Michigan’s state House and Senate passed Right-to-Work bills last week, because, as Governor Rick Snyder said, workers “should be able to decide whether to join a union or not.”
Which exact bill will wind up on the governor’s desk is anybody’s guess, but one could be signed into law by Snyder as early as tomorrow. Both would prevent unions from requiring workers to join as a condition of employment.
Predictably, Michigan Education Association President Steve Cook argues that legislators “want to force unions to … provide se+rvices, benefits and the protections to non-members who will not pay a penny for them. It defunds unions.”
That’s a rather one-sided way of looking at the issue. The cases of Michigan day care workers and home health care workers, both railroaded into union, tell a different tale.
Two years ago, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy challenged the bizarre unionization of 40,000 self-employed day care providers by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the United Auto Workers, with dues skimmed “from the Michigan Department of Human Services subsidy payments made to some providers on behalf of qualifying low income parents.”
Then, there’s the $33 million SEIU has nabbed “from the elderly and disabled in Michigan … through a unionization scheme it orchestrated when Jennifer Granholm was governor.” Jarrett Skorup writes in Michigan Capitol Confidential that “tens of thousands of people are being forced to send money to the Service Employees International Union simply because they care for a friend or family member who receives a Medicaid stipend.”
After reviewing these two cases, the right-to-work is clearly part of an even bigger right: the right not to be ripped off.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.