When your right to work = your right to starve

One of the generally unacknowledged reasons for the end of slavery in America was the realization by the slave-owners that they could save a lot of money by setting their slaves free.

No longer did they have to feed and house the slaves all year round just for a few weeks of work during planting and harvest seasons. And of course freeing the slaves made for good political optics as well, optics that became part of American mythology.

The Right to Work folks are exploiting an American myth too. They've got commercials on the TV where a couple of imaginary blue-collar white guys are shaking their heads in disgust at the political candidates that their union bosses have been sending their dues to.

I was perusing the website of the Right to Work Committee when I realized that they were on a blog aggregator that also runs The View From Falling Downs. Just for fun I took a look at their numbers. Their numbers are shit. Nobody reads the stuff. This anti-war, pro-labor, legalize common sense blog blows them out of the water.

Nevertheless they have big money behind them. Ironically the money behind them is also the money behind the "research" that recently discovered that American workers are the most overpaid in the world.

I know that there are real flesh-and-blood working folks who hate unions. I've worked with them. I feel sorry for them. They're the people who buy into the "right to work" nonsense that's being promulgated by the most reactionary elements of the 1%.

In my experience, unions are amongst the most democratic organizations in the world. If you don't like what's going down, go to your meetings and speak up. Get involved. If you're scared, take half a dozen friends with you.

If you've been on the shop floor for more than six months and you still don't have half a dozen people to back you up, maybe you're just full of shit.

The reason our economy is in the shitter today has nothing to do with unions being too strong, and everything to do with them being too weak. All the high-wage Western countries that are doing better than we are have stronger unions and more labor rights, not less.

"Right to work" is about one thing; your right to work longer hours for less money.