Union: Right-to-Work Law Like Slavery

Intimidation through civil litgation. If they lose at the ballot box, they cry foul and take you to court. What they're bitchin' about is the fact that non-union workers with the same trade-skills must be paid the same hourly rate as union workers, but the non-union workers get to keep every dime they earn, except for payroll taxes of course. Hitting the unions in the bank account is a sure way to piss them off. The union is really stretching credibility on this slavery thing though. No one is requiring them to do anything. They have the same freedom of choice non-union workers have. Or do they?

Union: Right-to-Work Law Like Slavery

Seriously.

The union, The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150, claims in the lawsuit filed on Wednesday that “compulsory service is the equivalent of involuntary servitude under the Thirteenth Amendment.” 

The lawsuit argues that the “defendants have exacted compulsory service and/ or involuntary servitude from the Union through the combination of the passage of the Right to Work law and the existing federal requirement of the duty of fair representation” and that the union is “compelled to furnish services to all persons in bargaining units that it represents but it may not require payments for those services because of the Right to Work law.” 

The union also claims the right-to-work law “requires dues-paying members to work alongside non-union personnel, and that is compulsory service within the meaning of the thirteenth amendment.”

The Thirteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War to emancipate blacks, reads, “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Needless to say, the original intent of the Thirteenth Amendment was not to help union workers prevent non-union members from being able to work.