Ok, since I am a certified Michigander – being that I have lived in the state all of my life, and worked here – I think I’m pretty qualified to comment on Right to Work.
Michigan has ALWAYS been a union state. You could not work in the auto factories on the line without being in a union, whether you wanted to be in one or not. That gave the unions unmitigated authority to take a portion of your salary for their dues whether you wanted their benefits or not.
You could not opt-out. Period. It was forced on you.
I know people who worked in the construction trades, and chose not to work in the union. The union would come in, destroy their equipment, and then the union lawyers would come in and sue them for back union dues. The union provided ZERO benefits for this, nor did they provide compensation for back benefits they did not provide, yet they were able to – via the courts – take someone’s hard-earned money.
The latest outrage came when the unions – in conjunction with the Granholm administration – forcibly unionized daycare workers (as if they didn’t make enough money already). They sent out a ballot asking if people wanted to be unionized, and people assumed that if you did not respond, then it was a vote to unionize. So, in the blink of an eye, people who never wanted to be unionized, did not ask to join a union, became union members with the stroke of a pen. Dues were extracted accordingly whether they liked it or not.
In 2010, Michigan basically went almost solid red, and voted in Republicans overwhelmingly (which is strange seeing that it went for Idi Amin Jr.). The result was twofold: the State of Michigan was no longer required to extract union dues from the paychecks of public sector employees, and RTW legislation was introduced and passed. I also believe a proposal was placed on the ballot that rolled-back the forced unionization thing. It passed by a HIGH margin of votes, if I recall correctly. I’d have to look it up.
Basically, Right to Work says you don’t have to join a union. The Union is responsible for collecting your dues (which removes the state government from that responsibility). If they provide benefits without collecting your dues, that’s the problem of the union. Period. A lot of this came about because unions were claiming that they were responsible for bringing about things like health benefits being offered by employers, the 40-hour work week, and all sorts of nonsense.
So now, in Michigan, unions actually have to compete. They don’t have their built-in, state-protected monopoly.
The fact is that unions in this state are thugs. They were given a free hand to basically bilk millions of dollars out of the auto companies by de-facto extortion via strikes to get all sorts of benefits that paid auto workers salaries and benefits that exceeded their work capacity. They also engage in several less-than-respectable practices that force the auto companies to pay more per worker, skirting heart of the contracts they sighed. I know this because the people who ran these plants often worked on the other side of the cubes I was working at in these places. I heard the discussions. It was very enlightening.
And when union membership declined, and companies were not hiring the number of union people that they used to, the unions did the honorable thing: kicked the people with lower seniority to the curb, so that the people with the most seniority (and highest wages) could keep their cushy little jobs. That’s the unions for you: looking out for the “little guy.”
Under Granholm and her union conspirators Michigan saw an exodus of manufacturing from the state. Some went overseas or to Mexico. Much of it went to states that did not require unionized labor for their factory workers. Other large auto-related businesses – Toyota and Honda to be exact – placed factories in places like Indiana, which was a Right To Work state at the time.
The only decent chunk of business that came into the state was the stuff I do: technology work. It is a very anti-union mindset – mainly because the people doing the work are mostly independent contractors and don’t want to be sharing their hard-earned money with a bunch of thick-brow, socialist knuckle-draggers - and it is kinda thriving. It isn’t what it was like under Engler, but it is much better than what it was under Granholm.
Now this is not representative of all unions in Michigan. Some of the trade unions are fairly decent. They have apprentice programs, they train their people, and some actually police their ranks. The rest of them, however, dragged the rest of them down into the hole they are in today.
My wife did a lot of voulenteer work at the schools, and had a lot of discussions with the teachers in the school district (all of the public school teachers in Michigan are unionized). It was kinda funny listening to her tell me what she’d hear from them when they were having funding problems (the district was running at a deficit). These teachers – many of whom made $80,000 or better and had gold-plated benefits packages – had no concept of the fact that they might have to make less because of shortfalls in district funding. Then my wife would explain to them what it’s like in the private sector, and they’d almost visibly turn white. They’d also quickly drop the subject.
Again, another union of whom most of the people were decent educators and fine people, yet they would do NOTHING to remove the bad elements from their ranks. And it’s like it never connected with them that they we taking a hit because those bad elements were drawing as much salary and benefits as a good worker in their ranks. In the private sector, that gets sorted out REAL quick.
So, what SD72 is giving you is absent context and historical perspective.
(That’s me saying that it is mindless propaganda.)
