Friday afternoon I saw a bit of the confirmation hearings for Hilda Solis, (D-El Monte, CA) Obama's designee as Labor Secretary. Both Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA) went after her, at one point trying to find out if the Federal Government would try to overturn states' right-to-work laws.
Huh? Is this another one of those issues like the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, which lives only in the fevered brains of Republicans? Yes, Obama and his team favor the Employee Free Choice Act (card check for unionization), but that's a far cry from trying to overturn the right-to-work laws.
The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 specifically allowed right-to-work laws to be passed by states. One of the biggest effects was
when a state passes a right-to-work law, it prohibits both mandatory union membership and initiation fees and dues obligations of agency shops, and permits employees who do not voluntarily pay dues and initiation fees to receive the benefits the union provides.
As you can imagine, unions hate this. A non-union employee can get all the benefits a union negotiates with his employer while paying no union dues, essentially getting a free ride on the work the union does. Unions say that's unfair.
Anyway, Tennessee and Georgia are two of the 22 states which have right-to-work laws; most of them are in the South, with a few in the Midwest and Mountain West (map). I can see that Alexander and Isakson have vested interests in right-to-work (see this map for locations of automobile plants in Tennessee and Georgia), but I've never ever heard of the Democrats trying to repeal or override state labor laws. The unions tried to get the offending section of Taft-Hartley [14(B)] repealed several times in the 1950s but failed, and there hasn't been a serious attempt to do so in years.
After eight years of the stewardship of Elaine Chao (when The American Spectator writes a puff piece about you, I think it's safe to say she wasn't on the workers' side), the Republicans are just paranoid. Their business buddies will now have to contend with a Secretary of Labor who believes labor has rights, rather than one who has collaborated with them to limit benefits, reduce overtime, and issue as few safety regulations as possible.
Posted by Linkmeister at January 10, 2009 12:01 AM | TrackBackThanks for this post - it makes a lot of what was going on in that hearing make much more sense for me.
p.s. I saw an even funnier poor turn of phrase than the one that had Blago's impeachment historic by right of being on a Friday, but I can't recall it at the moment.
On a not-exactly-but-almost-related note: Why has it taken me 38 years to catch on that being a Governor is a job we give people who require constant adult supervision but don't know what else to do with? I was thinking through the roster state by state and, well, damn. I guess I just always thought gubernatorial insanity was a uniquely florida trait.
Posted by: rebecca at January 10, 2009 02:30 PMGee, I hope my analysis is right, then. ;)
I saw Alexander questioning her and when he brought right-to-work up I thought "well, maybe that's just a hobbyhorse of his," but then when Isakson did too it struck me that the Republicans are actually worried about its repeal.
There must be some good governors; Napolitano did a decent job in Arizona, I've heard. Ours is slightly feather-brained ("hey, Obama's from Hawai'i and all my constituents love him, so I'll avoid going to that Governors' Conference he convened last month!"), but her Lieutenant Governor is worse.
Posted by: Linkmeister at January 10, 2009 02:49 PM