Right to Work Ascending

Union thug attacks Fox News contributor Steven Crowder

Union thuggery is alive and well. And if you are a Fox News contributor, beware. The union thugs will beat the crap out of you. Thus are the lessons coming out of Michigan! The state that gave birth to the United Auto Worker Union has laid the union bugaboo to rest. This past week it became the 24th Right to Work state in the union.

Contrary to popular belief, Michigan did not outlaw unions. The Michigan law reaffirms collective bargaining rights as guaranteed in Federal statutes. What it does do is hit the union where it hurts…in the pocketbook. There are no more closed union shops where you have to join the union to get a job. Workers are now free to politely say “no thank you” to sign up invitations. Less union members mean less money for the unions to spend on….let’s say….political campaigns? The union thugs went down fighting, literally.

In a way, unions are victims of their own success. Rooted in our dreary industrialized past, unions brought about better working conditions, job security, good pay and were the building blocks for working Americans to join the middle class. But then was then and now is now. It’s a different world. In the world marketplace, American manufacturers are stymied by union work rules, some of which verge on being ridiculous. In addition, many union members really don’t want to be union members. Dues are not cheap, sometimes approaching close to a $1,000.00 per year. American statutes and regulations have eliminated much of the overt issues which gave rise to unions in the first place.

The percentage of the workforce which is now unionized is in the 12% range, including public employee unions. That’s down from close to 40% during the union glory days. Modern attitudes have changed. Employers work hard to keep employees satisfied and to meet cultural expectations as to how the employer/employee relationship should be. Employees of Honda, Toyota, Walmart, and numerous other companies have routinely turned down efforts to unionize. Notwithstanding, the threat of unionization is the hammer over non-union companies keeping ‘em honest, so to speak.

The real problem for unions will be decreased political influence. Money is the mother’s milk of politics and the delivery man just stopped coming to the union door in Michigan. In state after state, fully a 1/3 of current union members opt out of the union when given the chance. That has sparked the violence seen in Michigan this past week by the union central core. Losing a major source of funds is a major problem for these guys.

On the other hand, unions aren’t going away. Unions will have to learn to market themselves to potential union members in ways that are relevant to today. The advantages of union membership can be found in job training and placement, insurance plans, benefit and discount packages such as one gets through the AAA, working for common political goals, and yes…even collective bargaining if things start to go south in a company.

One thing unions SHOULD do to protect American workers is look to unionize labor overseas. That is the heart of the real threat to American unions. If overseas labor begins to unionize, the benefits to making things there and shipping things here will go away. It would do things American tariffs and taxes can’t do. As the rest of world moves into the modern digital and industrial age, unions should be looking at the rest of the world as a source of new members.

Or…they can just punch out another Fox News commentator, and slip into irrelevance.