With Governor Scott Walker saying he will sign a so-called right-to-work law on Monday, Wisconsin’s labor leaders are railing against the legislation and rushing to take steps to minimize any drop in membership and dues it might cause.
Indeed, some union leaders say the legislation – which prohibits requirements that employees at unionized workplaces pay union fees – will do more to buoy Walker’s hopes to win the Republican presidential nomination than to hurt Wisconsin’s unions.
Wisconsin’s Republican-dominated state assembly debated the legislation late into Thursday night, and approved it on Friday morning by 62 votes to 35.
“This is all about Scott Walker’s presidential run – he’s trying to wear this credential for conservatives,” said Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO. “The upside of this right-to-work fight is we’ve seen a lot of solidarity. When you look at all the labor protests over the last two weeks, this just might build stronger unions, and it might blow up in their faces.”
Thomas Millonzi, the head of a 4,700-member Teamsters local in Milwaukee, said he was already taking steps to discourage Teamsters from seizing on the new legislation to quit the union and stop paying union dues.
“We’re going to do the best we can do to educate our members about what belonging to a union does and what collective bargaining achieves,” Millonzi said. “It’s unfortunate that people who don’t pay dues are going to still reap the benefits of those who pay dues. Any business whose customers don’t pay for services, you wonder how they will survive. But we will survive.”
Walker spoke to Wisconsin’s business leaders on Wednesday, telling them that the law would be a “tremendous tool” to lift the state’s economy. Speaking to a meeting of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s main business group, Walker said: “If you’re a company that’s here and you’re looking to grow or if you’re talking to one of your colleagues in the industry and you’re trying to get someone to come here, we now have given one more big thing on that checklist to say that Wisconsin is open for business.”
Many Republicans and business lobbyists argue that Wisconsin needed to adopt such legislation – after nearby Indiana and Michigan did in 2012 – to send a signal that it welcomes business (and not labor unions).
“For job growth, this is an excellent bill,” Representative Dan Knodl, a Republican, said during the late-night debate. “For worker freedom, this is an excellent bill and for the future of Wisconsin, this is an excellent bill.”
But many Democrats and union leaders say right-to-work’s champions vastly exaggerate how much these laws do attract business, with some saying they lure companies largely by lowering wages by making unions weaker.
Michael Bolton, the United Steelworkers’ district director for Wisconsin and Michigan, acknowledged that the new law – under which unions still have to represent non-payers on grievances and other matters – would hurt. “It’s wrong that we should have to represent people who do not pay some sort of fee for the representation we provide,” he said. “But it isn’t going to kill the labor movement. What is going to kill the labor movement are lawmakers who spend their time kowtowing to moneyed interests instead of worrying about the concerns of the people they’re supposed to represent.”
Mike Jackson, the top official with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters in Michigan, said his union might lose anywhere from 2% to 10% of its members because of right to work. “It’s political retribution against unions,” he asserted, saying Republican lawmakers were punishing them for often supporting Democrats.
Chuck Jones, the president of Steelworkers Local 1999 in Indianapolis, has adopted a highly controversial strategy to minimize any membership loss – and said his 2,900-member local had lost a mere 25 members since Indiana enacted right to work.
“We thought the effect would be devastating, we thought we’d lose 30% of our members,” Jones said. “But I came up with a ‘sheet of shame’ when people opted out of the union.”
In this “sheet of shame”, Jones placed the names of a few dozen workers who opted to quit the union and stop paying union fees. He posted that sheet on bulletin boards and the local’s website. “That was a deterrent,” he said. “When people saw other people’s names up there, they had second thoughts about opting out.”
Some workers accused Jones of illegally harassing them, but the National Labor Relations Board did not find his actions unlawful. “Was I playing dirty?” Jones said. “Hell, yeah. I thought if people want to be freeloaders and have us still represent them, then everybody should know who they are.”
Tim Strong, the president of Communication Workers Local 4900 in Indiana, responded to right to work in a far less contentious way, discouraging workers from dropping their membership through a straightforward strategy: increased communications. He said his 3,100-member local had lost only around 30 workers.
“We put a very strong focus on communications and the importance of bargaining and how important it is to vote on the contract you work under – and you can’t vote unless you pay dues,” Strong said. “We stressed the benefits of the contract, and we talked about our victories in grievances and arbitration.”
After Indiana enacted right to work, his local has begun Twitter and Tumbler accounts and focused far more on Facebook. “These things aren’t popular with myself, but they’re popular with my members,” Strong said.
Still he worries that right to work can do grave damage to unions. “It’s a ticking time bomb,” he said. “Today’s mentality is, If you don’t fix my personal problem, then I’m going to drop my dues just because you didn’t help me.”
He worries there could be an exodus of members and fall in dues money if an employer strong-arms his local into accepting a bad contract. “Quite honestly right to work could be devastating for my local,” he said. “It could create a lot of devastation in a short period of time.”
