Right to Work Laws are Good for Unions, but not for the Chamber of Commerce

The Chamber of Commerce is one of the biggest advocates in the US of right to work laws, which allow individual workers to get the benefits of a union contract without paying union dues. Their purpose is to make it harder for unions to collect dues and thereby weaken them financially.

Back in 2005, a member organization of the Chamber of Commerce in Owensboro, Kentucky asked the Chamber if it could stop paying dues to the Chamber yet still get the benefits. This is what the Chamber said:

The vast majority of the Chamber’s annual revenues come from member dues, and it would be unfair to the other 850+ members to allow an organization not paying dues to be including in member benefits.

Hard to argue with that.

4 Comments

  1. Chris Harlos November 7, 2013 at 9:49 pm | #

    The value of “fairness” simply does not apply to the annihilation of labor. Put another way, all is fair in (class) war.

  2. Glenn November 8, 2013 at 3:05 pm | #

    Consider that the constitution was written by a chamber of commerce, populated by those whose wealth came from ownership of collectives, either by ownership of the individuals of which they were made (slavery) or by direct ownership, where the productive individuals were somewhat able to move between collectives (productive capitalism, as we know it), although without altering the terms and nature of the collectives.

    Today’s Chamber of Commerce is operating well within the tradition of the government founded by its original commercial interests.

  3. juantenorio November 9, 2013 at 11:08 pm | #

    This country was created by and for businessmen.

    In fact, one of Geo. Washington’s motives in supporting the constitutional convention was that he wanted to do some commercial development on property he owned in a neighboring state, and the articles of confederacy placed too many obstacles in his way.

    The American ‘revolution’ was really simply an expansion of the franchise of wealth: in very early times, you had to be of royal blood IN ORDER to be wealthy; then, as business grew and non-royals started to have money, they were pissed because all the REAL power over how society was run was still held by dukes and counts.

    So what CHANGED when the US seceded from the British Empire was simply that you no longer had to be a member of a particular family to have real power–all you had to have was money.

  4. Ron November 12, 2013 at 12:33 am | #

    Can the same be said of Tea Party members who want less substantive government, yet are “members” of it in part to subtlety unravel it?

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