However, this is a double edged sword too. For example, California is a "Right to work" state which means you can work some place without "joining a union". So, for example, say you are an electrician in California. You could non-union, even though you were union say in San Francisco or San Diego, still work as a non-union electrician in Los Angeles at a much lower wage than you might be paid if you were working union. However, this is about actually being able to get a job at a lower wage rather than having no wage at all and be broke and homeless. So, altering right to work laws might just put many people out of work as well. So, this is a tricky one and lawyers on either side of this issue could really screw it up for everyone by inacting new legislation because it is not the 1930s anymore with millions starving to death with no jobs here in the U.S. So, people haven't presently suffered enough to understand this if they are maybe under 70 or 80 years of age having grown up with people who suffered through the Great Depression and watched people die from that.
Canada's wake-up call to the US on NAFTA (opinion) - CNN - CNN.com
www.cnn.com/2017/09/29/opinions/nafta-canada-broken-labor.../index.html
4 hours ago - The state "right to work" laws are exploiting American workers and need to be repealed, and I've introduced a bill that can help, writes Elizabeth ...
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Canada's wake-up call to the us on nafta Canada's wake-up call to the us on nafta Elizabeth Warren Even ...Canada's wake-up call to the US on NAFTA | Drudge Retort
https://www.drudge.com/news/215279/canadas-wake-up-call-us-nafta
Canada's wake-up call to the US on NAFTA
Story highlights
- Elizabeth Warren: Even Canada can see that "right to work" laws in the US undercut American workers
- NAFTA renegotiations need to add a repeal to the provision that allows states to enact them at the expense of workers' wages, health care and pensions, she writes
Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, is the senior senator from Massachusetts. The views expressed are her own.
(CNN)President
Donald Trump, a loud and persistent critic of the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA), recently began renegotiating this trade deal
with Canada and Mexico. The President promised to secure a fair deal for American workers.
That sounds great. After all, we don't think Americans should be
forced to compete with poorly paid workers from Mexico or elsewhere, and
we can demand that companies that want to trade with us lift wages,
benefits, and health and safety standards for their foreign workers.
So it probably came as a shock that one of Canada's main goals in this renegotiation is to get the United States to treat our own workers better.
Canada doesn't want its workers competing with poorly-treated laborers
-- including workers in the United States. And they have a specific
target in mind.
Elizabeth Warren
According to Canada's major newspaper The Globe and Mail,
Canadian negotiators are urging the United States to roll back
so-called state "right to work" laws that undercut worker power in the
US. I'm glad we're renegotiating NAFTA because it has been a raw deal
for American workers. But the Canadians are giving America a wake-up
call. As negotiations continue, the United States should take a close
look at how our own broken labor policies are hurting American workers
-- and fix them.
The Canadians focused on so-called "right-to-work" laws, the
state regulations that make union dues optional even when unions
bargain and represent all the workers. These state laws are a powerful
weapon in the war against working people. Twenty-eight states have
passed these laws, whose main purpose is to make it harder for workers
to have the resources they need to stand up for themselves. Because of
these laws starving unions of resources, union leaders face an uphill
battle when they try to help workers join together to advocate for
higher wages and benefits. And the completely predictable consequences
for workers in these states have been devastating.
Strong
unions lift wages for all workers -- even those workers who aren't
union members. Union membership is sharply lower in "right-to-work"
states -- after all, that was the whole point of these laws. And the impact
is clear: In "right-to-work" states, wages are lower and employees are
less likely to have access to employer-provided health care and pensions
-- and that's true for union and nonunion employees.
The
decline in unionization over the last 30 years has hollowed out
America's middle class. For the more than 40 million nonunion people in
America's private workforce, the lost wages add up to about $109 billion every year.
Unemployment
has declined and corporate profits have gone up, but workers don't have
the kind of bargaining power that unions once created.
Trump predicts NAFTA termination 01:16
Instead
of strengthening the rights of working people, the Trump administration
has pushed in the opposite direction. Since taking office, President
Trump has signed several laws that directly undermine the wages,
benefits, health and safety of American workers. The President and the
Republican Congress have rolled back rules
designed to make sure federal contractors don't cheat their workers out
of hard-earned wages. They've delayed safety standards that keep
workers from being exposed to lethal carcinogenic materials. They've
given shady financial advisers a few extra months to cheat hardworking
Americans out of billions in retirement savings. The list goes on.
The
assault on America's workers didn't start with President Trump. For
decades, armies of lawyers and lobbyists who represent a handful of
giant corporations have pressed our federal and state governments to
pursue policies that maximize corporate profits at the expense of the
health, safety, and financial security of their workers. Over time,
those laws have taken their toll. And now, instead of looking to
America for the example of workers who enjoy the best pay, best
benefits, and best working conditions in the world, our trading partners
are complaining about working conditions in America that are falling
below their own standards.
A
nation that cares about its workers shouldn't need foreign negotiators
to sound the alarm. It's a national embarrassment -- and it should spur
us to action.
That's why earlier last week I introduced a bill repealing
the provision in the National Labor Relations Act that allows states to
implement "right-to-work" laws. Giant companies that have become
accustomed to squeezing every last dime of profit out of their workers
in "right-to-work" states will fight any effort to improve workers'
rights. But let's be clear: we don't allow these corporations to
exploit their workers when we negotiate trade deals with countries like
Colombia or Panama. As we renegotiate NAFTA, we shouldn't allow them to
exploit workers in Canada and Mexico, either. And above all, we must not
let them exploit our own workers here at home.
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