Public Employee Press

The Right to Work (for Less)

HENRY GARRIDO
Executive Director, District Council 37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO

Anti-union right-to-work laws now govern the workplace in half of the country.

Last month, Wisconsin became the 25th right-to-work state in the country. It was fitting that Gov. Scott Walker - who has made a political career out of attacking unions - was the one to sign the legislation.

Right-wing spin masters have cynically succeeded in making people unfamiliar with the term believe "right to work" is about guaranteeing employment.

Actually, "right to work" describes laws intended to cripple unions financially and limit their power to defend workers. The laws are designed to undermine the ability of unions to collect dues from workers covered by collective bargaining agreements who don't want to pay their fair share for services.

Right-to-work laws are part of the anti-union agenda of the Republican Party and their right-wing backers, such the Koch brothers, the libertarian think tank Reason Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council, which provides boilerplate anti-labor legislation to conservative state and local legislators.

Frankly, I'm worried that those who are informed about the threat don't take it seriously enough. Our complacency here is understandable when you consider that organized labor remains strong in New York. Our state accounts for 2 million out of the country's 16.2 million wage and salary workers who enjoy union representation in the United States. And the state's unions are a potent political force.

But if there is a shift in the political winds in New York, public employees could fall victim to the same kind of attack that Walker carried out in 2011. That attack took away the collective bargaining rights of our national union's members in Wisconsin, causing our membership there to plummet by more than 50 percent.

With a pending U.S. Supreme Court case that could open the way for New York to become a right-to-work state, we took preventive action earlier this year by urging thousands of agency-fee payers to join DC 37. (Agency fee payers are workers who haven't joined the union but receive services, such as workplace protection and contract coverage, because they pay dues.) Through our organizing campaign, which continues, we have signed up 13,000 new members.

But even without a bad ruling by the Supreme Court, there is trouble ahead in our state.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo seeks legislation that would allow the state to take over schools that have "failed" for three years. The state would have the power to put a receiver in charge of a failing school and throw out the union contract, gutting union power. Such a receivership would in effect be a mini-dictatorship because power would be shifted from a democratically-elected school board to the receiver, who would also have the power to fire school administrators and staff and appoint a superintendent.

The way I see it is if Cuomo succeeds in "reforming" our public schools by giving unelected receivers the power to rip up union contracts, the door will be open for additional attacks on working people, including the adoption of a right-to-work law.

What would life be like for us if New York were to become a right-to-work state? Our standard of living would go down as our wages and benefits come under attack. Consider:

• On average, workers in a right-to-work state earn $5,971 less than workers in other states,
• Workers in right-to-work states are 16.3 percent more likely to be uninsured, and
• Poverty rates are 14.8 percent higher in states with right-to-work laws.
  

In 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke eloquently about the threat of right-to-work laws. He said: "Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone."

A half a century later, Dr. King's words ring true. We need to listen.