Posts tagged Worker freedom
Michigan: Listen to union members: Protect right-to-work
March 16, 2023 // Two separate Mackinac Center polls found that voters want to keep right-to-work by a two-to-one margin. Tellingly, that includes 55% of Michigan union members – spot on with the results of the union-backed poll in Tennessee. In other words, the very people unions say they’re fighting for want the unions to stop fighting altogether. It should come as no surprise that union members support this common-sense policy. They understand that right-to-work protects their right to join a union just as much as it does their decision not to do so. They also understand that if the union is not looking out for their best interests, they should never be forced to continue giving it their hard-earned money. And that’s why unions are fighting against their own members’ wishes. They want to keep workers’ money, which they can spend to elect governors and legislators who will protect them – a never-ending cycle where unions and union-backed politicians win. That inevitably means workers lose because no one is actually speaking for them.
Video: ALEC’s Labor of Love: A History of Championing Worker Freedom
March 10, 2023 // Today, ALEC debuts its first episode, “Worker Freedom,” in our 50th anniversary video series. The episode features ALEC champions Scott Walker (45th Governor of Wisconsin), Matt Hall (Michigan House Minority Leader and ALEC Board of Directors Member), and Vinnie Vernuccio (Senior Fellow, Mackinac Center), discussing ALEC’s pivotal role in securing Worker Freedom policy wins across the states. In some states, private sector workers can be forced to join, leave, or pay fees to a union as job requirement. The Right-to-Work Act, which ALEC task forces approved as a model policy, provides a solution to this issue. It prevents private employers from requiring or banning union membership (or fees) as conditions for employment, giving workers in Right-to-Work states a guaranteed right to support a union or not to support a union without this choice affecting their hiring or job security.
Virginia Drops from A+ to C in Worker Freedom — Largest Decrease in the Country
October 31, 2022 // Virginia plunged from an “A+” ranking in 2019 to a dismal “C” this year. This was due to what the report called “[t]he most dramatic government union victory of the post-Janus legal frontier” – Janus being the 2018 Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME declaring everything government unions do is political, and public employees have a First Amendment right not to subsidize this political activity. It essentially brought right-to-work provisions to public employees across the country.
The Battle for Worker Freedom in the States: Grading State Public Sector Labor Laws
September 30, 2022 // In the four years following the Janus v. AFSCME U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the nation’s four largest government unions—AFSCME, SEIU, NEA, and AFT—have lost almost 219,000 union members. The Janus decision to end forced unionism for government workers accelerated a long-term decline in membership. In response, government unions are conducting aggressive campaigns to unionize new workers with recent successes in Virginia and Colorado.
CDW ISSUES REPORT ON THE DANGERS OF ONLINE VOTING IN UNION REPRESENTATION ELECTIONS
July 12, 2022 // “Electronic voting is a system ripe for coercion, intimidation, and harassment. It violates workers’ privacy and makes it impossible for the NLRB to safeguard the election. Moreover, as the report notes, the National Mediation Board, several states, and various foreign countries have all shelved online voting programs because of costs and cybersecurity concerns. For these reasons, the Supreme Court, other federal courts, and the NLRB itself have all recognized that secret ballots are the best method for determining the will of the workers. Online Voting in Union Representation Elections: The Latest Attempt to Eliminate Workers’ Right to Secret Ballots, online voting,
Opinion: Michigan is better off because of right-to-work law
May 9, 2022 // Right-to-work laws drew raucous debates over their adoption, but evidence continues to demonstrate largely positive effects from such laws. They should be protected by policymakers for the sake of worker freedom and for sound economic development policy.
The Employee Rights Act Puts American Workers, Not Union Bosses, in the Driver’s Seat
April 13, 2022 // The Employee Rights Act contains several other provisions to protect workers from union intimidation. The bill criminalizes union threats in the workplace and bans unions from using personal employee data for anything unrelated to campaigns, taking Big Labor’s most aggressive and unethical tactics off the table. The bill also prohibits union “salting,” a tactic where a union pays an individual to apply for a job within a company that has not yet been unionized. Instead of becoming a productive employee, the “salt” is there to organize a union and be Big Labor’s mole on the inside.
Court Should Recognize That Unions Cannot Charge Nonmembers Grievance Fees
April 7, 2022 // Workers who do not belong to a union cannot be charged grievance fees, according to an amicus brief submitted today by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy to the Michigan Supreme Court. This is the second time in a year that the Michigan Supreme Court specifically requested an amicus brief from the Mackinac Center.
What is the Employee Rights Act, and how would it advance worker freedom?
March 26, 2022 // Unlike the PRO Act – which, imbued with a dated and rigid workplace vision that is increasingly displacing American workers – the ERA would empower workers to seize more opportunity and take greater control of their futures.
Vincent Vernuccio: Time to celebrate and protect worker freedom
March 17, 2022 // A right-to-work law simply means that a union cannot get a worker fired for not paying them. In states without right-to-work laws unions can require private-sector workers to pay union fees just to keep their jobs.