What is the right to work?

Last week as my usual Christmas baking frenzy got underway, the mailman delivered a small box from my brother in Texas. Inside was a stack of CDs — or as I termed them, “music to bake by.”

One of the CDs was Americana artist Dave Alvin’s Eleven Eleven, which includes a song called, “Gary, Indiana 1959.” Written from the viewpoint of a former U.S. Steel employee, the middle of the song reflects much of Middle America today.

“Now the years disappeared in the blink of an eye.
And I feel like a stranger in a world that isn’t mine.
Now my dear wife died, and my kids all moved away
‘cause there ain’t nothin’ here to make ‘em want to stay.
‘Cause the factories are in ruins; decent jobs hard to find,
and you can’t get a break no matter how hard you try.
‘Cause the big boys make the rules; tough luck for everyone else,
and out on the streets it’s every man for himself.”

This song echoes events in Michigan as Gov. Rick Snyder attempts to destroy unions via a “Right to Work” law. Like so many Corporate Conservative maneuvers, Right to Work laws are deceptively named. They have nothing to do with workers’ rights. Instead, they are designed to protect corporate political power and profits by gutting unions.

How? These laws do away with unions’ right to ask non-union members to help pay for the collective bargaining unions conduct to benefit ALL workers — union or non-union. Because the bottom line is, all workers at an organization benefit from the pay, benefits and protections union contracts provide. Employees who do not wish to belong to the union don’t have to pay union dues, simply the portion that covers the cost of bargaining. It’s only fair.

But throughout the years, via corporate control of media and campaign financing, efforts to demonize unions and collective bargaining have paid off. By and large Americans have fallen for these efforts. Union membership has declined, and not coincidentally, worker protections and wages have too. As Colin Gordon, professor of history at University of Iowa, writes on his blog for the Economic Policy Institute: “The wage effect alone underestimates the union contribution to shared prosperity... And unions not only raise the wage floor but can also lower the ceiling; union bargaining power has been shown to moderate the compensation of executives at unionized firms.” [http://www.epi.org/blog/union-decline-rising-inequality-charts/ ]

Many worker protections were won because of hard fought union battles, and today, we take most of them for granted: the 40-hour work week, employee benefits, paid vacation and safety regulations, to name a few. Unfortunately, after years of Corporate Conservative political influence, these benefits are no longer guaranteed.

Snyder’s lame-duck passage of a Right to Work law in Michigan follows a similar drive by Scott Walker in Wisconsin a year ago. In both cases, the initiative has been tied to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Americans for Prosperity, two organizations funded by the Koch brothers and other wealthy corporate moguls. [http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/12/michigan-right-to-work-unions.php]

These are the “big boys” Alvin sings about. Their goal is protecting their power and profit, not workers. So we’d best follow Alvin’s protagonist, who sings:

“I still remember where we marched side by side back in Gary, Indiana 1959.”

Because united we stand; divided we fall.