Labor’s anti-Snyder campaign makes case for right to work

Posted by hpayne on August 21, 2013

Union members protest right-to-work legislation at the Michigan state capitol in December 2012.

Last week, the AFL-CIO announced that it was targeting the re-election of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (and five other Republican governors) because of his support of allegedly anti-worker initiatives, such as right-to-work legislation.

But in its partisan broadside, the Big Labor lobby only proved why right to work — which allows employees in a union shop the choice of whether to pay dues — benefits Michigan workers who are opposed to their paychecks being diverted to partisan electioneering.

“Many AFL-CIO rank and file members in those six states approve of the job being done by those governors, yet their union will use those workers’ dues to engage in an extremely partisan fight not supported by those workers,” says Terry Bowman, a United Autoworkers Union member and founder of Union Conservatives, a non-profit organization opposed to Big Labor’s one-party agenda.

The political record of Big Labor indicates that union leadership is more concerned with Democratic Party politics than with the needs of its rank and file. Now law in 24 states after last winter’s stunning win in union-stronghold Michigan, right to work promises to force labor leadership to refocus on workers’ needs if enough employees choose to refuse union dues.

As evidenced by the re-election campaign of President Barack Obama in 2012, Big Labor has been milking member dues to elect Democrats. Indeed, the GM and Chrysler bailouts — more accurately called the UAW bailouts — were White House-organized bankruptcies designed to preserve the UAW and its massive dues structure, a key Democratic funding source for its political PACs and grassroots organizing (ironically, the UAW’s favorable treatment came at the expense of unionized teachers and firefighters, whose bond-invested pensions were gutted in the automakers’ bankruptcies). The Teamsters union also poured resources into Obama’s re-election to preserve Obamacare — as did the AFL-CIO, which represents Michigan AFSCME workers and trade unions.

But workers might be wondering what their union dues bought them.

As the Democratic Party leadership has lurched left to the coasts, green priorities often trump industrial concerns. The Keystone Pipeline XL, for example, promises some 20,000 jobs — many of them represented by the AFL-CIO’s trade unions — yet the Obama administration has turned a deaf ear to the project.

“America’s Building Trades Unions emphatically support the construction of Keystone,” wrote Sean McGarvey, president of the AFL trades, to Congress this May lamenting the 13 percent unemployment rate among construction workers in the slow Obama recovery. “For many members of our unions, Keystone XL is not just a pipeline; it is, in the most literal sense, a lifeline.”

The United Mineworkers have also suffered thousands of coal industry job losses under the Obama EPA’s War on Carbon, while Obamacare has come back to haunt the Teamsters and AFSCME, threatening jobs as employers move more employees to part time to avoid the budget-busting employer mandate.

Yet these same workers’ dues continue to fund the Democratic agenda.

In 2014, that agenda includes defeating Republican governors who have fought to give these employees the right to withdraw financial support from political activities. “These are all states in which the rights of working people are at stake,” Michigan AFL-CIO spokeswoman Sara Wallenfang told The Detroit News in explaining why her leadership has targeted Snyder for defeat.

“This proves that the AFL-CIO purposely ignores that individual workers actually receive additional rights, freedoms and protections when states grant them the return of their First Amendment right of freedom of association by passing a right-to-work law,” responds union activist Bowman. “Ms. Wallenfang apparently wants to continue the destructive policy of forced unionism that politically discriminates against many of their own members.”

Mackinac Center labor analyst Vincent Vernuccio, a supporter of Michigan right to work, hopes that, as more workers refuse to pay dues, the unions “will be forced to concentrate on their original purpose, which is not to campaign for politicians but to ensure the best conditions for workers.”

By giving workers the right to choose, Snyder has won a victory for worker rights. What if the $12 million in dues money that unions spent last year on super PACs to re-elect an anti-coal and anti-Keystone jobs Democratic president was dedicated instead to better coal mine and oil pipeline safety?

 

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