Right to Work Blog

Auto workers in Alabama have the choice to join a union while workers in Michigan do not. If more politicians in Michigan would be willing to stand up to the labor union bosses, the auto industry would be in much better shape — perhaps doing as well as in Alabama. The Birmingham News takes an insightful look:

If organized labor is looking at a shaky economy as an opportunity to elbow into Alabama’s auto manufacturing industry, union bosses must be reading their own propaganda.

A bad economy would be the worst time for workers at Alabama’s three major auto plants - Mercedes in Vance, Honda in Lincoln and Hyundai in Montgomery - to look for the union label.

These are difficult times for auto manufacturers all over the nation, and Alabama is no different. With car building a relatively new industry in the state, this is the first serious economic challenge. But even with the downturn, Alabama’s manufacturing plants are doing better than many others.

Mercedes has cut production to bring the number of vehicles produced more in line with decreased demand.

Honda also has trimmed production, but is bringing new models to the plant in Lincoln.

Hyundai has not announced any cutbacks, but if demand continues to weaken, production cuts at the assembly plant are a good bet.

Yet, none of the companies has laid off any employees in Alabama.

The argument by organized labor that union membership will assure Alabama auto workers job protection is undercut by the layoffs and closings at auto assembly plants elsewhere, especially in the heavily unionized Midwestern rust belt. Those union jobs are hardly secure.

Unions have a better shot at organizing a plant if workers are upset about working conditions, pay or job security. There are no serious complaints about working conditions or pay at the Alabama plants. With the economy limping along, there can be no absolute job guarantees. That would be the situation whether auto manufacturers run union or nonunion shops.

The real risk - to unionizing auto manufacturing plants and many other businesses in Alabama and across the nation - is the misguided and misnamed Employee Free Choice Act being pushed by Democrats in Congress.

Under that bill, which has little chance of passing this year, but will surely be a top priority of the next Congress, workers would be prevented from using a secret-ballot election to certify a union. If a majority of workers sign cards saying they want a union, the union will be certified.

With no secret ballot, union leaders could intimidate workers into signing the card. Just as elsewhere, peer pressure can be powerful in the workplace, too.

Voters shouldn’t have to explain their ballot in the presidential election, a governor’s election or a union election. That’s why in the United States we cherish the secret ballot. People should be allowed to vote their conscience without pressure, as the secret ballot guarantees.

Readers know the difficulty Michigan is having creating jobs and economic prosperity. But defenders of Big Labor like to deny that the regulations and costs the United Auto Workers (UAW) and other big unions have imposed on the state have anything to do with the state’s mired economic conditions. Albeit already difficult, it is getting harder to make such an argument.

Phil Gramm and Mike Solon writing in the Wall Street Journalnote:

The Competitiveness Index created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) identifies “16 policy variables that have a proven impact on the migration of capital — both investment capital and human capital — into and out of states.” Its analysis shows that “generally speaking, states that spend less, especially on income transfer programs, and states that tax less, particularly on productive activities such as working or investing, experience higher growth rates than states that tax and spend more.”

Ranking states by domestic migration, per-capita income growth and employment growth, ALEC found that from 1996 through 2006, Texas, Florida and Arizona were the three most successful states. Illinois, Ohio and Michigan were the three least successful.

The rewards for success were huge. Texas gained 1.7 million net new jobs, Florida gained 1.4 million and Arizona gained 600,000. While the U.S. average job growth percentage was 9.9%, Texas, Florida and Arizona had job growth of 18.5%, 21.4% and 28.9%, respectively.

. . .

There also appears to be a clear difference between union interests and the worker interests. Texas, Florida and Arizona are right-to-work states, while Michigan, Ohio and Illinois are not. Michigan, Ohio and Illinois impose significantly higher minimum wages than Texas, Florida and Arizona. Yet with all the proclaimed benefits of unionism and higher minimum wages, Texas, Florida and Arizona workers saw their real income grow more than twice as fast as workers in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois.

Incredibly, the business climate in Michigan is now so unfavorable that it has overwhelmed the considerable comparative advantage in auto production that Michigan spent a century building up. No one should let Michigan politicians blame their problems solely on the decline of the U.S. auto industry. Yes, Michigan lost 83,000 auto manufacturing jobs during the past decade and a half, but more than 91,000 new auto manufacturing jobs sprung up in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Texas.

Gramm and Solon ask whether any of these facts play into the presidential debate and the positions the candidates have on issues like Right to Work?

So what do the state laboratories tell us about the potential success of the economic programs presented by Barack Obama and John McCain?

Mr. McCain will lower taxes. Mr. Obama will raise them, especially on small businesses. To understand why, you need to know something about the “infamous” top 1% of income tax filers: In order to avoid high corporate tax rates and the double taxation of dividends, small business owners have increasingly filed as individuals rather than corporations. When Democrats talk about soaking the rich, it isn’t the Rockefellers they’re talking about; it’s the companies where most Americans work. Three out of four individual income tax filers in the top 1% are, in fact, small businesses.

In the name of taxing the rich, Mr. Obama would raise the marginal tax rates to over 50% on millions of small businesses that provide 75% of all new jobs in America. Investors and corporations will also pay higher taxes under the Obama program, but, as the Michigan-Ohio-Illinois experience painfully demonstrates, workers ultimately pay for higher taxes in lower wages and fewer jobs.

Mr. Obama would spend all the savings from walking out of Iraq to expand the government. Mr. McCain would reserve all the savings from our success in Iraq to shrink the deficit, as part of a credible and internally consistent program to balance the budget by the end of his first term. Mr. Obama’s program offers no hope, or even a promise, of ever achieving a balanced budget.

Mr. Obama would stimulate the economy by increasing federal spending. Mr. McCain would stimulate the economy by cutting the corporate tax rate. Mr. Obama would expand unionism by denying workers the right to a secret ballot on the decision to form a union, and would dramatically increase the minimum wage. Mr. Obama would also expand the role of government in the economy, and stop reforms in areas like tort abuse.

The states have already tested the McCain and Obama programs, and the results are clear. We now face a national choice to determine if everything that has failed the families of Michigan, Ohio and Illinois will be imposed on a grander scale across the nation. In an appropriate twist of fate, Michigan and Ohio, the two states that have suffered the most from the policies that Mr. Obama proposes, have it within their power not only to reverse their own misfortunes but to spare the nation from a similar fate.

First, Big Labor unions in Michigan drive up the cost of making an American automobile to the point where they are not competitive in the marketplace. Then, union bosses demand the taxpayers provide the auto companies with $50 billion in loans — with no reforms. Here is an idea — tie the loans to enactment of a Michigan Right to Work law. That would help Michigan workers, allow the companies to compete in the future, and ensure that the taxpayers won’t be on the hook again.

Financial Week takes an insightful look at Big Labor’s big hope and big bet — the effort to end the secret ballot election — despite underestimating the amount they will spend to buy enactment of their scheme:

The labor movement’s big-money campaign for Sen. Barack Obama faces stiff challenges in getting rank-and-file union members to overcome their concerns about the candidate, according to labor specialists and polls.

“There’s been a cultural and political divide between union members and Democratic candidates who may not care as much about trade and some other issues as they do,” said Bruce Cain, a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley. “That makes it hard for union leaders to deliver the vote.”

This clearly worries union leaders, who see the November election as pivotal in getting key legislation passed. At the top of the list: the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would allow workers to organize via card checks rather than the usual secret ballots. Mr. Obama endorsed the legislation, which passed the House before stalling in the Senate. Sen. John McCain opposed it. Last week, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue said his group would lobby against the bill.

“All of labor’s eggs are placed in this legislation’s basket,” said Mike Asensio, a management labor lawyer for Baker Hostetler in Columbus, Ohio. “If they don’t get the bill passed, it raises a specter about their future.”

Given the stakes, it’s hardly surprising that organized labor is splashing massive amounts of cash on the election. The AFL-CIO and its 56 member unions plan to spend a whopping $300 million to support Democrats in the presidential and congressional campaigns this fall and produce about 250,000 volunteers. The breakaway Service Employees International Union plans to pitch in another $85 million.

To put that in perspective, the Democratic Party as a whole had raised $416 million through July.

The campaign at the AFL-CIO is typical of labor’s big-money strategy. The union will target 3 million undecided members, voting family members and retirees in 24 battleground states, the group’s political director, Karen Ackerman, said. That target group consists of about a quarter of all union members.

The umbrella labor organization’s highest priorities will be voters in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania—swing states with large numbers of union members. It plans to spend as much as $18 million to reach undecided union voters and others in those three states with TV ads, flyers, phone calls, e-mails, mailings and one-on-one visits.

“Union members vote at a higher rate than the rest of the population,” said David Karol, a political science professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “Many are basically Democratic who will end up coming around.”

Maybe. But the largest block of undecided U.S. voters consists of older white, blue-collar, church-going men and women, according to a recent bipartisan poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted by Lake Research Partners and the Tarrance Group.

Blue-collar workers in Macomb County, Mich., a Detroit suburb, favor Mr. McCain over Mr. Obama by a 51%-42% margin, according to a survey by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg that was released Aug. 25.

The Michigan workers, many of whom voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, harbor doubts about Mr. Obama’s experience, values and patriotism, with lesser concerns about his race, the poll found. “Many folks have never voted for an African-American,” Ms. Ackerman granted. “It’s complicated by unfamiliarity, inexperience and rumors. Our job is to make sure people know who Barack Obama is and what he stands for.”

But earlier labor-funded ads seem to focus on what John McCain supposedly stands for. One flier about Mr. McCain’s proposal to privatize Social Security said: “McCain’s worth over $100 million…. He owns 10 houses…. He flies around on a $12.6 million corporate jet…. He walks around in $520 loafers…. If John McCain lost his Social Security, he’d get by just fine. Would you?”

An online video showcases Mr. McCain’s houses and condominiums in Arizona, California and Virginia while also needling the Arizona senator about his calfskin loafers made by Salvatore Ferragamo. The video, distributed by the AFL-CIO and SEIU, then focuses on a person whose house was lost to foreclosure.

“Labor’s money provides them with the potential to make a significant impact in publicizing who Obama is, and it doesn’t really matter that it’s coming from the unions,” said Alan Gitelson, a political science professor at Loyola University of Chicago. “Political advertisements have an impact if they are repetitive.”

With the rolls of organized labor down nearly a quarter since 1979, union leaders will no doubt continue to hammer away.

Big Labor is making its presence felt at the Democrat convention in Denver and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by the Wall Street Journal.

We all know of Big Labor’s desperate effort to enact the Card Check Scam Law. But wait, there’s more:

Card check is merely the start. Next on the agenda is a campaign to repeal “right to work” laws in the 22 U.S. states that have them. Right to work laws allow employees to decide for themselves whether to join or financially support a union. Former Michigan Congressman David Bonior told a union event in Denver on Monday that limiting right to work laws is essential both to lifting union membership and promoting more Democratic political victories. He pointed out that John Kerry didn’t win a single right to work state in 2004, while Al Gore won only one — Iowa — and only by a few thousand votes in 2000.

How is the AFL-CIO spending over $50 million in workers dues money? On political mailers, of course. National Journal reports that over 600,000 pieces are hitting mailboxes in four battleground states.

The AFL-CIO begins a ramped-up campaign to define Sen. Barack Obama with union members and their families in battleground states, focusing heavily on working-class, swing union voters in OH, MI, PA and WI. The goal, per union officials, is to dispel the many rumors circulating about Obama via two new mailers, dropped today, that ask and answer still-looming questions about the candidate. The union will send the pieces to 600K swing voters living in the four critical battleground states.

The mailers are just one leg to a very expensive political stool the union bosses are constructing.

Here are other elements of the AFL-CIO’s effort for Obama:

– The group’s focus is on mobilizing working people in 24 states, targeting about 13M union voters, including members, householders, retirees and those involved with the group’s community affiliate, Working America. Union voters make up between 25-35 percent of the vote on Election Day in OH, MI, PA and WI.

– In August, AFL-CIO volunteers will deliver 1M flyers about Obama’s record and background to worksites across the country. Overall, more than 4M flyers have already been distributed to worksites, including flyers about McCain’s “anti-worker” record, sources said.

– Every weekend in August, union volunteers will canvass neighborhoods across the country, providing voters with information about Obama’s record and contrasting it with McCain’s. Again, swing voters will be targeted. AFL-CIO volunteers will also be phone banking all month to swing union voters in key states.

– Members of Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO for those without a union, are canvassing nightly to discuss the issues that matter to working-class voters. In OH alone, more than 160 canvassers are going out every day. Working America currently has nearly 2.5M members, including 800K in Ohio.

– One note: The AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council, launched last month in five states, is expected to create new state councils expected in August. The Veterans Council will play an integral role in mobilizing 2.1M union veterans, according to union officials. Meanwhile, the TV ad about McCain’s economic priorities, featuring union veteran Jim Wasser, continues to run in media markets in six states: MI, MN, OH, PA, VA and WI. Also since February, AFL-CIO volunteers have now protested at more than 100 McCain campaign events from coast to coast.

If you are still scratching your head trying to figure out why companies like VW would pass over Michigan when deciding where to put a new billion dollar production facility, look no further than W.I. Meyers Nursery in downtown Detroit.

The Detroit News reports that:

A plan to turn over an abandoned City of Detroit nursery to a nonprofit group that would use it to grow trees for neighborhoods and parks has been blocked by union objections.

The Greening of Detroit, under an agreement approved by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the City Council, would manage the W.I. Meyers Nursery, a 125-acre plot in Rouge Park that has been closed for more than three years.

Using privately raised funds and volunteers, the group would restore the nursery and use it to provide mature trees to neighborhoods. Greening already plants 2,000 trees a year throughout the city.

But the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees [AFSCME] obtained an injunction from Wayne County Circuit Court against the deal, saying it violates the collective bargaining agreement. The union says the bargaining agreement applies to any deals to turn over control of city operations to a third party — meaning city workers must staff the nursery.

Someone should tell AFSCME that the “Greening of Detroit” shouldn’t mean the greening of AFSCME’s pockets.

Michigan is in the throes of a Big Labor induced economic recession and Crain’s Detroit Business report has weighed in with an idea that is a small step in the right direction.

Crain’s suggests the state enact Right to Work zones. That, of course, is not an equitable solution as some workers would be protected from Big Labor coercion and others would not be, based solely on the location of their place of employment.

What was the cause of their suggestion? Michigan’s loss of a near $1 billion automobile facility to two Right to Work states — Tennessee and Alabama.

Where will Volkswagen build its new U.S. plant? That’s the $788 million question.

By late last week, sister publication Automotive News was reporting the automaker was leading toward Huntsville, Ala., and Chattanooga, Tenn.

Michigan tried hard, with its $18.7 million “Choose Michigan” program of loans and tax credits, but it wasn’t enough.

According to Crain’s:

To many manufacturers, Michigan suffers from the perception that organized labor calls the shots. Labor strikes, including this year’s shutdown at American Axle and Manufacturing Holdings Inc., don’t help that image.

Perception?

In this case, clearly perception is reality.

All workers deserve the same protections from forced unionism. And if Michigan would take that step, the whole state would benefit from new jobs and new economic growth.

The editors of Crain’s have taken a small step in the right direction, but it is still a step indeed.

Over 27 years ago, on February 3, 1981, the Nissan Corporation started, what has become, a mass migration of the auto manufacturing industry away from the stagnation of Detroit and the Midwest’s forced-unionism environs to a new day, and a new way, in the Right to Work South, when it chose Smyrna, Tennessee for the site of its first ever U.S. production plant.

Mealand Ragland-Hudgins of the Tennessean.com chose the 25th anniversary of the plant’s production start to report on how it came about:

The first Nissan vehicles rolled off the factory floor in June 1983, essentially becoming a catalyst for thousands of additional auto industry jobs to follow.

“Nissan led the way for Tennessee’s emergence into the auto industry,” said U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who was governor when the state courted Nissan as a major employer. He said Nissan also considered Kentucky as a location for the assembly plant, but chose Tennessee because of its state’s “right-to-work law” and because of its investment in a four-lane highway system.

What people forget is just how risky any new investment in the auto industry was at that time. But the promise of a brighter future in Right to Work Tennessee made the risks worthwhile.

The Japanese automaker’s decision came as much of the nation was coping with a deep recession.

“Up until that time the automobile companies had all stayed in the Midwest,” Alexander said. In 1981 and 1982, the Big Three automakers — General Motors, Ford and Chrysler — were enduring record high layoffs of full- and part-time employees amid a slow economy. Layoffs totaled nearly 270,000, according to newspaper reports.

Read on to learn more about this historic event.

In addition to the quarter of a billion dollars the AFL-CIO will spend to elect pro-Big Labor puppets across the nation, the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) will spend an incredible $75 million in forced-union-dues money between now and November.

The New York Times noted:

The union’s secretary-treasurer Anna Burger said the SEIU would devote money and staff to Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia. The union’s strategy appears to dovetail with the Obama campaign’s plans to compete in those states, all three of which President Bush won in 2004.

At a strategy briefing last week, campaign manager David Plouffe said “we think we’re in a very strong position” in North Carolina and Virginia and he indicated Mr. Obama would not be ceding the mountain West to Senator John McCain either. Mr. Obama chose the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs as the venue to talk up his national service agenda on Wednesday.

Ms. Burger said the union, which endorsed Senator Obama in February, would also pour resources for both the presidential contest and down-ballot races into the perennial battlegrounds of Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, among others, as well as governor’s races in Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina and Washington State.

To add insult to injury, the $75 million total does not include a $10 million bounty the union bosses have set aside to ensure that pro-Big Labor politicians don’t ever vote the interests of union members instead of the union leadership.