This Labor Day, when most Americans pause to celebrate workers and their contribution to our free society, union bosses will not let anything get in their way to promote their own agenda of special interests.
Despite this, there is still much to celebrate this Labor Day. Workers from across the country have made substantial gains for workplace freedom.
Earlier this year Kentucky and Missouri became the 27th and 28th states, respectively, to pass Right to Work laws. Kentucky’s law went into effect immediately, and the state has already seen a boom in economic development and job creation as a direct result.
Union bosses in Missouri – desperate to keep their power to order a worker fired simply for not paying union dues or fees – have been able to delay implementation of the law so far. But with six new states adopting Right to Work laws in five years, there is no question that workplace freedom is on the march.
While these victories are promising for workers’ freedom, more work remains to be done.
In the 22 states without Right to Work laws, union officials can legally order workers fired, simply for refusing to hand over part of their hard-earned paycheck to union officials. What’s more, millions of other workers have no choice but to accept union bargaining over their wages and working conditions, even if they want nothing to do with the union and could get a better deal on their own.
This, despite the fact that poll after poll shows that 8 in 10 Americans oppose forced union dues and affiliation. With such overwhelming support for Right to Work, union officials are increasingly reliant on their forced union dues-funded political activism to protect and expand their government-granted legal privileges of compulsion and extortion.
For union officials, political activism takes precedence over protecting worker rights. Big Labor’s multi-billion dollar forced-dues funded political machine enables it to wield immense clout in Washington and in state capitals, even though much of it is spent on candidates and causes opposed by many of the workers whom union officials claim to represent.
Meanwhile, union officials sit back and rake in the forced dues. After all, why bother with the hard work of representing employees as long as they are sitting on a forced-dues revenue stream guaranteed by the government?
If union membership, representation, and dues payment were strictly voluntary, union officials would have to earn workers’ support. They would have to be accountable and responsive to the rank-and-file or else face a loss of revenue. Instead, workers pay billions each year to union bosses simply because they would lose their jobs if they did not.
Perhaps this Labor Day, union officials should take a step back and reexamine how reliant they are on government-granted compulsory powers and how this causes millions of American workers want nothing to do with a union.
Mark Mix is president of the National Right to work Legal Defense Foundation.
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