Big Labor's latest attack on Right-to-Work is wrong - and outrageous

The Center for Worker Freedom has learned that union supporters have been circulating in Kentucky a ridiculous article called, “What’s Wrong with ‘Right-to-Work’: Exposing the Racist Legacy and Corporate America’s Agenda.”  

Using a litany of false arguments, unsupportable claims, personal attacks, logical fallacies and blanket allegations of racism, the writers Alex Bradshaw and Richard Becker, both union activists, attempt to scare off potential public supporters of local right-to-work: Since December twelve counties in Kentucky have used their Home Rule statutes to pass local right-to-work  ordinances.                                                                                                                   

The authors in their reprehensible circular claim two “facts” about right-to-work:

The first is the fact that the RTW campaign has racist, divide-and-conquer origins initially pushed by far-right business interests and candid white supremacists. The second is the fact that the proponents of RTW today are part of the exclusionary lineage of the American right, determined to divide the working-class in one way or another.

The first claim shows Bradshaw and Becker to be poor students of history; the second shows them to be dishonest or ignorant at best. 

As a matter of fact, the union movement itself has deep history of racism and racist leaders. Horace Cooper recently wrote a piece on the dark history of labor unions in the June 2014 Labor Watch.  Cooper is co-chairman of Project 21 National Advisory Board, which bills itself as:

....an initiative of The National Center for Public Policy Research to promote the views of African-Americans whose entrepreneurial spirit, dedication to family and commitment to individual responsibility has not traditionally been echoed by the nation's civil rights establishment.

In his Labor Watch article, Cooper quotes the founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) Samuel Gompers as saying, “the Caucasians…are not going to let their standard of living be destroyed by negroes, Chinamen, Japs, or any others.” 

 Cooper gives context to the quote by using Cato Institute’s Charles W. Baird’s explanation of how organized labor -- not the right-to-work movement -- explicitly and purposely-hurt African-American  communities in its early days:

Excluded from white unions, the only way blacks could compete for construction jobs was to work for union-free contractors for market wages lower than union-scale wages. Those union-free contractors and their black employees were effectively excluded from those projects by [the union supported] Davis-Bacon, which was racist in intent and effect.

Cooper also illuminates the discrimination and racism of unions and Democrats in parts of the New Deal, the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.  

But Cooper is not the only one to report on the racist history of labor unions and their supporters. Tim O’Neil of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch looks back to 1917 in East St. Louis, when:

That spring, the largely white workforce at Aluminum Ore, 32nd and Missouri avenues, went on strike. Management hired strikebreakers, both black and white. Embittered union leaders remembered black faces, and they demanded that City Hall “get rid” of the newcomers.

The labor union members were infuriated by the fact that African-American workers had taken their jobs. After days of tensions and cases of violence, the union members, egged on by their union leaders, shot, beat and stabbed as many black people they could find on the streets. They also burned down homes of African-American citizens and ran many out of town. 

In light of Cooper’s and O’Neil’s reporting, Bradshaw and Becker’s claims seem laughable. It’s a pathetic attempt to rewrite history while smearing those who support right-to-work today. The allegations are a scare-tactic in an obvious bid to frighten readers into believing that if they openly support right-to-work they will be called racist. 

 Besides, in theory and in practice, right-to-work laws are not meant and don’t prohibit unions.  If you you’re your union you can keep your union, but only if you, the worker, want to. Right-to-work liberates workers from mandatory unionization, regardless of their race, creed or gender.

Bradshaw and Becker also falsely state that,  “No American citizen is forced into a labor union or forced to pay dues.” But, indeed, workers across the country have been and are coerced into unions or forced to finically support them. For example, the United Farm Workers (UFW) union is continuing their mission to force the farmworkers of Gerawan Farming, Inc. in Fresno, California to be a part of their union even after thousands of workers signed petitions and voted to decertify the UFW. 

The authors also claim that only states may pass right-to-work under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, but the act that speaks to the proper authority, section 14B, was written with the intention of making sure states and their subdivisions were protected from blanket mandatory unionization. The section reads:

 Nothing in this Act [subchapter] shall be construed as authorizing the execution or application of agreements requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment in any State or Territory in which such execution or application is prohibited by State or Territorial law.

Since the Taft-Hartley act was an amendment to the National Labor Relations Act, why would Congress need to amend the act to specifically state that states were protected unless they feared union overreach? 

Additionally Bradshaw and Becker claim that right-to-work state leads to lower wages.  This is highly misleading.  Many of the non-right-to-work states are located in areas of the country that feature a higher cost of living. This means that right-to-work states, many of which are located in the less-expensive, right-to-work South, may be paid less, but have a higher purchasing power.

Bradshaw and Becker have willfully attempted to misconstrue, scare and manipulate citizens with false charges about right-to-work and its supporters.  Their piece was sent to intimidate county officials in Kentucky, and their message is clear:  Support right-to-work, and we will smear you as a racist.

County officials who receive this trash have a choice - they can give in to this outrageous intimidation, or they can do the right thing for their communities.

Photo credit to Andy Pixel.