A rift has formed between conservative groups opposed to organized labor over how best to pass legislation in Kentucky that would limit the ability of unions to force dues from unwilling workers — commonly called a right-to-work law.
The rift came into public view Wednesday when the president of the National Right to Work Committee said he had been verbally chewed out by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
“I got lectured for 15 minutes by Senator Rand Paul yesterday on this very issue, saying that we had made so many people mad about our position,” said NRTW President Mark Mix during an appearance at the conservative Leadership Institute. The comments were in reaction to a question from the audience.
Later in the speech, Mix said: “Like I said, I got a call from a well-recognized politician saying, ‘People are so mad at you. You’ve set back the right-to-work cause for years.’ That’s literally a quote.”
A spokesman for the senator declined to comment. Several others interviewed for this article would only speak off the record but expressed frustration with what they described as NRTW’s our-way-or-the-highway stance.
Right-to-work laws prohibit contracts between unions and businesses that say no one can work for the company unless they join the union or at least support it financially. Currently 24 states have the versions of law. The laws are widely seen as a threat to unions because they cause them to lose members and dues money by allowing people to simply opt out of joining.
Mix’s group is arguably the most prominent advocate for the laws, and its legal foundation has won several high-profile victories. It has invested several years in an effort to pass right-to-work in the Bluegrass State. That has lately put it at odds with other conservatives in the state and nationally.
At its the core, the conflict is over political strategy, sources on both sides say. NRTW favors focusing exclusively on passing right-to-work laws through state legislatures, while other conservative groups have recently adopted a novel legal strategy of trying to pass the laws at the county level.
The latter approach has rarely been tried before, and even some advocates concede they don’t know how courts will ultimately react. Nevertheless, conservative activists at places like the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Tax Reform are excited by the idea. They see it as complimentary to the state-level efforts, believing that county-level wins will build even broader grassroots support.
The effort has caught on in Kentucky. In just three months, versions of right to work have passed in five counties: Warren, Simpson, Fulton, Todd and Hardin. Four other counties — Logan, Cumberland, Whitley and Pulaski — have considered versions but have yet to officially adopt them.
Brent Yessin, a business-side labor lawyer and Kentucky native who has spearheaded the effort through his group Protect My Paycheck, told the Washington Examiner he expects as many as 10 more counties to adopt laws in the coming weeks. Labor groups are fighting the efforts in court.
Matt Patterson, executive director of the Center for Worker Freedom, an affiliate of Americans for Tax Reform, says that that progress shows the approach is working. “Clearly what we are seeing in Kentucky and elsewhere is legislators realizing that there is an appetite for this,” he said.
NRTW sharply disagrees, saying the legal argument is weak and that it is bad political strategy to boot because it will undermine efforts to pass laws at the state level. Lawmakers higher up in the political establishment won’t feel as much pressure if they think the issue has already been addressed, Mix said.
“In Kentucky, we are very close to passing a right-to-work law. In fact, the state senate passed a right-to-work law by a two-to-one vote,” Mix said in his Wednesday speech. “The [legislative] sponsor of the right-to-work bill down there is now saying that they will not have a vote in the Kentucky statehouse because the local option is the way to go.”
Mix also argued that it was a bad approach because county ordinances can be fairly easily overturned and unions are well-organized at that political level. On the other hand, no state right-to-work law has ever been overturned, he noted.
Yessin is not backing down. He dismisses NRTW’s claim that the county-level approach is on shaky legal ground: “If the National Right To Work Committee is right, then they know more about Kentucky law than the retired chief justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court and every other major conservative [legal] group with whom we have spoken.”
Some conservative activists argue that NRTW hasn’t just refused to aid the county-level efforts in Kentucky but has actively harmed them by coming out so strongly against the effort. On Dec. 23, NRTW posted a statement on its website arguing that there was “zero reason to believe that any local Right to Work ordinances adopted in Kentucky or any other state will be upheld in court.”
Activists complain that that statement and others by NRTW officials are now being cited by unions in their lobbying efforts against the laws.
NRTW officials say that as the leading group on the issue, they just get asked about it a lot. “We are not going out of our way to tell people not to do this. We are just giving our honest opinion,” said NRTW spokesman Pat Semmens.
The organization’s opposition took many on the Right by surprise. William Messenger, one of the top attorneys for NRTW’s legal foundation, was a featured guest at an August forum hosted by the Heritage Foundation in which conservative legal analysts pressed the case that counties could adopt the laws. Messenger’s presence made many think NRTW was on board with the effort.
Messenger said at the time that there was a legal argument for the county-level approach but cautioned there was very little case law on the subject. It was an audience member’s question regarding Messenger’s comments that prompted Mix’s revelation Wednesday that Paul had lectured him.
Mix said there was nothing inconsistent about Messenger’s comments and the group’s current stance, arguing that the lawyer’s comments regarded narrow issues of legal theory, not any specific strategy.
Both sides say they don’t want the disagreement to undermine the broader effort to expand right to work. “Everyone who is pushing for this has the exact right intentions,” Semmens said.
