Right-to-work laws are union-hating Republican’s weapon of choice

[unhappycamper]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/right-to-work-laws-are-union-hating-republicans-weapon-of-choice/



Illinois governor Bruce Rauner

Right-to-work laws are union-hating Republican’s weapon of choice
Michael Paarlberg, The Guardian
10 Feb 2015 at 09:20 ET

There are few crusades in American politics more quixotic than bashing unions. They are a threat that exists mostly in the imaginations of their opponents: an all-powerful, resurgent labor movement that scares investors and imperils the economy, despite representing just 11% of the US workforce. Right-to-work laws are their weapon of choice.

Last week, the Supreme Court announced it would hear a case that could very well finish off American unions in the last bastion where they have any significant presence at all, the public sector . The case, Friedrichs v California Teachers Association, will decide if right-to-work laws (designed to bankrupt unions by encouraging employees who benefit from collective bargaining agreements to not pay for them) will extend to all public employees nationwide – an outcome Justice Samuel Alito has all but promised to deliver .

Lest you think such measures only target politically unpopular public sector unions, Illinois governor Bruce Rauner just announced he would create “right-to-work zones” for private businesses throughout the state, encouraging municipalities to follow Michigan and Indiana’s lead. Those two states were the latest to pass right-to-work laws in 2012, a remarkable shift in that last geographic stronghold of organized labor. Rauner contends that businesses, unshackled from the burden of union contracts, will rush to create jobs in Illinois communities – contrary to a University of Illinois study that found no such evidence for such a broad claim.

Economic arguments for right-to-work are, however, always highly speculative, proposing that the low-wage jobs that might be created by companies attracted by such laws would offset the very real, calculable income losses that inevitably accompany deunionization.