Workers of the world need to unite to stand up against unions, on Labor Day and beyond
Rep. Dingell warns Dems about their problems with unions, seniors in Michigan
Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., alerted the Democratic Party to their weak points in Michigan ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Labor Day should be a time for celebrating the American worker, not just enjoying an extra day off work or the unofficial end of summer. Yet every year union officials inevitably attempt to steal the spotlight from rank-and-file workers in order to argue for more government-granted powers to the detriment of the rights of the very workers they claim to represent.
You see, today’s unions are built on the government-granted power to compel workers into their ranks. In the 24 states without right-to-work laws, union officials can legally extort private sector workers to "pay up or be fired."
Even for the millions of Americans for whom union financial support is ostensibly voluntary, they have no choice but to accept union bargaining over their wages and working conditions. The fact that individual employees may not want the union’s so-called "representation" or even that they are harmed by a one-size-fits-all union-imposed contract, doesn’t change the fact that they are forced under a union without a choice.
Adding insult to injury, to advocate for new coercive powers, union officials use the money "collected" from workers who would be fired if they refused to pay.
UAW Strikers slow a truck from entering the Ford Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Illinois on September 18, 2023. (Mandi Wright/The Detroit Free Press/USA Today Network)
Take the so-called "Pro Act," Big Labor’s top legislative priority in Congress, which has as its signature provision the repeal of all 26 current state right-to-work laws in the country by federal fiat. Even though right-to-work laws don’t stop a single worker from joining a union or paying dues to a union voluntarily, union officials’ top goal is to strip the rank-and-file of the choice.
Polls regularly show that workers support the choice they have under right-to-work laws. In fact, a just-released nationwide Rasmussen Media Group poll of registered voters found that 79% of current union members agree that workers "should never be forced to join a union or pay dues to a union as a condition of employment," nearly identical to the 82% of all Americans that support that right-to-work principle.
However, ending right to work is hardly the only provision of the bill that undermines workers' choice over union financial support and affiliation. The "Pro Act" would also allow union organizers to skip secret ballot votes when seeking to gain power over an entire workplace and also authorizes government bureaucrats to impose forced dues contracts over the objections of both workers and employers.
Still another part of the "Pro Act" would codify and expand rules recently enacted by the Biden-Harris National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to keep currently unionized workers trapped in forced dues for months or years at a time over the objection of a majority of employees.
In rulemaking that was finalized in July, the Biden-Harris administration has given union officials the ability to unilaterally block worker-requested "decertification" votes to end union affiliation by using "blocking charges" – unproven allegations against the company used as a pretense for blocking workers’ request for a vote.
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These "blocking charges," combined with other NLRB policies barring decertification votes for years at a time, trap workers in union ranks most oppose. In multiple cases, such tactics were used to block decertification even though 100% of the workers signed the decertification petition.
Union bosses may like the security of knowing no matter what they do, they cannot be removed by those they claim to represent, but no one could claim with a straight face that trapping workers in unions they oppose is actually pro-worker.
Polls regularly show that workers support the choice they have under right-to-work laws. In fact, a just-released nationwide Rasmussen Media Group poll of registered voters found that 79% of current union members agree that workers "should never be forced to join a union or pay dues to a union as a condition of employment," nearly identical to the 82% of all Americans that support that right-to-work principle.
Big Labor has strayed from its traditions of voluntarism, once espoused by union leaders like AFL-CIO founder Samuel Gompers, who said: "I want to urge devotion to the fundamentals of human liberty – the principles of voluntarism. No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion."
Today, instead of persuading workers to join up and pay dues of their own free will, union bosses increasingly rely on government-granted coercion to protect and expand their privileged position. In doing so, as Gompers observed, they undermine the liberty of those they claim to "represent."
So, this Labor Day, reject the union boss talking points that say workers must be denied the freedom to choose. After all, it’s Labor Day, not Union Day.
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Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
