In the formative years of the modern American labor
movement, employers—especially in steel, mining, and auto manufacture—would
hire “goon squads” to quash, even terrorize, workers who were seeking to
voluntarily unite to bargain for better wages and working conditions.
Sometimes, these squads would be uniformed National Guardsmen, but more
frequently, they would be Pinkerton agents or just local thugs hired by the
owners and management of target industries.
And it was just plain wrong—unAmerican and contrary to the freedom of
association implicit in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Laws were passed to ensure that workers were
free to join unions without fear or physical harm or other forms of
intimidation.
This morning, I was listening to the American Left’s
most effective propaganda arm: National People’s Radio. From the scandal in 1999 when it was revealed
that many PBS stations routinely “rented” their donor lists to the Democratic
Party, to the programming of PBS’s three major stations, WGBH (Boston), WNET
(New York City) and WETA (Washington, DC) which is hopelessly intertwined with
the Democrats' party line, to stations
in Philadelphia, Chicago, and others which rebroadcast materials from those
three stations, “Public Broadcasting” and “National Public Radio” are accurate
descriptions only if “Public” is redefined to mean the left-wing of the
Democratic Party. I defy anyone to
listen to NPR and hear any fair representation of conservative America.
So, what does this have to do with labor goon
squads.
On this morning’s “Morning Edition”, one of the lead
stories was the upcoming vote in the Wisconsin legislature to enact a law that
would ban contracts between
businesses and unions in which workers are required to pay union dues as a condition of employment. Violation
of the law would be a crime punishable by nine months in jail and a $10,000
fine.
Wisconsin is currently a “closed
shop” jurisdiction. If a union manages
to get enough employees of a business to form a local, it can then require ALL
similarly situated employees in that business to pay union dues whether they join the union or not. Oh, there are some “safety
valves” that allow non-member workers to pay only a “portion” of the full dues
(usually, the portion used for political lobbying and donations to the
Democratic Party), but it is amazing how low that portion is after the lawyers
and accountants are done with the computations.
Well, as one may well
imagine, this move in Wisconsin is anathema to the AFL-CIO and its leadership. These big boys are millionaires thanks to
their members and they just love hobnobbing with liberal multi-millionaires
and movie stars and Democratic politicians, all on the workers’ dime. And the
fact that it is Wisconsin, where, only a few years ago, big labor (such as it
is) took its worst drubbing in decades just makes it worse.
You see, big labor
isn’t all that much anymore. More than
half of all union members are employed by government. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
in 2014, some 14.6 million American workers were members of a union, about
11.1% of the work force. By way of
comparison, in 1983, 20.1% of American workers were union members. In 2014, another 1.6 million workers
disclaimed union membership, but their jobs “were covered by a union contract.” In other words unions were able to extract
payments of “dues” workers who amounted to more than an additional 10% of union “membership.”
At the same time, only
7% of private sector American workers are union members, compared to 36% of government workers. In other words, if you produce something, you
are very unlikely to join a union, but if you suck at the government teat, a
union is the way to go. And the trend
has been underway for half a century.
Fifty years ago, one American worker out of three was a union member;
today it hovers at one in ten.
The big boys in the
AFL-CIO are getting scared. The goose that lays their golden eggs is getting
thin and old. Wisconsin is their new
battleground.
So, National People’s Radio “reports”
on this issue right along the party line.
Rich Trumka, national President of the AFL-CIO wails that “This is a blatant attempt to silence workers’ voices to
stop us from speaking out about lower wages and mistreatment at work. … Unions
and collective action are a powerful line of defense against this aggressive
attack on our working families. We need to use this fight to help all workers
– union and non-union – unite in their collective voice and in their demand to
raise wages throughout our country.”
Really? Does he
think we are all stupid?
A right to work law does nothing to silence workers’
voices, although it may require their mouthpieces, like Trumka and his ilk to
do so for a lot less money. Right to
work laws protect workers from extortion.
If a person wants to work, and an employer wants to hire that worker, that
should be it. Why should a union be allowed
to extort from the employee a fee for that privilege?
No, the 21st Century “Pinkertons” are the
unions that want to threaten and coerce and extort and terrorize. They are the new labor goons
The bottom line is that if union representation is such a
good deal, the unions would have no problem signing up new members. When 90% of the workforce sees no benefit to
union representation, that is not the fault of industry or government. It just means that, like the buggy whip,
union representation is obsolete.
And the AFL-CIO and its wholly-owned subsidiary, the
Democratic Party, and its propaganda wing, NPR, would better spend their time
and money figuring that out.
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