An Open Letter to Michigan Union Workers

An Open Letter to Michigan Union Workers

Steve Deace, a Michigan native and union member, writes an open letter to Michigan union members on why Right to Work benefits their families and the state he loves: I love the state of Michigan. I grew up there. I may live in Iowa, but my man cave is adorned in maize-and-blue. I still allow the Detroit Lions to rip my still-beating heart of out of my chest and show it to me 16 Sundays per year. I use Detroit Red Wings championship banners for curtains. I can still recite the entire everyday lineup – in order – of the 1984 World Series champion Detroit Tigers. I say this to point out I am one of you. Heck, I was also a Teamster. I worked at the nation’s first automated UPS plant in Grand Rapids as a truck loader to put myself through Grand Rapids Community College. When I stopped working there I made sure to pay up all my dues to leave as a member in good standing. I grew up with a step-dad who was an active Teamster at Grand Rapids Gravel driving ready-mix trucks. I think unions historically have been an imperfect but mostly necessary check-and-balance against corporatism, which I and most other liberty-loving Americans loathe. I can’t stand crony capitalism any more than you can. It’s an oxymoron like “gay marriage,” “moderate Arab nation,” and “local celebrity.” There’s no such thing as “crony capitalism,” because capitalism is based on the objective worth of an asset as determined by a free and competitive market. Whenever cronyism gets involved it becomes about the subjective nature of palm-greasing and back-scrubbing, which is antithetical to capitalism. I agree with you it’s hypocritical for those claiming to be for economic growth to fight Obamcare and then fight to nominate as an alternative in the other party the guy who gave the administration the idea in the first place. I agree it’s hypocritical of ruling class Republicans to say a union worker in Toledo making $15/hour at the local Chrysler plant doesn’t deserve a bailout from the federal taxpayer, but their buddies at “too big to fail” Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs do. I share many of your laments, but what you’re being sold as the solution to these problems is actually what caused the problem.

Thomas Jefferson Forced Unionism "Tyrannical"

The significance of Michigan enacting a Right to Work law was not missed on George Will: Rick Snyder, who is hardly a human cactus, warned Michigan’s labor leaders. The state’s mild-mannered Republican governor, in his first term in his first public office, has rarely been accused of being, or praised for being, a fire-breathing conservative. When unions put on Michigan’s November ballot two measures that would have entrenched collective-bargaining rights in the state constitution, Snyder told them they were picking a fight they might regret. Both measures lost resoundingly in the state with the fifth-highest rate of unionization (17.5 percent, down from 28.4 percent in 1985) and, not coincidentally, the sixth-highest unemployment rate (9.1 percent). Republicans decided to build upon that outcome by striking a blow for individual liberty and against coerced funding of the Democratic Party. Hence the right-to-work laws passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature to prohibit the requirement of paying union dues as a condition of employment. The unions’ frenzy against this freedom is as understandable as their desire to abolish the right of secret ballots in unionization elections: Freedom is not the unions’ friend. After Colorado required public-employees unions in 2001 to have annual votes reauthorizing the collection of dues, membership in the Colorado Association of Public Employees declined 70 percent. After Indiana’s government stopped in 2005 collecting dues from unionized public employees, the number of dues-paying members plummeted 90 percent. In Utah, automatic dues deductions for political activities were ended in 2001; made voluntary, payments from teachers declined 90 percent. After a similar measure in Washington state in 1992, the percentage of teachers making contributions fell from 82 to 11. The Democratic Party’s desperate opposition to the liberation of workers from compulsory membership in unions is because unions are conveyor belts moving coerced dues money into the party.