{"id":11970,"date":"2012-12-05T17:26:17","date_gmt":"2012-12-05T21:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=11970"},"modified":"2012-12-11T17:27:57","modified_gmt":"2012-12-11T21:27:57","slug":"payne-the-war-for-worker-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2012\/12\/payne-the-war-for-worker-freedom","title":{"rendered":"Payne: The War for Worker Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

UAW President Bob King, led a violent,\u00a0mob union protest<\/a>\u00a0against the Republican legislature’s right-to-work bills in Lansing Thursday – but it’s King that the protestors should be turning against. Were it not for his introduction of the divisive Prop 2 in November’s campaign, right-to-work would not be an issue today.<\/p>\n

With his\u00a0March announcement<\/a>\u00a0of a constitutional amendment to ban right-to-work and reverse Republican-led government reforms, sources say that King united a broad coalition of business, grass-roots activists, and legislators in a long-term strategy to not only defeat Prop 2 – but to enact game-changing right-to-work legislation in Michigan.<\/p>\n

Politics is about personalities as well as issues, and King’s key mistake was honking off Governor Snyder who, until King’s Prop 2 provocation, had tried to keep right-to-work on the sidelines.<\/p>\n

But Prop 2 – which would also have overturned Snyder’s key budget reforms – forced One Tough Nerd’s hand.<\/p>\n

From March on, Snyder joined conservative activists that were paving the ground – not just to defeat Prop 2 – but give every Michigan worker the freedom of right-to-work. It was an audacious strategy that took full form at\u00a0The West Michigan Policy Conference in September<\/a>. The conference brings together the state’s top conservative business leaders, legislators, economists, and activists – and the agenda was heavy on right-to-work.<\/p>\n

The message was clear and it was aimed at a national audience: If King aimed to make Michigan Ground Zero to eliminate right-to-work, then business interests should make Michigan Ground Zero to enact right-to-work.<\/p>\n

In short, defeating Prop 2 AND passing R2W in Michigan – the cradle of the UAW- would be a crippling blow to the national labor movement.<\/p>\n

America’s fastest-growing states are right-to-work states. Indeed, Michigan has been losing jobs to southern R2W states (now including Indiana) for decades. No state would be more symbolic of labor’s decline than passage of right-to-work in Michigan. In pushing for right-to-work today, Governor Snyder – and his House and Senate partners, Bolger and Richardville – are not just crowning a strategy that has been in place for months, they are winning a major battle in America’s War for Worker Freedom.<\/p>\n

If Snyder & Co. sign right-to-work in the next week, they will have fully committed to a war that was launched by King last March. That war will finally be won when Snyder wins re-election in 2014 – and any labor referendum to overturn right-to-work goes down in flames.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UAW President Bob King, led a violent,\u00a0mob union protest\u00a0against the Republican legislature’s right-to-work bills in Lansing Thursday – but it’s King that the protestors should be turning against. Were it not for his introduction of the divisive Prop 2 in November’s campaign, right-to-work would not be an issue today. With his\u00a0March announcement\u00a0of a constitutional amendment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,87],"tags":[2369,1332],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11971,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11970\/revisions\/11971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}