Congress‘s lame duck session is proving more interesting than expected. Don’t miss out on these three important ThinkProgress stories from this week:
1. What You Need To Know About The Michigan GOP’s ‘Right-To-Work’ Assault On Workers
2. 11 Reasons You’re Glad Jim DeMint Is Leaving The Senate
3. After Spending $9 Million To Defeat Her, Wall Street Watches Sen-Elect Warren Join Banking Committee
Best,
Igor Volsky
Deputy Editor, ThinkProgress
Jan. 20, 2012
Over the past year, GOP-controlled state houses have been passing Voter ID laws, making it harder for many people, including America‘s seniors, to vote. Alliance for Retired Americans President Barbara Easterling says this is an outrage: “Our generation, like those who came before us, fought and died for the right to vote. We must never let politicians take this away.”
Read more important news of the day on the issues working families care about. |
As we discussed last week, Republicans in Michigan are ramming through so-called “right to work” legislation (along with several other highly controversial bills) during the final days of lame duck session.
A new report out today from our colleagues at the Center for American Progress underscores why right to work for less isn’t just bad for unions, it’s bad for everyone:
- The average worker—unionized or not—working in a right-to-work state earns approximately $1,500 less per year than a similar worker in a state without such a law.
- Workers in right-to-work states are also significantly less likely to receive employer-provided health insurance and pensions. If benefits coverage in non-right-to-work states were lowered to the levels of states with these laws, 2 million fewer workers would receive health insurance and 3.8 million fewer workers would receive pensions nationwide.
- All of the states with the lowest percentage of workers in unions—Mississippi, Arkansas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, South Dakota, and Oklahoma—are right-to-work states. They all have a relatively weak middle class, as the share of total state income going to the middle 60 percent of the population is below the national average.
- Over the past several decades, unions in Michigan have weakened and the middle class has been hollowed out—a trend that would significantly worsen if right-to-work became law. As Figure 1 shows, Michigan’s middle class earned 53.6 percent of the state’s income in 1979, a year when over 37 percent of the state’s workers were in unions. Today less than 18 percent of Michigan’s workers are unionized, and the middle class receives only 47 percent of the state’s income.
- Moreover, right-to-work does not reduce unemployment. Indeed, right-to-work states such as Nevada—which has the nation’s highest unemployment rate—and North Carolina both have higher unemployment rates than Michigan. Not surprisingly, researchers find that right-to-work has “no significant positive impact whatsoever on employment.”
As it happens, President Obama was in Michigan today to celebrate new jobs and investments in a Daimler diesel engine plant. The president came out swinging against this latest right-wing attack on unions and working people. He also explained that middle class consumers are the real engine of economic growth:
Watch it:
President Obama: And by the way, what we shouldn’t do — I just got to say this — what we shouldn’t be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages and working conditions. (Applause.) We shouldn’t be doing that. (Applause.) These so-called “right to work” laws, they don’t have to do with economics; they have everything to do with politics. (Applause.) What they’re really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money. (Applause.)
You only have to look to Michigan — where workers were instrumental in reviving the auto industry — to see how unions have helped build not just a stronger middle class but a stronger America. (Applause.) So folks from our state’s capital, all the way to the nation’s capital, they should be focused on the same thing. They should be working to make sure companies like this manufacturer is able to make more great products. That’s what they should be focused on. (Applause.) We don’t want a race to the bottom. We want a race to the top. (Applause.)
America is not going to compete based on low-skill, low-wage, no workers’ rights. That’s not our competitive advantage. There’s always going to be some other country that can treat its workers even worse. Right?
Audience: Right!
The President: What’s going to make us succeed is we got the best workers — well trained, reliable, productive, low turnover, healthy. That’s what makes us strong. And it also is what allows our workers then to buy the products that we make because they got enough money in their pockets. (Applause.)
BOTTOM LINE: Instead of a race to the bottom pushed by right-wing billionaires, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) should focus on building an economy that works for everyone, including workers.
Earlier this month, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) “sent shockwaves across the state” when he unveiled a budgetary bill that would strip most of the state’s public workers of collective bargaining rights, essentially devastating state government employees’ ability to negotiate for fair wages, benefits, and working conditions. At the time, many local news observers thought the bill would easily pass. After all, Republicans won commanding majorities in the legislature during the last election and stood united in support of the bill. Yet on the eve of the bill’s certain passage, all 14 state Senate Democrats fled the state, denying the Senate the quorum needed to proceed and freezing the anti-labor bill in its tracks. Tens of thousands of Wisconsinites then took to the streets in support of the “Wisconsin 14,” invigorating a nascent progressive movement. And all around the country, Americans inspired by Wisconsin’s example are taking action and battling attempts by conservative-led state governments to attack organized labor, slash education and environmental funding, and to make America a country where only the privileged and well-connected can prosper. While conservatives may believe that the last election gave them a wide mandate to decimate the social safety net and enact policies that will make us an even more unequal country, it appears that Americans disagree. By trying to enact their radical agenda, conservatives have stirred America’s Main Street into action. The progressive protests that are sweeping the country are defending the American Dream itself, the idea that anyone, no matter what their socioeconomic background, can succeed and prosper.
ASSAULT ON THE MIDDLE CLASS: While Walker’s assault on his state’s public employees’ labor rights is the most visible assault on the middle class, conservative governments across the country are waging similar campaigns. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich (R) is backing legislation similar to Wisconsin’s in that would gut the organizing rights of public employees. Kasich has already killed his state’s federally-funded high-speed rail project, which will cost Ohio $400 million in infrastructure investment and thousands of jobs. While he justifies these moves by claiming he’s tackling his state’s deficit, he also is championing a slew of tax cuts that could actually double the state’s deficit. New Jersey’s Gov. Chris Christie (R), who previously vetoed progressive efforts to raise taxes on his state’s millionaires, is trying to ram through steep cuts to education funding and municipal assistance. In Georgia, Gov. Nathan Deal (R) has unveiled cuts to the state’s treasured subsidized college tuition program, HOPE, which would lead to hundreds of thousands of college students paying thousands of more dollars out-of-pocket in order to be able to get a higher education. Deal is also cutting overall education spending by seven percent, and he simultaneously plans to dramatically reduce the corporate income tax rate, further reducing the state’s revenue coffers. Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) has dismissed tax increases while simultaneously slashing funding for K-12 education, because, he argued, “That’s where the money is.” Michigan’s Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has unveiled a spending plan that includes “$1.2 billion in cuts to schools, universities, local governments and other areas while asking public employees for $180 million in concessions” while at the same time giving $1.8 billion in tax cuts to businesses.
WORKING AMERICA FIGHTS BACK: To the chagrin of right wingers like Walker, Americans have decided that they don’t want to live in a country where their labor rights are destroyed and their children grow up in the most unequal era since the 1920s. All over the country, ordinary Americans are fighting back, because they understand that if you want a strong middle class you need organized labor and important social services. Yesterday, Indiana House Democrats inspired by Wisconsin’s example fled the state to prevent the passage of a bill that would enact “right-to-work” policies that would cripple the right to organize in the state. After the departure of the House Democrats, hundreds of unionized workers and students marched into the state capitol and began a sit-in in solidarity with the state’s labor unions. Meanwhile, as many as 10,000 union workers and other Ohioans demonstrated both inside and outside the state house in Columbus, as former Gov. Ted Strickland (D) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) joined the rally to show their support for the protests. So many people showed up that the Ohio Highway Patrol was ordered to lock the doors of the state capitol to stop more demonstrators from getting into the building. At least 2,000 demonstrators rallied in Olympia, WA, against state budget cuts and in solidarity with the Wisconsin protests. In Montana, hundreds of “conservationists, sportsmen, firefighters, teachers, correctional officers and others” gathered at the state capitol to defend the state’s environmental laws and protest budget cuts. Hundreds of teachers in Idaho marched against legislation that would layoff 700 teachers and leave schools severely understaffed. Emboldened, the South Central Federation of Labor, a Wisconsin union federation consisting of 97 unions and representing 45,000 workers, voted on Monday to endorse a general strike if the state’s anti-union law is passed by the legislature. Although the strike would be restricted by federal law thanks to the 1947 anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act, it represents a courageous act of civil disobedience and solidarity.
CONSERVATIVES BACKING DOWN: There is evidence that the massive groundswell of legislative disobedience and grassroots protests that have erupted all over the country have started to succeed in forcing conservative governments to back down. Despite the passage of Indiana’s right-to-work bill out of a House committee, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) “signaled [yesterday] afternoon that Republicans should drop the…bill that has brought the Indiana House to a standstill for two days and imperiled other measures.” Conservative Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) refused to endorse Walker’s anti-union bill for his own state, saying, “My belief is as long as people know what they’re doing, collective bargaining is fine.” Right-wing Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) also said he has no plans to enact a Wisconsin-style law. Although in Michigan, Gov. Snyder does plan to take aim at public worker compensation, he so far has said he’s “not interested in making Michigan a right-to-work state, or going wholesale after the bargaining rights of unionized workers.” One reason these conservatives may be backing down is because they realize Main Street America is against their anti-middle class agenda. A USA Today/Gallup poll found that 61 percent of Americans oppose a Wisconsin-style anti-labor law and only 33 percent favor such a law.
DEFENDING THE AMERICAN DREAM: As CAP Senior Fellow Van Jones writes, this new Main Street progressive movement seeks to “renew and redeem the American Dream.” “It’s time to draw a line in the sand — nationally,” he writes. “Someone has to stand up for common sense and fairness.” A coalition of progressive groups and organizations is taking up this call to “Save the American Dream” by announcing rallies at every single statehouse in the country on Saturday at noon. The groups, led by Moveon.org, are calling for Americans to “[d]emand an end to the attacks on workers’ rights and public services across the country. Demand investment, to create decent jobs for the millions of people who desperately want to work. And demand that the rich and powerful pay their fair share.” It is up to Americans to ensure that states do not balance their budgets by gutting important services and attacking public workers in order to deal with the effects of a recession caused by Wall Street‘s misdeeds — not those of policemen, firefighters, teachers, students, and other hard-working middle class Americans.
Be a Seed for Change 