By Bob Plain in RIFuture.org
Of all the ridiculously obvious ways in which the press panders
to conservative ideology and terminology, one of the most egregious examples is
when reporters refer to the union-busting legislation such as what passed in
Michigan yesterday as “right to work” bills.
As a point of fact these laws have absolutely, positively
nothing to do with any right to work. Not in any way, shape or form. It is
simply an inaccurate and misleading way to describe them. CNN, NBC, the AP and
the Washington Post all use it, but they are wrong to do so.
Best I can tell, the term has been around since the late 1960′s,
in the form of the National Right to Work Legal Legal Defense Foundation, a non-profit that gets its money from the
same crony corporatists as does ALEC and the Heritage Foundation. Trust me,
these conniving one percenters didn’t call it this because it was the most
honest way to describe their intentions.
“We must guard against being fooled by false slogans such as
‘right to work,’” Martin Luther King Jr. once
said.
It’s actually more accurate to use the left’s re-spinning of
this misnomer – the “right to work for less” – because a vast preponderance of
evidence shows that employee wages are lower in the states that have these
labor-hating laws. Here’s President Obama doing so the
other day in Michigan,
before the bill passed:
University of Oregon professor Gordon Lafer studied the issue for the
Economic Policy Institute and here are just some of his findings:
RTW laws have no impact on the performance of state economies. Seven
of the 10 highest-unemployment states are states with RTW laws, including
Nevada and Florida, which have unemployment rates higher than Michigan’s
unemployment rate of 10.5%, and South Carolina, which also has an unemployment
rate of 10.5%. Factors other than RTW laws, such as major industries and
climate, shape states’ economies.
RTW laws lower wages for union and non-union workers by an
average of $1,500 a year and decrease the likelihood employees will get health
insurance or pensions through their jobs. By lowering compensation, they have
the indirect effect of undermining consumer spending, which threatens economic
growth. For every $1 million in wage cuts to workers, $850,000 less is spent in
the economy, which translates into a loss of six jobs.
Not only are these laws not about a right to work, they aren’t
even about economic development!
It might sound cliche, but the law Michigan passed on Tuesday –
that is now a law in 24 states – is most accurately described as good
old-fashioned union busting. That’s what the laws are designed to do after all:
make it harder for organized labor to collect dues.
Here’s how the New York Times describes the
new Michigan law:
The legislation here, which will go into effect next year, bans
any requirement that most public and private sector employees at unionized
workplaces be made to pay dues or other fees to unions. In the past, those who
opted not to be union members were often required to pay fees to unions that
bargained contracts for all employees at their workplace.
That isn’t a right to work. That’s a right to not pay for the
expense of bargaining collectively. These laws actually make it legal to utilize
the services of a labor union without paying for them.
Here’s how Rich Yeselson writing for the
American Prospect describes
them:
It’s a snarling pit bull of a policy that disempowers the
institutional voice of employees—unions—for the benefit of corporations. Most
of the wealthy states don’t have right-to-work laws, and most of the poor ones
do. Workers in right-to-work states make less than those in non-right-to-work
states, and their unions have fewer resources to fight the corporations and
politicians who benefit from this lopsided system. That’s the idea.
And, according to the Washington
Post, not even labor
loving Rhode Island, the seventh-most unionized state in the nation at
17.9 percent of the
workforce, is safe anymore:
If Michigan, of all places, is no longer safe from a sweeping
revisions to its labor laws, then none of the remaining pro-union states in the
Midwest and Northeast are immune.
Bob Plain is the editor/publisher of Rhode Island's Future. Previously, he's
worked as a reporter for several different news organizations both in Rhode
Island and across the country.