Posts tagged Overton Window
Darn good policy’ George Leef on Right to Work and Rethinking Higher Education
April 20, 2025 // While acknowledging some setbacks — “Michigan being key among them” — Leef remains optimistic. “Union membership keeps shrinking. The union clout, I think, is less than it used to be,” he attests. Leef attributes this to a growing awareness among workers that, “unions don’t always represent the people they claim to; they’re oftentimes lining their own pockets.” Leef argues that labor relations were healthier before federal interference. “In our early history, people could sign up if they wanted to, or they were free to not sign up… Then the federal government stepped in and insisted that unions had some special right to represent workers,” he says.
Has the Overton Window Shifted on Right-to-Work?
July 6, 2023 // Advocates of repealing right-to-work didn’t have to. They just needed to get enough people with a union label elected to office. The Overton Window has clearly shifted over the past 30 years. It shifted to make right-to-work possible, but it did not shift enough to make its repeal impossible. Both approval and repeal are in the Overton Window now. That’s a major change. But more work is needed to convince people that unionization should rest on the constitutional right to voluntary association, as is the case with most American institutions.