Tyranny Triumphs in the Great Lakes State
Ignoring ample evidence of forced unionism’s unfairness and its damaging impact on jobs and incomes, Big Labor Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed Right to Work destruction in 2023.
Obama Touts Right to Work?
Well, not directly, but the president did go to Right to Work North Carolina to tout the growth in manufacturing in the Tar Heel state. From Henry Payne of the Detroit News:
On his first post-State of the Union whistle stop, pro-union, anti-right-to-work President Obama came to Linamar Corporation outside Asheville, North Carolina. Somehow Obama’s advance team missed this: Linamar is a non-union shop in a right-to-work state.
“I believe we attract new jobs to America by investing in new sources of energy and new infrastructure and the next generation of high-wage, high-tech American manufacturing,” said the president to Canadian-owned Linamar’s 160 workers. “And that’s why I wanted to come down here to Asheville, because there’s a good story to tell here.”
But Linamar didn’t open in an abandoned Volvo plant two years ago because of Obama’s federal spending initiatives. It opened here because North Carolina is a right-to-work state – a fact that union puppet Obama and his party vehemently oppose. Indeed, Obama’s National Labor Relations Board has fought manufacturing firms like Boeing from moving to right-to-work South Carolina.
Linamar’s biggest North Carolina customer is Big Labor-enemy #1 Caterpillar Corporation which has brought a steady drumbeat of manufacturing jobs to the right-to-work south (part of a “southern strategy”that unions loath) – and away from Obama’s Big Labor Illinois Midwest. That should be a lesson not only to President Obama – but also to Michiganians who recently made their state more competitive with right-to-work legislation.
“Right to work is something we talk about in our marketing,” says Ben Teague, a spokesman for the Asheville Chamber of Commerce who confirms that both Caterpillar and Linamark officials like North Carolina’s labor climate. “We fell it is a competitive edge. It means you get workers that want to work at a reasonable wage.”
The president seems remarkably ignorant of this reality.
“I mentioned this last night — Caterpillar, which I know you guys supply, they’re bringing jobs back from Japan,” the president told the non-union Linamark crowd. “We’re seeing this trend of what we call insourcing, not just outsourcing. And the reason is because America has got outstanding workers. ”
Yes, outstanding workers – but in particular, outstanding NON-FORCED-UNION workers in right-to-work states like North Carolina. That’s what’s driving in-sourcing.
