Michigan enacts right-to-work law

[Lord Zentei]

Linka

LANSING -- Right-to-work legislation was introduced in the state House just before 3 p.m., bringing loud protests from Democrats and protesters inside the Capitol building.

Backed by shouts from fellow Democrats, House Minority Floor Leader Kate Segal, D-Battle Creek, insisted that the bill be read aloud in its entirety.

The House clerk, Gary Randall, then read the bill aloud.

Right-to-work legislation makes it illegal to require financial support of a union as a condition of employment.

State Rep. Vicki Barnett, D-Farmington Hills, who spoke against the bill to loud applause from the gallery, said it contains an appropriation of state funds designed to make it referendum-proof. Bills considered appropriation bills can not be repealed through a ballot measure, as happened with the toughened emergency manager law, Public Act 4, on Nov. 6.

•RELATED: Police arrest several protesters, spray mace into crowd inside Michigan Capitol (video)

• RELATED: Protesters allowed back into state Capitol after being locked out for hours

The Republicans are using a bill that was in the House Commerce Committee that was designed to create a commission to handle labor disputes.

They discharged it today from the committee and introduced a substitute bill introduced by Rep. Mike Shirkey, R-Clark Lake, who has been drafting right-to-work legislation.

"An individual shall not be required as a condition of obtaining or continuing employment to ... pay and dues, fees, assessments or other charges or expenses of any kind ... or provide anything of value to a labor organization," the bill says.

Shouts of protesters outside the chamber could be heard as Randall read the bill.

"You're doing this in lame duck because you know next session, you won't have the votes," said state Rep. Brandon Dillon, D-Grand Rapids. "This is an outrage."

Barnett said unions are allowed only in businesses where employees vote for one, but "there is a group of people who want to undermine democracy."

• RELATED: State email warns its employees to be careful, 'avoid walking alone at night

• RELATED: UAW president Bob King tried to talk Snyder out of right-to-work push

Gov. Rick Snyder said at a news conference today that the bill is about freedom to choose and equality for Michigan workers.

State police closed the entrances to the Capitol, preventing hundreds of protesters from entering.

"Some of the unions came up to protest, but they were locked out of this building," Barnett said.

Zack Pohl, executive director of the liberal group Progress Michigan, said on Twitter that union officials had obtained a court injunction shortly before 4 p.m. to reopen the doors to the Capitol.

The bill is expected to be one of at least two bills intended to enact right-to-work legislation, one for private sector employees and one for public sector employees.

But state Rep. Dave Agema, R-Grandville, defended the legislation. The bill is about freedom to choose, he said, and "it should be for the hiree to decide" whether to join a union.

At the same time, the state Senate was debating a bill that would impose right to work legislation on private sector employees.

“I rise with a heavy heart to see this legislation pushed through without any public input and without even sharing the text of the bill with us,” said state Sen. Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing.

Sen. John Gleason, D-Flint, said it was a “shameful day” in the state Legislature when a bill is allowed to be rammed through with no public hearings.

“This is a shameful day when you say that you know more than 10 million people in this state,” he said.

Democratic senators offered amendments to the bill that would: delay the implementation of the bill for one year; put the issue up to a vote of the people; remove an appropriation from the bill that would make the bill one that couldn’t be up for a repeal by voters; and tie the bill to repeals of same sex benefits for the partners of state workers, the item pricing bill and the tax on retiree pensions. All failed.

“Here we are less than a month after the election and the choice voters made at the ballot box shows that voters don’t want this type of divisive agenda,” Whitmer said.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com

[Stark]

American IR is just fucking bizarre. I'm not even sure what would be required to fix the labour relations situation.

[Darksider]

Idk, Maybe go back in time and make us lose the cold war?

Why do they always call them "right to work" laws? That makes it seem like it'd be something about helping more people get jobs or reducing the amount of ways you can get fired or something, but every time I read about one of these it's just about fucking over the unions.

[Flagg]

Idk, Maybe go back in time and make us lose the cold war?

Why do they always call them "right to work" laws? That makes it seem like it'd be something about helping more people get jobs or reducing the amount of ways you can get fired or something, but every time I read about one of these it's just about fucking over the unions.

It's the "right to work" without having to join a union. If we actually had worker protections worth a shit in this country I'd be all for it, but it's just a way for Republicans to fuck with the Democrats biggest donors.

[Darth Wong]

Idk, Maybe go back in time and make us lose the cold war?

Why do they always call them "right to work" laws? That makes it seem like it'd be something about helping more people get jobs or reducing the amount of ways you can get fired or something, but every time I read about one of these it's just about fucking over the unions.

It's the "right to work" without having to join a union. If we actually had worker protections worth a shit in this country I'd be all for it, but it's just a way for Republicans to fuck with the Democrats biggest donors.

Maybe the Democrats should have fought for worker protection laws then, instead of rewarding unions and not really caring about non-union workers. The hostility between unionized and non-unionized workers has been growing for 40 years, and it has caused a real schism between two groups that would ordinarily have common cause against predatory business practices.

Unions have been utterly shameless about wanting the gap in working conditions between unionized and non-unionized workers to be as large as possible; they even brag about this as part of the benefit of unions. The political party which panders to unions therefore has an incentive to protect the union, but little incentive to enact worker protection laws which would reduce the key marketing point of unions: namely, that you'll get better pay and perks than those poor non-union SOBs ("and every time we unions win in contract negotiations against a big employer, that employer will lean on its non-union suppliers to cut their costs and therefore their wages, so they lose and we win, nudge nudge wink wink").

How long can this situation continue? It's a lot like the latent hostility between the greedy but practical business lobby and the insane nutjob evangelical lobby in the Republican party: it's a source of instability. It's one of the two big reasons the Republicans have any working class support at all (the other being the Religious Right).

Every time I see a story about Democrats fighting for unions, I can't help but think: if I was a non-union employee working in one of these states, wouldn't I be thinking "OK, so the Democrats fight for unions; when will they fight for me?"

[Sea Skimmer]

Doesn't exactly help that so many unions don't police themselves anymore, maybe never did, and do nothing to make lazy bastards work. They are however perfectly happy to have strict policies banning a worker from ever reporting anyone isn't doing his or her job. Plenty of union workers exist in the US who don't like unions either. If someone is going to take 1-2% of your salary as union dues, and then functionally double your work load because the earlier shift does nothing and cannot ever be fired for it, that isn't much benefit.

[kc8tbe]

I am admittedly a novice in the sphere of labor relations, but if Republicans were genuinely concerned about the "right" to work [not in a union], couldn't they just pass a law requiring more frequent union recertification or a higher majority for recertification to pass?

[Grumman]

I am admittedly a novice in the sphere of labor relations, but if Republicans were genuinely concerned about the "right" to work [not in a union], couldn't they just pass a law requiring more frequent union recertification or a higher majority for recertification to pass?

That would at least be a step in the right direction (and they appear to be trying to do exactly that at the federal level), but it is absurd to imply that successfully taking a stronger stance in favour of your right to not fund a union that does not serve your interests means they are not "genuinely concerned".

[Stark]

The phrase right to work comes right from union busting tactics, which however unable to destroy the idea of organised labour in the US have totally distorted the relationship between labour, industry and the law. Maybe anywhere would have reacted to so many brutal repressions of unions in the same way, but the backwards hodgepodge of counter-productive laws in the space throughout America are just bizarre.

It's particularly sad because politicians in Australia often think the American methods are totally awesome, even as they're obviously inapplicable to a country with IR policy not trapped in 1894.

[Darth Wong]

The phrase right to work comes right from union busting tactics, which however unable to destroy the idea of organised labour in the US have totally distorted the relationship between labour, industry and the law. Maybe anywhere would have reacted to so many brutal repressions of unions in the same way, but the backwards hodgepodge of counter-productive laws in the space throughout America are just bizarre.

It's particularly sad because politicians in Australia often think the American methods are totally awesome, even as they're obviously inapplicable to a country with IR policy not trapped in 1894.

The phrase "right to work" is a nice example of Orwellian Doublespeak, but I have a feeling that unions would object to the more honest title "right to say no to forced union membership" as well.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The problem is that the republicans bypassed the usual public comment period and committee review and fast-tracked this as fly-by-night legislation when they're losing the majority in Michigan, explicitly to hammer the unions and punish them for their major Super PAC contributions that were made legal under Citizens United which had a big hand in helping Obama win, as the big unions realized they could literally put down just as much money as the biggest corporations in the country to counter said pro-republican message. The brutal reality is that without those big unions, like them or hate them, Mitt Romney would likely be the incoming President. A huge fraction of democratic Super PACs were union and they essentially rendered the republican big business money advantage null and void; without them, nobody would be there to oppose the Koch brothers. So the Republicans aren't doing this for the slightest of altruistic motives, but rather to try and cripple the unions in their homeland so they can use their money with nobody at all to counter it come the next election cycle so that the likes of the Koch brothers can completely dominate the airwaves and blot out the democratic message--which is what they thought was going to happen until the Unions realized they could legally do the same thing under Citizens United and countered it.

[Lord Zentei]

The phrase "right to work" is a nice example of Orwellian Doublespeak, but I have a feeling that unions would object to the more honest title "right to say no to forced union membership" as well.

Arguably, "right to work" is more honest a turn of phrase than the unions not saying "right to say no to forced union membership". As in, it's your right to work regardless of whether a union, or anyone else, says you can. Though of course, all such political buzz-phrases are arguably dressed up marketing slogans.

I am admittedly a novice in the sphere of labor relations, but if Republicans were genuinely concerned about the "right" to work [not in a union], couldn't they just pass a law requiring more frequent union recertification or a higher majority for recertification to pass?

The whole point of right-to-work laws is that their proponents believe that collective bargaining rights are bad, because they prevent people who are able and willing to work for less don't get to do so. They consider this bad for the same reason that they oppose bans on keeping prices of goods and services artificially high. It doesn't matter that you need certification or oversight of the union. You're thinking of this from the premise that unions are inherently desirable. Seeing as they are, essentially, an institution designed to obtain a monopoly in their given sector of the labour market, that's the very premise that the right-to-work advocates reject.

[Stark]

The phrase "right to work" is a nice example of Orwellian Doublespeak, but I have a feeling that unions would object to the more honest title "right to say no to forced union membership" as well.

It's that the middle ground has been so poisoned that's the problem. Obviously union bosses and corporate bosses want it their own ways, but the wide variety of laws forcing workers different ways is a tragedy for the people at the bottom. I guess that's why the term industrial relations isn't used much in America; it's far to pacific a term for the direct war between leadership on both sides.

To my limited knowledge it seems different parts of America have different labour laws based on how the brutal repression played out a hundred years ago, and everyone involved seems to have a death-grip on the status quo. What I've seen of union/corporate negotiations would be very difficult in America, because workers in an area might be unable to join a union while in another are might be forced to join a union.

[Simon_Jester]

The phrase "right to work" is a nice example of Orwellian Doublespeak, but I have a feeling that unions would object to the more honest title "right to say no to forced union membership" as well.

Arguably, "right to work" is more honest a turn of phrase than the unions not saying "right to say no to forced union membership". As in, it's your right to work regardless of whether a union, or anyone else, says you can. Though of course, all such political buzz-phrases are arguably dressed up marketing slogans.

Except that you are now MORE likely to be deprived of the right to work by other parties... such as your asshole boss, who is no longer worried about a pissed off union when he decides to fire you. Because you asked him an annoying question. Or he doesn't like you taking a day off for a family emergency on the day he was planning to regale all employees at a meeting. Or he resents your politics.

Are your rights now safer?

[xt828]

Democratic senators offered amendments to the bill that would: delay the implementation of the bill for one year; put the issue up to a vote of the people; remove an appropriation from the bill that would make the bill one that couldn’t be up for a repeal by voters; and tie the bill to repeals of same sex benefits for the partners of state workers, the item pricing bill and the tax on retiree pensions. All failed.

Am I reading that correctly as saying that if that amendment had passed, the bill would have ended same sex benefits for partners of state workers? Aren't the Democrats the ones who aren't staunchly opposed to same sex rights?

[General Mung Beans]

Democratic senators offered amendments to the bill that would: delay the implementation of the bill for one year; put the issue up to a vote of the people; remove an appropriation from the bill that would make the bill one that couldn’t be up for a repeal by voters; and tie the bill to repeals of same sex benefits for the partners of state workers, the item pricing bill and the tax on retiree pensions. All failed.

Am I reading that correctly as saying that if that amendment had passed, the bill would have ended same sex benefits for partners of state workers? Aren't the Democrats the ones who aren't staunchly opposed to same sex rights?

I think the plan was to tie the bill to something unpopular like ending same sex benefits for partners of state workers to help defeat the bill.

[Grumman]

Except that you are now MORE likely to be deprived of the right to work by other parties... such as your asshole boss, who is no longer worried about a pissed off union when he decides to fire you. Because you asked him an annoying question. Or he doesn't like you taking a day off for a family emergency on the day he was planning to regale all employees at a meeting. Or he resents your politics.

Convincing people that they'll have the employee's back if the employer mistreats them is their job. If a union is too incompetent or corrupt to convince you that they will help you if your boss treats you unfairly, how are they going to convince your employer?

[Lord Zentei]

Except that you are now MORE likely to be deprived of the right to work by other parties... such as your asshole boss, who is no longer worried about a pissed off union when he decides to fire you. Because you asked him an annoying question. Or he doesn't like you taking a day off for a family emergency on the day he was planning to regale all employees at a meeting. Or he resents your politics.

That depends on whether working for someone who doesn't want to hire you is a "right". After all, being an employee is a transaction: I doubt that you would consider it a "right" for a corporation to sell you stuff you don't want to buy (although apparently Individual Mandate now makes that so, lol).

Incidentally, unemployment is slightly lower in right-to-work states than in union ones.

[Starglider]

Except that you are now MORE likely to be deprived of the right to work by other parties...

The 'right to work' is the right to offer your services for monetary compensation in a voluntary exchange, without third parties having a veto or the ability to steal your earnings at will. It is not and has never been the ability to force people to pay you for what you deem to be a worthwhile service... unless you are a government employee of course. Unions believe they can and should act like an extension of the government; a 51% majority of the laziest, short-term focused voters justifies unlimited taxation, regulation and punnishment of the remainder (for the ultimate benefit of the party leadership of course).

Are your rights now safer?

Absolutely yes; the most important and relevant right of being able to perform to the best of one's ability and negotiate a reasonable return on the results, without petty-minded slackers being able to drag everyone down into the mud with them through mazes of ridiculous rules.

[Simon_Jester]

Except that you are now MORE likely to be deprived of the right to work by other parties... such as your asshole boss, who is no longer worried about a pissed off union when he decides to fire you. Because you asked him an annoying question. Or he doesn't like you taking a day off for a family emergency on the day he was planning to regale all employees at a meeting. Or he resents your politics.

Convincing people that they'll have the employee's back if the employer mistreats them is their job. If a union is too incompetent or corrupt to convince you that they will help you if your boss treats you unfairly, how are they going to convince your employer?

I'm not sure I got my point across. Here's the problem:

The union needs money to protect employers. It needs lawyers who can defend you against wrongful termination. It needs to counter-lobby to block the effects of business lobbies that try to change the legal code that defines the terms you work under. It needs people just to keep track of all the crap the union is supposed to be doing.

Remove a major source of the union's money, and the union becomes less powerful and less capable of winning a fight on your behalf. Even if you continue to donate, you are donating to a less capable institution. You get less protection. So do the people who decided not to join.

There are always people out there who could afford to buy insurance against some disaster, but choose not to, because they don't believe anything bad can happen to them.

When the disaster is infectious disease they turn into anti-vaccine kooks. Which is how we get outbreaks of diseases everyone thought were extinct, because some cluster of bozos refused to bring their kids in to get a shot.

When it's fire they turn into the kind of idiots who make Obion County a watchword: the place where over 60% of the county is rural, and the county doesn't have funds for a fire department. There are people there whose houses burned down because they were too cheap to pay a subscription to the fire department- and because their neighbors were too cheap to pay taxes to support their own.

When it's car accidents, you get uninsured motorists charging around and running up everyone else's premiums.

And when the disaster is wrongful firing or shitty working conditions, they stop paying union dues. This is predictable, and makes the disasters happen more often, just like it does with vaccines or fire insurance or car insurance.

That depends on whether working for someone who doesn't want to hire you is a "right". After all, being an employee is a transaction: I doubt that you would consider it a "right" for a corporation to sell you stuff you don't want to buy (although apparently Individual Mandate now makes that so, lol).

...I thought you believed in lasting agreements?

I mean, I assume you actually like the idea of free-market libertarianism working. It's not going to work if we assume that all transactions are one-off things that can be freely revoked at any time on either party's whim. You can't replace a law with a whim and expect there to be no consequences, certainly not in the business world.

An organized cartel of buyers has a huge advantage over a disorganized horde of individual sellers. That advantage is not part of the power of the free market, and is not an example of the market in action. Unless of course you consider oligopolies to be the natural outcome of markets... in which case I don't see why you favor markets in the first place.

Incidentally, unemployment is slightly lower in right-to-work states than in union ones.

How much lower? Enough to offset all other factors? I suspect employment is high in the industrial zones of China too; that doesn't mean I want to live and work there. Or to import similar working conditions to the US.

Except that you are now MORE likely to be deprived of the right to work by other parties...

The 'right to work' is the right to offer your services for monetary compensation in a voluntary exchange, without third parties having a veto or the ability to steal your earnings at will.

So you have a right to offer your services, but you do not have a right to protection from your employer's whims, or to have enough organization on your side to counter the organizations on their side? The industrialized world tried that; it led to working conditions so bad that a real Marxist command economy started looking good by comparison to a lot of laborers. Political terror and expropriation of property matter less to someone who's working twelve hour shifts six days a week and knows damn well that the minute he gets too sick to work he's going to be replaced by someone who isn't.

If the union regulations have gotten stupidly byzantine, that's a problem for what Stark's sensibly been calling "industrial relations." Getting rid of the unions altogether only sounds appealing if you don't give a shit what happens to the majority of people who can't credibly threaten to resign and get results just as effectively as the company could by threatening to fire them.

[Lord Zentei]

...I thought you believed in lasting agreements?

Where have I implied that I do not?

I mean, I assume you actually like the idea of free-market libertarianism working. It's not going to work if we assume that all transactions are one-off things that can be freely revoked at any time on either party's whim. You can't replace a law with a whim and expect there to be no consequences, certainly not in the business world.

You don't need unions to have enforcement of contracts. You need courts for that.

An organized cartel of buyers has a huge advantage over a disorganized horde of individual sellers. That advantage is not part of the power of the free market, and is not an example of the market in action. Unless of course you consider oligopolies to be the natural outcome of markets... in which case I don't see why you favor markets in the first place.

Oligopolies do not form for this reason. They form due to economies of scale favouring a small number of agents over a large number of agents (or a single agent). Moreover, you don't break an ologopoly with unions, but with anti-trust laws and similar measures.

How much lower? Enough to offset all other factors? I suspect employment is high in the industrial zones of China too; that doesn't mean I want to live and work there. Or to import similar working conditions to the US.

The difference is not great, but the point is that you made the claim that the phrase "right to work" was misleading because other causes of loss of work would outweigh the elimination of the union's ability to prevent a worker working for less. That claim is false. Now you're invoking some unspecified "other factors" and comparing the US to the industrial zones of China? Do these other factors include union dues paid to corrupt bosses? Or non-union workers suffering because unions only give a shit about their own members?

[Grumman]

Convincing people that they'll have the employee's back if the employer mistreats them is their job. If a union is too incompetent or corrupt to convince you that they will help you if your boss treats you unfairly, how are they going to convince your employer?

I'm not sure I got my point across. Here's the problem:

The union needs money to protect employers. It needs lawyers who can defend you against wrongful termination. It needs to counter-lobby to block the effects of business lobbies that try to change the legal code that defines the terms you work under. It needs people just to keep track of all the crap the union is supposed to be doing.

Here's my problem: you're assuming a priori that the union is your friend. Sometimes they're more focused on lining their own pockets than helping you. Sometimes they are too eager to waste capital protecting employees who should be fired, or lobbying for political positions you oppose. Sometimes, your boss just happens to not be an asshole.

There are always people out there who could afford to buy insurance against some disaster, but choose not to, because they don't believe anything bad can happen to them.

And there are always people who believe that insurance is automatically a smart choice.

[Simon_Jester]

Here's my problem: you're assuming a priori that the union is your friend. Sometimes they're more focused on lining their own pockets than helping you. Sometimes they are too eager to waste capital protecting employees who should be fired, or lobbying for political positions you oppose. Sometimes, your boss just happens to not be an asshole.

Heh.

That's true. And yet... suffice to say that I am now a member of a union. And personally, I see a lot more threat coming down from above, in the form of bizarre, byzantine, and borderline-sadistic requirements placed on the staff from the bureaucracy. And a lot less coming from the union doggedly preventing anyone from ever leaving the job ever, although I suppose that might be part of the overall institutional problem in places I don't see.

I'd be much more afraid of the environment I'd be in without the union than with it. There may be other times and places where that isn't true. But I don't think "right-to-work" is a good way to fix the problem; it's like trying to adjust the balance of a piece of machinery by blowing up the building it's in.

[looks around nervously]

You didn't hear me say this, but... Stark is right. I think the problem is the deeply unhealthy approach we have to labor relations as a whole; it's purely adversarial, with both sides out for all they can get and no willingness to meet in the middle.

When a union sees all policy and law changes as a threat to its existence (which right-to-work and bans on public employee unions are), that gives them a lot less room to maneuver. They get inflexible, they get radicalized, they start drawing lines in the sand because they see other unions being destroyed all over the country. Not good when they really should concede issues like "complete fuckwits who can't do the job and make their coworkers' lives worse ought to be fired," for the sake of not getting stuck in an untenable position.

When an employer sees the very existence of the union as a parasitic drain on the economy and an enabler of FILTHY SOCIALIST policies, they're going to get aggressive. They start thinking "if only we could blow up the union the company would be really efficient!" And since that's pretty much the limit of their perspective- the efficiency of their company- they start trying to influence government accordingly.

It's very polarized, and the way that "right-to-work" gets presented as a serious policy plan for fixing things by chopping one of the union's arms off does not help.

[Lord Zentei]

When I posted the OP, I was half inclined to add a comment to the effect that the unions are actually at heart very much like the corporations they so love to hate, rather than some kind of collectivist idealists. But there is a difference. They don't make their money by producing goods and services that people want to buy.

No one is out to destroy unions, contrary to what you were claiming above. At least not anyone here. But it's another matter whether the unions should have the ability to demand that people join them in order to be allowed to work. That path leads to corruption, as it grants them absolute power over the workforce and their ability to make a living.

Moreover, it's not entirely accurate to compare this to things like police protection and fire departments (as for whether police and fire departments can be privatized and still be functional, that's perhaps another question for another time). Keep in mind that people are able to get non-union work contracts. They don't gain the benefits of the union contracts if they do so. And despite this, only 12% of US workers are union workers. That means that the money that goes into union dues is worth more than the benefits the union contract grants. That implies in turn that the unions suck donkey balls, if you'll pardon the expression. (1)

The question union advocates need to ask themselves is "if unions are so great for workers, why don't they want to join them of their own free will?"

Perhaps if workers had choice, the unions would feel required to make an effort not to act like the illegitimate offspring of feudal barons and Chicago gangsters and instead acted like the advocacy agencies they claim to be, and more people would be willing to pay them. But they prefer to comport themselves almost like a government - or more accurately, like the components of a political machine. They're still acting like it's the 1890s, and I don't think their culture is going to change as long as my footnote remains reasonably accurate.

OTOH, it's entirely possible that unions are no longer needed as much as they once were (regardless of whether they were the ones who actually improved the conditions for the workers, or whether that was just claiming the credit for the natural evolution of the economy post hoc, but again, that's another discussion for another time). Even if that were so, they don't need to go away, since with freedom of association, they can still remain in the woodworks should things genuinely become intolerable.

That is perhaps the correct balance to freedom-to-work: you must also guarantee freedom of association with unions IF the worker so desires and requires.


(1) Donkey balls - get it? Arf. Point being, they're not just out to make money, but they're out to make paid activists, canvassers and politicians. They seem rather less noble and harmless if viewed that way.

[Simon_Jester]

When I posted the OP, I was half inclined to add a comment to the effect that the unions are actually at heart very much like the corporations they so love to hate, rather than some kind of collectivist idealists. But there is a difference. They don't make their money by producing goods and services that people want to buy.

No one is out to destroy unions, contrary to what you were claiming above. At least not anyone here. But it's another matter whether the unions should have the ability to demand that people join them in order to be allowed to work. That path leads to corruption, as it grants them absolute power over the workforce and their ability to make a living.

No one in this forum wants unions destroyed; there are politically powerful fractions in America that would very much like them to be destroyed, or at least totally neutralized as a political and economic force.

Moreover, it's not entirely accurate to compare this to things like police protection and fire departments (as for whether police and fire departments can be privatized and still be functional, that's perhaps another question for another time). Keep in mind that people are able to get non-union work contracts. They don't gain the benefits of the union contracts if they do so. And despite this, only 12% of US workers are union workers. That means that the money that goes into union dues is worth more than the benefits the union contract grants. That implies in turn that the unions suck donkey balls, if you'll pardon the expression. (1)

Many employees work in sectors that have no unions, or effectively no unions (big box retail, fast food, lots of white collar jobs...) So I don't see how you can justify saying the benefits of the contract are inadequate in light of that. Just one example: we honestly don't know what kind of contracts Wal-Mart would have to sign with unionized employees. Because they don't have any, and go to considerable trouble to avoid having any.

Plus the free-rider question: much of what unions have done at the national political level affects all workers, including the nonunion ones, because it affects labor law, not just union contracts. You may get some of the benefits of the union's existence without paying them a dime; weighing the cost-benefit analysis is far beyond the capacity of the individual worker.

Economic decisions aren't made in an ideal frictionless vacuum; people often decide to spend or not spend money when they are not in possession of all the facts.

Perhaps if workers had choice, the unions would feel required to make an effort not to act like the illegitimate offspring of feudal barons and Chicago gangsters and instead acted like the advocacy agencies they claim to be, and more people would be willing to pay them. But they prefer to comport themselves almost like a government - or more accurately, like the components of a political machine.

Mine doesn't.

That is perhaps the correct balance to freedom-to-work: you must also guarantee freedom of association with unions IF the worker so desires and requires.

What will you then do to a corporation which uses systematic union-busting tactics like closing any store where a union makes headway?

(1) Donkey balls - get it? Arf. Point being, they're not just out to make money, but they're out to make paid activists, canvassers and politicians. They seem rather less noble and harmless if viewed that way.

I consider this important, especially since we now have a Supreme Court decision explicitly ruling that spending an arbitrary amount of money to influence elections is "free speech."

Hell yes they are out to make paid activists, canvassers, and politicians. The only difference I see is that said activists, canvassers, and politicians are on my side instead of being on Richard J. Butterworth VI's side. Since he can pay his own damn PACs whenever he likes, I'm pretty glad to have that going for me.

If you don't like it, switch to public-only funding for campaign finance, or take some other drastic step to ensure the honesty of politics. Maybe have the federal election fund pay candidates X dollars for every duly authorized signature they can get on a petition or something.