Donald Trump may dominate the Republican Party today, but we should not forget that when the 2016 GOP race began, Scott Walker was viewed as the lead conservative challenger to establishment favorite Jeb Bush.
Governor Walker rose to political fame by taking a hatchet to unions in the state of Wisconsin. In addition to his famous fight against teacher unions, Walker passed “right to work” legislation designed to destroy unions.
Thankfully, Wisconsin judge C. William Foust has struck down Walker’s right to work legislation,
Conservatives like to claim that no one should be forced into paying union dues, and that union should only represent those workers who wish to join it. Many great sales teams are built on non-unionized workers. But this is an impossibility. Corporations will always ignore and stop unions if it is possible. If they can just turn to non-union workers, then they will have no need to listen to the unions’ demands. And with the collapse of a labor union, workers will be forced to stand up to the corporations by themselves, ensuring lower wages and benefits for all.
It is similar to taxation. No one likes paying taxes, and if people could opt out of paying taxes, they almost certainly would. But even most conservatives understand that if people could just opt out of paying taxes, then the government would never receive enough revenue and it would collapse.
Right to work laws are a classic application of the “tragedy of the commons” problem. If every worker just thinks about their own self-interest and do not band together in a labor union, then they will all end up worse off in the long run. It is strange how conservatives cannot understand this, given how much they love to use the tragedy of the commons to debunk communism.
Unions must receive revenue in order to keep up their fight for workers’ rights, and it is not possible for a company union to fight for the rights of just one subset of workers and not others.
Despite this easy argument, right to work laws have been passed in 25 states across the United States, and it is difficult to imagine that judges will strike them down in states like Texas, Utah, and South Carolina. Labor activists and the people cannot wait for judges to slowly strike them down while labor unions fall into pieces. They must get to the ballot box and ensure that right-to-work legislation is stopped and judges and legislators who support them are remove.
For now, the judicial decision to strike the Wisconsin right to work law, which has been one of the key anti-union states over the past few years, is a great victory. But there is much which has to be done to ensure it is not merely a one-time thing.