Most commentators recognize that Right-to-Work legislation would improve the economic prospects of New Mexico. Politically, RTW also acknowledges the individual’s freedom to choose.
Consider now another, more fundamental importance of RTW.
Both as RTW it applies to New Mexico and every other state in the nation, unions are fiercely against it for a number of reasons. Unions per se, like the government, do not produce anything. Union leaders use members’ dues for (a) influencing support and passage of union-backed legislation; (b) manipulation of union workers to vote for union-backed legislation; (c) manipulation of union workers to vote for union-backed candidates; (d) influencing the electorate through advertising for union-backed interests; (e) paying union leaders’ salaries.
Originally, unions formed through advertising the Marxist line that they were “protecting” employee well-being against allegedly unscrupulous employers. The parallel with extortion rackets is obvious. It was a nation-wide scheme to control business people – employers and employees alike. Today, all business people are being forced to accept union demands as “good business practice.” Minimum wage laws throughout the nation and the sick Proposed Ordinance in Albuquerque, New Mexico are cases in point.
RTW will very likely reduce the number of union members, which means less “protection” money available for influencing politicians and legislation.
For many decades union leaders fed employees the Marxist philosophy that employees were of greater value than the employer, ignoring the employer’s prodigious work in creating a value, in risking his money to start a business offering that value, in creating jobs, in persuading customers to try his product or service, in keeping his margin of profit within customer’s affordable range, in keeping the quality of his product constant and/or improving it, and in using the profit to replace inventory, pay salaries and save a little in order to expand business operations, hiring more employees.
I have heard union members talk about their employer as if the employer owed employees a living. It is the same viewpoint that the Black Panthers in the 1960s demanded, e.g., “full employment of every black.”
It is the same view that advocates the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was this same viewpoint that closed the Studebaker factory stopping production of the Studebaker car. It was this same point of view that forced railroad owners to feather-bed train personnel — hiring more union members than traffic could support — forcing railroad owners into bankruptcy, their property turned over to the government. It is the same point of view that forced every city bus system in the nation created by private business to be turned over to the municipal government operated by unions. It is the same point of view that dismissed volunteer fire fighters in every American community and replaced them with unionized fire departments.
Given such views, it is no wonder that the collectivist nature of unions support the Far Left, and that “progressives” rush to support unions. It is also no wonder that an element of organized crime entered union activities and that many union leaders were involved in criminal activities, even murder. When individual rights are ignored it cannot be otherwise.
The most important aspect of enacting Right-to-Work is freeing the individual from coercion and re-asserting the moral principle that human beings have the right to life and that employees and employers are capable of and have the right to making their own decisions and choosing what is in their own individual best interests.
While individuals have a right to organize, they do not have the right to violate other people’s rights, forcing them to join their organization. Right-to-Work, if it continues to gain recognition, could be a history-making turning point in re-gaining recognition of the importance of individual rights.
