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Laborious
Author: Raine    Date: 12/12/2012 14:41:47

Michigan is now a "right-to-work" state. What does that mean? I'm going to let this member of Democratic Underground explain it in a way that few others have:
...We have just completed a long and costly negotiation that increased our pay to nearly $20 an hour. In the other tracks in New England, the pay ranges from $12 and hour to about $16 an hour. Most other tracks have either non-union shops or in-house associations with no affiliation to an international Union or the AFL-CIO. We are a closed shop and affiliated with both the IBEW and the AFL-CIO. Under our law here in Massachusetts you have to pay union dues to work at a "union shop" and be a member of the union. However, if you put your request in writing with the employer, you can opt-out of the union by paying an agency fee, which amounts to about 80% of the union members' dues. You still are represented by the union, you remain on the seniority list in your rightful place, you bid for jobs in accordance with the contract and you enjoy the wages and benefits that the union negotiates with the company. What you give up is participating in union meetings or voting in union elections or voting on the contract itself.

(snip)
Union Dues money can never, ever be used for political donations of any kind. No one is coerced to pay into this (PAC) fund and any member can bring any union or union official up on charges before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) even if he or she thinks this law has been violated.

What right to work laws do, is allow the employee to enjoy all the benefits I have outline here as a non-union member, but that employee doesn't even have to pay an agency fee. Pretty soon, the union is defending that individual, or itself, if that individual wants to put forward "nuisance charges" against the union. (snip) Fewer people pay dues, the union has less resources but the same amount of responsibility, and the union ends up in a "death spiral".

What if you could enjoy all the security of being a US citizen. Our country was protected from invaders, our children still had to be educated, our roads were built, etc. Yet, if you decided to, you could opt-out of paying taxes. Sure, some folks would continue to pay taxes. But the same type of person who would opt-out of paying union dues would opt-out of paying taxes. Pretty soon, the rest of us feel like idiots, and there would be no federal, state or local treasury. And as a result, there would end up being no country. That's the closest analogy I can make to this outrage of forcing unions to provide services to employees for free, while they enjoy all the benefits that we provide.


This is where we are heading. How do "Right-to-Work" states do economically? With the glaring exception of Virginia, not very well -- take a look at these graphs. This move in Michigan - like that of Wisconsin - is part of an effort to not just break unions, but also to solidify power by the leaders of the Republican party. When I say leaders, I am speaking of the likes of the Koch Brothers.
Supporters of such laws - largely Republicans and business interests, including the Koch brothers - say workers should have the right not to pay union dues if they don't want to. (They also call the laws "freedom to work" legislation.) In addition, they say that right-to-work laws are good for business. Economist Thomas Holmes in 2000 found that growth in manufacturing in counties near the border in right-to-work states was 26 percentage points greater than non-right-to-work states - a finding trumpeted by right-to-work supporters.

Critics - largely Democrats and unions - say the laws are designed to weaken unions. If employees are not required to pay union dues, they point out, unions are likely to shrink and labor will have less leverage to engage in collective bargaining. That results, they say, in lower wages and worse working conditions. Opponents of the law also say it's no surprise that businesses are drawn to states with anti-union policies, as well as looser regulation and lower taxes, but that doesn't prove such policies are good for the economy - and workers shouldn't have to suffer in a race-to-the-bottom battle between states to appeal to businesses.
This editorial takes it all a step further:
Americans For Prosperity, founded by billionaire tea party titans David and Charles Koch, is heralding Michigan's imminent passage of right-to-work legislation laws in Michigan as "the shot heard around the world" in the fight to weaken unions.

But the group was also a significant financial backer of Proposal 5, an effort to amend the Michigan Constitution to bar tax increases without a two-thirds legislative supermajority.
(snip)

The answer may lie in another Koch-funded group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which promotes a radical right-wing agenda in states across the country, supplying "model legislation" to sympathetic lawmakers.

The organization boasts more than 2,000 legislative members. It also has corporate members, who weigh in on the model legislation before it's approved by the group's public-sector committee, the group's national chairman said in an interview he gave after dozens of pieces of ALEC-written model legislation were leaked last year in a joint project by The Nation and the Center for Media and Democracy.


Want to know why this is all very disconcerting? Read the opening address to the United States during the Nuremberg trials:
The purpose to regiment labor for the Nazi Party was avowed by Ley in a speech to workers on 2 May 1933, as follows:

"You may say what else do you want, you have the absolute power. True we have the power, but we do not have the whole people, we do not have you workers 100%, and it is you whom we want; we will not let you be until you stand with us in complete, genuine acknowledgment."

The first Nazi attack was upon the two larger unions. On April 21, 1933 an order not even in the name of the Government, but of the Nazi Party was issued by the conspirator Robert Ley as "Chief of Staff of the political organization of the NSDAP," applicable to the Trade Union Confederation and the Independent Employees Confederation. It directed seizure of their properties and arrest of their principal leaders. The party order directed party organs which we here denounce as criminal associations, the SA and SS "to be employed for the occupation of the trade union properties, and for the taking into custody of personalities who come into question." And it directed the taking into "protective custody" of all chairmen and district secretaries of such unions and branch directors of the labor bank.
This is not Godwin, this is a historic parallel -- and a dangerous one. Workers in America are slowly being stripped of the right to unionize. I don't bring up Hitler lightly or in a hyperbolic way; there are real parallels here.

The problem is, it is easier for the likes of Kochs to go after houses divided, and as thus, they have taken the fight to the states. If it happens in Michigan, then they assume that people in New York won't care-- until they decide to go after New York. It happened in Wisconsin, so why should Massachusetts care -- until they come after Massachusetts?

This is happening. It is happening here in America. They are doing this. These are not Nazi's -- these are people who want the power to control and own the people. They've been doing it slowly, like boiling a frog. This week, the heat got kicked up a notch again. Americans put these people in office to do the bidding of the rich.

I cannot stress it enough that elections MATTER. ALL OF THEM. There is a reason Michigan and Wisconsin (and Virginia) have state legislatures filled with these puppets: people elected them. What is happening in states all over the country is not conservatism -- it is the bidding of groups like ALEC, Americans for Prosperity and others. They are fronts for billionaires to become even more wealthy and powerful on the backs of the American worker. The GOP is their mouthpiece at this point. We did the right thing on November 6. We need to keep doing the right thing in state and local elections. This is one of the most effective ways to stop this creeping financial imperialism. We used to fear this about the previous administration, what so many people failed to see is that the back door to this was the States.

Elections really matter.

and
Raine
 

51 comments (Latest Comment: 12/12/2012 23:15:05 by Will in Chicago)
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