Forced-Unionism Bills Menace Economy, Mutilate Nebraska Constitution

by Mark Mix

FOR RELEASE: March 1, 2001

For several years now, Nebraska employees and businesses have worked hard to offset the damage done to the state economy by the sharp decline in farm commodity prices since 1997.

Thanks to Nebraska's well-educated, purposeful employees and innovative business owners and managers, a largely agricultural state has remained prosperous in a tough climate.

Unfortunately, it seems that many members of the Nebraska Legislature in Lincoln can't stand prosperity.

Last month, some of these legislators held hearings on two measures that are designed to dismantle Nebraska's Right to Work law, and thus wipe out a critical factor in the Cornhusker State's economic success.

Like similar laws in 20 other states, Nebraska's Right to Work law partially restores for private-sector employees the individual freedom of choice that pro-union monopoly federal labor law takes away from them.

Federal law dictates that private employees in all 50 states can be forced as a condition of employment to accept union officials as their "exclusive" bargaining agents in contract negotiations and grievance procedures.

Federally-imposed union monopoly bogs down economic growth because it actively discourages workers' efforts to improve their productivity.

Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute, an AFL-CIO-funded "think tank," admitted as much a few years ago when he wrote that union-boss negotiated contracts' typical result is "reducing pay of the most productive workers."

But the Right to Work of Nebraska employees, both private and public, is protected by statute and the state constitution.

Therefore, employees cannot be fired for refusal to join a union or for refusal to pay dues or "fees" to union bargaining agents they don't want and never asked for.

The harm done by federal labor law is far less in Right to Work states, where highly productive workers have the freedom to fight back against union bosses who discriminate against them by withholding their union dues.

And better incentives for employees lead to higher real incomes in Right to Work states.

The Nobel Prize-winning Economics Department of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., issued a study last year comparing household incomes, adjusted for taxes and other living costs, in metro areas in Right to Work and non-Right to Work states.

The report revealed that Right to Work states have an adjusted mean two-earner household income nearly $1200 a year above that of non-Right to Work states.

The evidence is clear. Right to Work laws both protect the individual employee's liberty and boost his purchasing power.

Nevertheless, in recent years some politicians have tried to repeal or gut Nebraska's Right to Work law. A few seem to have naively swallowed union lobbyists' line; others are clearly trying to curry favor with Big Labor.

This winter state Sen. John Hilgert (Omaha) has introduced a bill that would gut the Right to Work in the Cornhusker State.

This measure (L.B.153) is a direct assault on Right to Work. It would authorize Big Labor to force workers, private-sector and public-sector, union members and nonmembers alike, to pay union tribute, or be sued by union lawyers.

L.B.153 would effectively abolish Nebraskans' constitutional Right to Work without being forced to bankroll a union.

In fact, Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg ruled in 1993 that a bill identical to L.B.153 was unconstitutional.

Another pending measure (L.B.29) by state Sen. Pam Redfield (Omaha) is much more subtle.

L.B.29 supposedly "remedies" injustices spawned under Nebraska's 32-year-old public-sector monopoly-bargaining law.

Under current law, an employee who opts not to join a union can take money out of his own pocket to pay for a nonunion lawyer to file a grievance with his employer -- then see the settlement junked because it doesn't conform to the union contract!

But L.B.29 would actually compound this injustice by forcing any union nonmember who, realizing he has no real choice, instead follows union-created grievance procedures to pay so-called "agency fees" to the union.

And L.B.29 would let the union bosses decide how much to charge for their monopolistic grievance "service."

Workers who balked at paying exorbitant fees to Big Labor would be hauled into court.

L.B.29 isn't out-and-out repeal of Nebraska's Right to Work law -- but it clearly hikes the pressure on independent-minded workers to pay "fees" for union legal products that they don't want and wouldn't ask for if they had true freedom of contract.

By moving L.B.153 and the slightly less extreme L.B.29 toward the Senate floor in concert, union strategists may be calculating they will give fence-sitting senators cover to vote for the latter as a "compromise."

Nebraska Right to Work supporters must not allow Big Labor to get away with any such "bait and switch" scheme. Both L.B.153 and L.B.29 are forced-unionism bills.

And any state senator who votes for either bill will have voted against freedom.

Mark Mix is senior vice president of the Springfield, Va.-based National Right to Work Committee®.