Propelled By ALEC, ‘Right-to-Work’ Assault on Unions Reaches Pennsylvania

by Bruce Vail

Pennsylvania labor is primed for the fight: An April 11, 2011 Teamsters rally against previous right-to-work legislation drew some 400 protestors to the state Capitol. (The Rick Smith Show / Flickr / Creative Commons)

Backed by powerful national business interests, conservative legislators in Pennsylvania announced last week a new push to bring so-called “right-to-work” laws to the Keystone state. State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe said January 22 that he and five other Republican legislators would introduce a package of bills aimed at crippling the ability of labor unions to collect dues from members.

Pennsylvania labor leaders say the package is part of a broad assault on labor that began in 2010 when the GOP won control of the governor’s office and both houses of the legislature.

UAW’s Bob King: Expanding the Fight Against Michigan’s Anti-Worker Forces

By Bruce Vail

Several hundred labor activists gathered last week in Lansing, Mich., for a frigid but boisterous protest of Gov. Rick Snyder’s State of the State address. Their intention was not to disrupt the speech, but to remind Snyder that he has awakened a deep and abiding anger among the state’s labor leaders and their allies. Snyder can count on many more such reminders in the coming months, Michigan labor sources say, as unions carry out plans to reverse the anti-worker initiatives Snyder has sponsored in the last six weeks, and push back against the big business forces that stand behind him.

What’s Next for Michigan Unions?

By Bruce Vail

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed two anti-union bills into law on December 11, but unions may be able to use a loophole to buy time.   (Michigan Municipal League/Flickr/Creative Commons)

The fight over the anti-union law passed in Michigan on December 11 is far from over, according to both labor leaders and anti-union partisans. Labor organizations are working to both delay its effects and reverse its passage.

Bill Black, legislative director of the 40,000-member Michigan Teamsters Joint Council 43, tells Working In These Times that the law will be challenged by a number of unions in state courts and by legislators in next year’s session. The hurried manner in which the so-called “right-to-work” legislation was jammed through the state house is of dubious legality, he says.

Right to Work for Less and the Destruction of Solidarity

by Joe Burns

Joe Burns

To some the passage of the right to work for less legislation in the union stronghold of Michigan signals the strength of labor’s enemies. Sure enough, the passage of the right to work for less bill in Michigan represents the power of money and influence. Even though they lost in the election, the right wing continues its relentless attack against what remains of the labor movement. But that is nothing new.

To others, the passage signals union weakness. Certainly this was the main message of the mainstream news, with NPR and the New York Times running pieces discussing how the passage demonstrated union weakness. Again, that is too obvious to be our takeaway. With lockouts at record levels and employer-provoked strikes successfully garnering concessions, that we are getting our asses kicked should be readily apparent.

No, the main lesson we should take from the Michigan defeat is how completely and utterly messed up labor’s current strategies are and have been for decades. It should be a wakeup call for the labor movement that no business as usual will be tolerated and an opportunity to question the underlying premises of modern trade unionism.

What Would a Real ‘Right to Work’ Look Like?

by David Kaib

I just asked this question on Twitter, and realized I wasn’t going to be able to explain it  in 140 characters.  So I thought I’d elaborate here. First, the question:

There has been a lot of talk about how we need to reframe the horribly inaptly named “right to work” laws, which essentially require unions to represent workers who refuse to join or otherwise support the union in any way.  Since no one is ever required to join a union, this whole framing in nonsense, a cover for a policy designed to weaken unions that can’t be defended on the merits.

‘Right to work for less’ is a common one, but it is fairly clunky.  I like the idea of ‘loafer laws’ or even better, ‘freeloader laws’ (that one is from Matt Bruenig) which emphasize the free rider problem here.  I also like ‘no rights at work’ law.  Regardless, the question I’m asking is a different one.

“Right to Work” : A Body Blow, Not a Death Blow

by Street Heat

The signing of “right to work for less” in Michigan is another stark reminder to us all how deep the crisis of labor is. As if we needed another. The fact that the supporters of “right to work” could garner enough votes to pass such a bill in Michigan underscores the determination of our enemies and the extent to which the decline of labor density has weakened labor’s ability to fend off attacks, even in our strongholds.

Right to work will not kill the labor movement in Michigan. If enacted, it will however weaken it substantially. This makes keeping up pressure in the streets, courts and all other points possible to defeat its implementation is essential. There is also still time to mitigate and undo the damage done through a variety of legal and legislative strategies. While the fight is far from ending in Michigan, we must look soberly at our priorities as a movement.

Going forward with the effort to beat back and repeal “right to work” is both necessary and makes sense. The same can be said for the other states who have recently passed or partially passed attacks on the labor movement. In many cases these states will see many of the Republicans who snuck into office in 2010 under false pretenses kicked to the curb in 2014. The energy created by the movements against the attacks on labor and working people represents a movement that has awoken from it’s slumber and this new energy will lead to our taking the offensive both politically and in organizing if our leaderships take advantage of it.

“Right to work” laws undermine democracy

With recent developments in Michigan, these words from the 1930s are surprisingly relevant. They present a case that is too rarely made–so called “right to work laws” are not only harmful to living standards and union strength, they are also profoundly undemocratic. Interestingly, 70 years ago “right to work” had a different meaning. It was used the justify the demand of companies that state police and militia be used to break strikes and support scabs.–Talking Union.

by Alfred Baker Lewis

Faced with the rising demand for unionization among employees in order to get halfway decent conditions incur the autocratic power of the owners of industry, employers, and their spokesmen in the newspapers and elsewhere try to confuse the issue in the minds of uninformed people by making certain demands or changes in the law which sound logical but which are intended to hamstring the unions, destroy their effectiveness,and preserve the employers autocratic economic power.

Employers talk about the “tyranny of the closed shop” and the tyranny of the unions in requiring every worker in a union shop to pay dues in order to hold his job. They demand that strikes for the closed shop be made illegal and in particular want to make illegal the “check off” through which did union dues are deducted by the employer from the workers’ pay.

A “Tahrir moment” in Michigan?

by Street Heat

Thursday the Michigan State House and Senate passed “Right to Work ” legislation despite howls of protest over procedure and a massive last minute mobilization by Michigan labor. Since the House and Senate passed different versions the differences must be reconciled and voted on be both houses. If were hiding under a rock  here is the quick and dirty from Working America’s blog Main Street.

Union members pack the Michigan capitol on Thursday

Passing “Right to Work” for less legislation in Michigan is further confirmation that the “War on Workers” that started after the 2010 election did not end  with the re-election of President Obama. Those ideologically anti-worker majority legislatures and Governors elected in 2010 that remained in place after this election cycle still hold in their hands the same plans ALEC handed them two years ago. Those chambers that have shifted back toward being less hostile to workers this election are busy ramming through their agenda in the remaining “lame duck” session.

Kicking Underdogs When They Are Down

by Leo Gerard

USW President Leo Gerard

In a nation enamored of underdogs, the sudden surge of right-to-work (for less) legislation is confounding. Right-to-work (for less) laws are perks for the wealthy, for the top dogs. These laws facilitate destruction of unions. The concerted action of a labor union is a tool that workers use to win fair wages, benefits and conditions from the powerful, from the likes of massive multi-national corporations. At a time of dwindling union membership, at a time when labor union participation is so small as to be nearly negligible, state legislatures across the country are taking up right-to-work (for less) laws that will further decimate union ranks. They’re kicking the underdog when it’s down.

Americans love an underdog. Maybe it’s an artifact of the American Revolution, when a rag-tag rabble of farmers and frontiersmen defeated the disciplined and well-provisioned military of the most powerful nation on earth.

Even though the United States has usurped most powerful status, Americans still ally with Davids in contests with Goliaths. They love to see a top dog taken down a notch. They rooted for the perennial loser Red Sox in the 2004 World Series and reveled in the win by America’s unseasoned ice hockey team in the 1980 Winter Olympics.

That’s why the sudden surge of right-to-work (for less) legislation is so confounding. Right-to-work (for less) laws are perks for the wealthy, for the top dogs. These laws facilitate destruction of unions. The concerted action of a labor union is a tool that workers use to win fair wages, benefits and conditions from the powerful, from the likes of massive multi-national corporations. At a time of dwindling union membership, at a time when labor union participation is so small as to be nearly negligible, state legislatures across the country are taking up right-to-work (for less) laws that will further decimate union ranks. They’re kicking the underdog when it’s down.

Workers on ‘Journey for Justice’ Meet Newly Scared Minn. Labor Movement

by Mike Elk

ST. PAUL, MINN.—Yesterday, locked-out union workers from five different American Crystal Sugar (ACS) facilities in Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa, as well as locked-out workers from Cooper Tire, set out on a 1,000-mile “Journey for Justice” across the United States to raise awareness of their plight. The ACS workers are members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM), while the Cooper workers are part of a United Steelworkers (USW) Ohio local.

The five-day-long trip will stretch through key battleground states for labor rights in America right now: Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. The story of these struggling workers represents much of what’s ailing the labor movement right now.

ACS locked more than 1,200 employees out out of their plants last August after BCTGM rejected proposed increases in healthcare costs and provisions that would allow the company to undermine the union by outsourcing work to nonunion workers. In November, Cooper Tire locked out 1,050 workers after they refused to agree to demands that workers take a wage cut to as little as $13 per hour, assume additional healthcare costs and eliminate pensions for new hires.

The two lockouts have many similarities. Both occurred at companies making huge profits where there had previously never been a lockout or a strike. And both ACS and Cooper are demanding big concessions, and both unions claim the companies aren’t bargaining in good faith.