The mainstream media has more or less ignored some interesting news out of Wisconsin. It is that the governor, the unflappable Scott Walker, has signed into law a right-to-work bill that covers private sector unions.
This makes Wisconsin the 25th state in the country to adopt right-to-work legislation, that is, legislation that stops any union from forcing workers to support it.
Wisconsin’s action is notable for a variety of reasons. First, it is a traditionally blue state. Second, it is an upper-Midwest industrial state. Third, it has a history of heavy unionization — about one-fifth higher than the national average (8.2%, compared to 6.7%). Back in the mid-1980s, over 20% of Wisconsin private sector workers were in unions.
Also, like Michigan, Wisconsin passed the bill even though its governor was initially reluctant to support it. Walker had originally called it a “distraction,” but after the state senate majority leader pushed the billed through the legislature, Walker quickly signed it into law.
The law did not have bipartisan support. In the state assembly, all 35 Democrats voted against it while all 62 Republicans voted for it. In the senate, 14 Democrats (joined by one turncoat Republican) voted against it, while the remaining 17 Republicans voted for it.
The vitriol reached its peak when a union supporter threatened to gut Walker’s wife “like a deer.”
Proponents of Big Labor hegemony were predictably outraged at Walker’s signing the bill. One union supporter lamented, “It’s going to take 25 to 40 years to correct problems Scott Walker’s done in 4 ½ years.” Phil Neuefeldt, head of Wisconsin’s AFL-CIO, threatened, “We’re not going to forget about it.” And of course our unifying President Barack Obama had to chime in, calling the Wisconsin law “a sustained, coordinated assault in unions, led by powerful interests and their allies in government.”
As if Obama’s whole tenure weren’t a result of the machinations of powerful interests — not least of which is Big Labor.
But then, Walker has made a career of facing down unions. In his first term, he pushed through restrictions on public employee unions’ collective bargaining powers, forced public employees to contribute more to their pension and health care benefits, and gave government employees the right to opt out of the obligation to pay dues to the public employee unions.
These modest reforms appear to have saved local governments in Wisconsin $3 billion in taxpayer dollars and kept property taxes from rising while keeping the number of teachers from being cut. But the teachers’ unions are singing the blues: the National Education Association saw its Wisconsin membership drop from 100,000 to 66,000, the American Federation of Teachers (representing the college teachers) saw a drop of 50%, and the state employees union dropped from 70,000 to 21,000.
For all this, Walker faced near-riotous demonstrations and a recall election, with Big Labor money flowing in from across the nation, to remove him. The public employee unions even tried to remove a Wisconsin state Supreme Court judge who had upheld Walker’s earlier law.
The vitriol reached its peak when a union supporter threatened to gut Walker’s wife “like a deer.” I am always moved by the boundless compassion offered by progressive liberals.
The rhetoric of the Walker-haters aroused by the current law — which, please note, merely gives private-sector workers the freedom given to public sector workers, years ago — has been amazing. But what is to come will almost surely be worse. GOP legislators are now indicating that they will take on Wisconsin’s nearly century-old “prevailing wage law,” which forces governments to pay union-dictated wages on all public works projects.
In the end, what is driving the push for worker freedom is popular opinion, supported by unarguable logic. One recent poll put public support for the right of workers not to support a union at 62%. And the reasons have been the same for decades. First, unions force workers to support candidates and causes they abhor. Second, unions often destroy the businesses that employ the workers. Third, unions violate the human right of free association.
With the action in Wisconsin, half the states in the union now give liberty to workers to belong or refuse to belong to unions. In many of the remaining states, such as California, the stranglehold of Big Labor is too strong to break. Yet there is hope. Should Scott Walker ever become president, with a Congress controlled by Republicans, it is possible that a federal right-to-work law would be enacted.
Should that ever happen, there would be a cry of freedom from American workers that would rock the gates of Heaven itself.
And it could happen.
