Do you really think that a dealer would care about quality if there was a law requiring everyone to purchase their cars at one dealership? It’s obvious. Without competition or choice they wouldn’t have any incentive to provide quality. This is what Governor Whitmer does to hardworking Michigan men and women by repealing Michigan’s “right to work” legislation. She is forcing workers to deduct a part of their pay to pay for a union that they may not like.
Like any other business, unions exist only to provide high-quality service to their members.
In 2012, Michigan lawmakers passed the “right-to work” law. They recognized that workers in Michigan should have the right to decide for themselves whether or not to join a labor union. The law eliminated union security agreements, and allowed workers to decide whether they wanted to financially support unions.
Whitmer has, unfortunately, replaced the will and judgment of the people by repealing Michigan’s right-to work legislation. She claims that this is necessary to “restore workers’ rights, protect Michiganders at the workplace, and grow Michigan’s middle class.” However, despite what the governor may preach, Michigan workers have lost a basic freedom: the ability to decide where, when and how they spend their hard-earned money.
The Michigan governor has failed to answer an important question: What rights and benefits were removed by the right-to work law? The right-to-work law is the thing that gives workers more rights and protections because it allows them to support only unions who advance their own interests. If a union fails to help workers by improving their working conditions and pay, and instead uses the dues to fund political activities, workers should have the right to refuse to join and keep their hard earned dollars.
Workers should be wary of union leaders who have been convicted of embezzlement and fraud in the past. Two presidents of the United Auto Workers and other senior leaders have been convicted of embezzling over “$1.5 million in membership dues” and “$3.5 million from the training centers.” The money was used to buy “expensive wines, liquors, golf clubs and apparel as well as luxury travel.”
Gary Casteel is one of the union leaders who has publicly endorsed right-to-work legislation. Casteel, who was the southern region director of the United Auto Workers from 2014 to 2016, said:
It’s something I can’t understand why people believe that right-towork is bad for unions. It helps them. If you don’t like it, then you don’t need to be a member. If I went to an organizing campaign, I could tell the workers: “If you do not like this arrangement, then you do not have to be a member.” Instead of saying, “If we got 50 percent of you then you all have to be a member, whether you want to or no.”
Moreover, academic data contradicts Governor Whitmer’s view. Employee satisfaction and management relations have improved after the passage of the right-to-work law. In addition, Michigan’s manufacturing employment has increased more than twice as much as in Ohio, which has been forced to unionize since 2013. Recent studies by National Economic Research Associates (NERA) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy have found that right to work states experienced higher private sector employment, personal income growth and manufacturing output compared to their union-mandated counterparts. This includes large double-digit increases for transportation and warehouse employment. All of these statistics are simply explained in a recent Harvard University study that found that there are “meaningful [positive] differences in economic outcomes” between right-to-work states and forced unionization states, citing the benefits of higher employment-to-population ratios, higher wages, higher population growth, and lower poverty. These findings show an expansion of Michigan’s middle class, and greater upward mobility of the families of American workers who live in right-to work states.
Instead of listening to voters, data and union members who support the right-to work legislation, Whitmer chose to follow the orders of politically connected union bosses that want to force the unionization. Michiganders cannot accept her agenda, especially when it involves selling out American workers.
