Support National Right-to-Work Act

Many Americans are very thankful to have a job in these critical economic times -- a job that puts food on the table, keeps the house warm in winter, puts gas in the car to get to work, and leaves a little left over to purchase some geraniums to plant along the front porch. But many Americans lose these jobs or face a stressful work environment that includes discrimination and persecution because they don’t want to be coerced into joining a union and paying union dues -- dues that end up being used by union bosses for political spending and advocacy. It's hard to believe that in the United States laws have been passed that actually prohibit people from being able to choose whether they want to participate in something they often don’t support or believe in, as a condition of employment.

Then of course, there are businesses that suffer monetary setbacks and losses because of the cost of implementing union rules and that see the workplace turned into a battleground for union expansion through strong-arm tactics and intimidation. Some unions have become so powerful that their style of union promotion and rules enforcement mimics Mafia protection rackets.

In order to reverse these unfair practices and hindrances for employers and employees, there is a newly introduced bill in the U.S. Senate, S. 2173, that would right the wrongs of forced union membership and closed shops. The National Right-to-Work Act would legally protect the free choice of individuals to join, or not join, labor organizations.

“Forced-unionism allows union bosses to forcibly take dues from a politically diverse group of workers and then give hundreds of millions every year almost exclusively to one political party. Workers should have the right to provide for their families without having to pay for political activity they strongly disagree with,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, (R-SC), the Senator who introduced this bill.

Rank and file union members themselves oppose their union bosses political spending, viewing it as wasteful, an October 2010 poll indicated. In fact, 59 percent of union members would vote to replace their own union leadership if given a secret ballot election, over 50 percent view ObamaCare as a failure, 80 percent support the Right-to-Work principle, while a whopping 90 percent favor more union disclosure and accountability.

A Winter 2010 Cato Journal analysis of right-to-work laws by Richard Vedder from Ohio University shows that in states unencumbered by heavy-handed union rules and intimidation, worker well-being outperforms forced-union states. An article posted on The Hill states: “From 2000 to 2008, about 4.7 million Americans moved from forced-union to right-to-work states and a recent study found that there is ‘a very strong and highly statistically significant relationship between right-to-work laws and economic growth,’ and that from 1977 to 2007, right-to-work states experienced a 23 percent faster growth in per capita income than states with forced unionization.”

And, “Contrary to much union rhetoric, right-to-work laws don't ban or bust unions. They simply grant individual workers the right to join or not to join, even once a workplace is organized by a union,” declares a Wall Street Journal February 2010 article.

Help workers keep more of what they earn, protect the workplace environment from monopolistic labor union tactics, end the stifling of competition by keeping industries at home in America, and stop the further erosion of employment liberty by restoring complete freedom for workers and employers with S. 2173, the National Right-to-Work Act.

This proposed legislation has already been placed on the Senate calendar, contact your Senators and Representative and ask them to promote and pass this bill that would positively affect millions of hard-working, tax-paying Americans, and that would decrease the stranglehold activist and political-agenda-driven union bosses currently have on employers and employees.

Thanks.

Your friends at The John Birch Society