By Greg Johns
Missourians for Right to Work
iae@murlin.com
Missouri’s new Right to Work law does only one thing. A company with a union contract cannot have a forced-unionism clause in the contract. That’s it. Everything else in the contract stays the same. Wages, benefits, working conditions and etc. The union still has all collective bargaining rights.
Does this Right to Work law destroy unions? NO. Information from the — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Missouri 8.8% of the total workforce is union. The latest states that passed Right to Work laws have a higher percentage of their workforce in their unions. Kentucky 11%, Indiana 10%, Michigan 15.2%, Wisconsin 11.7%, West Virginia 12.4%. And other states around Missouri – Iowa 9.6%, Kansas 8.8%, and Alabama 10.8%. Unions are doing very well in Right to Work states.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has Missouri in 1983 with 374,000 union members, which is 21%. In 2015 there were 230,000 union members, 8.8%. That’s a loss of 144,000 union jobs. In the last five years, 45,000 union jobs have been lost. Missouri has been losing union member jobs for 34 years. Just think about how bad this has been for our union members with all of these job losses. This has to STOP! With our new Missouri Right to Work law, union jobs will start coming back to Missouri just like it has in these five new Right to Work states.
Household Income Higher in Right to Work States. A study by Dr. Barry Poulson, past president of the North American Economics and Finance Association, professor of economics at the University of Colorado compared household incomes in 133 metropolitan areas in Right to Work states with those of 158 metropolitan areas in non-Right to Work states. Among other results, he found that the average real income for households in Right to Work state metro areas, when all else was equal, was $4,258 more than households in non-Right to Work state metro areas.
Labor Union Bosses claim they are forced to have to represent everyone in the bargaining unit even though some workers may not pay any union dues or fees. Labor Union Bosses call these workers “Free Riders”. Contrary to the false claims that Organized Labor and other advocates of forced unionism make, labor union officials can choose to represent only their members and allow non-members to bargain for themselves. It’s called “Member-Only Option”. An August 2007 legal brief filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by the United Steelworkers of America and six other large AFL-CIO affiliated unions openly acknowledged that such “Member-Only Option” bargaining has been permissible under federal law for decades.
Labor Union Bosses will not use the “Member-Only Option” because they fear they will lose control over the union members, giving union members the power to control their own local unions. Instead, union organizers have focused their efforts only on being the “Exclusive Monopoly Bargaining Agent” of all the employees in the bargaining unit. Then these Labor Union Bosses falsely claim they are forced to represent workers who will not pay union dues or fees. Right to Work will give the unions back to the union members.
In a Frank Luntz Poll union workers only were asked –“Workers should have the right to decide whether to join a union. They should never be forced or coerced to join or pay dues to a union as a condition of employment”. Union Members – Agree (80%) Disagree (14%) Really Don’t Care (6%) — 80% support Right to Work.
I have been a labor union business agent and organizer for the AFL-CIO for eight years. I have worked in both Right to Work states and forced unionism states. We have had higher paying contracts in a Right to Work state than in a forced unionism state. Labor unions can do very well in Right to Work states.
