A daily, pocket-sized history of America's working people, brought to you by The Rick Smith Show team.
Episodes
Tuesday Dec 12, 2023
Tuesday Dec 12, 2023
A daily, pocket-sized history of America's working people, brought to you by The Rick Smith Show team.
On this day in labor history, the year was 2012.
That was the day Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed Right-to-Work legislation into law.
The birthplace of the United Auto Workers union had just become the 24thstate to pass legislation that guaranteed the open shop and the prohibition of mandatory dues collection.
More than 10,000 trade unionists gathered in Lansing that day to express their outrage.
The only source of income unions have is their dues base.
Without it, unions can’t adequately represent their members.
Work of the unions isn’t just about effectively negotiating a contract.
It also includes fighting contract violations, excessive discipline and wrongful discharges and enforcing safety and good working conditions on the job.
All this suffers under Right-to-Work.
But this is nothing new.
Right to Work laws have their roots in fighting the Wagner Act and CIO organizing drives throughout the South in the 1940s.
The Texan businessman and lobbyist Vance Muse fought hard against child labor laws, the eight-hour day and even the right for striking workers to picket.
Pro-segregationist Democrats, cotton brokers, Fred Koch, the DuPont brothers, Gerald Sloan of GM and others, supported him in his efforts.
His organization, the Christian American Association was closely aligned with the Ku Klux Klan.
Muse argued that segregation could only be maintained by enforcing the open shop.
Otherwise whites would be forced to interact with blacks.
He said, “From now on, white women and white men will be forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will have to call ‘brother’ or lose their jobs.”
The wealth class has spent millions of dollars over over sixty years to defeat working people and reverse hard fought gains.
Now is the time for workers to stand in solidarity against their No Rights at Work agenda.
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