Missouri voters statewide just voted down the Prop. A ‘right-to-work’ bill their Redstate Governor signed last year, even thought the Republican legislature moved the vote to the primaries in an effort to depress turnout. Way to go, Missouri Mules! (er, donkeys… democrats… you get the idea): www.cnn.com/…
And there’s good news on the national level with Democrats sponsoring a new Bill, House Resolution 6080: The Workers’ Freedom to Negotiate Act of 2018. The EPI (The Economic Policy Institute, a resource for the working class) is sharing it as a citizen co-sponsored petition: www.epipolicycenter.org/… It’s pushback against Janus, the recent SCOTUS decision which has put unions on life support.
ICYMI, ‘right-to-work’ is a euphemism used by the hard right, Tea Partiers, and Trumpzombies to justify outlawing union dues in either the private or the public sector. It’s total union busting, period… often disguised by claiming to provide more jobs, but with less hours and at much lower wages (with little to no healthcare), and getting employees to sign agreements not to organize, ever, and to submit to employer-mandated arbitration. Which we know is always ‘fair and balanced.’
Patty Murray (D-WA) and Bob Scott’s (D-VA) House sponsorship of the WFNA, H.R. 6080 shines a light at the end of the tunnel created by the Roberts/Gorsuch Court in Janus vs AFSCME, the awful June 27, 2018 decision basically kneecapping unions in this country.
By removing the requirement for all employees in a public unionized workforce to pay administrative dues, Janus deprives unions of a basic source of cost-sharing. To be clear, these administrative dues are a minimal fraction of the actual dues full Union Members pay (e.g., $4 vs $36/mo. here in CA for CSEA). And the ‘opt-out’ nature of the decision does not obviate union responsibility to non-union employees for collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance settlement; it just means they don’t have full representation, counsel, and help on other personnel matters. Non-union employees can ‘opt in’ and obtain full representation at any time, so non-members could be semi-free riders for years until they felt their jobs were threatened. Unions could afford this up until now by charging the minimal administrative costs or dues, which has been Case Law for 41 years under the 1977 Abood vs Detroit decision.
So ‘right-to-work’ is NOT what the Nordquists and Kochs of the world sell it as: An even-handed choice for some individuals to completely opt out of the costs and benefits of membership. Janus is a naked power ploy to pressure organizations not to be union shops in the first place, by making the administrative burdens unsustainable. Effectively it puts the onus on the union shop to have all their employees be full members from day 1, or else risk operational solvency. And then it removes the strongest incentive for new employees to become members by saying, ‘you can be a total free rider now and it won’t cost you a dime, but you can still sign up later.’ Clever, no? Using the glib propaganda of ‘fair and balanced’ and ‘standing up for dissenting individuals’, the Republicans enforced a legal shibboleth (‘right-to-work’) that will eviscerate the unions’ bottom line and decimate new membership.
In any case the NLRA (National Labor Relations Act) has been severely weakened over the years since Reagan, to the point that unions in America are literally making their last stand. The Workers’ Freedom to Negotiate Act of 2018, if passed, would update weakened and outdated NLRA and NLRB legislation dating from the ‘50s and ‘60s (and push back against Trump’s pro-business NLRB appointees). Specifically, it would: Prevent employers from indefinitely stalling the bargaining process to form a union (the favored practice in the private sector, where wealthy firms use court costs and endless delays to stymie workers’ groups), prevent employers from penalizing employees who attempt to organize (by firing them or hiring scabs), enable employees to bring their cases to Federal Court, and prohibit employers from denying employees the right to collective bargaining and claims for violations of their labor rights. It would also address employers’ divide-and-rule strategies of classifying supervisors and independent contractors differently than other employees, forcing them to form their own separate (and therefore competing, and more costly) unions. All employees of a company, regardless of status or income, could belong to the same shop and this would really save money without pitting employees against each other as ‘right-to-work’ does with old vs. new members, full-time vs part-time, or workers vs management.
Don’t just sign the online petition, those get tabulated by bots; write snail letters to your Congresspeople that will be seen by a human, and call and speak to them or their staff personally. Federal law requires your Representative to answer written inquiries from a constituent, even though a staffer might signature-stamp it. Our experience is, the more thoughtful your letter the more detailed the answer and the more likely it will be from your actual Rep. Best of all, go to their receptions or town halls and advocate for this Bill. Refer specifically to H.R. 6080, The Workers’ Freedom to Negotiate Act of 2018 introduced by Murray and Scott, and tell them why you support it. Examples from your work experience, or a friend or family member's, will help especially cases of employer suppression or intimidation of employees; but most helpful of all is face-time with your Representative demanding they support this bill. If we can flip the House, it might pass out of Committee and go to a general vote. If we gain the Senate, even by a small margin, we could probably leverage it there or at least make the Republicans sweat some seats over it. By that time, we might have a new President who could actually sign a bill that would reverse 40 years of relentless union-busting in the U.S. Support H.R. 6080!