The Slippery Slope on Right-to-Work
Having reached the ripe old age of 53, I wouldn’t quite say that I’m old, but I am getting there. Advanced age has some obvious downsides. I run slower, find new wrinkles each day, and more often than not I get up for the day at 4 a.m. There is one thing that age brings, however, that is positive – perspective. Older folks have seen much more than their younger counterparts, and in that have a greater perspective about life. As the old saw goes “there is nothing new under the sun.”
People my age and older have seen, again and again, “slippery slope” arguments proven correct over time. Lambasted when first spoken as ridiculous, these arguments, basically that if we do “this” then eventually we will have “that,” as we have put ourselves on a slippery slope towards the eventual “that,” this line of argument is often forgotten when “that” comes to pass. Having seen what the world was once like, older folks are uniquely able to remember those forgotten arguments, and too often we see them borne out as true. Examples are legion – creeping gun control, the federal income tax (“People supported the income tax because it was originally meant to impose only very low tax rates on only the highest incomes,” Raymond J. Keating, The Freeman, 1996), a culture of unwed parenthood emerging from the sexual revolution, the dumbing down of our schools, affirmative action (“there is nothing in [the Civil Rights Act] that will give power to the Commission to require hiring, firing, and promotion to meet a racial ‘quota,’ or achieve a certain racial balance” Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, 1964), our current political-correctness folly, and on and on. Who among us has not read “First They Came,” the poignant poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller decrying the Nazi rise to power in Germany? Now, this is not to argue that all results of a slippery slope are bad or even true, although I cite some bad ones, only that the argument is not always as old-fogey as it may initially seem. It is unavoidable that in retrospect we often wish we had done something back then, to stop the descent into what we have now.
And thus it is with the Virginia Constitutional Amendment we are voting on this year regarding “Right-to-Work.” (No, no, no I am not arguing this is on the scale of the rise of Nazism!) On the pages of Bearing Drift my good friend and colleague Brian Schoeneman argued, in his always persuasive and articulate way, that this amendment is unnecessary because “Virginia’s right-to-work laws are not in any danger of being repealed, and there is no active campaign to end them, either at the state or the federal level” and thus we should not “lard up the Virginia Constitution with policy provisions that are not fundamental to the running of the government.”
At the risk of running afoul of my editor, let me respectfully disagree.
“Right-to-work” is a concept fundamental to the rights of all Americans. What these laws do (and they are laws, not a “law”) is guarantee that people will have a right to work, even if they prefer, or refuse, to join a union. Right-to-work laws prevent governments from requiring companies to be unionized in order to qualify for contracts, or employees to be required to join a union as a condition of employment. The Virginia Code prohibits denying any citizen the right to work because of membership, or non-membership, in a labor union or labor organization. This is a fundamental right, and one clearly supported by our current crop of elected officials and the public. As Brian rightly points out, this has been the law in Virginia since 1947. He is wrong, however, to assert that there is no “active campaign” to change (or “repeal”) these laws. To the contrary, many Democratic Party politicians support changes to Virginia’s set of right to work laws, as I know personally through my own campaign in 2009 for the House of Delegates. My opponent, Scott Surovell, now a State Senator, while supporting right-to-work generally, did admit that he would “tweak” portions of the law if he could. His supporters lapped that up. (Admittedly it may be true that Democrats only say they support these laws because it plays well with their supporters, and that they have no intention of trying to change them. But, if that is true, then one has to acknowledge that their supporters do, in fact, support changes.) Today Senator Surovell argues against the amendment, echoing Brian’s argument that, since no one is trying to change these laws, a constitutional amendment is unnecessary. He tips his hand, however, when he goes onto argue, in the very same statement, why right to work laws are “bad policy” and that “[w]orkers in states with right-to-work laws earn 12.1 percent less than workers in other states, median household incomes are lower and fewer workers in right to work states have access to basic benefits like health insurance. States with right to work laws spend 32 percent less on K-12 education than other states, have higher rates of workplace fatalities and have higher poverty and infant mortality rates. Workers in these states also have fewer job protections.”
Senator Surovell appears to get his data from the AFL-CIO, hardly a wilting flower and definitely an active political powerhouse, which states on its website: “By many measures, quality of life is worse in states with right to work laws.”
So which is it? Do we not need the amendment because everyone agrees these laws are good and so therefore they will never change? Or are they “bad policy” with reasons to change them? This glaring contradiction only can lead to one conclusion. Despite argument to the contrary, there are those who would deny Virginian citizens these fundamental rights, and who would, should political winds change, alter our right to work laws.
If you polled Americans as to the number one reason for a constitutional amendment, I’m betting they would say “to guarantee a fundamental right” (or something close to that). If you believe that the right to work is, in fact, a fundamental right, then you should support putting it in the Virginia Constitution.
The question on the ballot this year is this:
“Should Article I of the Constitution of Virginia be amended to prohibit any agreement or combination between an employer and a labor union or labor organization whereby (i) nonmembers of the union or organization are denied the right to work for the employer, (ii) membership to the union or organization is made a condition of employment or continuation of employment by such employer, or (iii) the union or organization acquires an employment monopoly in any such enterprise?”
Political winds do change and slippery slopes do exist. Sometimes what we fear, but claim will never happen, does actually happen.
Call me an old-fogey, but I fear a slippery slope here. Start “tweaking” right to work laws and maybe someday we will join the other twenty-four states that don’t have them.
If you do not support right to work laws, fine, that is your right. But if you think right to work is a fundamental right, then preserve that right for future generations and vote yes on Question 1. Vote to protect right-to-work, now and in the future.
