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It amazes that Michigan, of all places, has become a right to work state. Today’s Pickings provides background to that victory. First, Reuters has an analysis.
LANSING, Michigan (Reuters) – As a trained aerospace engineer, Patrick Colbeck applied his penchant for data analysis and “systematic approach” to his new job in early 2011: a Michigan state senator, recently elected and keen to create jobs in the faded industrial powerhouse.
Those skills paid off handsomely for the first-term Republican this week as Governor Rick Snyder signed into law bills co-sponsored by Colbeck that ban mandatory union membership, making Michigan the nation’s 24th right-to-work state.
From outside Michigan Republican circles, it appeared that the Republican drive to weaken unions came out of the blue – proposed, passed and signed in a mere six days.
But the transformation had been in the making since March 2011 when Colbeck and a fellow freshman, state Representative Mike Shirkey, first seriously considered legislation to ban mandatory collection of union dues as a condition of employment in Michigan. Such was their zeal, they even went to union halls to make their pitch and were treated “respectfully,” Colbeck said.
The upstarts were flirting with the once unthinkable, limiting union rights in a state that is the home of the heavily unionized U.S. auto industry and the birthplace of the nation’s richest union, the United Auto Workers. For many Americans, Michigan is the state that defines organized labor.
But in a convergence of methodical planning and patient alliance building – the “systematic approach” – the reformers were on a roll, one that establishment Michigan Republicans came to embrace and promised to bankroll.
Republicans executed a plan – the timing, the language of the bills, the media strategy, and perhaps most importantly, the behind-the-scenes lobbying of top Republicans including Snyder.
They knew they would likely face an acrimonious battle of the kind they had seen over the last two years in the neighboring state of Wisconsin between Republican Governor Scott Walker and unions. Operating in plain sight but often overlooked, they worked to put the necessary building blocks in place. …
Kimberley Strassel says if the unions want to find someone to blame for the Michigan loss, they have to look at their own ranks.
A suggestion to those union folk protesting Michigan’s new right-to-work law: All future complaints might prove better addressed to one Lafe Solomon, care of the National Labor Relations Board, Washington, D.C. Blind copy to President Barack Obama.
Mr. Solomon, remember, is the pro-union lawyer whom Mr. Obama recess-appointed in 2010 as general counsel of the NLRB, the federal agency governing union relations. Big Labor had helped give Mr. Obama his first election victory, and Mr. Solomon was one of the president’s gifts back to the unions.
The general counsel wasted no time in making good on the president’s debts, penning legal opinions favorable to the union cause. But his big-time moment came in April 2011, when he issued an unfair labor practice complaint against Boeing, BA -0.40%for the heinous crime of deliberately choosing to locate a plant in a state (South Carolina) that doesn’t allow unions to require workers to either join a union or pay union dues.
Prior to the Solomon complaint, the right-to-work movement had been stuck in idle. The U.S. hadn’t witnessed a state vote for right to work in more than a decade, when Oklahoma in 2001 became the 22nd state to do so. The Solomon bombshell blew the issue back onto the national scene. Americans who had never heard of right to work were provided proof (in the form of Mr. Solomon’s complaint) that such laws really did serve to pull businesses away from other states and create jobs. Why else would unions be complaining?
That public awareness of the benefits of right to work, in a time of economic struggle, was all the groundwork GOP legislatures needed to once again take up the cause. New Hampshire last year passed right-to-work legislation (though it was vetoed by a Democratic governor). Indiana became the 23rd right-to-work state in February. Michigan makes 24. According to the National Right to Work Committee, 19 states have introduced right-to-work legislation since the beginning of the 2011 legislative session—the most in decades. Many thanks, Mr. Solomon. …
Jennifer Rubin nominates Michigan Governor Rick Snyder as distinguished pol of the week.
No politician made more of an impact last week than Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R). NBC News reported on his support for and signing of right-to-work legislation: “The impact of Michigan’s decision will be felt far beyond the borders of the once-staunchly pro-union state. Even though the ranks of union workers have been dwindling across the nation, the influence of big unions is still felt from the halls of government to corporate board rooms, and their clout affects everything from the economy to the political field. But the rising number of right-to-work states could further drain that influence.”
Until this Snyder has been regarded as a mild-mannered former businessman known for work on good governance and education. He has for the most part stayed out of the national limelight, even at the Republican National Convention, where he preferred to talk about his state’s progress instead of favorite-son nominee Mitt Romney.
But in taking on organized labor he simultaneously improved his state’s economic climate dramatically, dealt a blow to the Democratic Party, which has been addicted to Big Labor’s money for years, and showed how liberty and opportunity can work as the GOP’s calling cards. In defending his move Snyder deployed his tell-tale calm and emphasis on job -creation. In an interview (beginning at the 2:00 mark) his appeal to worker fairness and customer service (both for government and labor unions) struck the tone that so many Republicans find difficult to muster.
He is a model for Republican governance, reform and rhetoric. Well done, Governor.
In Bloomberg News, Shikha Dalmia explains labor’s options.
It seemed to happen in a flash. A cradle of the U.S. labor movement became the 24th state to adopt right-to-work laws, when Republican Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan signed legislation on Tuesday banning mandatory union dues.
The unions barely had time to muster one big protest in the state capital after the Republican-controlled Legislature approved the bills last week. Today they are preparing for a long war to recover from this huge blow to their power.
Labor has two options now that its ability to extract mandatory dues from workers as a condition for employment is gone. It can fight the law or try to persuade workers to voluntarily pay up.
Union bosses aren’t accustomed to the second approach, so until the next elections in 2014 they can be expected to try everything to overturn the law and to stop the right-to-work fever from spreading to neighboring states.
Legal analysts say labor’s first tactic will be to obtain a court injunction to stop the law from being carried out on grounds that its exemption for public-safety workers — firefighters and police officers — violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal-protection guarantees. Unions have managed to persuade a Wisconsin judge to rule against a similar law by Republican Governor Scott Walker that ended mandatory dues deductions from the paychecks of public employees. The ruling is widely expected to be overturned on appeal. …
Seth Mandel points out that even George McGovern was worried about the anti-labor aspects of union power grabs.
The extent to which George McGovern, who died in late October, was identified with American liberalism itself can be seen in headlines of his various obituaries. CNN’s headline called him an “unabashed liberal voice”; PBS went with “Liberal Icon”; the New York Times chose “Prairie Liberal” (though the online edition dropped the word “prairie”); and the Nation called him a “Touchstone of Liberalism.” The Nation obit, written by John Nichols, proclaimed McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, “the most progressive nominee ever selected by the Democratic Party.”
McGovern, then, possessed unimpeachable liberal credentials. Yet four years before McGovern passed, the liberal blog site Firedoglake was ready to send him packing, and used the occasion to call McGovern perhaps the nastiest insult in the liberal lexicon: “Wal-Mart Lover.” What could have prompted such spite? McGovern, though a committed liberal through and through, was concerned about the growing and coercive power of unions. He felt the need to speak out against the Democrats’ proposed anti-choice legislation, card-check. McGovern chastised his party for its extremism in the Wall Street Journal: …
To start off the humor section, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit explains why good labor goons are hard to come by these days.
So the public employee unions have been on the defensive across the nation, and they’ve been losing battles in state capitols from Wisconsin, to Ohio, to Tennessee.
Although there have been some violent incidents and death threats, overall, despite the talk from many right-leaning pundits about “union goons,” the actual danger posed by the union members appears to have been very small by labor-historical standards. Apparently, you just can’t get good goons nowadays.
And that makes sense. In the old days of the labor movement, the unionized industries were, you know, actual industries, involving miners, steelworkers and the like. And those are trades that foster exactly the qualities you need in good goons.
Why? Because they’re very dangerous activities that put a premium on teamwork. (Even in totalitarian countries, people know that it’s dangerous to get the miners upset.) …
… But miners and steelworkers are one thing. When the public employees of, say, Wisconsin hit the streets, it looked more like a bunch of disgruntled DMV clerks and graduate teaching assistants, because, well, that’s what it was.
Though they displayed more creativity in signage than you might expect from steelworkers, overall, they brought pretty much the same work habits to their protests that they bring to their jobs. (Sleeping in the capitol? Pretty much what they do at the office.) …