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Instant Guide Indiana's 'right to work' bill: A serious blow to Big Labor?

Indiana enacted the first "right-to-work" law in the nation's industrial North on Wednesday. What is this historic law and how much will it weaken unions?

Posted on February 2, 2012, at 2:14 PM

On Wednesday, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) signed the first "right-to-work" law in the traditionally union-heavy Rust Belt. A blow to organized labor, the law weakens unions by giving employees at unionized workplaces the option to skip out on paying dues. Unions turned out pretty heavily to oppose the bill, but a series of Republican victories in the state since 2006, and a change of heart by Daniels, paved the way to its passage. What are these laws, and what do they mean for organized labor? Here, a brief guide:

What is a "right-to-work" law?

Right-to-work laws, many of which were enacted in the South and West after World War II, bar mandatory union membership at businesses and prohibit unions from collecting dues from nonmembers. Joining 22 other right-to-work states, Indiana is the first to adopt the law since Oklahoma more than a decade ago. Indiana actually had a similar law on the books from 1957 to 1965, when it was repealed after Democrats took control of state government.

What are the arguments for, and against, such laws?

Daniels and other Indiana Republicans argue that the law will create a more business-friendly environment that will attract companies, and jobs, to the state. As well, says Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe, according to polls, "most Americans regard compulsory unionism as unconscionable." These laws aren't "anti-union." They promote choice. Opponents say these "right to work for less" laws erode wages, lead to lower-quality jobs, and unfairly let "free riders" enjoy union-negotiated benefits without paying for the negotiating. For what it's worth, says Andrew Rosenthal in The New York Times, "six of the 10 states with the highest unemployment have right-to-work laws."

Why is Indiana's such a big deal?

It's "a turning point in American labor history," says Abby Rapoport in The American Prospect. This is "the first time since 1957 that unions in a northern state have lost key rights," and the first right-to-work law aimed at crushing unions rather than preventing them from gaining power. Since the 1930s, the big question for organized labor has been "when will we organize the South," says Cornell University labor historian Jefferson Cowie. In Indiana, "the opposite happened. The South is slowly chipping away at the North and bringing the North into a lower wage, non-union economy."

Will other states follow suit?

Right-to-work activists in Michigan, Ohio, and Minnesota sound optimistic. But "the political factors that aligned in Indiana were so unique," says Tom LoBianco in the Associated Press, that a repeat in those states is "unlikely." Proponents in the dozen states that considered but failed to pass right-to-work laws last year have run into vetoes from Democratic governors, opposition from labor-friendly Republicans, or in other Rust Belt states, "squeamish Republicans who don't want to pick fights with private sector unions," which are weaker that they've been in 50 years but still "a clear political threat."

Will the Super Bowl in Indianapolis this weekend be affected?

Probably not. Daniels warned the unions on Monday that disrupting Super Bowl weekend would be a "colossal mistake," because "thousands of people are earning money they wouldn’t otherwise earn because of the Super Bowl." The unions apparently agree. The AFL-CIO says it will pass out pamphlets in the days leading up to the big game, but won't organize any big protests on Super Bowl Sunday. "This has always been about the fight over 'right to work,' and that takes place in the Statehouse and the ballot box," says AFL-CIO spokesman Jeff Harris.

Sources: American Prospect, AP, Boston Globe, Indianapolis Star, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, NPR, Think Progress, Washington Times

Speaking of the rich...

...even his fellow Republican candidates for President of the United States take shots at Richey-Rich Mitt Romney.

Some consider me a liberal Democrate...

...ya think!

If I were a conservative Republican, I sure wouldn't have said what I said above about right-to-work legislation.

Anyway...

I hereby relinquish my soapbox to a fellow liberal Democrat...Washington Post Columnist Eugene Robinson. He has a few words to say about Republican front-runner Mitt Romney and his recent "I'm not concerned about the very poor" comment.

From the Washington Post...

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Opinion Writer
Romney fails the empathy test

By Eugene Robinson

I wish Mitt Romney’s cavalier dismissal of poverty in America could be chalked up as just another gaffe, but it’s much worse than that. The Republican front-runner seems dangerously clueless about the nation he seeks to lead.

When I first heard the now-famous quote — “I’m not concerned about the very poor” — I thought it might be fodder for a snarky column about the wee little Mr. Monopoly who lives inside Romney’s head and blurts out things like “Corporations are people, my friend,” or “I like being able to fire people.” But I realized that being “very poor” is no laughing matter to millions of Americans.

Putting Romney’s words in their full context makes them worse. Here is what he said on CNN:

“I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

For my part, I’m concerned about what sounds like shocking ignorance about the extent of poverty in this country and an utter lack of urgency about finding solutions.

According to a U.S. Census Bureau report released in September, the poverty rate began rising sharply in 2007 as the recession took hold. By 2010, the report says, 15.1 percent of Americans were living below the poverty line — 46.2 million people who apparently do not merit Romney’s attention.

A substantial plurality of these poor people — about 20 million — are non-Hispanic whites. Roughly 13 million are Hispanic, and nearly 11 million are African American. These figures show that minorities are overrepresented among the poor, but also that poverty is by no means some kind of “minority problem.” It’s an American problem.

And even these numbers are somewhat misleading, since the official poverty threshold is set at a level that many researchers consider unrealistically low. Imagine supporting a family of four on $22,314 a year — food, shelter, clothing, transportation — and being told you’re not poor.

A better measure, in my view, is the number of families getting by on incomes that equal the poverty level plus an additional 25 percent. By this standard, fully one-fifth of the nation is poor.

Romney says that we have a safety net. That’s still true, despite the best efforts of his party to rip it to shreds.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume the most important support for people living in poverty — the food stamps program — continues more or less unchanged. Let’s also assume that Romney, as president, manages to “fix” Medicaid and Social Security in a way that does not reduce the benefits they provide to poor people and that Romney’s tax plan is altered so it does not raise taxes on the lowest earners, as many analysts say it would.

In Romney’s worldview, case closed. No need to be “concerned” about poverty as long as people are not starving.

What our society ought to be concerned about is making sure that poor people have the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty. Liberals and conservatives might disagree on how best to accomplish this goal. We can argue about the role government should play versus the private sector. We can dispute the merits of traditional public schools versus charter schools. What we cannot do is simply write off up to one-fifth of the nation’s human potential, as if it were a footnote in a corporation’s annual report.

I’m not blaming Romney for our decades-long failure to address structural poverty. The fact is that our system tends to award benefits to those who wield political and economic power. Romney was clumsily trying to pledge fealty to the interests of the middle class. President Obama, in speech after speech, has been doing the same.

But there was something disturbing about the icy way in which Romney, even when trying to clarify his initial remark, continued to insist that the poor receive government help and therefore need not be a focus of his policies. Even some conservative Republicans were taken aback, with Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) saying that Romney should “backtrack” and make clear he does not want the poor to languish in “government dependency programs.”