Justin's Political Corner

“Right to work” is the most dishonest phrase in American political discourse. It sounds like it’s defending people’s right to earn a living. But as used by its supporters, it means making it impossible for workers to form an effective union, couched in the language of “freedom” and “choice.”

Specifically, it means laws banning “union shops,” in which everyone in a workplace has to join the union or pay a fee to cover the cost of union representation. Twenty-four states have such laws. All were in the South and West until last year, when Indiana and Michigan enacted them. Michigan’s law was rammed through the Republican-dominated legislature in a lame-duck session last December.

The Michigan law was “pretty devastating for the labor movement,” says Erin Johansson of American Rights at Work. It came in the state where the United Auto Workers’ six-week occupation of General Motors plants in Flint in 1937 won the victory that opened the doors for unions throughout American industry, the state whose union labor defined the working-class prosperity of World War II to the 1970s.

Both Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Dick DeVos, the heir to the multibillion-dollar Amway fortune who bankrolled the campaign for the law, stuck to the party line about “freedom.” Snyder said the law would give workers “the freedom to choose” and unions “an opportunity to be more responsible to their workers,” because instead of automatically collecting dues, they’d have to show workers “a value proposition.”

“Absolute horseshit,” responds Ed Ott, former head of the New York City Central Labor Council. “This is a total offensive against workers. They don’t want workers to have any say. After workers vote for a union, they don’t want them to maintain membership.”

This year, “right to work” measures were introduced in 17 states, according to Peggy Shorey, director of state government relations at the AFL-CIO. Ten were defeated, including those in Missouri, Kentucky, and New Hampshire, where Gov. John Lynch vetoed one in 2011. Republicans in the Ohio legislature introduced one in early May, but the state senate president said he didn’t want to give Democrats an issue to raise funds on. (Ohio voters overwhelmingly overturned draconian limits on unions in 2011.) Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced one in January, but it hasn’t gotten a committee hearing.

“It’s striking that they were not successful in passing it in Missouri,” says Shorey. The most significant measures still pending, she says, are in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. In North Carolina, House Speaker Thom Tillis proposed making the state’s “right to work” law and a ban on public-worker unions an amendment to its constitution, after declaring that he wanted to keep North Carolina “the least unionized state in the United States.” In Pennsylvania, the sponsor is Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, chair of the State Government committee, who also sponsored the state’s voter-ID law and fulminates against “illegal alien invaders.”

Neither measure has made it out of committee, but “after Michigan, anything could happen,” warns Ott.

The Michigan and Indiana laws came as part of the 2011–’12 offensive against worker rights in the upper Midwest, but the concept emerged after the great union victories of the late 1930s. The phrase “right to work” was coined in 1941 by William B. Ruggles, an editorial writer at the Dallas Morning News who didn’t want to join a union. His bosses feared that federal laws and regulations backing union rights were forcing unions down the throats of employers and socializing industry. Ruggles proposed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to work with or without union membership.

Lobbyist Vance Muse, founder of an organization called the Christian Americans, picked up the campaign—but realized that it would be much easier to win state laws than a constitutional amendment. Without such a law, he argued. “white women and white men will be forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will have to call ‘brother’ or lose their jobs.” He also said the law would help “good niggers, not these communist niggers.”

He won support from business groups, and Texas outlawed the union shop in 1943. Arkansas followed in 1944. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which restricted strikes and banned communists from being union officials, specifically allowed states to pass such laws, in its Section 14(b). By 1960, 18 states had done so, and Wyoming, Louisiana, Idaho, and Oklahoma trickled in over the next few decades.

In 1961, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “right to work” a “fraud,” saying that it “provides no ‘rights’ and no ‘works.’ …Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining.” In 1965, the high-water mark of liberal power in Congress in the last 70 years, the House voted to repeal Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, but a filibuster in the Senate preserved the provision.

In today’s network of anti-union think tanks and lobbying groups, the two most concerned with right to work are the National Right to Work Committee and its offshoots, based in Washington’s Virginia suburbs, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, in Michigan.

The National Right to Work Committee, founded in 1955, has grown to include a legal offshoot, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, and the National Institute for Labor Relations Research. Reed Larson, who headed NRTWC for 45 years, touts the Foundation, established in 1968, as the nation’s first conservative litigating organization.

The committee proclaims that it is “dedicated to the principle that all Americans must have the right to join a union if they choose to,” but its masthead motto is “No one should have to be forced to pay tribute to a union boss to get or keep a job.”

Asked what these organizations have done to support the right to join a union, spokesperson Patrick T. Semmens says that there’s no risk that union membership will be outlawed, but “the right not to join or associate with a union…is not currently the law and therefore is our focus.”

In practice, responds Erin Johansson, if a worker complains to the National Labor Relations Board that she was illegally fired for union activity, it can take eight or nine years to get her job back. “We have nothing now. We don’t have a functioning NLRB,” she adds.

Republicans in the Senate have filibustered President Obama’s nominees to the NLRB for years, to prevent if from having a majority that recognizes workers’ legal rights. If the vacant seats are not filled by August, the board won’t have a quorum. In January, a federal court said Obama’s recess appointments were unconstitutional, and voided rulings they participated in. The National Right to Work Foundation filed an amicus brief in that case, the result of a lawsuit filed by the Chamber of Commerce-backed Coalition for a Democratic Workplace.

The Foundation has won several Supreme Court decisions banning unions from using dues collected from nonmembers for activities not directly related to collective bargaining—that is, supporting pro-union candidates or legislation. It’s also represented people who don’t want to join unions or pay dues, and calls strikebreakers “courageous individuals.”

The Foundation’s list of “Big Labor’s Top Ten Special Privileges” includes just about anything that would make a union effective.

It claims that union “monopoly bargaining” is “depriving employees of the right to make their own employment contracts.” In other words, it denies them their right to ask for a raise on their own and not get one—or to undercut the union by agreeing to work for less.

It claims that unions have the privilege to “strong-arm employers into negotiations,” because “unlike all other parties in the economic marketplace, union officials can compel employers to bargain with them.” As opposed to employers’ right to ignore workers or tell them, “you’re fired, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

It claims that union workers have the privilege to “refuse to work while keeping their job,” because they can’t be fired for going on strike. This isn’t exactly true. Employers can’t fire workers striking against unfair labor practices, but they can legally “replace” workers striking for more money. The union movement of the mid-20th century was strong enough so employers rarely did that until after 1981, when President Ronald Reagan fired striking air-traffic controllers. And if employers can fire striking workers, that makes it next to impossible to have a successful strike.

If one wants proof of the union slogan that “right to work” really means “right to work for less,” it’s in a book excerpt posted on the National Right to Work Committee’s Web site. In Stranglehold: How Union Bosses Have Hijacked Our Government, Reed Larson blames the New Deal for establishing the plague of “compulsory unionism.” He writes that the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, by setting minimum wages in various industries, “trampled the rights of workers” by denying them the freedom to make a contract to work for less money.

The “right to work” network’s other main argument is that weakening unions stimulates job growth, that jobs are increasing in states with right-to-work laws. As companies often prefer to move to places with the lowest wages and the weakest safety regulations—witness the garment industry’s migration from the Triangle Shirtwaist Company to the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh over the last century—this makes sense, although Armelagos says, “companies are still moving out of Indiana.”

It’s harder to sell low wages to the public. In 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median weekly wage for union workers was $943 a week, compared to $742 for nonunion workers. To get around this, they argue that per capita income in “right to work” states, adjusted for the cost of living, is equal to, almost equal to, or more than it is in “forced union” states.

Today in union-hating by Dana Loesch: She is defending right-wing loon and The Dana Show regular Steven Crowder’s false accusations that the union member was “assaulting” him, when in fact it was the other way around.

DanaLoeschRadio.com:

 It’s insane to allege that Crowder — who wasn’t standing near the union member, who appeared to trip over his own feet rather than was “pushed,” and who had his back turned and turned with hands up in a non-threatening manner — pushed the union member. Where is Dunnings’ evidence? Why didn’t the union bring charges? Because it’s a bogus assertion. 

Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings said he didn’t obtain the full video until he got it from a far left group which is an absolute, outright lie as the full, unedited video was posted by Crowder when he posted the edited-for-TV video.The full, unedited video was always available.
Dunnings is simply protecting the union members behind the riot which saw them destroy property, put women and children in harm’s way, and assault those who were videotaped simply asking questions. It’s an embarrassment to the office in which he serves.

Dunnings did his job properly, and this is typical of her to demonize unions.


The Lansing State Journal, on the other hand, called out Crowder’s phony baloney:

Eclectablog:

It turns out that I was 100% correct. Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III is not filing charges in the incident because Crowder provided him with highly-edited video and the full, unedited version shows that his “attacker” was simply defending himself. 

Nice try Crowder. You’re a fraud and now everybody knows it.

Loesch and Crowder both are manipulative liars.

(Cross-Posted From DanaBusted.blgospot.com )

(cross-posted from Daily Kos)

Kablammo! There go GOP Gov. Rick Snyder’s approval ratings and his standing for re-election. PPP just lays him out:

Just last month when we took a first look at the 2014 landscape we talked about how much Rick Snyder had improved his popularity during his second year in office and how he led a generic Democrat for reelection by 6 points, even as Barack Obama won the state comfortably.

Last week he threw all that out the window.

We now find Snyder as one of the most unpopular Governors in the country. Only 38% of voters approve of him to 56% who disapprove. There are only 2 other sitting Governors we’ve polled on who have a worse net approval rating than Snyder’s -18. He’s dropped a net 28 points from our last poll on him, the weekend before the election, when he was at a +10 spread (47/37).

Three words are to blame here: right to work. Well, of course, Snyder himself is to blame: After telling the state of Michigan that he would not push through anti-union and anti-worker “right to work” legislation (that Orwellian epithet really means “right to work for less”), he went ahead and did exactly that during a shameful lame-duck session of the legislature. (Michigan Republicans lost seats this November, so they wanted to force a vote while they still had greater numbers.) Overall, voters oppose RTW 51-41, and a similar 49-40 margin says they’d vote to overturn the law if given the chance at the ballot box.

And now for the really fun stuff. If Snyder does indeed run for a second term—something he previously said he might not do—well, he’d get pummeled, if his fortunes don’t somehow turn around. Here’s how he does against a passel of possible contenders:

38-49 vs. 2010 nominee Virg Bernero
39-47 vs. Rep. Gary Peters
38-46 vs. state Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer
39-44 vs. ex-Rep. Mark Schauer

Note that ceiling of 38 to 39 percent for Snyder: All of his potential opponents are unknown to half the state, even Bernero. That means, at least right now, voters are really thinking “anyone but Snyder.” Hell, as Tom Jensen points out, Bernero lost by 18 points in 2010, so these new numbers constitute a remarkable 29-point reversal of fortune.

Don’t be thinking recall, though: Voters still oppose the notion 48-44, and as we saw in Wisconsin, those numbers tend to get worse over time, not better.

h/t: David Nir at Daily Kos Elections

Extremist groups, right-wing politicians and their corporate backers want to weaken the power of workers and their unions through so-called “right to work” laws. Their efforts are a partisan political ploy that undermines the basic rights of workers. By making unions weaker, these laws lower wages and living standards for all workers in the state. By many measures, the quality of life is worse in states with “right to work” laws. Wages are lower, poverty and lack of insurance are higher, education is weaker—even infant mortality and the likelihood of being killed on the job are higher.

Lower Wages and Incomes

• The average worker in states with “right to work” laws makes $1,540 a year less when all other factors are removed than workers in other states.¹
• Median household income in states with these laws is $6,437 less than in other states ($46,402 vs. $52,839).²
• In states with “right to work” laws, 26.7 percent of jobs are in low-wage occupations, compared with 19.5 percent of jobs in other states.³

Less Job-Based Health Insurance Coverage

• People in states with “right to work” laws are more likely to be uninsured (16.8 percent, compared with 13.1 percent overall; among children, it’s 10.8 percent vs. 7.5 percent).⁴
• They’re less likely to have job-based health insurance than people in other states (56.2 percent, compared with 60.1 percent).⁵
• Only 50.7 percent of employers in states with these laws offer insurance coverage to their employees, compared with 55.2 percent in other states. That difference is even more significant among small employers (with fewer than 50 workers)—only 34.4 percent of them offer workers health insurance, compared with 41.7 percent of small employers in other states.⁶

Higher Poverty and Infant Mortality Rates

• Poverty rates are higher in states with “right to work” laws (15.3 percent overall and 21.5 percent for children), compared with poverty rates of 13.1 percent overall and 18.1 percent for children in states without these laws.⁷
• The infant mortality rate is 15 percent higher in states with these laws.⁸

Less Investment in Education

• States with “right to work” laws spend $3,392 less per pupil on elementary and secondary education than other states, and students are less likely to be performing at their appropriate grade level in math and reading.⁹

Higher Rates of Death on the Job

• The rate of workplace deaths is 36 percent higher in states with these laws, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.¹⁰

H/T: AFL-CIO.org

Union workers who were protesting the passage of so-called “right-to-work” laws outside the state capitol in Lansing, Michigan are “terrorists,” according to a former high-ranking official in the Republican Party of Virginia who now serves in a county-level elected office.

Shawn Kenney, who formerly served as the communications director for the state GOP and is now the chairman of the Fluvanna Co. Board of Supervisors, posted an entry on his blog titled, “We Don’t Negotiate With (Union) Terrorists.” The post features a video of a brief fight that occurred outside the Michigan state capitol. Before the video, Kenney writes: “…and these people are terrorists.”

The video, the subject of numerous Fox News segments aimed at ginning up anti-union sentiment among the conservative base, shows an isolated fight between union protesters and Steven Crowder, a Fox News contributor who was punched during the dispute. A state employee (who is represented by a union) who witnessed Crowder’s earlier interactions with the crowd while passing by told the Huffington Post that Crowder appeared to be provoking the workers and there is evidence showing that the video may have been selectively edited to portray union members in a negative light. 

While it is unfortunate that any violence occurred, local media reports and police painted a picture of the protests that didn’t quite resemble “terrorism.” The protests, which included at least 10,000 workers, were “mostly peaceful” according to media reports, and the Michigan State Police said just three arrests were made.

Another former Republican Party of Virginia official wrote on the same blog this week that by passing “right-to-work,” Michigan had “finally unshackle[d] itself from slavery.”

H/T: Travis Waldron at Think Progress Economy

On yesterday’s edition of KFTK’s The Dana Show, Loesch had on Clint Tarver, whose hot dog stand got demolished in the protests on Tuesday. Predictably, she and the other right-wingers are trying to make this into another Kenneth Gladney non-scandal.

From the 12.12.2012 edition of KFTK’s The Dana Show:

Loesch, of course, was blaming the unions for his hot dog stand being destroyed.

Nobody is safe. Apparently union protesters targeted anything that had a white tent yesterday, even reportedly taking out the hot dog stand of Lansing fixture Clint Tarver.

MLive.com:

LANSING, MI – A fixture on the local food scene was in the wrong place at the wrong time Tuesday: under the Americans for Prosperity tent on the lawn of the state Capitol when it collapsed, allegedly at the hands of pro-union protesters.
Clinton Tarver operates a popular hot dog stand at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Capitol Avenue, across from the state Capitol, from March to November each year.
In the offseason, he takes on catering work. 

Tarver was set up under the Americans for Prosperity tent, his wife, Linda Lee Tarver, said Wednesday.

When the tent came down, allegedly at the hands of pro-union protesters, Tarver and his catering equipment were caught inside.
His cart was not on-site, Linda said. 

She estimates the equipment losses totaled at least $500; other losses include supplies, condiments, coolers and food. He crawled out of the tent.
Tarver, who is black, was also the victim of racially-charged verbal attacks, his wife, Linda, said. 

On her Facebook page, she wrote that union protesters called her husband “an Uncle Tom [n-word]” when he attempted to retrieve his equipment from the collapsed tent.
“When he came back to get his stuff, people called him the n-word,” she said. “They said he deserved what he got and he was on the wrong side. I think they thought he was part of [Americans for Prosperity].”
But Clint is not a political man, she said; she herself is, and has been involved with Americans for Prosperity.

There was no excuse for Tarver to be racially insulted by a few protestors; however, this is no excuse for right-wing nuts to blame everything on “union thugs.”


Eclectablog has all the facts on how the anti-union right-wing media is blowing this story out of proportion:

This is a far cry from the all-caps-can-you-believe-what-these-union-thugs-did freak out by conservatives who would have you believe that Tarver lost his entire livelihood at the hands of union goons. Tarver was set up on some tables under the tent and did not even have his cart. He must have had a very slow day. Anyone who was at the rally and wandered by the two giant AFP tents will tell you that they were essentially empty all day. There were a few AFP folks standing out front, taunting union members and provoking confrontations, but there was not a lot of activity inside the tent where Tarver was. 

Nonetheless, much like, Kenneth Gladney, the St. Louis guy who faked getting injured at the hands of union members then solicited funds for his hospital bills even though he had health insurance, a collection has been taken up on Tarver’s behalf. According the article, they have raised over $10,000 for him (UPDATE: MIRS News reports that it’s now over $16,000.) The total value of what he lost in the scuffle? $500. 

I wonder what they’ll do with the thousands of extra dollars not needed to buy more buns, hot dogs, ketchup, mustard and a couple of folding tables and coolers?
Certainly Clint Tarver didn’t deserve to be treated as shabbily as he was by the union folks there. His wife claims he was called a “nigger” and jeered for working for the enemy. If true, that’s reprehensible and inexcusable. But the off-the-charts poutrage from the right on this is an absolute joke. Some of the same people decrying the verbal taunts that Tarver experiencde are here on this very website calling union members all sorts of hideous names. So let’s keep it real, shall we?

Adding… Let’s not kid ourselves about what “Tentgate” and “Hot Doggate” are all about: distracting the country from noticing that corporatist ideologues have turned the birthplace of American organized labor into a Right to Work for Less state. It’s a smokescreen, chaff to make sure the conversation is not about screwing union members and is, instead, about the AFP losing a couple of tents.

(cross-posted from DanaBusted.blogspot.com)

Yesterday, I wrote about how Americans for Prosperity representatives helped knock down their own tent on the grounds of the Michigan State Capitol building during an anti-Right to Work for Less rally there. Subsequent to posting that piece, I was alerted to comments on Reddit by user “mtalna”. You can read those comments HERE. What is evident from the comments is that there is a lot of editing that has gone on with the videos Fox News is now running in nearly constant rotation making it look like all of the violence and hostility at the rally yesterday came from union members. As it turns out, significant portions of it were faked and creative Breitbart-style editing helped it along much more.

This morning I spoke with “mtalna”. “mtalana” is Matt Allen from Fowlerville, MI. He’s an 18-year college student and not a union member. He assisted me in putting this piece together and was present for the conversation that happens in the first minutes of the first video below.

This video is actually a composite of a things that happened over the course of the day, many of them hours apart. The initial conversation happened early in the morning. At about 0:16, it cuts to Crowder saying, “You’ve already destroyed one tent, leave this one alone.” That happened hours after the interview with the union workers that starts the segment. The guy he’s talking to is standing quite a distance from the tent but Crowder insists that he’s somehow tearing down the tent.

Selective editing at about 0:39 mark shows what appears to be union guy attacking Crowder for no apparent reason. However, if you look closely, you’ll see that the guy is getting up off the ground — that he was NOT the one that became aggressive first.

At about 1:13, as the tent is coming down, Crowder comes over to the cameraman and waves him off as if to say, “that’s enough filming.”

What they apparently don’t want you to see is union members using knives to cut the tent open to let people inside out. Rather, the message that is being sent by the conservative media and blogosphere is that the union members deliberately cut the tent to pieces in an act of malicious vandalism. As Matt Allen points out in his comments HERE, the union members actually ask, “Is everybody out?” and then proceed to make sure that they are.

At 1:49 in the longer video, one union members notes that an AFP guy has a gun and brags that he’s “killed plenty of mother fuckers with a gun” (i.e., he’s killed people who were in possession of guns.) This is being played up as if a UNION MEMBER had a gun. Not true.

If you want to see a blatant act of theater on Crowder’s part, keep watching that segment. At 2:07, Crowder asks the cameraman “are you recording this?” The cameraman answers, “Yes”, then Crowder acts as if he’s being roughly shoved back into the crowd unprovoked. If you watch closely, the guy who supposedly pushed him has his hands by his side.

For those who have accused me of defending violence by union members, I don’t. It pisses me off to no end that these people allowed themselves to be manipulated by Americans for Prosperity and Fox News and incited into doing stupid shit that gives ALL union members a bad name even though the stupid shit was done by only a small handful out of the 15,000+ people that attended the rally and behaved perfectly calm.

That said, there is no question in my mind whatsoever that AFP and Fox employees set out to incite a huge crowd of very angry people. 

h/t: Eclectablog.com

Fox Business’ Dobbs: “What This Law Changes Is Forced Union Membership. I Repeat: Forced Union Membership.” Discussing Michigan’s new law on the December 11 edition of his Fox Business program, host Lou Dobbs mislead viewers about the effect of right-to-work laws. He claimed that “Michigan workers still tonight have the right to form and join a union. They still have the right to bargain collectively. And what this law changes is forced union membership. I repeat, forced union membership.” [Fox Business, Lou Dobbs Tonight, 12/11/12] 

Maine Center For Economic Policy: “Under Federal Labor Law, Workers Cannot Be Legally Required To Join A Union.” The Maine Center for Economic Policy laid out how forced union membership is illegal in a February 2011 op-ed: “A right-to-work law is not needed to protect nonunion workers. Several federal laws already protect the rights of nonunion employees in unionized workplaces, such as the NLRB vs. General Motors Supreme Court decision in 1963, and the Communication Workers vs. Beck decision of 1988. Under federal labor law, workers cannot be legally required to join a union as part of a collective bargaining contract.” [Maine Center For Economic Policy, 2/19/11]

National Right To Work: “No Employee In The United States Can Legally Be Required” To Be A Full Union Member. Even National Right To Work, an organization that promotes right-to-work laws, acknowledges that forced union membership is already illegal. Informing workers of their rights concerning unions, Right To Work makes clear that “[n]o employee in the United States can legally be required to be a full-dues-paying, formal union member. But in many states, an employee can be forced to pay certain union dues or be fired from his or her job.” [National Right To Work, accessed 12/11/12]

NLRB: Workers That Don’t Want Full Union Membership “Pay Only That Share Of Dues Used Directly For Representation” Of Union Contract They Work Under. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) explains that workers do not have to be full union members, but instead must only pay for the union representation they receive by working at a union shop, regardless of their membership status. The NLRB says that “employees who object to full union membership may continue as ‘core’ members and pay only that share of dues used directly for representation, such as collective bargaining and contract administration. Known as objectors, they are no longer full members but are still protected by the union contract.” NLRB also notes that right-to-work states allow non-union members to pay nothing, “even though all workers are protected by the collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the union.” [National Labor Relations Board, accessed 12/11/12]

Center For American Progress: “Right-To-Work” Laws “Allow Some Workers To Receive A Free Ride.”A Center for American Progress report titled “Right-to-Work 101” explained that “right-to-work” laws simply “allow some workers to receive a free ride” by receiving benefits from a union contract without having to pay for it:

In states where the law exists, “right-to-work” makes it illegal for workers and employers to negotiate a contract requiring everyone who benefits from a union contract to pay their fair share of the costs of administering it. Right-to-work has nothing to do with people being forced to be union members.

Federal law already guarantees that no one can be forced to be a member of a union, or to pay any amount of dues or fees to a political or social cause they don’t support. What right-to-work laws do is allow some workers to receive a free ride, getting the advantages of a union contract — such as higher wages and benefits and protection against arbitrary discipline — without paying any fee associated with negotiating on these matters.

That’s because the union must represent all workers with the same due diligence regardless of whether they join the union or pay it dues or other fees and a union contract must cover all workers, again regardless of their membership in or financial support for the union. In states without right-to-work laws, workers covered by a union contract can refuse union membership and pay a fee covering only the costs of workplace bargaining rather than the full cost of dues. [Center for American Progress Action Fund, 2/2/12]

From the 12.11.2012 edition of FBN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight:

H/T: MMFA

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced on Tuesday that he has signed so-called “right-to-work” legislation into law.

“Both the public sector bill and the private sector bill have been signed,” Snyder told reporters at a press conference. “I have signed these bills into law.”

h/t: TPM LiveWire

Protesters are marching on the Michigan Capitol Building today, where lawmakers are expected to approve the final version of a so-called “right-to-work” law. Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI), who had previously said he wouldn’t pursue such anti-union legislation, has indicated he’ll sign the measure.

During an interview on WWJ Newsradio 950, Snyder claimed that the law is necessary in order to boost Michigan’s economy. “This is about more and better jobs coming to Michigan,” he said:

“Michigan is not unique in doing this. Twenty-three other states are right-to-work states and they’ve been fast growing, in terms of their economic growth in relationship to other states… If you look at Indiana, Indiana’s had at least 30 companies accept offers from the Indiana Academic Development Corporation since they did this in February that are bringing thousands of good jobs to Indiana. And we could use those jobs here in Michigan,” he said.

And more jobs in Michigan is something Snyder said will benefit all the state’s residents.

“This is about more and better jobs coming to Michigan because a lot of companies do look at this as a major factor in their analysis. We’ll then be more competitive as a state and that’s good for all of us. It’s good for workers and good for unions, because it gives them more of an opportunity to grow themselves,” he said.

However, the economic research isn’t on Snyder’s side.

Instead, right-to-work laws simply result in lower wages and fewer benefits for workers, union and non-union alike. In Michigan (and across the country), as unionization rates fall, so does middle-class income. President Obama yesterday blasted right-to-work as “giving you the right to work for less money.”

h/t: Pat Garofalo at Think Progress Economy

Deranged anti-union extremist Dana Loesch is lying as usual. This particular “offense” in Loeschworld: A Democratic Michigan State Representative by the name of Douglas Geiss had the nerve to say that “there will blood on our hands” because of Michigan likely going to be the latest state added to the Right-To-Work For Less list.

FYI: @mihousedems deleted their Tweet wherein they suggested violence over RTW.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) December 11, 2012