Why Indiana's "right to work" law must be overturned now.
If you ask most people if they believe "right to work" laws are a good thing, they nod their heads and agree that everyone should have a right to work in their state. This is because the term has been purposely chosen for it's positive sounding inference. In truth, the right to work laws are pushed by an organized group that has an agenda for lowering wages nationally, and if held to truth in advertising, would have to call their enactments a "right to work at a lower wage" law. This group of industrialists pay dues, meet in conference, and plan strategies behind closed doors to meet their goal of purging unions from the business landscape. In other words, they use the very same organizational tactics that they decry as bad for hourly workers who seek decent working conditions and a living wage.
In a state with right to work laws workers may gain employment at a unionized shop and choose whether or not they want to pay dues to the local union. If they want, they can simply opt out while retaining the full pay and benefits of the union members. Needless to say, the union in a right to work state soon whithers and dies a quiet death as workers come to believe the union is unnecessary as wages seem pinned to the status quo instead of organised bargaining. Once the union is gone however, there is no longer a reason for an employer to honor agreements made by the now defunct union. Indeed, the rise and fall of the middle class tracks perfecly with the rise of organized labor and it's fall caused by corporate sabotage of the union.
Back when Henry Ford was building Model Ts in Detroit he famously paid his workers $5 a day, an unheard of wage for the time. Popular history teaches that Ford did this because he loved his men and wanted them to be able to afford one of the cars they built, but there's a darker reality behind that corporate benevolence. Henry Ford hated unions. Because of this dread that his workers would organize and speak with a unified voice, Ford paid nearly double the going wage to keep the workers content enough to fend off union organizers. Because of this tactic, other Detroit factories were soon forced to raise their wages in turn to prevent their best employees from flocking to the Ford plant.
Unfortunately for Henry Ford, workers who became disenfranchised by his restrictive employment conditions, such as his social officers that investigated workers for moral issues like gambling, drinking, and being in arears of child support, employees decided that they needed protection in a invasive and hostile workplace. They finally turned to the UAW in the early '30s, and Henry Ford promptly shut out those workers my high school history teacher claimed he so dearly loved. What followed was nearly ten years of bloodshed and death as Henry Ford paid almost double for replacement workers that would cross a picket line. These workers were escorted by riflemen who had permisission to use any means necessary to man the assembly line for another day.
At more than one point his son Edsel and other investors thought they had an acceptable agreement with the UAW that would allow the company to once again find a peaceful way to fruitful production, only to be submarined by Henry's power of final veto. The era of violence culminated at what became known as "The Battle at the Overpass" where Ford security workers clashed with UAW organizers in 1937. By 1941 Henry Ford's wife Clara, fearing that the company would not survive for her son and grandchildren, packed her bags and told her husband she would leave him if he didn't accept the UAW agrement. Apparently, Henry Ford loved his wife more than he loved money, because a contract was signed that month in 1941. What followed was the best 50 years in Ford Motor Company history where both the Ford family and workers shared in the prosperous success of a great American company.
Today, we still see companies that pay at least decent wages to keep union organizers at bay, but in states like Indiana, that incentive to reward workers for a good day's work will disolve into a base pay dictated by an arbitrary "standard wage" set by employers who auction off jobs to the lowest bidder. Gone will be any semblence of health insurance or decent vacation compensation, as the only reason to supply these benefits is because union shops offer them. Voters of Indiana must now work to overturn this "right to work cheap" law because the only way they'll ever regain the right to organize in the workplace is to relive the bloody history of Henry Ford's beloved employees.
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