobs of Madison are motivated more by the Wisconsin legislation's impact on coerced union dues than they are by "worker rights."
Curbing union power in 22 other states are right-to-work laws under which workers, taxpayers and states do better and enjoy more freedom. Right-to-work states limit the ability of Big Labor to organize and forcibly collect dues from employees. Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio are not yet among them.
According to statistics compiled by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, real personal income in right-to-work states grew 28.3% from 1999 to 2009 vs. 14.7% in forced-unionism states — almost double. Disposable income in right-to-work states stood at $35,543 per capita in 2009 vs. $33,389, and growth in real manufacturing GDP jumped 20.9% from 2000 to 2008, compared with 6.5% in forced-unionism states.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, right-to-work states added 1.5 million private-sector jobs from 1999 to 2009 for a 3.7% increase; states that are not right-to-work lost 1.8 million jobs over the same decade, a decline of 2.3%.
Americans for Tax Reform compared states gaining and losing population and therefore congressional seats in the 2010 census and found that "states gaining seats had significantly lower taxes, less government spending and were more likely to have 'right-to-work' laws in place." Clearly workers and taxpayers are voting with their feet against forced unionism.
So it would seem that breaking the union stranglehold on labor is good for workers and good for jobs. But it's bad for union dues, the lifeblood of the public-sector unions and the liberal Democrats they support. This is more about the involuntary servitude of forced unionism than it is about the economic condition of Wisconsin teachers.
It's also about freedom. Should people be forced to contribute their money as a condition of employment to candidates and causes they oppose? Thomas Jefferson once said: "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical."
The three major public-sector unions spent more than $171 million in the 2010 election, plus an estimated $250 million worth of so-called volunteer activity such as get-out-the-vote efforts, door-to-door campaigning and poll-watching. More than 90% of that went to Democrats.
In 2010, private-sector union membership reached 6.9%, a record low. There are now more government workers in unions than private workers: 7.6 million to 7.1 million. Unions need government to grow even as states and taxpayers are pushed to the point of collapse.
Public-sector unions serve no legitimate function except to feed at the public trough of governments that have gone broke seeking their political support. States with right-to-work laws have greater growth, prosperity and freedom. This is the states' air traffic controller moment. President Reagan fired them just before the greatest peacetime economic boom in our history.
The unions insist they're trying to protect workers' rights. Wisconsin can free itself from the shackles of forced unionism by guaranteeing every Wisconsin citizen's right to work. |
