Jessica McBride On What’s Wrong With Right To Work

(Yes that Jessica McBride)…in a blog piece for OnMilwaukee.com, Jessica McBride opines on all of the things that Governor Scott Walker can’t seem to make up his mind about. You can read the whole article if you like…it does have a certain entertainment value…but here are her opinions on the misnamed mission of destiny for the Madison GOP. Her apparent right leaning support also comes with a caveat…not everyone in favor seems to miss the inequality involved:

Walker’s comments about right-to-work being a distraction ARE the distraction. And who cares if it’s a distraction if it’s the right thing to do. That’s what I want to know: Does Gov. Walker think this is the right thing to do? You can’t even argue in this one that Walker’s dodging it because he wants to maintain a strict economic emphasis. This one affects the economy.

For the record, I generally support right-to-work legislation. I don’t believe union membership should be compulsory, nor union dues either, especially since the money and support goes to organizations largely supporting one political side. If studies universally showed disastrous results occurring in other right-to-work states, that might be one thing, but they don’t – they are mixed at best. So I side with freedom, not forced membership.

Opponents argue that it’s unfair for employees to benefit from a union’s work if they don’t help pay for the union; frankly, I wish there could be a provision whereby workers who don’t belong to the union don’t get the union-negotiated benefits. (When I was a newspaper reporter, by the way, we weren’t forced to join the union. Other employees pressured us to do so, though. Weird, then, that the newspaper editorial board opposes right-to-work for everyone else.)

I do not, however, agree with Senate leader Scott Fitzgerald’s comments that he might try to exempt only some unions that support Republicans. That’s just wrong, and it provides an unseemly overlay that takes this one from the realm of principle into the world of political (similarly, I thought Act 10 should have applied to cops and firefighters too). I also don’t agree with rushing right-to-work legislation through. Give people time to weigh in this time. And I don’t like the fact, at all, that Republicans didn’t run on this in the last election and then sprang it on the public. Those are questions of process, but they are certainly troubling ones. So I support right-to-work, but not in the exact way they are going about it.

So we should have right to work…and too bad that non-union supporters would be able to opt out of paying dues but not the union benefits (as long time reader nonquixote had pointed out: that would violate federal law)…and it’s unfair to exempt the unions who supported the GOP this past cycle…somewhere in there is a sense of fair play. Considering all of things she sees wrong…including admitting the economic effects are mixed…it’s really hard to see why she finds the wherewithal to support it!

Share:

Related Articles