BrianGarst.com

For the title of dishonest headline of the day I submit this gem from Reuters: “Michigan votes to restrict union rights.”

And how did Michigan “restrict union rights”? By telling people they don’t have to join a union if they don’t want to?

In reality, what Michigan’s new Right to Work law does is enhance individual rights – in particular the rights to earn a living and free association, which both protects our right to associate with others and our right not to associate with others however we may see fit. The law ends the long-standing political handout to unions of forced membership by protecting true individual rights.

Unions should be allowed to exist in a free society just like any other voluntary group, but they should have to earn their membership by providing a worthwhile service, not through forced conscription. The legal system should not weight the system in their favor as it has done, and correcting that distortion is not a “restriction” on union rights, as the Reuters spinmeisters would have us believe.

Now that unions will have to actually work to get new members and keep their existing ones, they might be more accountable and actually spend more than just a tiny share of their dues on representing their members – the supposed reason unions exist – rather than primarily on cushy union salaries and lining the pockets of politicians.

civil liberties right-to-work laws