My column in today’s paper is about how critics of right-to-work laws almost never bother to explain exactly what the laws do. That’s because a clear explanation tends to undermine the critics’ cases, revealing that they are essentially arguing for the right of Big Labor to force people to support unions financially even if they don’t want to join one.
I was curious therefore to see how most media outlets would describe right-to-work in their stories about Michigan becoming the 24th state to adopt such a law. Conservatives may be surprised, but the New York Times had it exactly right:
It was one of the few I saw that bothered to explain the coercive nature of “closed shop” rules and how that impinged on workers’ rights. Most other news outlets failed to do that. They generally gave readers the impression the law allowed workers to renege on paying money they had promised to the unions.
For example, here’s how it is described in today’s front-page Washington Post story:
That’s technically accurate but the description does not clarify that the workers are not paying dues because they don’t want to be union members in the first place. Instead it implies the workers joined but have slacked off on paying their dues and the union is just trying collect what the workers promised it.
A story on CNN’s website also fails to clarify that the workers it affects don’t want to belong to a union.
ABC news also doesn’t explain “closed shop” rules, again giving the impression that workers are members weaseling out of paying what they promised the union.
Here’s how TPM.com described it:
Well, by describing it as involving “payments that are currently required” it makes it sound like the worker has some contract with the union and owes it something rather than the union simply having the power to demand payment.
MSNBC’s version appears to have come directly from a union group’s talking points:
Not only does this one not explain closed shop union rules, it adds “even though the union negotiates on a worker’s behalf” at the end to hammer home the impression the workers are ripping off the union.
Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., tries to address the free market argument for right-to-work in the Detroit Free Press and proceeds to tie himself into knots:
So, you see, they don’t have to pay dues to a union. They have to pay an “agency fee”! And this is different because … how, congressman?
In fairness to Levin, it is true that those nonunion workers can demand that they not be dunned for non-collective bargaining-related expenses by union. Of course, unions also fight tooth and nail to make that as hard as possible.
