Surprise! President Obama Opposes Michigan's Right-to-Work Effort
President Obama came to Michigan to talk about his plan to put the country on a permanent path to fiscal ruin avert the fiscal cliff and took the opportunity to slam the state's Right-to-Work law bill–if all goes well, insha allah–will be signed into law in less than 24 hours. Both the House and the Senate approved separate bills last week that will be reconciled and put to another vote tomorrow– and the final bill will be sent to Governor Snyder who has vowed to sign it immediately. But Obama lambasted the effort to make Michigan the 24th right-to-work state in the country. He said, reports the Business Insider:
"What we shouldn't be doing is try to take away your rights to bargain for better wages and working conditions…We don't want a race to the bottom."
Right-to-work laws "have nothing to do with economics" and "have everything to do with politics."
Obama should know what he is talking about given all the forcibly extracted membership dues the unions funnel into the Democratic Party. This year, unions pumped a whopping–and I don't use the term lightly–$400 million to re-elect him and other Democratic legislators.
But if you want to know the lengths that unions will go to support Democrats, consider what the American Federation of State, Country and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) did in 2010 to arrange $87.5 million to help Democrats hang on to the Congress. Not only did it empty out $16 million from its emergency account–it actually took a $2 million loan, according to the Wall Street Journal.
This isn't crazy if you consider the potential payoff. In the 2009 stimulus and other legislation, the WSJ noted, Democratic lawmakers sent more than $160 billion in federal cash to states, aimed in large part at preventing public-sector layoffs. "If Republicans running under the banner of limited government win in November, they aren't likely to support extending such aid to states."
So, yes, RTW laws are about politics–it is about the politics of how unions use memberhsip dues to extract sweet deals for themselves at taxpayers' expense.