Congress Can Restore Employees' Right to Work

by Mark Mix

FOR RELEASE: March 21, 2001

Under the American constitutional system, it's long been a common understanding that freedom is two-sided.

The First Amendment bars Congress from interfering with religious observance, and at the same time bars Congress from forcing anyone to worship.

The constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press doesn't just bar Congress from forbidding a newspaper to publish a particular opinion. It also bars Congress from ordering a newspaper to publish that opinion.

In the area of employee rights, however, federal law has for several decades rejected this principle and instead perpetuated a phony, one-sided "freedom."

The law recognizes the right to join a union. But at the same time it authorizes and promotes the firing of employees for refusal to join or pay dues to a union that is certified by federal bureaucrats as their "exclusive" bargaining agent.

With the departure of the pro-forced unionism Clinton Administration in January, Congress now has a unique opportunity to eliminate the labor-law provisions that trample the individual worker's freedom to refrain from financially supporting a union.

On March 20, Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) reintroduced legislation (H.R.1109) in the House of Representatives to end the federal government's role in forcing workers to pay dues and "fees" to union bosses in order to feed their families.

This legislation, known as the National Right to Work Act, is publicly backed by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), and President George W. Bush. A companion Senate bill will be reintroduced soon.

The vast majority of Americans agree the law should respect employees' freedom to hold a job regardless of union affiliation.

Popular support for Right to Work has been confirmed in poll after poll. A 1997 opinion survey by Political Media/Research Inc. (Mason-Dixon), for example, showed that 77% of Americans support employees' Right to Work whether or not they choose to affiliate with a union.

Furthermore, the 21 states that now have Right to Work laws, which protect private-sector employees from federally-imposed forced union dues and also bar forced dues in the public sector, have together compiled an impressive economic track record.

Between 1969 and 1999, according to the U.S. Labor Department, real per capita personal income grew by 82% in Right to Work states, compared to 67% in forced-dues states.

With standard governmental principle, public opinion, and economic data all favoring Right to Work, you might think this wouldn't be a controversial issue.

Of course, it is, primarily for one reason -- politics.

Union officials funnel a large portion of the $5 billion in compulsory dues and "fees" they grab each year under federal labor law into hidden support for favored political candidates.

Poll data indicate that a substantial majority of the workers whose forced dues bankroll such efforts either actively oppose union officials' favored candidates, or would prefer not to be involved in politics at all.

These workers' forced-dues money pays for partisan phone banks, get-out-the-vote drives, politically oriented mail, and much more.

Big Labor politicians who are self-styled advocates of campaign-finance "reform" claim that voluntary, reported "soft" contributions to political parties that pay for the exact same campaign activities are so evil they must be completely banned.

Yet these very politicians will fight to the bitter end to maintain the forced-dues system that empowers union officials to amass by far the largest campaign war chest in politics today.

According to a formula developed by Rutgers University economist Leo Troy, the leading academic authority on U.S. labor unions, the estimated value of hidden, "in-kind" federal contributions by Organized Labor in 1999-2000 was at least 75% greater than total "soft" contributions to either major party!

The ongoing debate over campaign-finance "reform" is a chance to put the spotlight on forced dues-funded electioneering.

As supporters of the National Right to Work Act, the true federal solution to the problem of forced union dues in politics, George Bush and other GOP leaders should make its passage their unconditional baseline for any campaign-finance reform package.

If Big Labor politicians respond as expected and kill the Right to Work Amendment, at least the public will know exactly which campaign "reformers" oppose reform of forced-dues political corruption.

And just putting that information on the record would constitute a major step toward restoring real, two-sided freedom for American employees.

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