Right to Work laws in America

[Pat Mustard]

It just seems like to me,  forcing someone to be part of a union just to be able to work at certain places,  isn't right and it keeps him from getting a better paying job as a result.

Fact of the matter is, your husband is getting the job with good pay simply because of the trades union, no other reason. Without their activism, their political pressure and their negotiating skills the minimum wage would still be at FDR's $0.25 p/h.

You want the benefits of unionised work and pay conditions, pay the small fees to join the union, and never give it up. Because before you know it, the company will have completely deunionised, made it impossible to reunionise and slashed pay, sick benefit, holiday and employee safety conditions as there is no longer a counterbalance to their power and political influence.

Right to work laws have nothing to do with giving people the right to work (or even expanding employment opportunities), they are simply there to make it easier for employers to treat their workers like shit. By breaking the link between the employee and their only means of collective action it makes it easier for companies to force bad conditions on their employees.

And one last word of warning, if you want to look at the end consequences of deunionisation of industry, look at what happened to the UK's manufacturing sector post Thatcher's union busting in the '80's. Then the country was still the second largest manufacturer in the world, now it's probably lucky to break the top twenty, with large swathes of the nation permanently crippled economically.

---

Okay I can see that,  but  a number of years ago,  A)the local Teamsters union (a truckers union) came in and persuaded the employees of the Preston 151 Line to allow them in and B) within 8 weeks, the company went under.  

Part A) has no relation to part B). If the company went under eight weeks after the union getting in, the company was literally on life support for a couple of years by that stage.

Aside from small (i.e. less than five employees) companies, businesses don't go bust quickly, especially if they've got big creditors. There's restructuring, liquidations, sell offs, receiverships and eventually bankruptcies to go through. These are complicated and long processes.