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Right to Work Laws · Why We Do What We Do

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  You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome to Why we do
• 0:16
  what we do. I am your very wealthy CEO host Abraham, and I'm
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  your wishing I could join a union host Shane or psychology podcast. We talk
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  about the things that people do and animals do, and the work that people
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  do and how they try and use different systems to best support their work.
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  I guess, and so in our series of random episodes that we talk about
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  work in general, this is one that we're going to kind of dive into
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  some of the policy and procedure around how working might work. You could maybe
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  loosely sort of categorize this inside of our organizational o BM type discussions a little
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  sure, but it's fairly gentil I think only insofar as it refers to the
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  kinds of policies that loosely might exist in an organization. And I think further
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  does speak a little bit to the kind of motivations and incentives that exist in
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  a workspace. But I guess mostly this is a political episode. Maybe,
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  Yeah, I think that's probably more accurate for sure. Yeah, all right,
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  very good. Well, anyway, if you're joining us for the first
• 1:25
  time and you'd like to support what we do. You can head over to
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  our website. You can pick up some merch you can join us on Patreon,
• 1:30
  you can like and subscribe, leave a rating and review. You can
• 1:34
  start a union and call it the Why we do what we do Union,
• 1:37
  the why we do what we crew. Yeah, and we can salute you
• 1:42
  from a distance because I don't know what your work is. But I'll talk
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  more about the ways that you can support us at the end of this discussion.
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  First, before we dive into our topic today, however, we also
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  like to acknowledge that you are listening to this probably on February seventh, and
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  so welcome, Thank you for being here. Also, Happy Black History Month,
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  everybody. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So typically what we
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  try to do is we try to do something to celebrate the black community as
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  much as we can. You know, we have a little radio show here
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  where we do that, and so hopefully we can do that. And today
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  we're going to share a link in our episode notes that will give you just
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  some recommendations around a whole lot of books from black authors. So it'll give
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  you opportunity to kind of explore and pick and choose and read some really great
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  books. First, from some really wonderful people. So, yeah, we're
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  so woke as a podcast because we mentioned that black people have written books.
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  Uh huh, Yeah, I mean I can't wait for Jordan Peterson to jump
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  back into our reviews and start sharing some nonsense. Yeah, like what about
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  all those white authors, at which point I'll wave to Amazon and Barnes and
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  Noble and to say they're over there, right, not to say that they
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  don't sell books by black authors, but you know, the people who have
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  had that opportunity tend to be anyway, let's talk about It's also Ballet Day,
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  so put on those ballet dance and shoes. Pirouette the Day Away.
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  Yeah, that's that's probably an episode in itself at one point, because I
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  feel like there's a lot of pain and struggle that goes into ballet and how
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  much it hurts. It's good Pointople's feet hurt. Yeah. It's also Harry
• 3:12
  Potter Book Night, which you know, take that for what it is.
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  I like, I like the stories. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
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  agree. Our world is complicated. It grows increasingly so over time. It's
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  International Clash Day, yes it is, don't know what that is. It's
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  also National Black HIV AIDS Awareness Day. I just learned today that apparently a
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  program that George W. Bush put in place during his presidency has saved and
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  estimated twenty five million lives in Africa. Wow, which I thought was really
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  pretty powerful. Yeah. Every once in a while they'll do something right,
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  Yeah, presidents, I mean or people named George maybe. Yeah, broken
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  clocks right twice a day, I guess exactly. It's also a National Fetucini
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  al Fredo Day. Ooh. I like that. It's National Girls with Women
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  and in sports Day, National periodic table Day. I do enjoy the elements.
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  Yes, it's a national signing day as well. If you're a fan
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  of getting poked by planets, it is rose Day. Or it could be
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  a fan of Titanic. Yeah, that's what it probably is. It's also
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  send send a card to a friend Day, which is really nice. Oh
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  that's cute. Wave all your fingers at your neighbor day. Not just the
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  one, not just the one in the middle, but all of them.
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  Yeah, all of them, I mean save save, you know, save
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  the special ones for the ones who deserve it. I guess you can do
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  a creepy tentacle style though, if you want that's what I would do.
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  Yeah, I'm watching. Yeah, I would put both of my hands up
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  at the same time and go like jazz hands to my neighbors. Exactly.
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  It's World Read Aloud Day, which I always really liked. Sure, I'm
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  one of those people that liked reading out loud. People don't like that though,
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  Yeah, yeah, I like it. It's it's a different skill,
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  but it related. I mean, got to be able to read to read
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  out loud. Yes, African Heritage and Health Week, which I think is
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  very fitting given. Yes, it's also burn Awareness Week, so be careful,
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  don't burn yourself, don't bring yourself. Children's Authors and Illustrations Week.
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  You overlap that with some of the black authors of children's books. I like
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  that. And it's finally, Dump your significant jerk Week, So apparently this
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  is a really good week for breakups too. Yeah, you know, it
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  could just be a friend. I mean, if your significant jerk implies to
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  me, it could also just be a friend. But it could also be
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  a significant other who's being a jerk. That's true. Like, lose that
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  zero and get yourself a dating app well or a hero. We can avoid
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  the dating apps. We know those are a mess. Sometimes that's fair.
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  That'd probably be something worth unpacking. Anyway, We're not a podcast about days
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  to celebrate things. Instead, we are a podcast about the psychology of what
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  people do. And one of the things that people do is they go out
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  and they like become politicians, and then they make laws and they make laws
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  that say what kinds of things people can and can't do. And sometimes they'll
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  make laws let's say what they can and can't do as part of their employment.
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  Yes, and so, as I said, politics is human behavior.
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  Therefore politic things are under our umbrella. Not that it would have stopped us
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  if it wasn't, but here we are. Yes. So today we are
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  going to talk about the idea of right to work laws and right to work
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  states and what that does to humans and human behavior and different systems that we
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  operate in. We are going to kind of talk about some of the policies
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  for and against right to work laws and what that looks like. And just
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  as kind of a fair heads up, we have our own opinions about things.
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  What we're going to do is we're going to try to do our best
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  to be fair and try to do our best to make sure that we are
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  sharing both sides of the argument. We kind of had this conversation before the
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  show started. Our general views are typically pro union, so that is going
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  to come out a little bit. The discussion around unions is going to be
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  an entirely different episode at some point in time, because that's in its self
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  worth unpacking. But I just want to kind of give everybody that fair heads
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  up before we dive into this one. So, yeah, as you said,
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  we're talking about right to work laws and the implication is that that has
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  to do with unions, and you're right, we do have to disclose up
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  front that our bias always going to be that generally we see unions as a
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  positive thing, and it is worth saying, you know, upfront that we
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  understand there are caveats with certain unions and the bad things that have happened as
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  a part of unions. But I think where we come down on this is
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  generally unions are a thing that protects people. We are in favor of protecting
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  people. Therefore, we are in support of unions and just keeping it as
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  general as possible for that part of the discussion allows us to, I think,
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  be really transparent about the biases that we have coming into this discussion.
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  But also, as I said, we have the platform and I think the
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  enough of a level of expertise. We're not lawyers, but we do psychology
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  things right that I think we can come in and we can have a nuanced
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  discussion about this without necessarily land on a firm conclusion and just sort of say,
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  like, let's really carefully weigh out the pros and cons and let's talk
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  about what's happening in these systems. Absolutely, So it's also worth mentioning that
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  this is a US centric topic. Yeah, a lot of the laws and
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  the policies and things that we're going to talk about are specifically to the US.
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  So we are going to talk about this idea of right to work,
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  So we are going to talk about what it is, what it isn't,
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  where it came from, and where it's possibly going. Yes, ready to
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  just dive right into this, let's do it all right, We've already given
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  I think a pretty good kickoff, so I think we're already rolling a bit.
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  But to make sure we're really clear on giving the background on what right
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  to work laws are. Now, it's despite what the name sounds like,
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  these are not laws that insist that every person has the right to work.
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  That is actually not what they're saying. That's not part of the thesis here.
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  They are not laws that guarantee your rights to work. There are other
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  laws that do that, but the ones that are called right to work law
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  law, they aren't actually not saying everybody has an equal right to work.
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  That's not what they do. Right. They are also not laws that protect
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  your employment of any kind kind of We will get to that, but they
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  are in a sense not laws that protect your employment well and will impact the
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  sort of pros and cons of these laws, and that you can maybe make
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  the case that they do protect employment in a way, but just in principle,
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  that's not what they do as the function of the law. Right.
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  So, right to work laws RTW laws are laws that are state laws specifically
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  that intend to protect the quote right of every American to work for a living
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  without being compelled to belong to a union end quote. And that comes from
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  the National Right to Legal Defense Fund. So another clear definition says that or
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  it states that quote. A right to work state is one that has passed
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  state legislation stipulating that no individual can be forced, as a condition of employment
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  to join or pay dues to a labor union end quote. So, just
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  to be clear, right to work laws say that somebody has the right to
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  go to work without being forced into a union. Yes, okay, So
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  that is a very important piece of the definition, understanding that these are state
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  laws, and that the state laws are intended to and state that people cannot
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  be compelled to join a union as a condition of their employment at a place.
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  Are going to work. Okay. So I think we need to unpack
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  the history of this a little bit, just like our pledge of allegiance,
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  the term right to work has been attributed to a French socialist, in this
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  case Louis Blanc and the mid eighteen hundreds. However, at that time it
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  was in reference to the idea that people be guaranteed protection to maintain employment.
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  So although the way that it becomes used later, at the time that it
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  was originated it sort of was more like what it sounds like. It was
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  a guarantee that people should have equal access to employment, and so that was
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  the sort of eighteen hundreds, right. So the more contemporary use of the
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  term, however, has been attributed to a conservative lobbyist named Vance Muse,
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  which is a hell of a name, right, Like there's sometimes you hear
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  a name and you're like, wow, that is a name. It's like
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  Max Power, the name that you mustn't that you want to touch, but
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  you mustn't touch. Yes, So I don't know if you, I don't
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  know. If you, you probably don't watch enough Simpsons to know. The
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  Homer changes his name to Max Power at some point. I did not know,
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  And he had a theme song. Oh no that yeah, yeah,
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  it was Max Power, the name that you want to touch, but you
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  mustn't touch. That's what he That's how he's saying that. That's great.
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  So anyway, Vance Muse is the conservative lobbyist who's kind of linked to the
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  term right to work as we know it today. Yes, he was also
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  nicknamed the Big Fink by the labor unions. He really dressed the part of
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  the Texan and was very outspoken. Has a fun background on him. He
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  liked to agitate people. He was a poster if he will. He was
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  directly quoted as saying, quote, I am a Southerner and I am for
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  white supremacy end quote. Oh if that tells you a lot about him,
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  very quickly, then worth having the background on him, because he's really not
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  the point of this discussion. But I think as part of understanding the development
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  of these laws, knowing the kinds of people who were pushing for them the
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  hardest, yeah, is useful. You should know who's on what team I
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  think, and what team they're on before they join yar team. Yeah,
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  yeah, absolutely try to do anyway. We've got some setup there. There
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  are multiple starting points to the right to work laws, so it wasn't just
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  him. There's multiple things coming together. Like most things, it's not just
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  like here's a thing, here's a cause, here's an effect. It's like,
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  here's a whole bunch of conditions that came together to sort of produce the
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  circumstance that would result in thaying in this case, right to work laws.
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  Right most points to a nineteen thirty five act called the National Labor Relations Act
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  or NLRA, And this act did several things. It was a lot of
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  these bills, if you read them, they're massive, But chief among the
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  things that it did do for the purpose of this discussion, it specified that
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  employees have certain un inalienable that's what I'm looking for, inalienable rights, and
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  that those rights included the ability to join or form a union where none exists,
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  or dismantle one that is no longer favored by the employees. Okay.
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  It's also designed to assist in union activities and that people can participate in a
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  union even if it is unrecognized by the employer, So I think that's an
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  important piece too. It also specified that employees have the right to be represented
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  by a union, and they have the rights to strike and engage in collective
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  bargaining for their members of the union right. And they also have a right
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  to criticize the union or union leaders without retribution or retaliation to and they have
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  the rights to engage in non union activities. And they can choose to do
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  none of the union things. They can choose to basically just not be a
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  part of any of it. So the Act was set up to have all
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  of these guarantees. It also means that employees are free from certain things.
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  So that was a list of things they're free to do. A list of
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  things they're free from is that they should be free from a threat for threats
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  due to not participating in a union, meaning that they should not be threatened
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  about their decision to not join the union if they chose not to, they
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  should. Also, they are free from being questioned about their union participation by
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  their employer, meaning that an employer cannot go you snooping around and investigating and
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  asking employees if they are in or planning to join the union. Right.
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  They are also free from finds or restrictions or privileges due to choice of joining
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  a union or not. So they cannot be fin or restricted or have privileges
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  reduced because of their either engagement or non engagement in that union. Right.
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  And they are free from excessive surveillance by employers. So employers can't watch this
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  person more because they are part of a union or because they're not part of
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  a union. They can't change their procedures around how they observe their employees because
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  of that. Yeah, and part of this was that there was a fear,
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  a correctly assumed fear, because this absolutely happens and has happened, is
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  that if employers are concerned that a union is forming, they will like put
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  in all kinds of surveillance to try and detect and then prevent that union from
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  forming. We'll talk a little bit more about that kind of thing later,
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  but that was part of what this law was intended to do was prevent employers
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  from having excessive amounts of surveillance over their employees. And I'm sure, I'm
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  sure that like this is somewhat profession specific. So like someone who is,
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  for example, guarding a diamond vault, you know, they probably have some
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  kinds of provision where they can have a lot of surveillance of that employee because
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  they're guarding an enormous amount of assets, right, And so like I'm sure
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  that there are our caveats or systems by which people can have high amounts of
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  security. When they need high amounts of security, it just means that they
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  should. It's so I think what it is is like, is it justifiable
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  levels of surveillance? Right? And I think that an employer just has to
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  be able to make the case that it is, and in many cases it
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  will be right. But it just can't be excessive. And one thing that
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  this law does not do, this act that we're talking about, we talked
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  about the the employees' freedoms and their choices, what they're supposed to be free
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  from, but none of this, none of the stuff that we're talking about
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  has to do with ads, all right, So We've been getting into this
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  act so that we can clearly understand the history of the conditions that sort of
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  leads to the formation of unions, understand what the laws that in place at
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  the formation of these unions, but also what the laws don't do. Right,
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  So what the Act did not do was prevent employment being dependent on an
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  agreement to join a labor union. That's really really important underneath this. So
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  this means that workers could be compelled to join a union and thus pay union
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  fees or else not be hired at that workplace, which sounds a little bit
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  I don't know, like a little bit coercive. Yeah, And not that
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  every union was going to do this, or in fact that many even did.
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  I don't have those numbers exactly, just that they could do that,
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  But that doesn't mean that they did do that very often, if at all,
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  or like how extensive it was, right, But there was a concern
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  that that would be a thing, and it seems like at least in some
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  instances that did happen somewhere, but I don't think that that was even the
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  norm. Again, I don't have the numbers exactly, but an important thing
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  is that that was a concern whether or not that was the effect. The
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  concern was that the law enabled and so in nineteen forty seven there was a
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  Taft Hartley Amendment that altered the language such that in states that passed such laws,
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  employees could not be forced to join a union and thus pay union dues.
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  Is a very important part of that right. So they could they could
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  not be forced to join the union and pay union dues as a condition of
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  their employment. And so this nineteen forty seven Taft Heartley Amendment, it essentially
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  made it that states could then put in right to work laws in their state.
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  That amendment is does not make it a national law. It gave states
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  the rights to make their own laws about this right right right. So of
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  course, of course I had to be one of my relatives that's causing this
• 18:44
  ruckus. I'm like related to Taft somewhere very very far down the line somehow.
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  That's it was. Can remember who you said? Yeah, it's that
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  guy, the one that's buried in the National Cathedral on a giant tomb.
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  Now more than half of the US states, twenty seven to be specific,
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  So twenty seven states have passed right to work laws in the US territory of
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  Guam specifically, but most not all, hence the word most of these states
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  are considered southern, so that's also something to be mindful of too. Before
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  we get into that, I think it is probably worth unpacking the arguments for
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  and against right to work laws and kind of what people are saying in this
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  discussion. Should I read like the list of the states that have joined or
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  just give a few. I think we could probably give a few. Yeah,
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  I mean, so one that's not southern is Nevada. Nevada has the
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  right to work laws. Also South Dakota, although I think you certainly put
• 19:33
  them in the conservative belt. Yeah, but they're South Carolina, Texas,
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  Utah, Virgila. Utah's not southern either, Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana,
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  also North Dakota and Michigan, Arkansas, Arizona, Alabama. So like,
• 19:47
  there are a lot of southern states in there, but there's it kind of
• 19:49
  it follows the middle of the country for specific reasons. Right, that's fair,
• 19:55
  But as we said, we should unpack essentially what the arguments that people
• 19:59
  who are row right to work are making. And again, this is why
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  I want this to be aced a nuanced conversation and paint both sides really fairly,
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  because I don't want to misrepresent their arguments at all. I want this
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  to be as genuine as they can be. Right, So, most advocates
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  of right to work laws argue that these laws do a few things. One
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  that they protect the workers right to choose gainful employment but to not participate in
• 20:22
  the union, to not pay union dues or fees. They also make the
• 20:26
  argument that these laws protect the workers right to join a union without compulsion.
• 20:30
  They also argue that these laws protect the worker's right to leave a union without
• 20:34
  any kind of threats to their overall employment if they, for whatever reason,
• 20:38
  think that that the union does not represent them anymore, they don't want to
• 20:41
  participate. They also state that these laws reduce to tax and spend policies they
• 20:45
  happen in Washington. All right, We'll have to unpack that one a little
• 20:49
  bit later, I'm thinking, but that's essentially a case that they explicitly made,
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  was that the right to work states essentially quell the problem of tax and
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  spend policies. That let's just need at that for now. Absolutely, again,
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  we're talking about the pros here, We're talking about the people arguing for
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  right to work laws, So there was there are several studies where people are
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  sort of have argued about what are all the important and reasonable metrics that we
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  could look at to see whether right to work states have a positive impact.
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  And there's many ways you could slice that, right, There's a lot of
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  ways, so you could you could look at the data. There's lots of
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  different data to look at. There are many choices you make to try and
• 21:27
  make that. One of them is that they argue that the people who are
• 21:32
  against right to work laws say, well, if you this weekends unions,
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  so there will be fewer unions. Well, in one study in Oklahoma,
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  they point to the fact that data show that union membership didn't change after the
• 21:44
  state enacted right to work law, so they didn't have the right to work
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  laws, then they did, membership stayed about the same, and this indicates
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  that people were able to choose to maintain memberships in their unions and they decided
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  to do so, and the state is sort of saying, yeah, fine,
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  like we just wanted you to have the choice, and now you do,
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  and you chose to keep doing that thing. That's fine, that's up
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  to you, right And so that's kind of the argument that they're making here,
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  is saying that, like, it's not necessarily the case that labor union
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  participation will decrease, And so they're like, we're just getting our point across
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  that what we want to support is workers' rights. Sure. Other right to
• 22:17
  work advocates have also pointed to the idea that if companies are not spending as
• 22:21
  much money because a union isn't forcing them to, then they can and will
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  pay employees a higher salary. So set another way, if companies are able
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  to save money on what they would describe as unnecessary union grievances, then that
• 22:37
  money that would be spent on those concerns would be going back to the employees
• 22:41
  for higher salaries for their work. And this one's more in the camp of
• 22:47
  hypotheticals because the other one I said was a study. This is not a
• 22:49
  study. Yeah, this is them instead saying that, like, you don't
• 22:52
  need a union, not only will you make less money because we can't afford
• 22:57
  to pay you, but it'll cost you more money. Right, And so
• 23:02
  they're sort of saying like people will end up making more money under right to
• 23:04
  work policies. It also means that if companies don't have to spend more money
• 23:08
  on employees in these right to work states, presumably because they're dealing with unions,
• 23:14
  essentially that they'll be able to hire more people, which means that there's
• 23:18
  generally more employment to go around. Like. That's both, that's the logical
• 23:22
  sort of conclusion that they're reaching, right, And then finally, if employees
• 23:26
  aren't having their wages garnished by paying union fees, that means they have more
• 23:29
  after tax income than they can spend on things that increase their standards of living.
• 23:33
  So therefore people in right to work states enjoy higher standard of living.
• 23:37
  Again, that's one of the arguments here. We're not espousing our opinions yet,
• 23:41
  we're just trying to say what they're arguing for here, right, I
• 23:44
  think it is probably I was going to wait till a little bit later to
• 23:47
  talk about the tax and spend policies, but I'm just going to go ahead
• 23:48
  and say it here because I think it's worth just understanding that part of it.
• 23:53
  And essentially, what they were arguing with the tax and spend policies and
• 23:56
  what they explicitly say on their website is that states that don't have right to
• 24:03
  work are more likely to elect politicians who vote on large spending bills. That's
• 24:10
  essentially what they're saying. Said another way, states that are more likely to
• 24:15
  elect a democratic representative are also states who are not likely to have right to
• 24:19
  work laws, and therefore the states that have more unions are more likely to
• 24:25
  send more Democrats to positions of power in the Senate and in the House of
• 24:30
  Representatives. And they don't like that because that obviously means that they're not as
• 24:36
  many people who are sort of on the conservative spectrum of things. So I
• 24:38
  think they loosely consider that it means over representation of like unions in these places.
• 24:48
  I think as maybe their concern. Again, I'm trying to be as
• 24:51
  charitable as I can and addressing their arguments. I think you said that,
• 24:55
  well, okay, that's essentially the pros the things that they're talking about with
• 25:00
  why people are for right to work policies. So let's go ahead and dig
• 25:04
  into those counter arguments the people who are against right to work policies. So,
• 25:08
  most opponents of right to work laws argue that these laws do a few
• 25:12
  things. One that they hamstring a union's bargaining power to advocate pay and benefits
• 25:17
  for employees. Another is that they decrease participation in unions, and another is
• 25:22
  that they lower employee income or at least prevent raises in income as part of
• 25:26
  these laws. Opponents of the right to work laws also say that what these
• 25:30
  laws really do is benefit corporations more than they benefit workers, by essentially making
• 25:36
  it a more hospitable place for the top sort of one percent of organizations than
• 25:41
  for the people who are doing most of the work sort of down below and
• 25:45
  the other I think one of their biggest points, and the whole criticism of
• 25:49
  right to work laws is that they enable free writers. Because what the right
• 25:53
  to work laws do that is not really stated in the sort of right to
• 25:59
  work thesis is that although people are not cannot be compelled to join a union,
• 26:04
  they do maintain access to the benefits of a union. So if they
• 26:10
  go to join a place of work, that if they choose not to join
• 26:15
  the union, the union is still, by these laws, obligated to cover
• 26:19
  to bargain on this employee's behalf when they engage in collective bargaining that raises all
• 26:25
  people's wages. The non union members get to benefit as well, even though
• 26:29
  they are not participating in that union, and means that they get to reap
• 26:33
  the benefits of other protections and benefits that are gained for union members, although
• 26:37
  again they're not participating in the union. As they called them, these free
• 26:41
  writers, and that's that they basically get all these benefits without any of without
• 26:45
  having to pay union dues, without being obligated to be of service to the
• 26:48
  union, and that they're sort of saying, that's not really fair to the
• 26:51
  people who are then shouldering that burden, right right. They also argue that
• 26:56
  these right to work laws are necessary because the nineteen thirty five n LRA actually
• 27:00
  made it illegal to force someone to join a union as a condition of their
• 27:04
  employment. So everything beyond that law they are arguing is or that act specifically
• 27:11
  is kind of like guilding the lily. It's like it's extra unnecessary. It's
• 27:15
  unga patchka, I think, is what they say, right, It's like
• 27:18
  too much. Well, and essentially they're saying, you know, I think
• 27:22
  that the it's a redundancy. It's a redundancy. Yeah, and it's like
• 27:26
  it's not it's not actually doing what they they're saying that what their thesis here
• 27:30
  is that it undermines the primary tenet of the right to work laws, because
• 27:36
  the right to work laws say that people need to have the choice to be
• 27:41
  able to not join union if they don't want to, and still be able
• 27:44
  to work at that job and not have their privilege. You know, that
• 27:47
  they don't get fewer work hours because they're not the union, like they don't
• 27:49
  have or wages because of the union, that sort of thing. That's essentially
• 27:53
  what they're saying, and they're sort of saying, well, that's already the
• 27:57
  case, so that's why it's not necessary. They also express concern that one
• 28:03
  of the things that unions will do is they will specifically advocate and bargain for
• 28:07
  higher safety standards and like work conditions. They're working conditions generally, right,
• 28:14
  and so that what happens then is that places that do not have unions have
• 28:18
  weaker unions or have some you know, smaller membership in their unions, whatever
• 28:23
  is going on there. If these right to work laws affect unions from being
• 28:29
  able to do what they do, then employers will generally adopt lower safety standards,
• 28:33
  meaning that you're going to have more people who are injured in the workplace,
• 28:37
  who have adverse health issues because of their job, et cetera, et
• 28:40
  cetera, And so they're sort of making the case that rights to work laws
• 28:44
  make it harder for people to have safe working conditions. Sure, we're going
• 28:48
  to talk more about like some examples of this, but I can see some
• 28:51
  examples of that happening right where it's like, if you don't have somebody holding
• 28:53
  you accountable, then you know, then you're not going to do the thing
• 28:59
  that is required of you. Yeah, there was supposed to be sort of
• 29:03
  a bulleted summary list of sort of reasons or arguments, but I think there's
• 29:07
  more to expand upon, and wouldn't you like to know what that is?
• 29:11
  But first you have to listen to ads. Our union says we can come
• 29:22
  back from the ads. Yay. Let's further elaborate on some of the claims
• 29:29
  here for the critical the opponents of right to work laws, So many critics
• 29:33
  point to the fact that there are many studies and analyzes that have shown that
• 29:37
  no matter how you look at the data, employees and states with right to
• 29:41
  work laws make less money than states without right to work laws. That is
• 29:45
  to say, wages are hired in states without right to work laws in every
• 29:49
  possible way to aggregate and average the data. So their argument is that no
• 29:55
  matter how you spin it, no matter how you analyze it, no matter
• 29:57
  how you massage it, right to work states have a lower wage for employees
• 30:03
  than non right to work states. Yes, and so one of the arguments
• 30:07
  that was made in favor of right to work states is that, like,
• 30:10
  well, employers will be able to pay their employees more, and the critics
• 30:15
  point out, like, well, but that's not what's happening. Right.
• 30:18
  Here are the data, every piece of data from every place that we've ever
• 30:22
  gathered, it shows conclusively, definitively and at one hundred percent of the time
• 30:26
  that in right to work states wages are lower. Right, So what I
• 30:30
  wanted to do is really try and break down the components here into the just
• 30:33
  what is the essential argument, what is the essential thesis if you will,
• 30:38
  of the anti right to work discussion here? And essentially, these advocates against
• 30:45
  right to work they argue that these laws mean people are less likely to join
• 30:48
  a union, that there will be fewer, smaller and or weaker unions,
• 30:53
  and that this will benefit the companies who are more likely to hire more people
• 30:57
  but at a lower wage. Okay, so that's part of it. They
• 31:00
  also point out that it is already federally protected to be able to choose whether
• 31:04
  or not to join a union without compulsion, and that employees do not have
• 31:10
  to pay dues for political causes, and therefore these right to work laws are
• 31:14
  pointless right because they're such a saying that the laws already protect the rights that
• 31:19
  are the main argument that right to work people are sort of making right and
• 31:23
  right to work states. It seems that the only difference between a right to
• 31:27
  work state and a non right to work state is that unions are forced to
• 31:32
  represent and benefit employees and right to work states, but that employees do not
• 31:37
  have to meaningly contribute to the union. They still get those benefits, which
• 31:41
  means that this stretches the union's budget just paper thin, and it forces the
• 31:45
  DOE pay in members of the union to shoulder the financial and legal burden of
• 31:48
  all employees, which they often cannot do. Thus, the responsibility of the
• 31:53
  many ends up being carried out by the few, sometimes to the breaking point
• 31:57
  and shutting down that union altogether. Right to be clear, I think there's
• 32:01
  still a lot to unpack within that right to be clear, what this is
• 32:05
  saying is essentially that because these right to work states have it set up or
• 32:10
  they have they basically have it set up so that there are people that will
• 32:14
  gain the benefits of the union without being in the union. The union in
• 32:17
  itself is it already has finite resources, and it has finite resources because of
• 32:22
  the union, the fee paying members of the union, the do paying members.
• 32:25
  Right, So for every one person that's in the union, there are
• 32:30
  let's say three, four or five people that are choosing not to be in
• 32:32
  the union, which is fine, choose that, but that one person is
• 32:37
  shouldering the burden of making sure that those other four or five people reap the
• 32:40
  benefits of the union. Those people that are not paying dues are still gaining
• 32:45
  from not being in the union, right. And I think that then the
• 32:49
  the what what happened in non right to work states is that people could choose
• 32:52
  not to join the union and then they just wouldn't get the benefits of the
• 32:57
  union, right, They just don't get all, you know, all the
• 32:59
  sort of perks that come with being a due paying member. And so that's
• 33:04
  had a really hard time really drawing a clear line there, but that was
• 33:07
  most consistently what I could find on both sides of the discussion pro or against,
• 33:13
  that the main difference in right to work is that people can benefit from
• 33:17
  the union without contributing to the union right. So it may go without saying,
• 33:22
  but right to work laws are particularly favored by conservative politicians. But what's
• 33:27
  interesting about that is that conservative politicians tend to express a lot of anger and
• 33:31
  resentment toward policies to provide non contingent support for people in principle, because it
• 33:37
  means spending tax money on people who don't quote unquote deserve it. That is,
• 33:40
  the responsibility of many is carried by the few. Like we just talked
• 33:44
  about. In that context, if the principal value is earned wages and proportionate
• 33:49
  wages for those who work harder, you would think that the specific protection of
• 33:52
  the right to work folks to force the organization to pay people who aren't contributing
• 33:58
  to be would be antithetical to conservatives. So their preference for right to work
• 34:01
  laws show that it is not the fact that it is. It isn't fair
• 34:06
  for some people to receive benefits when they don't earn them. Instead, their
• 34:08
  value is whatever best protects the assets of the people who already have the most
• 34:14
  that makes sense. I mean, just like trying to say here that like
• 34:17
  a lot of times, there's a couple of steps, Like it tends to
• 34:22
  be conservatives who favor right to work laws, which is why you tend to
• 34:24
  see the most conservative states have right to work laws generally, or or they
• 34:30
  also the most libertarian states I have those. And what's interesting about it is
• 34:35
  that what these laws seem to do is enable freeloaders. Like that seems to
• 34:39
  be what they're specifically designed to do is to enable freeloaders, right right,
• 34:45
  But what's antithetical about that is often the argument against welfare spending, against low
• 34:51
  income housing, against government for debt, forgiveness, all the things that the
• 34:55
  government does that sort of supports people. They're sort of saying, we can't
• 35:00
  spend tax dollars to support these people and they don't even deserve it is what
• 35:05
  they're deserve being a very loaded word, but I think that that's essentially what
• 35:07
  is being implied is like they're not working, they shouldn't get unemployments. The
• 35:13
  fact that these things happen to them, bummer, bad things happen, But
• 35:16
  like that doesn't mean the rest of us should have to pay for it,
• 35:19
  the sort of the thing that there's no freeloaders. And yet this exact policy
• 35:23
  again seems to be tailor made to promote freeloading so that it will gut the
• 35:30
  power of the union. And if that's the case, then it says that
• 35:32
  their value actually isn't that they don't like freeloading. It is that what they
• 35:37
  like is that the people who have the most power get to keep the most
• 35:40
  power, because that's what those two different approaches will do. Right. The
• 35:45
  one that says that people shouldn't get support when they're down is so that you
• 35:51
  can protect people who would be spending the money that have the resources to support
• 35:54
  those people, right. And when that's not the case, then it's we
• 35:59
  don't want people to still earn their money because if they don't get set up
• 36:02
  so that they're paid more, that means that the people who are at the
• 36:05
  top get to keep more of their money. So again, this is protecting
• 36:07
  power for the sake of protecting power. Right. And again this is part
• 36:10
  of the arguments against right to work that people make right. I mean,
• 36:15
  that is one of the talking points is that exact thing is that if everybody
• 36:20
  benefits. Then, isn't that part of kind of like what they would describe
• 36:23
  in other places as handouts? Right exactly, that's what they're kind of saying
• 36:27
  here. Now, states without right to work laws, and this is again,
• 36:30
  this is under the cons of right to work laws. States without right
• 36:34
  to work laws have an umbrella effect where not only do the employees who work
• 36:37
  for the company that have unions do they see higher wages, so do the
• 36:42
  employees who work for non union companies, and so higher union participation states have
• 36:46
  benefits that extend to everyone, from safer work conditions to better benefits, to
• 36:51
  higher salary and everything in between. So essentially, what they're saying is in
• 36:55
  those places where most people are part of a union and the unions do have
• 37:00
  length, the strength in the union also kind of bleeds out into other places
• 37:05
  where unions aren't present or people are not participatory in unions. Okay, there's
• 37:08
  another another important piece of the discussion of rights to work that I think many
• 37:15
  people will see coming, and many people maybe won't. But when you talk
• 37:20
  about why people do what they do, there is an unfortunate amount of racism
• 37:23
  and bigotry that creeps up, creeps into like almost every conversation about a hot
• 37:29
  thing, right, especially in the US, especially in the United States,
• 37:34
  where it's practically a sport in some states. Yep. And so anyway,
• 37:37
  the right to work lause no different here important to discuss the sort of racist
• 37:42
  element in it. Now it goes back to this vance muse guy that we
• 37:45
  were talking about before. And this guy I mean, and he he was
• 37:51
  very sort of flamboyant in his not flamboyant in the sense that I think people
• 37:54
  would maybe associate with LGBT people, but flamboyant in the sense that he was
• 38:00
  very self aggrandizing all the time. Sure, he was really proud of himself,
• 38:04
  called himself the best lobbyist in the country, et cetera. He formed
• 38:08
  all kinds of gigantic mega donor special interest groups that he started. And as
• 38:15
  we said, he specifically said I am for white supremacy. Now he took
• 38:20
  this further. So in nineteen forty four there were campaigning to pass right to
• 38:23
  work legislation in Arkansas, which did go through. Before this, he had
• 38:28
  fronted this Christian American Association, which was a front for wealthy special interest groups.
• 38:32
  It was basically just wealthy people who were sort of the special interest groups
• 38:37
  that were flying under the banner of Christianity to have public support right and they
• 38:43
  distributed all this literature to try and make their case for right to work,
• 38:47
  arguing that if their efforts did not go through that quote white women and white
• 38:52
  men will be forced into organizations labor unions with black African apes whom they will
• 38:59
  have to call brother or lose their jobs end quote. So real piece of
• 39:05
  this guy. It's not really a surprise. I mean, when this was
• 39:07
  all going on, he was sending labor organizers to the South to kind of
• 39:12
  stir the flames and like stir up people, like he was sending to people,
• 39:15
  like sending them down there to specifically like to flyer or pamphlet the town
• 39:21
  with all this information that was just completely unfounded. And it ended up that
• 39:25
  some of the first right to work laws were enacted in nineteen forty four around
• 39:30
  that time forty four fight after the Taft Hartley Amendment, and so Arkansas and
• 39:36
  Florida were the first to adopt them. Yeah, not surprised, but you
• 39:39
  know, even like Martin Luther King actually had some stuff to say about this.
• 39:43
  So there's a quote a really great quote. Here, in our glorious
• 39:45
  fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans such
• 39:50
  as right to work. It is a law to rob us of our civil
• 39:52
  rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom
• 39:57
  of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions for everyone.
• 40:01
  Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer,
• 40:07
  and there are no civil rights. End quote. That was from Martin
• 40:09
  Luther King in nineteen sixty four about this specific topic. Wow, I found
• 40:15
  this really interesting interactive map that also shows the adoption of right to work laws
• 40:20
  in the United States. I'm going to illustrate that in a second, but
• 40:22
  just a while, just to finish up really quick on this muse guy.
• 40:27
  It will not come as a surprise to most people, given that we've described
• 40:30
  that he is a white supremacist. He is also anti semitic. Was I
• 40:32
  should say he's not around anymore. He fronted all these wealthy special interest groups
• 40:37
  to hide money and that sort of thing. He of course opposed women's suffrage.
• 40:42
  He worked to repeal child labor laws and the eight hour day for railroaders,
• 40:46
  so basically making it so that they could they could be forced to work
• 40:50
  longer hours. He was active in the Committee for the Americanization of the Supreme
• 40:54
  Court, which was really just targeting a Jewish man named Justice Felix Frams.
• 41:00
  Further, he was a very active dude whose primary activities were to ruin as
• 41:06
  many people as he possibly could, particularly if they were not white men.
• 41:09
  Right, Yeah, this guy was not going into this with any good intentions,
• 41:14
  it seems, no, no. And so another part of this,
• 41:17
  because I think it's worth talking about that the majority of places where unions exist,
• 41:22
  they're often blue collar jobs. Not always, but often blue collar jobs,
• 41:25
  which are people who generally make lower wages, who do not have a
• 41:30
  lot of education, who are doing a lot of like manufacturing and industrial work
• 41:35
  and things that require a lot of physicality to them a lot of the time.
• 41:37
  They can also entail some amount of exposure to dangerous chemicals depending on the
• 41:42
  job. There's lots of these types of jobs and the people. If you
• 41:45
  tend to look at economic distribution, it tends to be the case that it
• 41:50
  is harder for people who are not white to see upward mobility, meaning that
• 41:53
  they gain more income, which means that the people who are in who are
• 41:58
  not white tends to be more highly represented in blue collar work. And if
• 42:02
  you are weakening unions, then you are specifically weakening organizations where they are a
• 42:08
  large proportion of representation of people who are not white, because those are where
• 42:14
  those people tend to end up economically due to the system. Right, Basically,
• 42:17
  what we're saying is that this is just another example it appears of systemic
• 42:23
  racism at play that is actively and effectively harming large swaths of minority demographics.
• 42:32
  I mean, that's just ultimately what's happening here, right, So just a
• 42:37
  real quick summary of this interesting trend. So, this was kicked off in
• 42:42
  the nineteen forties. As we said, nineteen forty seven was when that amendment
• 42:45
  passed. Immediately these laws started going into place. In the nineteen forties,
• 42:50
  you had eleven states kick off the right to work laws. It's like,
• 42:53
  basically as soon as that amendment went into place, eleven states jumped on the
• 42:58
  bandwagon. After that, and then iighteen fifties you got about six more,
• 43:01
  and the nineteen sixties you got one more, and the nineteen seventies you got
• 43:06
  one more, so they really slowed down in the nineteen eighties, you get
• 43:07
  one more, they have eleven to kick off, six more, and then
• 43:12
  just one at a time for a few decades, one per decade, basically.
• 43:15
  Sure, in the nineteen nineties there were none, There were no states
• 43:20
  who adopted right to work legislation, and two thousands there was one more.
• 43:24
  And then after twenty ten, five more states all of a sudden jumped on
• 43:29
  the bandwagon. After this trajectory of their having been you know, only eleven
• 43:35
  to begin with, then six, then one, then one, then one,
• 43:37
  then zero, and then one, and then all of a sudden five.
• 43:40
  It was like, what's going on, all of the sudden that there's
• 43:43
  this huge increase in all of these states, right, And a lot of
• 43:45
  these, interestingly, are states that historically had a lot of really strong labor
• 43:50
  unions, Michigan being chief among them, is one of the leaders of states
• 43:54
  that had a lot going for it in terms of sort of protecting employees and
• 44:00
  to people who had some of the highest standards of living because of all the
• 44:02
  car manufacturing plants that were there and that that paid people really well. And
• 44:07
  then all of a sudden, in the twenty tens, there's this big flip.
• 44:12
  It's super interesting to watch, like this is I mean, this is
• 44:14
  I think why political science is so fascinating when you really get into it,
• 44:17
  is like these little events that have these like ripple effects that change everything and
• 44:22
  kind of these these ebbs and flows of social movements and what we find important
• 44:27
  and how as somebody who's interested in political science, how upsetting it is that
• 44:31
  most of these things don't ever follow actual data, right. There is some
• 44:36
  amount of values that are embedded in like how you interpret these data. And
• 44:40
  I think that that's important because sort of saying like, well, here's the
• 44:44
  outcoming states that have right to work laws that versus don't among those sort of
• 44:47
  measurements we were talking about earlier, where you want to say, is this
• 44:51
  a good idea or not right? And whether or not it's good depends on
• 44:54
  sort of where you're coming from. So we can just dig into those exact
• 44:58
  data. So because most of this time we've really just been talking about what
• 45:01
  other people have said, whether they're for or against, what our arguments have
• 45:05
  been, and we haven't really necessarily weighed in with our opinion explicitly, though
• 45:09
  certainly is colored a bit of it, sure, but there are actual data.
• 45:14
  Unfortunately, there are also actual ads. All right, we've been talking
• 45:24
  about well racism recently, but as pretty usual, at some point it comes
• 45:30
  up. There's all the arguments that people were making. What do the data
• 45:34
  actually say. These data that we're going to talk about come from multiple sources,
• 45:37
  so it is worth kind of unpacking that. But right to work states
• 45:40
  do tend to have a higher rate of employment across the state, so you
• 45:45
  are going to see higher rates of employment across that state that does have those
• 45:49
  right to work laws. Also, right to work states typically have lower union
• 45:53
  participation, so you have higher rates of employment, lower rates of you engagement.
• 46:01
  And they were sort of saying the right to work is not pro or
• 46:05
  anti union. That's what the pro right to work things say. And there
• 46:09
  was the one study that showed that in Oklahoma at least, there was not
• 46:13
  a marked decrease in union participation after right to work laws went into place,
• 46:17
  but everywhere else there has been pretty much that is the exception, not the
• 46:22
  rule. The rule is that union participation decreases and right to work states,
• 46:25
  which seems to have been largely the goal of the right to work, but
• 46:28
  Sorry, that's not the data part, right, that was just interpretation.
• 46:30
  Here's the data part. Right to work states do have lower wages than average,
• 46:35
  and non right to work states do have higher wages than average. Of
• 46:39
  course, that is kind of inevitable when they both contribute to the average,
• 46:43
  like they're gonna be apart on once those data streams. But they that means
• 46:47
  that, as we said earlier, every single place where non right to work
• 46:52
  states have policies, they have higher wages, and in every single place where
• 46:57
  they have right to work policies, they have lower wages, which approximately a
• 47:00
  three dollars per hour difference in states with right to work laws. I mean,
• 47:05
  that's a huge difference, I think, I mean, and that's the
• 47:07
  average. Like it could obviously be much more disparate than that, but I'd
• 47:09
  be willing to bet that because you have minimum wage, that that's artificially preventing
• 47:15
  the bottom from going down as low as it probably could if you didn't have
• 47:17
  a federally guaranteed minimum wage. Right absolutely. Another point that comes up is
• 47:23
  that right to work states do tend to have more jobs in the private sector
• 47:28
  than states that do not have right to work laws, So there are a
• 47:31
  higher number of private sector jobs in these right to work states and right to
• 47:36
  work states do tend to see corporations more lucrative. I guess they do better
• 47:40
  financially economically, the larger corporations do better in those types of states. So
• 47:45
  again there's the values here. Is it a good thing that those corporations do
• 47:49
  better? Is it a good thing that there are more jobs in the private
• 47:52
  sector? Like those are going to be Those are going to depend on the
• 47:55
  values that you have going into it. But I think we can will share
• 48:00
  sort of our opinions about this. I have absolutely no problem sharing my opinion
• 48:04
  on this, Okay, I think that ultimately what I'm hearing in all of
• 48:08
  this discussion and some of the pro right to work arguments were that, oh,
• 48:13
  if companies don't have to pay for union stuff or be forced to spend
• 48:16
  money, then it'll go back to the employees. But that's just Reganomics,
• 48:21
  right, that's trickle down where it's not happening. Yeah, exactly. So
• 48:24
  what we're seeing is those those companies that are more financially you know, profitable,
• 48:30
  are also in those states that have lowest wages. So there is a
• 48:34
  discussion I think around that piece where you know, the right to a living
• 48:37
  wage and the employee in general, I think should take kind of the forefront
• 48:45
  of the conversation that person's wages, that person's safety, that person's benefits,
• 48:49
  all of those things, and typically those are managed and handled and bargained for
• 48:52
  within the union space. So I tend to land on overall, as a
• 48:58
  general rule, unions tend to be the good thing, and right to work
• 49:00
  states tend to discourage people away from unions, and that ultimately, maybe not
• 49:07
  explicitly, but there is kind of an insidious kind of harm that happens long
• 49:13
  term ultimately, I think, and disproportionately affecting people who need that support the
• 49:19
  most. Absolutely. Where I want to come in at this, as I
• 49:22
  said, is I want to be nuanced, and I think communicating that my
• 49:25
  bias is generally pro union because unions tend to protect people both their wages,
• 49:31
  their safety, kind of a lot of their benefits, a lot of ways
• 49:36
  that unions the reason they come to exist is to give people a way to
• 49:40
  advocate for themselves right and that that results in them getting a lot of benefits
• 49:45
  that they wouldn't have otherwise had. So there are lots of really important critical
• 49:52
  discussions to get into unions and where unions do with things that I think are
• 49:55
  against anyone's values, And I think that we should unpack unions by themselves.
• 50:00
  That's some other point, but I think in general, the point being that
• 50:05
  unions are good. That's that's where my bias comes in. But I think
• 50:08
  it's also difficult to say that someone should be forced to join a union as
• 50:12
  a condition of their employment. Like I do understand that being a concern.
• 50:15
  I can imagine if I worked somewhere where the union engaged in and represented activities
• 50:22
  and political orientations that were the opposite of mine, I wouldn't want to be
• 50:25
  forced to join that union, even if I really really wanted that job,
• 50:30
  and I would say I should have the right to not be forced to join
• 50:32
  that union. I do understand that point. I think that's a really important
• 50:37
  consideration there. But I think in that point too, I think it's fair
• 50:39
  to understand that that person, whoever that person is, that opts out of
• 50:44
  the union, opt out of having a representative come to the table and bargain
• 50:46
  for them right, opt out of the like those types of things, And
• 50:51
  I think that that's I think That's the thing that I keep coming back to
• 50:52
  too. It's like like, if you don't want to be in an union,
• 50:55
  you shouldn't be forced to be in an union, but you also shouldn't
• 50:58
  get all of that like like the rest of the union. I mean,
• 51:01
  I'm also very much so like a chaotic kind of person and it comes to
• 51:05
  stuff, I'm like, everybody should benefit no matter what, and I think
• 51:07
  that unions shouldn't, you know, there should It shouldn't be this like complex
• 51:13
  and argument. And it would be a less complex argument if the wealth was
• 51:15
  shared down like people keep talking about it happening, but it's not happening like
• 51:20
  that. So I just keep landing on. No matter what your opinion is
• 51:23
  on unions or not, I think that we need to tax the rich more.
• 51:27
  I might be thinking about doing an episode on that too. I think
• 51:30
  it'd be a really good mini yeah, because there's I was hearing something about
• 51:35
  there was a point in history in one in some European country where the rich
• 51:40
  were being taxed at like ninety percent, which I mean people are going to
• 51:45
  hear that and like want to break something. But what was interesting about it
• 51:49
  is they had so much money that them being taxed at ninety percent, it
• 51:53
  meant that they still had more money than almost everyone else put together. Right
• 51:59
  Like that that's how equally the wealth sort of existed and where it was distributed.
• 52:04
  Anyway, I think it's a really interesting conversation to have inside of that.
• 52:07
  You're absolutely right, I think is that where my point on this would
• 52:10
  come down is that, like, if you don't want to join a union,
• 52:14
  fine, that just means you don't get to participate in the benefits of
• 52:16
  the union. There are some that you're gonna get either way, Like if
• 52:20
  they put in safety precautions that make it so that like as part of that
• 52:23
  company's policy, they have to have these safety measures in place. Yeah,
• 52:27
  but if you're not in the union, you'll benefit from that. That's a
• 52:30
  good thing for everybody, exactly. Everybody wins in that situation. So,
• 52:32
  like, you shouldn't get you UNI representation if you have some grievance against your
• 52:37
  employer because you chose not to have that representation by saying you didn't want to
• 52:40
  be part of the union. And that's fine, Like you just gotta you
• 52:44
  got. Those are the choices you are faced with, right, Like,
• 52:46
  you just don't get to have your cake and eat it too. And the
• 52:50
  way that that super bizarre saying works is like, right, if you cannot
• 52:54
  both not participate and then also get all the benefits from it, you'll still
• 52:58
  get some inadvertently like you have to, but like the special ones that are
• 53:02
  more active that you're not contributing to. I would just say, like,
• 53:06
  then you're just opting out of it, and that's fine. Well. And
• 53:08
  I think the other side too, is like I can hear the argument just
• 53:12
  from an accessibility standpoint where people will say, well, the union dues are
• 53:15
  so so much can't I can't afford union dues. As part of my job,
• 53:20
  I'm forced to opt out of union benefits and stuff. And I think
• 53:22
  that that's a conversation to be had too, as far as accessibility and making
• 53:27
  union dues, you know, affordable for people and making it easier to be
• 53:30
  in a union so that they can still you know, there's a lot of
• 53:34
  there's a lot to unpack there that comes from like the social justice standpoint,
• 53:37
  And again I don't know, I don't know enough of the intricacies of that
• 53:40
  piece. I just know that whenever there's a discussion around I have to pay
• 53:45
  money to get into a club, that's always a discussion of accessibility and living
• 53:49
  wages and stuff like that. So yeah, and you also don't know like
• 53:52
  what someone's circumstance is, Like they have a lot of debt, they have
• 53:55
  a lot of kids, they have a lot of medical bills, whatever that
• 53:59
  might be. That like what their income means to them is going to be
• 54:02
  different than it means to someone who doesn't have all those things. Right,
• 54:06
  Not that I'm saying any company should be obligated to account for those explicitly,
• 54:09
  but just thinking about like what comes from participating in a union in a way
• 54:14
  that supports or doesn't support these employees, and they're just going to have different
• 54:19
  situations, so like factoring those into the conversation at least right exactly now.
• 54:23
  I also think with all of the things that I've said and that we've said,
• 54:28
  is that like it already seems that people can't be forced to join a
• 54:30
  union, so there is relatively little issue like on that part of things,
• 54:35
  right, So I don't know. I mean, I think I do understand,
• 54:38
  I think what the right to work legislation is trying to say, but
• 54:42
  how it's been the way that it was set up right from the outset was
• 54:46
  problematic. You know, this began as a way too, Like they were
• 54:52
  not shy about the fact that this was intended to try and weaken unions,
• 54:57
  right. They were specifically citing the fact that they wanted this legislation so that
• 55:01
  people wouldn't have to have mixed race groups inside right of an employee, Like
• 55:07
  that's a problem. So it just seems like the right to work legislation.
• 55:13
  So one of the things I think is important to say, though, Sorry,
• 55:15
  that was a weird stream of consciousness. Several transitions I want to go
• 55:17
  with this is that both sides are a little disingenuous, okay, And where
• 55:23
  I think the the critics the opponents of right to work are disingenuous as they're
• 55:28
  saying they're trying to undermine the thesis that people should not be compelled to join
• 55:32
  a union by saying people already aren't compelled to join a union, like it
• 55:38
  can't be. But I think where they're being disingenuous is I think that's because
• 55:43
  of the Taft Hartly Act right, which is the one that enabled right to
• 55:46
  work to exist right, right, And so I think that they're sort of
• 55:50
  trying to pretend that that's or just you know, obvious gate the fact that
• 55:53
  that's the reason that people are protected, while saying that like, now,
• 55:57
  we don't need these right to work laws because of that that Act or that
• 56:00
  amendments, and the amendments the reason rights of work laws happen. So that's
• 56:04
  why where they're being disingenuous, sure fair, and where I think the pro
• 56:07
  right to work people are being just disingenuous is kind of on the same side
• 56:13
  as their is on the flip side of that coin, which is they're sitting
• 56:16
  here arguing, you know, we think that we need to pass right to
• 56:20
  work laws so that people can elect to not participate in a union if they
• 56:24
  don't want to without any repercussions on their employment. And I'm like, yeah,
• 56:30
  that was covered in the Taft Hartley Amendments, right, and if not
• 56:34
  already from the nineteen thirty five National Labor Relations Act. So like essentially,
• 56:38
  you're sort of saying we need to have these laws to protect this while citing
• 56:43
  the law that protects it already. Right. So anyway, I think that's
• 56:45
  where they're both sort of being a little disingenuous with their arguments. This is
• 56:49
  not to say that they're wrong just to say that, like they're not sort
• 56:52
  of speaking the whole part of it. They're not using clarity or I mean,
• 56:58
  I it's just it's one of those things where it's like both sides are
• 57:02
  arguing an agenda. I mean truly when it comes to that very much.
• 57:07
  So yeah, and that's clear. And so like I said, I think
• 57:10
  in general we're going to be in favor of things that are pro union because
• 57:14
  I think we are pro union and things that weaken unions then are not in
• 57:17
  line with things we're generally going to be in support of. Sure, And
• 57:21
  no matter how you choose to spin it, it seems like that the right
• 57:24
  to work legislation means less wages and weaker unions. And so that's why it's
• 57:29
  I think it's something that it doesn't make as much sense from someone who has
• 57:32
  the values that we have. One I agree with you there one really quick
• 57:36
  thing. This is just something that I found in talking about this, because
• 57:38
  there's this union in some of the original the National Labor Relations Act. It
• 57:44
  specifically says in this Act that an employer cannot engage in union busting activities.
• 57:50
  It can't like post propaganda force people to attend seminars like threaten people, right,
• 57:55
  Yeah, it can't actually like fire people over their decision or consideration of
• 58:00
  joining a union. So those things are illegal, and they one hundred percent
• 58:05
  happen, like flagrantly happen a lot in this country. So like it's also
• 58:10
  like that side is also not plain fair, you know, like they're already
• 58:15
  breaking the actual law and then trying to like advocate for laws to make it
• 58:21
  easier for them to break the law basically right, well, and a lot
• 58:24
  of times right to work laws will have embedded in them some type of way
• 58:29
  that allows there's some language around union busting techniques that make them quote unquote not
• 58:35
  union busting when the truth is like they like employers can go, well,
• 58:38
  I'm just providing information, right, And it's like, but you're doing it
• 58:43
  under the guise of like you have to be at this meeting, like I'm
• 58:46
  going to present this meeting this information at this meeting. That was not optional.
• 58:51
  You can do with this information what you will, But like they've made
• 58:53
  it so that like those right to work it's almost like pork belly legislation where
• 58:57
  it's like kind of like rolled into right to works where they have legalized state
• 59:00
  specific union busting techniques. Yeah. Absolutely, So there's generally a lot more
• 59:07
  to say about this topic. We just wanted to get into and where I
• 59:09
  think this aligns with anything I know. We didn't get super into the sort
• 59:13
  of psychological weeds of things. I think it's what I wanted to point to
• 59:16
  is sort of where the agendas were, Like, what are the motives here
• 59:20
  the people who have rights to work legislation, Again, the motives are to
• 59:22
  protect companies. That's primarily it. And the one thing I was thinking also
• 59:28
  is a lot of them say like in these rights of work states, companies
• 59:30
  do tend to do better. And they were also making the case like,
• 59:34
  well, because they're not dealing with unions, the companies have more money.
• 59:37
  What that means is by not dealing with unions is because companies aren't paying their
• 59:43
  employees as much and they're not investing in safety and workplace condition upgrades or like
• 59:49
  higher standards or benefits. Yeah, then the company has more money, and
• 59:53
  that's why they can hire more people cheaper. It's because they're paying more people
• 59:57
  less money, so they're getting more work for less money. That of course
• 1:00:00
  is going to be in their best interest. So again, it's just it's
• 1:00:05
  just these disingenuous, bad faith arguments, whether sort of they're trying to tell
• 1:00:09
  sell you one thing while doing it something different, and it's just not fair,
• 1:00:15
  is the way to put it. But it's it doesn't quite capture it.
• 1:00:16
  It's like stup, yeah, yeah, well because it's it's it's not
• 1:00:22
  providing all the information or being honest about the information that's out there, like
• 1:00:27
  yeah, or I mean, even in the best scenario, the people that
• 1:00:30
  believe that companies will trickle down their money, like they truly believe that,
• 1:00:36
  but they have ignored every economics class or just ignored human like humans who have
• 1:00:40
  resources, right, Like yeah, at the end of the day, I
• 1:00:44
  think that's a really important thing. Is like on paper, they're like,
• 1:00:46
  well, yeah, companies can spend more money on this, and then the
• 1:00:50
  reality is that CEOs and higher leadership are reporting record profits for companies that have
• 1:00:55
  some of the worst working conditions, and you go, well, why is
• 1:00:59
  that money not going back back into the labor force or the workforce, And
• 1:01:01
  it's not because people do that. And so I think for that to be
• 1:01:05
  a talking point in the pro right to work discussion is so interesting that it's
• 1:01:10
  stayed, given that we know that it doesn't happen, right, I think
• 1:01:15
  there's generally a lot more to say about Like I said this, we sort
• 1:01:17
  of briefly touched on this topic, and I'm hoping at least that we did
• 1:01:21
  some amount of justice to unpacking the nuances of the conversation and again being really
• 1:01:27
  transparent about the fact that because we're relatively pro union, our values are not
• 1:01:30
  going to reflect the values of something that is not also pro union. Sure,
• 1:01:34
  I do also understand the problems with unions, and again we do need
• 1:01:37
  to tackle those because they are not ubiquitously good. Part of the impetus of
• 1:01:42
  this conversation is because there were so recently so many new states adopting right to
• 1:01:45
  work legislation. We're in a political we're in an election year, and so
• 1:01:50
  that the conversations around this are happening a little bit more than they have been
• 1:01:53
  recently. And also because we're coming out of a year of like a record
• 1:01:58
  sending amount of major strike that happened because of labor unions who organized to engage
• 1:02:04
  in collective bargaining, and when that didn't work out, then people stopped working.
• 1:02:08
  So there's a whole aspect of this that were like this happened in huge
• 1:02:12
  in the public view, in a really big way just twenty twenty three,
• 1:02:16
  right, And so I think the idea of labor unions and legislation around right
• 1:02:22
  to work and all kinds of things that was kind of at the surface and
• 1:02:24
  at the top, and worth pointing out that it was kind of a unique
• 1:02:28
  time that we find ourselves and when we talk about unions, it'll be worth
• 1:02:31
  also diving into the fact that part of the reason this happened is because during
• 1:02:36
  the pandemic, a lot of unions did relinquish some of their bargaining power given
• 1:02:39
  that it was a different circumstance. And so there's something to talk about inside
• 1:02:44
  of that as well, and that seems to have been part of the fuel
• 1:02:45
  that kicked off that ignited these protests and strikes that happened. Right. Absolutely,
• 1:02:51
  we've talked so long. This is one of our longer ones when I
• 1:02:53
  definitely thought it was going to be one of our shorter ones. But that's
• 1:02:55
  why I didn't say it was going to be shorter, because I thought I
• 1:02:58
  jinx it. But it didn't help. You know, it's a skill it's
• 1:03:00
  a power, so we should probably cap it here. Then, yeah,
• 1:03:04
  I think now's a good time. All right, perfect, So hopefully we
• 1:03:07
  did as much justice as we can. If you like to reach out to
• 1:03:09
  us and tell us what we got wrong, what we got right, et
• 1:03:13
  cetera, we like hearing from you. You can also reach us on the
• 1:03:15
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• 1:03:17
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• 1:03:21
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• 1:03:23
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• 1:03:25
  us on Patreon, you get all kinds of bonus goodies and things that are
• 1:03:30
  delicious. Then includes a super group of people who are fantastic, who are
• 1:03:32
  so generous and we really appreciate them, which is Mike, m Megan,
• 1:03:37
  Layla, Mike T, Justin, Kim, Joshua, Brad, Stephanie,
• 1:03:40
  Olivia, Brian and Ashley. Thank you all so much for your continued support
• 1:03:45
  of our show. So much love your way. Also, thank you to
• 1:03:47
  my team, without whom I could not do this podcast. Thank you for
• 1:03:50
  recording with me today, Shane, at anytime. Our writers and fact checkers
• 1:03:53
  are Shane and myself. Our social media coordinator as Emma Wilson. Our audio
• 1:03:59
  production Amazing Magical make a sound good guy is Justin And then of course thank
• 1:04:04
  you all all all my listeners, thank you for being here. Yeah,
• 1:04:06
  it's so great. So without you, we would not we would not be
• 1:04:12
  yes c n A kwan Nan right, without which it could not be Simpifi.
• 1:04:16
  I don't know, No, that's a different thing. Okay. Anyway,
• 1:04:21
  we actually aren't completely done the yet because whether or not you were joining
• 1:04:25
  us for the first time or you've been with us for a while. We
• 1:04:27
  have a little tradition here that we we plug at the end of our episodes
• 1:04:30
  where we like to recommend something that we found joyful recently or just that was
• 1:04:34
  at the forefront of our minds. So well, let's get to some recommendations.
• 1:04:38
  Let's do that recommendations. Okay, I am recommending a book. I
• 1:04:49
  actually don't remember if I've recommended this book recently. Have I recommended this Yetsha
• 1:04:53
  and we talked about this book, but I don't think that you recommended this
• 1:04:56
  book recently. Okay, all right, I actually finished reading this book in
• 1:05:00
  December. It was after we recorded our year at wrap up episode, so
• 1:05:02
  it wasn't on that list, but it has. I've been thinking about it
• 1:05:06
  ever since, and I kind of just want to read it all over again
• 1:05:09
  because I liked it so much. It's great, that good. And this
• 1:05:13
  is a book called Project Hail Mary. This is by author Andy Weir that
• 1:05:16
  people will most likely know from The Martian. He wrote the book that turned
• 1:05:21
  into the movie. He wrote another book called Artemis, which was also a
• 1:05:26
  lot of fun. Yeah, and he tends to do what I would called
• 1:05:30
  hard sci fi. So he takes a fictional scenario that hasn't happened, and
• 1:05:34
  he he has the main character, you know, navigate that scenario using a
• 1:05:41
  lot of science, like existing known science. But there are of course major
• 1:05:45
  fictional elements that are built in, like moon bases, moon bases, or
• 1:05:51
  you know, someone who has stranded on Mars who has never humans have ever
• 1:05:56
  been to Mars, so you know, is an element of that sort of
• 1:05:59
  thing. Sure, I don't want to give very much away on this book,
• 1:06:01
  Like even setting up the premise. It kind of caught me off guard
• 1:06:04
  because I didn't know anything going in, and so I kind of like that
• 1:06:06
  for other people. I will say that if you've read Andy Wear's other stuff,
• 1:06:11
  the problem solving element is the same. So, like, you know,
• 1:06:15
  a major scientific thing happens, smart person needs to use science to alleviate
• 1:06:19
  that issue. Sure as being sort of the general description of it, that's
• 1:06:23
  all stays about the same. This one took a very different turn than it
• 1:06:28
  was expecting it to, again not knowing anything going into it, And I
• 1:06:31
  think is maybe his best book, and The Martian was maybe my favorite book
• 1:06:35
  before this, so I'm very torn between the two. But this one was
• 1:06:40
  so so good, or at least I loved it. So if you're into
• 1:06:42
  hard sci fi, you could do a lot worse than Project Hail Mary by
• 1:06:45
  author Andy Weir. Yeah, he definitely takes a page out of the Asimov
• 1:06:49
  storytelling, where it's like very hard sci fi and stuff like that. Like
• 1:06:53
  so if you're like, it's not like the you know, I mean,
• 1:06:55
  Philip K. Dick has a little bit of it, but it's more fantastical.
• 1:06:59
  So like you like hearts I fire like asthmav stuff like you'll dig it.
• 1:07:02
  I mean I've read both The Martian and Artemis and they're both incredible.
• 1:07:06
  Yeah, so I'm really excited to read this one. Cool. That's my
• 1:07:10
  recommendation. I love it. My recommendation is a video game. So yesterday
• 1:07:15
  I took my son in the game stop. He got a gift card for
• 1:07:16
  his birthday and he picked out this video game that was Ghostbusters, the video
• 1:07:20
  game remastered. I remember, I've loved Ghostbusters my entire life, Like I
• 1:07:25
  can't think of a time where I haven't. I think that that's like applying
• 1:07:28
  science to supernatural phenomenon I think is always really fascinating. So they put out
• 1:07:32
  this game a few years ago and they remastered it. And this game is
• 1:07:35
  you are a Ghostbuster who has joined the ghostbusting team with the original cast.
• 1:07:42
  So the original cast produced it, wrote it, and they voiced everybody in
• 1:07:45
  it. Okay, and you are a Ghostbuster in New York like doing Ghostbuster
• 1:07:50
  things. You're trapping ghosts, your fire in the proton pack. It's so
• 1:07:54
  much fun. Wow. And it's like the best Ghostbusters game experience you could
• 1:07:59
  possibly have. You get to be a Ghostbuster, you get to use the
• 1:08:00
  equipment, you get to bust ghosts like how could you not? How could
• 1:08:04
  you want more? And what platform is this on? It's across multiple platforms,
• 1:08:09
  we have it on the switch. Okay, got you so awesome?
• 1:08:12
  Well that sounds like a lot of fun. I think I would. I
• 1:08:15
  tend to also really like Ghostbuster content and the idea of running around being a
• 1:08:19
  Ghostbuster in New York just fills me with joy. Just the idea of it
• 1:08:23
  just fills me with joy. Yeah, it's so fun. That's it's really
• 1:08:26
  lovely. It's so good awesome. As I said, if you'd like to
• 1:08:29
  talk to us about the right to work legislation or unions, if you would
• 1:08:31
  like to talk to us about some books or video games that you've played recently
• 1:08:35
  that you really like, or if you've read Project Hill Mary or played the
• 1:08:38
  Ghostbuster's video game and One Away in We love hearing from everybody. Email us
• 1:08:42
  directly info at WWD wwdpodcast dot com, or reach out to us on the
• 1:08:46
  old other social media platforms. Shane, is there anything I am forgetting or
• 1:08:49
  that you would like to add before we wrap up today? Nothing else here?
• 1:08:53
  All? Right? Then? That is it? This is Abraham,
• 1:08:55
  this is Shane. We're out. So Yeah, you've been listening to Why
• 1:08:59
  we do what we do. You can learn more about this and other episodes
• 1:09:02
  by going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and we
• 1:09:09
  hope you have an awesome day.