The most interesting fact is that there is a striking similarity between the Right to Work States and those states which voted against Obama in the 2012 election.
Many states have gone on to pass "Right-To-Work" laws; most citing the Common Law interdiction of self-help as an infringement of the Constitutional right of freedom of association and the common law principle of private ownership of property. The unions have shown that these Right to Work states are almost uniformly the poorest in the nation and that their unions have been weakened by these laws, wages are lower and worker safety and health is endangered.
This is not a struggle in favour of establishing constitutional rights for workers. It is a blatant demand of the ultra-right Republicans to try to compete with the Democrats in those areas in which they are strong. They have engaged in a wide range of nefarious practices, election-rigging, midnight sessions and quasi-legal votes to promote this agenda in Wisconsin, Ohio and, now, Michigan. This is not an economic or moral issue. It is plain down-in-the-dirt politics of a dying brand of conservatism. Workers from across the land should oppose these last convulsions of a dying viper and allow the forces of democracy to reassert themselves.
[i]
Edward P. Cheyney, ed., "England in the time of Wycliffe, (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1898)
[ii] Orren, Karen (Jan 1, 1992). Belated Feudalism: Labor, the Law, and Liberal Development in the United States. Cambridge University Press.
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