You Hate "Right To Work" Laws More Than You Know. Here's Why

From: Mark Ames
TO: The Labor Desk
Date: Dec 12th, 2012

You Hate "Right To Work" Laws More Than You Know. Here's Why

Las Vegas, NV:

“From now on, white women and white men will be forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will have to call ‘brother’ or lose their jobs.”
— Vance Muse, founder of the “right to work” anti-labor campaign

The Michigan GOP apparently blindsided everyone with the union-busting “right to work” laws they just rammed through the state. Certainly my labor friends were caught off-guard tactically by the Republicans’ speed and choice of battleground.

For most of the county, though, the confusion has to do with what “right to work laws” are and why they’re so bad. You can see it written on the faces of the morning cable news hosts on CNN and even MSNBC — trying to pretend like they know what “right-to-work” laws actually mean, flummoxed by the brazen Orwellian neologism of the phrase and sweating over the possibility that they might have to explain it. Lucky for them, and for most of the media establishment (and for the Koch brothers), few people even know what questions to ask about “right to work laws.” All they know — kinda — is that they’re bad for unions, and that those unions seem to know exactly how bad things are about to get.

Today, in most of America, unions have it bad. And part of the reason it’s bad is because we no longer know how to organize. Imagine trying to organize workers in your call center or warehouse, or your software gaming firm or your human rights NGO, as they’re doing at Amnesty International. The pressures against you — from worker cynicism and colleagues’ fear of losing their jobs, to personal relations with your boss and superiors, the bills you have to pay, and simple questions like “how do I organize” and “how do I know I won’t be screwed” — not to mention the inevitable appearance of company snitches, provocateurs, and just run-of-the-mill assholes and idiots... I’m not even talking here about your company’s ability to fire you, demote you, abolish your department, slash your pay, pretty much whatever the Hell they want ever since Reagan busted the air traffic controller’s union... This is the lot of American labor organizers in 2012 , except for in a few remaining pockets of America where union power and memory is still strong and tightly woven into the local cultural DNA.

FULL story at link.