To the Editor:

As members of Teamsters Local 406, Grand Rapids, we have been very interested in the recent primary election. It seemed as though all the political candidates have been unanimous in their promise to bring more jobs to Michigan. We wonder why, if they all had the secret to more jobs, they haven’t shared it by now. We should be buried in Help Wanted ads.

The fact is that no one has the solution to kill unemployment in Michigan. The drastic loss of so much of our manufacturing base has no quick easy remedy. Some say less tax, but Michigan has a considerably lower tax rate than fifteen years ago, yet jobs have disappeared. Some say that less regulation is the answer. But the problem isn’t over regulation. We are no more restrictive than our neighboring states. And in any event, we only need to look as far as the oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico or the recent mine explosion in Kentucky to learn caution when diluting regulations. The auto industry was not regulated into decline. Nor was its near fatal decline the fault of the unions. Its collapse was the result of poor quality, global competition and poor management. Americans simply didn’t want to buy as many cars from the “Big Three” as they once did. Now we read that after years of supporting free trade agreements and lassie fare banking practices that ruined our economy, the Big Business remedy for Michigan’s economy is to make Michigan a Right to Work (RTW) state.

The term “Right to Work” sounds great, but in fact it is a gross distortion of the truth. Right to Work is the right to work for less pay under hostile working conditions with fewer benefits and even less job security. Consider the statistics. Workers in RTW states earn about 17% less than workers in the same jobs in non-RTW states. In RTW states the poverty rate is 16% higher. Job fatalities are a staggering 54% higher! These statistics come from the University of Michigan Institute for Industrial Relations.

The history of social advance is written in large part by union initiatives. The minimum wage, safer working conditions, better child labor laws, environmental conditions, health insurance, pensions, paid vacations and the 40-hour workweek to mention just a few. These are things that we now take for granted but we all have unions to thank for them. Unions paved the way for the middle class to grow after WWII. And now the converse is true. As union memberships have declined, the middle class has eroded and shrunk. In 1983, 23.3% of American workers were unionized. In 2008 only 13.7% were unionized, and that number has continued to shrink. As wages have suffered and stagnated, the buying power of the middle class has diminished causing the whole economy to go into recession as Americans buy less.

But worry not for the entrepreneurs and bankers. While working men and women’s wages dropped, the CEOs of Big Business earned more. Lots more. The wage gap between workers and CEOs grew from a factor of 85 times the average worker in 1985 to 300 times in 2003! From 1990 to 2003 corporate profits grew by 128%. During that same period, worker’s wages grew 49% while an inflation of 41% took most of that gain. Productivity grew by 75% from 1980 to 2008, while the real adjusted wage grew by only 22.6%.

Big Business can’t blame the unions for the state of our economy. Now only less than 8% of private sector workers are unionized. If the loss of union jobs was the answer, we should again be in economic heaven. But consider that today the median household income for workers under the age of 65 is below what it was in 2000. And yet Big Business is not satisfied. They want to hurt the union movement even more by imposing RTW laws in Michigan and elsewhere.

For the sake of the Michigan economy we need more union members, not less. The Hart poll says there are fifty-seven million workers who would join a union and have only a 20% chance to do so. They don’t want or need RTW laws. They want representation at the bargaining table. When the politicians and their media friends present the RTW arguments, understand it as another attack on the American middle class. The wealth of our country continues to be ever more concentrated in the top 1% of the population. The RTW argument is class warfare at its worst.

The members of Teamsters Local 406 enjoy good wages and benefits gained over many years by labor contracts that benefit both the employees and management. We would wish that all workers, brothers and sisters, could be union members. Union members work productively for a better share of the profits. They in turn spend their hard-earned wages, stimulating the economy in Grand Rapids, the state of Michigan and the entire USA.

Right to Work is Wrong for Michigan!

Ronald E. Holzgen,

Secretary-Treasurer

Teamsters Local 406

Grand Rapids, Michigan