Michiganders Are Leaving for Right to Work States
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Michigan’s auto-manufacturing jobs are on the decline, and young workers are quickly moving out of the state.
As one Michigan resident put it:
"Every week at my church I hear about two or three more young people moving South or Southwest," Mr. Warren says. "Too bad, because Michigan needs to keep its young people."
Mr. Warren echoes Mark Mix’s call in the Detroit Free Press on Labor Day, stating:
Michigan simply isn’t creating enough good jobs to keep its young employees from leaving for more prosperous states.
Michigan, one of 28 forced-unionism states, is home of the auto-industry’s “Big Three” where United Auto Workers (UAW) union officials have a stranglehold over employee free choice. The state has seen its fair share of economic decline and is facing troubles both now and in the long-term.
According to data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, between 1994 and 2004, the number of 25 to 34 year-olds in Michigan fell from 1.46 million to 1.29 million, a stinging decline of 10.6 percent. The data also indicate this decline is largely attributable to the absence of a Right to Work law in Michigan.
To retain its young employees and the energy and creativity they contribute, Michigan needs to create more jobs. And a Right to Work law would guarantee the right of employees to decide for themselves whether or not to join or financially support a union.
Angela Davis, a Michigan resident who intends to pursue a nursing career, started taking classes at a local university after being laid off from Chrysler earlier this year. She plans to return to Alabama, where her father lived before moving to Michigan.
Mrs. Davis hopes to graduate in 2010 and then retrace her father’s journey, relocating her family to the South, where unemployment rates are lower than Michigan’s 7.2%, the highest in the U.S. "Every time I visit down there it just feels like home," she says.
The whole Southern region of the U.S. is made up entirely of long-time Right to Work states.
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
Yesterday, longtime number-two union boss at the AFL-CIO, Linda Chavez-Thompson announced she would be retiring later this month. Amazingly, in a 1999 interview Chavez revealed that she had no idea what Right to Work means:
Of course, Right to Work protections have nothing to do with at-will employment. Rather, Right to Work laws – like the one in Texas – simply guarantee that employees cannot be required to pay dues to a union to get or keep a job.
Perhaps that ignorance of the concept of employee freedom of choice made it easier for Chavez to collect her salary of over $240,000 funded by individual workers who would fired if they refused to pay.
Set to replace Chavez is another longtime union official Alrene Holt-Baker who came over to the AFL-CIO with Chavez-Thompson from the AFSCME union in 1995. Holt-Baker, who already collects over $100,000 a year, can expect a sizable raise for her new position – funded, naturally, with forced union dues taken from workers under threat of termination.
Does Forced Unionism Also Threaten Bridge Safety?
The National Taxpayers Union’s blog (they’re a voluntary “union”) picks up on a Senate vote today to repeal Davis-Bacon wage mandates for bridges classified as “structurally deficient” or “functionally obsolete.”
Like “Project Labor Agreements,” Davis-Bacon effectively discriminates against nonunion workers and contractors, effectively blackballing them from working on government projects.
Not surprisingly, Big Labor’s allies in the Senate blocked the amendment that would have eliminated the onerous David-Bacon requirements… meaning that taxpayer dollars will continue to be diverted into bridge construction projects under union boss monopoly control.
The resulting featherbedding, extortionate work stoppages, and wasteful work rules will run up the costs. Meanwhile, union officials will rake in millions in forced union dues.
But that isn’t where the story ends. This map shows the Percentage of Bridges in each State that is classified as “Functionally Obsolete” or “Structurally Unsound” (the same classifications used in the blocked Senate Amendment):
It turns out that bridges in Right to Work States are far safer than those in states that allow union officials to force workers to pay union dues or be fired.
In fact bridges are 31% more likely to be functionally obsolete or structurally unsound in forced-unionism states (29.68% in Forced-Unionism States vs. 22.71% in Right to Work States).
Time’s Running Out…
Right to Work attorneys this week won a ruling at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) stating that union officials cannot force nonunion workers to object twice simply to receive basic information about how union affiliates spend their forced union dues.
However, as noted on Labor Day, the window of opportunity for the Bush NLRB to undo the damgage to employee freedom done by the agency during the Clinton years is closing quickly.
Kaiser Admits to Confusion During Organizing Drive
When it comes time for union officials to corral employees into forced dues-paying ranks, they are increasingly using coercive "card check" organizing schemes.
Lisa Eklund, an administrative specialist at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California, experienced this first hand. Service Employees International Union-United Health Care West (SEIU-UHW) union officials attempted to force Kaiser employees into signing union "authorization" cards that would later be counted as "votes" favoring unionization.
Just like that, the SEIU-UHW union gained monopoly bargaining privileges. But union officials and Kaiser could not prove that the union had actual support of a majority of employees. In fact, in a memo that Kaiser Permanente sent to its employees, they even admit that the company did not know how many employees were in the bargaining unit, yet claimed there was majority support for unionization anyway, and was prepared to enter into negotiations with union officials.
Previously, Lisa and three of her coworkers filed federal charges against the union and their employer for manipulating the size of the bargaining unit in order to obtain a majority. Despite requests, union officials were unable to disclose the names of the employees who were eligible to participate in the drive and couldn’t indicate which employees were inside or outside the alleged bargaining unit.
The National Labor Relations Board agreed to investigate and issue a complaint, but within two weeks of that announcement, SEIU-UHW and Kaiser suspiciously abandoned the card count. Having filed follow-up charges, Lisa and her coworkers are currently awaiting an outcome to the board’s investigation.
You can read about several other employees like Karen Mayhew and Mike Ivey who fought back against "card check" organizing schemes with help from the National Right to Work Foundation.
Federal Labor Board: Employees Need Not Object Twice to Obtain Detail of How Union Officials Spend Forced Dues
**Janesville, Wisc. (September 11, 2007)** – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, DC, ruled that union officials cannot force nonunion members to object twice simply to receive basic information about how union affiliates spend the workers’ forced union dues.
By a vote of 3-2, the NLRB majority agreed with National Right to Work Foundation attorneys and chose to follow an earlier U.S. Court of Appeals decision (also won by Foundation attorneys) which the Clinton NLRB had refused to apply. This week’s NLRB ruling decreed that refusal to provide a breakdown of union affiliate expenditures violates the union’s “duty of fair representation” (DFR) owed to nonunion workers. The relatively vague DFR standard is intended to protect employees from arbitrary or deliberately discriminatory actions by union officials.
With free legal help from the Foundation, Brandon Jones, a former employee of Chambers & Owen warehouses, in Janesville, Wisconsin, originally filed unfair labor practice charges at the NLRB in October 2001. Jones challenged Teamster Union Local 579’s policy of refusing to provide employees information about how union affiliates spend their mandatory dues until the employee not only “objects” to paying for non-collective bargaining activity, but also further “challenges” the union’s diversion of funds to union affiliates. Affiliates include such entities as the national or regional union or the AFL-CIO.
Under the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court *Communications Workers v. Beck* and *Ellis v. BRAC* decisions, the high court recognized that workers have the right to refrain from formal union membership and have the right to object to paying for non-bargaining activities (such as politics, organizing, and lobbying). Under *Chicago Teachers v. Hudson*, non-members are also entitled to receive an independently audited breakdown of union expenditures and to challenge the breakdown before an impartial decision maker.
But the Clinton NLRB dramatically undercut the Beck decision and piled additional burdens on dissenting employees. Specifically, the Clinton NLRB applied the weak DFR standard instead of a stricter statutory standard to processing of Beck objections. In part, this meant that employees must resign or refrain from union membership and affirmatively object before receiving any disclosure of union expenditures. In this week’s ruling, dissenting NLRB members Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh (an activist union partisan who is reportedly jockeying for Senate confirmation with his recess appointment expiring in December) argued, like the Clinton NLRB, that employees should be forced to object a second time before receiving any meaningful disclosure from union affiliates. While this ruling does not correct many of the deficiencies of the NLRB’s *Beck* enforcement procedures, it does reverse one of its many anti-employee elements.
“This ruling is a small step forward for employee freedom,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “However, the Bush NLRB has a lot more work to do to put the agency on the side of the worker rather than the union bosses. And time is running out.”
Talking Economics on CNBC’s Power Lunch
Speaking of the economic benefits of Right to Work, here’s another recent national television appearance by Mark Mix on CNBC’s "Power Lunch" discussing that very topic.
Right to Work Laws are an Economic Boon
In South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel today, Gene Mechanic of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) writes that Florida should scrap the state’s highly-popular Right to Work law.
His outrageous claims including "Right to Work laws harms workers" and "the economically damaging effect of ‘right to work’ laws is well documented" are completely bogus.
In fact, Mechanic’s perversion of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ data is misleading. According to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR), since 2001, Right to Work states lead in job growth 5-to-1. Between 2001 and 2005, real personal income growth increased 37% in Right to Work states. Comparatively, forced-unionism states had a real personal income percentage growth of only 26%, below the national average of 31% growth.
There’s no doubt that Right to Work laws are an economic boon. In fact, a recent special on CNBC television shows that Florida was ranked the 8th best state in which to do business overall. And, the top six states to do business were all long time Right to Work states.
But aside from providing economic prosperity, Right to Work laws give employees the freedom to choose. Florida’s Right to Work law, on the books since 1944, ensures Floridians’ long and proud tradition of supporting freedom of choice when it comes to union membership.
Governor Charlie Crist couldn’t have put it better when he said Florida’s Right to Work law provides "greater freedom" for his fellow citizens.
Drive Compulsory Unionism-Free
Fall is the time of year when car companies release their new model automobiles. It also is the time of year when United Auto Worker union bosses release their list of so-called “union made” cars – with the hope that the label will attract consumers.
Of course, the UAW International union officials aren’t actually making anything. Rather by “union-made” they mean that the rank-and-file workers who make the cars are forced to affiliate with the union and those in non-Right to Work states are forced to pay dues.
For many, such a list has the opposite effect, as nearly 80 percent of Americans oppose the injustice of forced union dues and compulsory unionism.
So for those who want to support American workers who are not forced to affiliate with or pay dues to a union, here is a list of cars assembled at compulsory unionism-free auto plants here in America:*
- Acura: TL
- BMW: X5, Z4 Roadster
- Honda: Accord, Civic, Element, Odyssey, Pilot
- Hyundai: Sante Fe, Sonata
- Infiniti: QX56
- Mercedes: GL-Class, M-Class, R-Class
- Nissan: Altima, Armada, Frontier, Maxima, Pathfinder, Quest, Titan, Xterra
- Subaru: B9 Tribeca, Baja, Legacy, Outback
- Toyota: Avalon,Camry, Sequoia, Sienna, Solara, Tundra
*Note: Determining the suppliers of parts of every car is very difficult. The above list is of cars assembled at facilities where our research indicates that a union does not have a monopoly bargaining power over individual employees. If you want to ensure that the parts of your car are not produced by employees forced to affiliate with a union, we encourage you to do your own research and let us know your results.
“Card Check” Bullying
Following up on Patrick’s post from yesterday, the testimony in this video details just a few types of bullying workers often endure under coercive "card check" unionization drives. This is the story of Freightliner employee Mike Ivey of Gaffney, SC.
