I’m not in a RTW state and people in my state have been arguing about it as long as I can remember. Even after I read it, I still don’t understand what it means and how it could bring wages down.
In: 96
So let’s start off with a brief lesson about unions and collective bargaining.
Joey is running a Lemonade Stand, selling glasses of lemonade for $1 each that cost him 50 cents each. His business is doing so well that he wants to expand and bring some people on to help him run his lemonade stands. So he hires some of the other local children and offers to pay them 5 cents per glass of lemonade they sell. Things go on like this for a little bit, and his five workers realize that they’re doing all the work while he sits at home playing videogames, and he’s making 45 cents per cup and they’re only making 5 cents a cup. So they get together and come and talk to Joey, and say hey, we don’t think this is far. We’re happy to run your lemonade stands for you, but we deserve a bigger cut of the profits. Pay us 30 cents per cup or we’ll all stop working for you. Joey balks, so they stop working (aka a strike) for him for a few days and he starts not making any money as he’s not selling any lemonade. Joey realizes getting 20 cents per cup they sell is better than nothing, so he agrees and they come back to work.
His five workers then decide that this probably won’t be the only time Joey’s going to try to take advantage of them, so they form a union, and agree that 5 cents of the 30 from each cup they sell will go into a collective pool, and this money will be used in support of their union efforts. For instance, in the event of another strike, they can all dip into this money to cover expenses for the period they won’t be getting paid for.
Joey, of course, decides that he’s definitely interested in taking advantage of them, so he starts to bring in other workers. He tells these workers they can get 30 cents per cup sold, OR they can get 25 cents per cup sold because 5 cents has to go towards the union – and who needs that union when you’re getting 30 cents per cup? The new workers, having not seen what the union had to go through to get their 30 cents per cup, choose not to contribute towards it. Eventually, he has enough non-union employees on the payroll that when the unionized members come forward with another demand, like “hey, we should get a bathroom break while we’re working, and we should have access to cool water to drink since we’re out here in the hot sun”, Joey tells them to pound sand. They threaten a strike again, but the non-union workers don’t want to lose their money and there isn’t enough in their fund to cover everyone, since only five of them have been paying into it. So even with all five of them gone, the remaining 10 workers are enough to keep things rolling without them. So their collective bargaining power has been destroyed. Joey is now free to squeeze the remaining employees where he can, and the next few people he brings on he’s only paying 25 cents per cup to. He raises prices a little but doesn’t raise what he’s paying his workers. Small perks start vanishing. Eventually, he ends up in a position much like he was in before the union formed.
Now let’s say that as part of the initial union deal, the union also negotiated a rule: anyone new hired HAD to participate in the union. They have to pay their 5 cents, and they have to abide by what the union says when it coms to strikes. Now, Joey doesn’t have that leverage to break up the union over time by bringing on non-unionized workers to replace them.
So Joey goes whining to the PTA and has them make a rule against this. It’s so unfair, he says, that this union gets to claim 5 cents of all of his workers’ money. The workers should be able to choose whether or not to join the union and pay the dues. They have a Right to Work, the evil corrupt union can’t take that away from them with its unfair rule that won’t let them work unless they’re a member of the union! The PTA decides he’s right and intervenes, the union’s deal is nullified, and we’re back to the situation where Joey can break up their collective bargaining power by diluting how many workers are members of the union.
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