Right to Work Blog

We expect big labor bosses will seek a bailout for their underfunded pension funds, but the UAW is seeking another bailout of sorts. As owners of a lavish golf club in Michigan the UAW is asking the township where the course is located for a lower tax rate — taking money right from the schools in the district.  As the Detroit News has noted, the course is a money loser for the union and is kept afloat from loans from the union’s strike funds.  Seems like workers in the UAW wish they had a mulligan on this boondoggle.

Mark Silverman is the Editor of the Tennessean.  But in a previous career, he was a newspaper reporter in Michigan covering the Big Three, the UAW and their interaction with the politicians in Michigan.  Recently, GM demanded that states pay up to $200 million in taxpayer money to GM or they would close plants.  The Democrat governor of Tennessee is rightfully balking.  Decisions on plant closures should be made on questions of profitability and efficiency, not payoffs and subsidies.  But that is the they way they have done it in Michigan for decades — with the help of big labor.  In an insightful piece, Silverman notes the power the UAW has over Michigan elected officials and how that influence helped kill the American car industry.  You can read it here.

Saul Anuzi gives a short history lesson about the brutal history of big labor in Michigan:

The reason that the great American tradition of making cars in my home state has now gone belly up is due in large part to the irrational and unreasonable demands made by UAW chief Ron Gettelfinger, former UAW chief Frank Garrison, and the union leaders that came before them. And the rest of it lies with the management of the Big 3 who made promises they knew they couldn’t keep, and the politicians who continued to enable this to happen.

Its an unemployment rate of nearly 13% — the highest rate since 1983 — the state of Michigan desperately needs to reform its economy.  Enactment of a Right to Work law would end the brain and job drain that is killing the state.  The question remains — are politicians ready to break big labor’s grip on the state’s economy?

David Keene looks at the effort by the Obama Administration to hand control of the Chrysler car company to the UAW and concludes its nothing more than theft and graft.

The insightful Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner looks at the business side of big labor in his recent column.  It’s clear that in many cases big labor is becoming synonymous with big business:

Imagine if President George W. Bush used strong-arm tactics to bend the law to favor a politically connected company with $1.2 billion in assets, including a private golf course. What if that company’s political action committee had spent $13 million in the previous election, including more than $4 million to elect him?

Barack Obama has done just that. The company is called the United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America International Union – or the UAW for short.

Obama and the Democrats will employ euphemisms when discussing the President’s plan to circumvent bankruptcy law and hand majority ownership of Chrysler over to the UAW. They will speak about “the workers” taking ownership of the company, with some arguing that the workers, by right, are the senior creditors in Chrysler’s bankruptcy.

This paints the union-versus-creditors battle for control of Chrysler as a fight between blue-collar workingmen and greedy hedge fund speculators in suits.

But that abstraction-equating the UAW with “the workers”-is grossly misleading. John Doe on the assembly line will not be running Chrysler or directing the use of billions in bailout dollar. No, the union management will become Chrysler’s management.

The Holland Sentinel in Michigan knows that the Card Check Scam is bad for workers and the economy:

. . .

The most important element of the Employee Free Choice Act is its promotion of the “card check” system of union organizing. The bill would eliminate the requirement of a secret ballot to determine union representation; union organizers would merely have to convince a majority of workers to sign cards indicating they want union representation. That’s not real democracy — workers would trade the privacy of the voting booth for the potential intimidation of co-workers pushing them to sign a card on the spot.

The secret ballot is a core democratic principle, and it amazes us that many members of Congress are willing to eliminate it in a matter as critical as union representation. (Notably, the bill contains no provision allowing workers to use the card-check system to decertify a union, which is a much more difficult process.) We doubt many people, regardless of their ideology, would want to sacrifice the secret ballot when it comes to choosing candidates for political office or deciding on a ballot measure.
Workers shouldn’t have to give up that right either.

(Holland area residents may be familiar with the card-check system because it has been employed by the United Auto Workers in efforts to unionize workers at Johnson Controls factories around the country. The card-check system was permitted under a “neutrality agreement” between the UAW and JCI signed in 2003. The UAW has acknowledged recently launching a unionization drive at JCI’s Southview plant in Holland.)

We are also concerned about another provision of the Employee Free Choice Act. If a union is certified as representing workers, the bill would require contract negotiations to begin within 10 days, and if a contract agreement is not reached in 90 days, the issue would be sent to the federal government for mediation and, ultimately, binding arbitration. Binding arbitration means a contract would be put in place not by employers and unions but by federal bureaucrats who may or may not be familiar with the facts that pertain to a specific company. Further, the fact that the law guarantees that a union will win a contract would unfairly tilt negotiating power in favor of the union, which would have little incentive to bargain in good faith and present its best offer.

The decline of organized labor in America is well documented. Unions now represent about 8 percent of non-public sector workers in the country, and the percentage is almost certainly lower here. That’s due, in part, to the fact that we have been fortunate enough to have, both today and in the past, major employers that have shown sincere respect for their workers and built collaborative workplace relationships that have eliminated any need for union representation.

We believe that honest, cooperative employer-employee relations serve workers better than an adversarial company-union arrangement. However, there are companies that mistreat their workers and violate their trust, and in those situations it is understandable that workers turn to union representation. And we know that some of those companies like to play hardball and use aggressive anti-union tactics that stretch or blatantly violate the law, firing supposed “ringleaders” and threatening to shut down plants if workers unionize. Abusive and intimidating behavior must be dealt with, and if regulators need stronger “teeth” to enforce the law, we should give it to them. But the need for better enforcement hardly justifies a major change in federal law that dramatically shifts union-employer dynamics.

To regain their status, unions will have to reverse a deep and abiding skepticism among millions of workers. A survey by Rasmussen Reports last month showed that American workers are hardly beating down the doors to organize — the poll found that 9 percent of non-union workers were eager to join a union. Instead of relying on favorable legislation from political allies, unions need to demonstrate their value to workers in a fair, democratic process. Congress should not rewrite the rules in their favor.
. . .

David Gillis of the Times Herald newspaper in Port Huron, Michigan has looked at the numbers and concludes Michigan can no longer afford to restrict workers’ Right to Work. Why?

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, in the 22 states that have right-to-work laws, private-sector employment grew 79% faster than in non-right-to-work states in a 10 year period ending in 2005. During this same period of time, real personal income grew by 37% in right-to-work states compared to 26% in those states without these laws.

The Grand Rapids Press is calling for the defeat of the Card Check Scam Bill:

Under the Employee Free Choice Act, a majority of employees simply need to sign a card expressing a willingness to join the union. Workers would likely make this crucial decision in the presence of union organizers, who would undoubtedly exercise considerable influence over them. Fellow workers would probably know who voted and how. So would bosses. Unions could still call a secret election, but the company’s right to demand one, something that is typically done now, would be taken away.

In addition to undermining secret ballots, the act would force companies to enter binding arbitration for a new union’s first contract and toughen penalties for companies that violate labor laws.

The act strikes at the heart of a basic tenet of democratic elections — the guarantee that people can cast their ballots without fear of retribution or coercion. Before a labor organizing vote takes place, unions and employers should have full and equal access to employees to make their respective cases. If that is not happening now, as union leaders claim, Congress should write laws to make sure it does.

However, when the public debate is done, workers deserve the right to weigh the momentous decision about joining a union with only their own consciences and considerations as guides. Anything less than a protected secret ballot is simply anti-democratic.

Both sides agree that the Employee Free Choice Act would be the biggest change to labor law since the 1930s. Unions are demanding it in part because they’ve seen their numbers decline as a percentage of the work force in the last few decades. Passing this bill may help them recoup membership losses, but not on fair terms.

The Employee Free Choice Act is divisive politics and bad policy. The measure won’t help workers. It certainly won’t help Mr. Obama as he seeks to change the tone of Washington.

The latest state unemployment figures, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, show that state Right to Work laws have a significant effect on unemployment rates. In December 2008, states with Right to Work laws had an average unemployment rate of 6.2 percent, compared to 7.0 percent for states without Right to Work. Under a Right to Work law, individual workers cannot be forced to pay union dues or fees to a labor union just to get or keep a job.

Michigan has the highest unemployment of all 50 states, at 10.6 percent. Rhode Island, another non-Right to Work state, had the nation’s second highest unemployment rate, at 10.0 percent. The lowest unemployment rates are all in Right to Work states.