Congress is about to have a major opportunity to strike a blow for more freedom and put more money in the pockets of hundreds of thousands of American workers.
That opportunity will come Friday when the Senate Labor Committee begins hearings on the proposed National Right to Work Act of 1996, a long-overdue measure that would repeal the federal requirement forcing nonunionized workers to pay union dues if they work at unionized companies.With polls showing compulsory dues are opposed by nearly 80 percent of the public, including 58 percent of union households, this nation's lawmakers can have no doubt about how they should vote.
But it won't be easy for some lawmakers to incur the wrath of powerful union leaders who have $5 billion a year in forced dues to spend in various ways, including campaigns opposing various members of Congress for whatever reasons the big labor bosses see fit regardless of how union members feel.
Nor will it be easy for the Senate and House of Representatives to muster the two-thirds majorities needed to override President Clinton's anticipated veto of the National Right to Work Act.
Even so, it's an effort Congress ought to undertake if it is to put the national interest and the wishes of the public ahead of the demands of a few labor bosses.
As a matter of principle, it's unfair to force workers to pay union dues in order to get and keep a job, then force those workers to subsidize candidates and causes they would not otherwise support.
It's also unfair to let unions keep dipping more deeply into workers' pockets than economic circumstances warrant.
Although union membership in the private sector of the economy dropped sharply between the mid-1970s and the late 1980s, unions lost little money because they hiked their dues and other assessments. So big, in fact, were such hikes that the price of union membership more than doubled between 1960 and 1987. Even when adjusted for inflation, union receipts dipped from $10.7 billion to $10.5 billion at a time when membership itself declined from 16.2 million to 10.9 million.
Did fewer union members receive more benefits for their increased dues? That's hard to believe in view of the high priority union leaders give to political spending. The National Right to Work Committee says that besides the tens of millions of dollars unions pour directly into political campaigns, experts estimate that unions spend 10 times as much in the form of hidden "soft money" political contributions such as phone banks, partisan get-out-the-vote drives and lending paid union staff to favored politicians.
How sad, since the purpose of such spending is to keep unions in the saddle even though states with right-to-work laws, which leave workers free to join or not join unions as they see fit, fare much better than other states.
Right-to-work states offer more jobs and higher real spendable income than other states. Not only do companies enjoy higher levels of prosperity in right-to-work states, but so do workers. In addition, the right-to-work states have higher levels of employment than the rust-belt industrial states, which have been losing businesses and jobs for two decades. Utah, fortunately, is one of those right-to-work states.
All these facts point to the same conclusion: If Congress is to put the national interest first, it will eliminate compulsion on the labor scene and give all Americans the right to choose freely when it comes to deciding whether or not to join a union and pay dues.