December 11 brought news of a major new attack on basic labor rights in the United States. The following day, the Federal Reserve announced new inflationary measures designed to end the economic stagnation the U.S. economy has been mired in since the “Great Recession” bottomed out in July 2009.
The new attack on labor rights occurred when Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed a so-called “right to work” bill in the state that is the home of the U.S. auto industry. Unlike the attacks in Wisconsin and some other U.S. states that targeted the labor rights of state employees, the Michigan legislation—though it affects state employees, with the police being a significant exception—is clearly aimed at Michigan’s highly unionized automobile industry.
So-called “right to work” laws in the U.S. have absolutely nothing to do with the right of workers to a job. The leaders of U.S. capitalism recognize no such right. Rather, under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, U.S. state governments can pass “right to work” laws that outlaw the union shop. Under a union shop, all workers are required to pay union dues after their probation period as new hires ends.
Traditionally, such laws have existed in the southern states, with their long history of slavery and post-slavery apartheid-type Jim Crow segregation laws. Ultimately, the “right to work” laws of these states, where unions have always been weak, can be seen as part of the heritage of slavery itself. However, the passage of such legislation in Michigan, a northern state that was never a slave state and was at the very center of the rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations—CIO—is another matter altogether.
Michigan is the home of the United Automobile Workers, the most powerful industrial union created by the great strike movement of the 1930s. For the first time since the auto bosses were forced to recognize the UAW, the passage of this legislation opens up the real possibility that they are preparing to bust the UAW altogether.
A Critique of Crisis Theory 