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Saturday, February 4, 2012

Opposite day, every day, in Republican World: Right to Work.


That research is in, and Right to Work offers hard working Americans the right to work for less, and with fewer benefits.
EPI: States are being told that the key to solving their state’s unemployment woes is adopting so-called “right-to-work” statutes.

This is all part of the underlying conservative attempt to either destroy unions, or at least freeload off the wages and benefits negotiated by unions. Freeloading is key here, because it’s being sold as a right to not have to pay dues. This same argument is being used to justify the phony outrage over the health care mandate. The message is the same; you don’t have to lift a finger or pay anything to receive the benefits already paid by others.   
Right to work: makes it illegal for a group of unionized workers to negotiate a contract that requires each employee who enjoys the benefit of the contract to pay his or her share of the costs of negotiating and policing it. Right-to-work laws have not succeeded in boosting employment growth in the states that have adopted them. For those states looking beyond traditional or low wage manufacturing jobs – whether to higher-tech manufacturing, to “knowledge” sector jobs, or to service industries dependent on consumer spending in the local economy – there is reason to believe that right-to-work laws may actually harm a state’s economic prospects … Forhigher-tech, higher-wage employers, nine of the 10 most favored states are non-RTW, led by liberal, pro-union Massachusetts.

Right to work is another short sighted policy.
Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. warned against “false slogans such as ‘right to work’… . [Whose] purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone.” 

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