Wisconsin Republicans have started moving another anti-union bill toward Gov. Scott Walker's desk. Nothing seems likely to deter them, but for what it's worth, the union representing the state's highest-profile union members
has come out in opposition. That would be the NFL Players Association, which represents football players on the Green Bay Packers.
"If you are able to decrease the ability of a group of people to bargain collectively, you've won the war before the fight started," [executive director DeMaurice] Smith said in a phone interview Monday. "It's one thing to be in a negotiation room where you have a group of workers who formed themselves as a team, and whatever contract you get is the contract you get. Or you can play the game in such a way where you actually prevent or inhibit the ability of that group of people to get into the room as a group, and you win the war before the fight began. And that's what right to work is." [...]
"Our guys work for a living," Smith said. "And when it comes to the issues of working men and women in America, our issues really aren't so divergent from theirs. Our guys want a safe workplace. They want a fair wage. They want a fair pension. And they want to know that they can address all of those issues as a collective team rather than being subjected to an employer who has a significant, if not tremendous, amount of bargaining leverage over an individual."
So-called "right to work" laws in fact confer no rights other than the right to force your union coworkers to pay for the union to represent you in contract negotiations and grievances. They create an incentive for people to freeload, weakening unions by forcing them to represent non-union workers for free ... or abandon the states that have passed such laws. As Smith suggested, such laws weaken workers by making them less "a collective team" and more individuals subjected to employers who have all the leverage.
Which is why Wisconsin Republicans are fast-tracking this bill.