"Goonions hate Freedom"
What do unions want the most, and therefore hate losing the most? If you guessed “money,” then based on that alone, you have good insight into what drives much of American politics. Unions love money. Unions especially love taking money out of workers’ paychecks involuntarily when they can do so under color of the law. This is why unions absolutely hate news stories like this one,
“The 2011 state law that all but ended collective bargaining for most public workers has hit Wisconsin’s second largest union particularly hard.
“The latest tax documents available show combined income of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) dropped 45 percent in 2012 — the first full year of the law, according to The Capital Times.
“In 2011, the four councils that make up the state organization reported a combined income of $14.9 million. In 2012 that dropped to $8.3 million. Dues revenue dropped 40 percent to $7.1 million.”
What has hit unions in Wisconsin so hard is the part of the 2011 law that Walker shepherded through the Republican-controlled state legislature that allows workers to refuse to “donate” funds from their paychecks to the unions. In essence, this law helped Wisconsin to take another step towards becoming a right-to-work state – one in which workers themselves are free to choose whether or not to join a union shop. Many workers in Wisconsin were using their newfound freedom to stop the union bloodletting from their paychecks.
Unions hate worker freedom. Despite the chest-thumping propaganda that unions “saved the worker in America,” the fact is that unions represent a business/labor model that simply is not relevant to our economy today. This, as much as the increased prevalence of right-to-work laws, is why they are dying out. Instead of adapting to the times, unions generally seek to freeze in place the sort of rust-belt economic model that peaked in the 1950s – which is a great example of the typical intellectual bankruptcy that is rife throughout liberalism. Part of this effort involves trapping workers in union shops were the union will “represent” them at the price of extorted dues taken out of their hard-earned paychecks. Obviously enough, the unions have a vested interest in forcing as many workers as possible to contribute. After all, expensive cigars and Cadillacs for the union bosses aren’t cheap.
Propagandists for the unions will try to claim that workers “really” like unions and want to be unionized. The very fact that so many workers bolt the unions when they can – as evidenced by the steep declines in union revenues seen in Wisconsin, to give one example – suggests that this is not the case. Likewise does the steadily declining membership rolls of most of the major unions in America. Sure, there are always some workers out there who want to belong to a union, but many don’t, and right-to-work laws and laws such as Wisconsin’s provide them the opportunity to make their own choice.
The issue is really about worker freedom. Right-to-work laws do not outlaw unions or forbid union membership. These laws do not infringe upon the First Amendment right of workers to organize and associate together. What they do, instead, is to affirm the First Amendment right of workers to NOT organize or associate with a union if they don’t choose to. Freedom to choose to join a union must by necessity carry with it the converse freedom to not join a union.
Forced unionization is also unjust because of the fact that unions essentially serve as fundraising arms for the Democratic Party. Yet, large numbers of blue-collar workers support conservative and Republican causes and candidates. By requiring the deduction of union dues so that the unions can throw large bags of money at left-wing candidates and movements, at best the unions are misrepresenting many of their own constituent workers, and at worst they are disenfranchising them. Millions of workers in America see some of their money taken and given to candidates and causes they never would themselves support.
But because paycheck theft involves big bucks, both the unions and the Democratic Party are adamant about keeping the trough full. Thankfully, worker freedom is becoming increasingly recognized across the country, not just in traditionally anti-union deep South states, but even in traditional industrial states like Indiana and Michigan (there are rumblings of this type of legislation in Pennsylvania as well). Democrats rightly fear that right-to-work and other worker freedom legislation will undercut their access to large amounts of “free” money, and even try to argue against these laws on that basis. But so what? Democrats should not have the right to shake down workers just to try to get themselves re-elected.