[Washington Examiner] When this legislation is proposed in coming weeks, it will not pass. But it must also not go unnoticed. Democratic attacks on the right to work will only become stronger, especially if they continue their efforts to break down the rule of law. If Democrats manage to take control of the Senate and abolish the filibuster, pro-union, anti-worker policy will become a top priority.
The repeal of right-to-work laws would reimpose upon large and now prosperous areas of America the very sort of labor rules that used to hold them back, from a time no one remembers anymore. Many of today’s baby boomers were not yet born when Taft-Hartley passed. In those times, the South was a backwater and the mountain West an undeveloped, provincial region. Those regions’ embrace of right-to-work laws was part of what helped them take the lead in our country’s economy in the modern era. It is no accident that 11 out of CNBC’s top 15 states for business are right-to-work states, or that right-to-work states enjoy lower unemployment, or that personal incomes in those states grew 50% faster between 2001 and 2016.
Democratic efforts to abolish right-to-work laws should be viewed as the rejection of seven decades of sound labor policy, the economic equivalent of resurrecting the polio virus and setting it loose on unsuspecting populations. Washington has no business fouling up the healthy business climates of the nation’s best-run states, just as a kickback to union bosses for their partisan contributions and activism. The abolition of the right to work would be a quid pro quo for unions and a knife between the ribs of the workers whom organized labor is supposed to represent.