{"id":1947,"date":"2023-04-06T19:36:48","date_gmt":"2023-04-06T19:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=1947"},"modified":"2023-04-06T20:07:10","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T20:07:10","slug":"economics-of-the-fist-unions-favor-telling-to-asking-with-wisconsins-right-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=1947","title":{"rendered":"Economics of the fist: Unions favor telling to asking with Wisconsin\u2019s right to work"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/economics-of-the-fist-unions-favor-telling-to-asking-with-wisconsins-right-to-work\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The strong-arm tactics of Act 10 antagonists<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n

Among the winks and nudges offered by Janet Protasiewicz on her way to the Supreme Court was that Act 10, the Gov. Scott Walker labor reforms, are toast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\"Fist<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI marched at the Capitol in protest of Act 10,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Would she appropriately sit out a relitigation?<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wink, wink.<\/p>\n

Democrat-friendly media spelled out<\/a> that this isn\u2019t just about<\/a> public-sector unions at issue in Act 10, but a raft of policies that includes \u201can anti-union right-to-work law,\u201d as a New York Times columnist put it.<\/p>\n

Only 7.1%<\/a> of Wisconsin employees are union members nowadays. But given how progressives, soon in majority on the Supreme Court, apparently see it as a free-range editor of laws they don\u2019t like, Wisconsinites\u2019 legal ability to be uninterested in joining a union\u00a0is endangered. So what are unions like?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look to the federal agency they more or less own, the Department of Labor, which has an online primer, \u201cUnions 101<\/a>.\u201d Across the screen is the welcoming portrait of the labor secretary and a line of people \u2014 all brandishing fists. As everyone saw during the 2011 progressive freakout over Act 10<\/a>, unions love fist imagery<\/a>. The thug vibe isn\u2019t a stereotype; it\u2019s branding.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Source: https:\/\/www.dol.gov\/general\/workcenter\/unions-101<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not terribly successful branding: Wisconsin union membership is half what it was in 2010, when 14.2% of the employed workforce paid dues, suggesting that Walker\u2019s labor reforms gave Wisconsinites an escape they desired.<\/p>\n

This is something you must hold in mind: The Walker era labor reforms didn\u2019t ban unions, didn\u2019t even make them harder to join. They just made it easier for Wisconsinites to say no.<\/p>\n

Act 10 concerned government employees. Under it, the state and local governments were required to bargain about wages \u2014 but not workplace rules or benefits, other than with firefighters, cops and other public safety personnel.<\/p>\n

This meant that the Wisconsin Education Association Council no longer could strong-arm school districts into buying overpriced health plans from the union\u2019s captive insurer. Districts fled the insurer and taxpayers were no longer fleeced as a means of funneling insurance profits toward union politics.<\/p>\n

More crucially, the law stopped governments from skimming union dues out of paychecks: Now, if you want to pay dues to the teachers union, you certainly may, but you have to write a check. Or not, and many prefer that: WEAC had about 98,000<\/a> members in 2010; it has 43,000<\/a> now that it has to ask politely.<\/p>\n

Right to work passed the Legislature in 2015 and endured two years of legal challenges from unions claiming something was taken from them. What was taken were captives: The law, which governs private-sector unions, says that no one can be coerced into union membership as a condition of employment nor fired for not paying the union. It\u2019s up to an employee and no one else.<\/p>\n

It is this, your option to join or not as suits you, that unions hate.<\/p>\n

Union-friendly Democrats seized majorities in Michigan\u2019s Legislature last fall and already have disposed of that state\u2019s right-to-work law, despite concessions from unions leaders<\/a> in recent years that they\u2019ve had to work harder at providing satisfactory service to members since membership became voluntary. So much for that: Now it\u2019ll be join or else.<\/p>\n

The same threat to your liberty is in play in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can do it,\u201d I was told by Mark Mix, president of National Right to Work Committee. Unions will have to gin up a case and run it up the ladder to a newly friendly Supreme Court, but elections have consequences that translate into opportunities. \u201cIs there a threat? Yeah,\u201d said Mix. \u201cBut that threat is predicated on judicial activism.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not predicated on Wisconsinites\u2019 preferences. The Badger Institute has polled repeatedly on whether Wisconsinites think they should be fired for not paying dues, and the answer repeatedly is no. Three-fourths said<\/a> in 2015<\/a> that no one should lose a job for disobeying those brandished fists, including more than half of Democrats. No wonder: Research shows<\/a> that workers\u2019 income grows faster in states where workers are free.<\/p>\n

Unions often claim that workers who don\u2019t pay are \u201cfree riders,\u201d benefiting from contracts unions negotiated. But as Mix points out, law doesn\u2019t require that unions add clauses to contracts saying that all employees are covered. They\u2019re free to work a deal for members only, as unions in Europe sometimes do. They won\u2019t. Their bargaining position depends not on cooperation with employers and employees but on being a cartel, a tollgate through which all others must pass.<\/p>\n

At bottom, unions \u2014 and the progressives looking to make them again mandatory in Wisconsin \u2014 don\u2019t get markets. They don\u2019t get that in a market, a seller and a buyer or an employer and an employee must both benefit or no future deals happen. Instead, the game is zero sum, a fight for morsels, and only the bigger fist wins.<\/p>\n

Why should Wisconsinites tolerate going back to that?<\/p>\n

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The post Economics of the fist: Unions favor telling to asking with Wisconsin\u2019s right to work<\/a> appeared first on Badger Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/economics-of-the-fist-unions-favor-telling-to-asking-with-wisconsins-right-to-work\/ The strong-arm tactics of Act 10 antagonists Among the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-badger-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1947"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1952,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions\/1952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}