Committee President to Trump: Don't Put Anti-Right to Work Congresswoman in Charge of Your Labor Department
The following letter was sent to President Trump by National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix on November 20th, 2024.
‘Unions Want Everyone Under Their Contract, Especially Those They Hold Back’
In a Labor Day weekend op-ed published in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (see the link below), James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation tersely explains why laws and policies authorizing the officials of one union to act as the “exclusive” bargaining agent for all the front-line employees at a workplace benefit, first and foremost, Big Labor. Independent-minded workers, as well as business owners and consumers, are frequently harmed by monopolistic unionism.
As long as Congress continues to promote this system through federal legislation, the least senators and congressmen can do is ensure that no worker is ever forced to pay for union monopoly bargaining that harms him or her.
In his concluding sentences, Sherk makes the point as well as anyone has:
[U]nions do not have to negotiate on behalf of non-union employees. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed unions’ ability to negotiate “members only” contracts. Unions choose to negotiate contracts covering all workers, members and non-members alike.
They do so because union contracts benefit some workers at the expense of others. Unions do not want to let the workers they hurt opt out. Seniority systems, for example, hold back better workers. If a union negotiated a members-only seniority system, high performers would never join. They would opt for performance-based promotions and raises, leaving fewer positions and less money for the union’s members. Unions want everyone under their contract, especially those they hold back.
That may be legal, but workers should not be forced to pay for it.
