Right to Work

I recall shopping for paint with my wife many years ago.  “I like white,” I informed her at the outset.  She agreed that we could choose white so long as it had—as she termed it—a little color.  After arriving at the paint section of a hardware store, I began to look through the white sample chips. Not two or three varieties of white—I saw dozens.  I stopped looking when I found one named “Distant Thunder.”

“Found it!” I called to my wife.  “Distant Thunder!  That’s exactly what I want.”

We bought a few gallons of Distant Thunder.

Though the paint seemed as white as the chips nearby, I like the name and mostly purchased on that basis.

“Right-to-work” laws are of the same ilk as Distant Thunder.  The name is really the only selling point.  When you hear something about right to work you think “Geez, everybody deserves the right to work.”  But behind the name is just plain old white paint, if not something less that.

Right-to-work laws are outgrowths of the Taft-Hartley Act, passed by Congress overtop a Harry S. Truman veto.  Taft-Hartley essentially provided means to dismantle “closed shops” where membership in a union was required as a requisite term of employment. Prior to the passage of right-to-work laws, you always had the right to work for whoever would hire you, but if the shop you wanted to work for was unionized you needed to become a member of the union.  Following the passage of right-to-work legislation, you could go to work for a union shop without paying dues and becoming a member of the union. 

Honestly, that is about the thrust of right-to-work.  You will still be required to abide by all the laws and restrictions laid down by employer.  Such laws are of no help in providing “rights’ in that regard.  So far as the unions are concerned, right-to-work forces freeloaders onto them.  Even if an employee is not a dues-paying member by choice, the union is still obligated to bargain for his wages and benefits and represent him in any grievance brought against them by the employer.

Why would someone wish to freeload in a union shop?  That’s pretty easy.  Generally—thanks to the efforts of the union—wages, benefits, and conditions are better than in similar non-organized shops.  As a final note, nobody, not even proponents of right-to-work, disputes that wages are lower in states operating under right-to-work legislation. 

--Mitchell Hegman