Democrats aim to abolish right-to-work laws – Washington Examiner

In 1947, over President Harry Trumans veto, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act. In doing so, it put an end to a long-since-forgotten era of labor unrest and paved the way to the prosperous 1950s.

Taft-Hartley curbed some of the worst excesses of Depression-era law that govern labor unions even to this day. Its greatest contribution to our modern governance was the state right-to-work law. States could forbid the pernicious practice of forcing workers to pay a union as a condition of their employment. Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress, out of obedience to the Big Labor bosses who underwrite their campaigns, are threatening to repeal and ban all such laws with new legislation. Their bill is inaptly referred to as the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.

Of course, the right to organize is not really under threat, but workers desire to band together in unions is vanishing as part of the natural course of events. Wherever workers have been legally freed from mandatory union dues or fees, they have consistently opted to stop paying. As a result, union bosses massive paychecks, expense accounts, and cash to spend on their favorite Democratic officeholders are under threat. This is what Democrats want to preserve in the face of workers' consistent choice to be free of such predatory constraints.

Unions have no relevance for most younger workers, and many states have adopted right-to-work laws in recent years to protect them from forced unionism. This has Democrats in a panic.

Unions face other problems. A big one is that the traditional employer-employee relationship is itself on the wane. The expenses and hassles that regulation, taxation, and mandates have loaded onto traditional, formal employment are prompting more and more employers to consider automation or contracting. More and more workers are going outside the formal, corporate employment structure, doing business for themselves in the gig economy. It is believed that 36% of the working population already do such jobs at least part time.

Bills that prop up moribund labor unions and create greater inefficiencies will do no good, and will actually accelerate this trend, forcing a too-fast transition that will harm many more workers than they help.

When this legislation is proposed in coming weeks, it will not pass. But it must also not go unnoticed. Democratic attacks on the right to work will only become stronger, especially if they continue their efforts to break down the rule of law. If Democrats manage to take control of the Senate and abolish the filibuster, pro-union, anti-worker policy will become a top priority.

The repeal of right-to-work laws would reimpose upon large and now prosperous areas of America the very sort of labor rules that used to hold them back, from a time no one remembers anymore. Many of todays baby boomers were not yet born when Taft-Hartley passed. In those times, the South was a backwater and the mountain West an undeveloped, provincial region. Those regions embrace of right-to-work laws was part of what helped them take the lead in our countrys economy in the modern era. It is no accident that 11 out of CNBCs top 15 states for business are right-to-work states, or that right-to-work states enjoy lower unemployment, or that personal incomes in those states grew 50% faster between 2001 and 2016.

Democratic efforts to abolish right-to-work laws should be viewed as the rejection of seven decades of sound labor policy, the economic equivalent of resurrecting the polio virus and setting it loose on unsuspecting populations. Washington has no business fouling up the healthy business climates of the nations best-run states, just as a kickback to union bosses for their partisan contributions and activism. The abolition of the right to work would be a quid pro quo for unions and a knife between the ribs of the workers whom organized labor is supposed to represent.

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Democrats aim to abolish right-to-work laws - Washington Examiner