Those Dastardly Voters

Chris at Unequivocal Notion goes off on right to work laws linking to a sad story out of Emmett:

And you wonder why some people get heated when they talk about politics. There are real world consequences for real people when our legislators make decisions in the smoke filled backrooms. People go hungry, people go homeless, kids lose parents, lives are genuinely affected by comfortable white men and their egos in Idaho’s capital.

Um, Chris, we voted on Right to Work in 1986 and 54% of the State voted for it. There have been attempts since then to repeal right to work and the unions haven’t been able to get enough interest to put it on the ballot. Blame your fellow citizens, don’t sit there and sandbag this onto the current legislator.

Chris and other advocates of forced unionization attack right to work, but it’s been good for this state overall. Our national unemployment is far below the national average. In addition, workers are not held hostage to furnish their hard-earned wages in support of unions with whom they disagree, and which often practice embezzlement, doublecross workers in order to enhance their own power, and take big salaries while they workers they represent suffer. If you think forcing Idaho workers to participate in these scams, I think your off base.

As for the incident that Chris links, while I feel for the lady (and this is a tough time to be out of work), I’d note that the company she cites is a relatively small business employing 10-20 workers. It would be unlikely to unionize and if it was unionized, it would have probably gone out of business long ago (unions aren’t that great for any business.) If the business did something wrong,  then it’s appropriate to get to a lawyer or file a grievance through the Department of Labor.

What is not appropriate is to say that every worker must bow under the yoke of the union boss because you had a bad experience.