OPINION:
Wisconsin may soon become the 25th state to adopt a right-to-work law, to guarantee that no worker can be compelled to join a union or to pay dues to a union. The state senate narrowly approved the legislation last week (by a vote of 17 to 15) and the bill is moving through the lower house. Gov. Scott Walker, who co-sponsored right-to-work legislation when he was a member of the legislature, says he will sign the legislation if it makes it to his desk.
The vote in the state senate followed the party line. All Democrats voted against it, joined by one Republican. The stakes were high and the debate was highly partisan. Sen. Dave Hansen, a Democrat, warned that “under right-to-work, the quality of life for Wisconsin families will only get worse.” Scott Fitzgerald, the leader of the Republican majority, citing the record in other states, argued otherwise, declaring that protecting the rights of workers will mean “more jobs, increased manufacturing output, and an overall better state business climate and stronger economy.”
Manufacturing jobs by the hundreds of thousands have migrated from states with forced membership in unions to right-to-work states, where workers can join a union or not. The forced-union states have suffered slumping economies, persuading some to abandon legally enforced union membership. The right-to-work movement began in the South, with its traditions of fierce go-it-alone independence, but has grown to national movement. Right-to-work states now stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, and include states in the West and the heartlands. Michigan, once the stronghold of unchallenged union power, is a recent right-to-work state.
But it’s more than a matter of jobs and manufacturing, as Mr. Fitzgerald rightly says. Individual freedom is at stake. His legislation, he says, will “ensure that Wisconsin’s workers have the sole power to determine whether they wish to belong to or support a labor organization, and ensure that they cannot be punished for that decision in their workplace.” Such assurance lies at the heart of what it means to be an American — “persuade me, but don’t try to make me”.
Most Americans — for political, financial or even religious reasons — don’t want to join a union. Many Americans are “joiners,” and many are not. No man or woman should be required to become a “joiner” because a union can persuade 50 percent plus one of the workers in a factory to vote for union representation.
Unions can thrive in right-to-work states, and some do, but they must persuade workers in free and open debate that the union has something attractive to offer. A few brave labor organizers now concede this. Gary Casteel, an organizer for the United Auto Workers in Southern states where union organizing is an uphill task, tells The Washington Post that he doesn’t understand why anyone thinks that right-to-work laws “hurt unions.” When he makes his union pitch, he will “tell these workers, ’If you don’t like this arrangement, you don’t have to belong,’ versus, ’If we get 50 percent of you, then all of you have to belong, whether you like it or not.’ I don’t even like the way that sounds.”
Neither do most Americans. Persuasion trumps force.
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