The rending of clothing and tearing of
hair by the labor union faithful continues in Michigan. They see it
as the end of the world as they know it and they don't know what's
going to happen. If I had to guess, I'd say nothing
will happen, at least not immediately. Eventually there will be some
fallout as unhappy members of the rank and file in formerly “closed
shops” will pull their financial 'support' for the unions that have
done nothing for them other than take their dues money and support
politicians and causes these now former union members have found
reprehensible.
Despite
unsubstantiated claims by union supporters that all Right To Work
means is the “right to work for less pay”, there are plenty of
stats that prove otherwise. Considering the unemployment rates are
higher than in union states compared to RTW states, I have to respond
to their claims thusly:
“I'd
rather have a job that pays $15 an hour than have no job that doesn't
pay me $30 an hour.”
I find
it amazing that many of the staunch and unquestioning union members
cannot fathom the idea that businesses will survive quite nicely
without them and might even provide better pay and benefits than
unionized businesses. Many non-unionized businesses can afford to do
so because there's no featherbedding or continued employment of
incompetent or non-performing workers which usually require even more
employees to make up for their lack of productivity. This phenomenon
is something I saw all too often during my 20 years as a union
member. This was particularly galling to me when a more senior worker
would get a higher-paying open position for which he/she was not
qualified to fill due entirely to seniority. Then one or two more of
the same positions would be opened in order to get someone who could
actually do the job because the first worker couldn't. All this did
was add unnecessary costs to the programs in which we were employed.
(I think the only reason this practice continued was because the
employer was a defense contractor, so the usual rules of economics
didn't always apply. If the company had been a commercial operation
in the private sector it would have gone under decades ago.)
If
Michigan, the bastion of labor union power, has gone RTW, can my home
state of New Hampshire be far behind? We did have one shot at it two
years ago when the New Hampshire House and Senate passed RTW
legislation, only to have it vetoed by the Democrat governor. The
House tried to override the veto but failed by 10 votes.
(The New Hampshire House has 400 members, meaning 256 representatives
voted to override and 144 voted against it.) With a Democrat majority
in the House for the upcoming session, the chances of it happening in
2013 or 2014 are unlikely. But after the 2014 mid-term elections that
might change.
We can
only hope.