Columns

After the election, Kentucky, Missouri, and New Hampshire are now under unified Republican control and legislators in these states are set on passing Right-to-Work laws, which lessens union power by allowing workers in unionized workplaces to withhold union fees used to organize and advocate on their behalf. And with a Trump presidency and a Republican-controlled Congress, there is a real danger of passage of a federal right-to-work law. 

Thanks to collective bargaining, union members have higher wages and better benefits. In addition, union membership actually raises living and working standards for all working men and women, union and non-union. When union membership rates are high, so is the share of income that goes to the middle class. When those rates fall, income inequality grows and the middle class shrinks. 

Right-to-work, or as some have called such laws, a right-to-work for less laws, are being enacted by more and more states. The 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, permitted a state to pass laws that prohibit unions from requiring a worker to pay dues, even when the worker is covered by a union-negotiated collective bargaining agreement. Thus, workers in right-to-work states have less incentive to join and pay dues to a union. As a result, unions have less clout vis-à-vis corporations. Twenty-five states now have right-to-work laws. 

Corporations did not all of a sudden give workers two days off each week, which we now call weekends, or paid vacations and sick leave, or rights at the workplace, or pensions, or overtime pay. Virtually all the benefits we have at work, whether in the public or private sector, are because unions fought hard and long against big business who did everything they could to prevent giving us these rights. 

Labor membership is shrinking. According to the Bureau of Labor Standards, in 2015 the percentage of wage and salary workers who were members of a union was 11.1 percent, down from 20.1 percent in 1983. Consider that union membership peaked in 1954 at 28.3 percent. 

However, union popularity is up. Last year, a 2015 Gallup poll found 6 of 10 approve of labor unions, up from 48 percent in 2009. Yet 71 percent of those polled support right-to-work laws. It would seem that many Americans just don’t like being forced to join an organization against their will, even if they support the organization itself. Unions have work to do on changing this perception of right-to-work laws. 

Studies found worker friendly [non-right-to-work] states are significantly healthier, are more productive, have less poverty, and with citizens who enjoy longer life spans. The studies found that "wages in right-to-work states are 3.1 percent lower than those in non-right-to-work states, after controlling for a full complement of individual demographic and socioeconomic factors as well as state macroeconomic indicators. This translates into right-to-work being associated with $1,558 lower annual wages for a typical full-time, full-year worker." 

Why do we need unions anyway? Because they are essential for America. Unions are the only large-scale movement left in America that serve as a countervailing balance against corporate power, acting in the economic interest of the middle class. But the decline of unions over the past few decades has left corporations and the rich with essentially no powerful opposition. You may take issue with a particular union’s position on an issue, but remember they are the only real organized check on the power of the business community in this country.  

Right-to-work laws are anti-union and contribute to a shrinking middle class and wealth inequality. Republicans hate unions because they are a threat to corporate control.