This country has a different definition for "Right To Work" than everyone else in the world. The phrase is deliberately meant to confuse. A Texas newspaper columnist coined the expression decades ago, and it was picked up to mean working without having to be a member of a union. In a peculiarly American way of adopting names that can be contrary to what they can mean, proponents called their effort "right to work." At first glance, this seems to be a declaration that there is a right to have a job, a right to meaningful employment. The phrase actually describes the farthest thing from having a right to work, and workers should refer to this corporate agenda as what it is; The Right to Work for Less.
Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. warned against “false slogans such as ‘right to work’ [whose] purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone.”
Like most business initiatives that purport to help the little people, this one starts with cutting workers’ wages. Right To Work is supposed to be a tool for luring manufacturers from one state to another. As the Chamber of Commerce explains, “unionization increases labor costs,” and therefore “makes a given location a less attractive place to invest new capital.” By giving up unions and lowering wages, workers increase their desirability in the eyes of manufacturers. This is the corporate lobby’s idea of economic policy: have people in every state compete for the lowest wages and crappiest benefits. Some location will inevitably win out, but in the end everyone’s wages will be lower and the number of jobs in the country will be exactly the same as before. And the race to the bottom picks up pace.
But even as a policy of “immiseration makes growth", it doesn’t work. According to statistical studies (February 2011 Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank study titled “Does ‘Right-to-Work’ Create Jobs?”), the impact of RTW laws is to lower average income by about $1,500 a year and to decrease the odds of getting health insurance or a pension through your job—for both union and nonunion workers. But while RTW succeeds in cutting wages, it fails to boost job growth. The facts are that Unions are weakened by Right to Work laws, wages are lowered, and worker safety and health becomes endangered. The Economic Policy Institute found:
Wages in right-to-work states are 3.2% lower than those in non-right-to-work states, after controlling for a full complement of individual demographic and socioeconomic variables as well as state macroeconomic indicators. Using the average wage in non-right-to-work states as the base ($22.11), the average full-time, full-year worker in an right-to-work state makes about $1,500 less annually than a similar worker in a non-right-to-work state.
The rate of employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) is 2.6 percentage points lower in right-to-work states compared with non-right-to-work states, after controlling for individual, job, and state-level characteristics. If workers in non-RTW states were to receive ESI at this lower rate, 2 million fewer workers nationally would be covered.
The rate of employer-sponsored pensions is 4.8 percentage points lower in right-to-work states, using the full complement of control variables in [the study's] regression model. If workers in non-right-to-work states were to receive pensions at this lower rate, 3.8 million fewer workers nationally would have pensions.
To be sure, the erosion of unions was already well underway throughout the United States. Unionization of private company workers is only 20% of what it was in the 1950s, when more than 35% of workers were union members, according to the latest federal labor statistics. North Carolina has the lowest rate of unionization, at 2.9 %, and South Carolina the second lowest, at 3.4 % while Indiana has a rate of 8.9%, down from 12.1%, as factory jobs have disappeared over the last decade.
Supporting right to work laws are based on outright falsehoods, some of them, including phrases like 'forced unionism', are embedded in the names of the legislation. Organizations like the National Right to Work Committee use scary language, including threats of union violence and allusions to corrupt union bosses, and misleading or false propaganda to pursue their anti-worker agenda. Right to Work conservatives at all levels echo these types of claims and use the army of talking points from the NRTWC and the Republican Party. The problem is that the talking points are just plain false.
So where is Mitt Romney on the question?
“If I become president of the United States, I will curb the practice we have in this country of giving union bosses an unfair advantage in contracting,” Romney said. “One of the first things that I will do – actually on Day One- is I will end the government’s favoritism towards unions in contracting on federal projects.
Friends don't let friends vote for Mitt Romney
“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.
Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.” —Martin Luther King, speaking about right-to-work laws in 1961
This country has a different definition for "Right To Work" than everyone else in the world. The phrase is deliberately meant to confuse. A Texas newspaper columnist coined the expression decades ago, and it was picked up to mean working without having to be a member of a union. In a peculiarly American way of adopting names that can be contrary to what they can mean, proponents called their effort "right to work." At first glance, this seems to be a declaration that there is a right to have a job, a right to meaningful employment. The phrase actually describes the farthest thing from having a right to work, and workers should refer to this corporate agenda as what it is; The Right to Work for Less.