My grandmother was a "Rosy the Rivetter"--not because she wanted it, but because she had to do it. She was working for Ford when the "Battle of the Overpass" occurred. She was a union member for decades in Michigan.
Ever since that we've been a union family. Even during the "period of insanity" when I was an administrator, I found negotiating a useful (albeit dissonant) activity. My respect for unions was affirmed when after I stopped being "on the other side" I was asked to negotiate for the union. Mutual respect helps. So it's with pain and angst that I read that there is a serious effort to convert Michigan, the cradle of America's union movement, to a right to work state.
Never happen? Think again. Jump with me.
Here, where unions mobilized a nation, the conservative think tanks are plotting the revolution. Here's what the Mackinac Center says:
Right-to-work, in its broadest application, simply means freedom of choice in the labor market. To many workers, it's a concept as American as baseball and apple pie. To today's union leadership, it's a scary notion because it means they would actually have to earn the voluntary approval of their membership by treating them as customers rather than as captives...Right-to-work is not anti-union. It is pro-choice
They are hiding in full view. A cover article in dBusiness (Detroit Business Magazine) last month suggests that it's the only way to bring back Michigan's economy. This hasn't escaped the state's union members and Democrats, but they are in hard times:
Here's Michigan Liberal
These special interests want to destroy the quality of life we all hold sacred. Workers in Right to Work states earn on average $6,590 less than workers in free-bargaining states. That’s the equivalent to a 17% pay cut! On average, Right to Work states have a 16% higher poverty rate and job fatality rates are also 54% higher. The average employee in a free bargaining state is 24.1% more likely to have health insurance than a worker in a Right-to-Work state. These statistics are staggering and we cannot afford to be fooled by a false slogan that is being forced on us by outside special interests. The University of Michigan Institute for Labor and Industrial Relations calls Right to Work "a veiled assault on wage-earners."
This is just one more assault on the American worker. When assembly plants for foreign cars were set up in right-to-work states a decade ago, importing every part they could from non-union countries to simply subvert the "American content" laws and import duties, the unions were too cowed to respond. When the Republicans and Clintons negotiated trade pacts with no allowance for worker rights (i.e. Colombia) a minority of Democrats cried foul. When Bush allowed Mexican truckers to bring their trucks and gas across the border, but the reverse relationship wasn't approved, the Teamsters' complaints were week.
In this nation the only medium "louder" than NetRoots is the radio/cell network that our cross-country truckers maintain. There is no greater force for grass roots canvasing than our service unions. There is no group who knows more clearly what kind of damage the Republican base can do to Americans than Michigan's auto workers.
It's time for revolution.