Right to Work: Employees Already Have Freedom To Choose

By Nathan Hansen
Contributing Writer

The bill Representative Steve Drazkowski helped author, HF 65 is called the right to work bill here and would allow any employee that wished to work at a company or public sector job with a union presence to refuse having anything to do with the union at his place of work.

I would humbly offer that we already have the freedom to choose whether or not to deal with a union, since we all can choose when and where we apply to work. The real purpose behind this bill is to destroy the ability of unions to operate and have them die a slow death.

In college, my Republican, Libertarian and Tea Party acquaintances would argue until they were blue in the face that minimum wage laws were ridiculous and that the free market would work just as well. If you wanted a higher pay or other desires you could change companies, move to a different city, country, or state; otherwise shut up and put up.

So, I find it a little odd that conservatives like Drazkowski have authored a bill asking for a constitutional amendment that actually works against free market principles. If I want a higher-paying job or better benefits I am supposed to apply the market and look elsewhere for work, but we need an amendment saying that job-seeking men and women do not have to deal with unions anymore?

HF 65 and other right to work laws and bills just make it easier to break up unions and limit the economic power of workers, tipping the balance back in favor of managers and owners. There really are only two possible outcomes from this bill, and neither promotes the freedom of employees.

The first option is that businesses will use the law to hire non-union workers at lower pay than those in the union and thus slowly kill off the unions. Since unions rely on numbers and bargaining power in order to negotiate better pay, working conditions and hours for its members, the ability to ruthlessly hire scabs instead of negotiating with workers brings us back economically and socially to the early 1900s and John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath.”

The second outcome is that workers who don’t want to join the union will still reap all the benefits of union membership, like higher pay, better working conditions and facilities, without having to contribute dues, participate in strikes and negations, etc.

This essentially gives non-union workers a free lunch and more people will soon follow suit. Enrollments will decline as a result and the union will die a slow death. Either of these outcomes will have the end result of lower wages, harsher working conditions and a loss of bargaining power for workers.

Unions are part of the lifeblood of this country. Rural farmers and dairy producers have for decades banded together in cooperatives to provide the high-quality produce, dairy products and other foodstuffs Americans consume each day.

Mine workers, steelworkers and other industrial workers banded together at the turn of the century to fight for a living wage that allowed them to provide food, clothing and a future for their families along with working conditions that would no longer slowly kill them.

And let us not forget the Freemasons, one of the oldest guilds on the face of the earth, and an organization that has long used collective bargaining and fraternity in order to improve the lot and negotiate better wages and profits for its members is the union that many our Founding Fathers were a part of.

Today, unions act as a check and balance on business and industry so that the power and decisions of management also look out for the interests and welfare of those that toil and labor each and every day.  Unions are not our enemy, greedy politicians wishing to placate business and industry are.

If Drazkowski truly believed in supply, demand and the free market, he would never have put his name on this bill. Employees already have the freedom to choose to look for employment with corporations and firms that do not have a union presence. The real intent and goal of HF 65 is to kill unions.

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