Right to Work Legislation

By Harry Berndt

Sitting at home on St. Patrick's Day I couldn't help thinking about all the efforts around the country, and here in Missouri, to weaken unions by the passage of Right to Work Legislation. The Irish in the Northeast and in Missouri were early and strong union members and organizers. They held low paying jobs in the clay pits of St. Louis, in railroad construction in the East and in most manufacturing industries. They were discriminated as being Irish and Catholic and they understood that union membership would bring better wages and safer working conditions.

The argument put forward by Right to Work advocates that Right to Work brings in new industry is fallacious. Tennessee, A Right to Work State is often pointed to as a success in bringing in new industry, Japanese Auto for example. But it wasn't Right to Work that encouraged these companies to locate in Tennessee. It was lucrative packages of tax incentives, infrastructure construction, and other inducements offered by the state and local communities. Companies are not encouraged to locate in states because of low wages. In addition to tax and infrastructure inducements, good schools, available housing, and low crime rates provide necessary incentives for locating in a community.

In 1978, Monsignor John Shocklee, Director of the St. Louis Archdiocesan Human Rights Office, along with the Missouri Catholic Conference, led the fight to defeat proposed Right to Work Legislation. Because there was much misunderstanding of just what was meant by The Right to Work, the Human Rights Office, under the direction of Msgr. Shocklee, scheduled eight educational seminars for the diocese. Letters announcing the seminars also stated, "The effect on a worker's paycheck is directly related to the existence of the Right to Work laws. Statistics indicate that workers earn less in the RTW states because they are unable to effectively organize and maintain unions." An editorial in The St. Louis Post dispatch on September 3, 1978 stated that the arguments by the right-to-work leaders are often self-serving and some downright hypocritical. The editorial asks if Missouri wants to follow states like Arkansas and Mississippi, which have RTW laws or Illinois that doesn't. "Right to work does not really offer the progress claimed for it. It offers, instead, a long step backward toward days of open shop and bitter industrial discord. Missouri can do without it." Comparison wage statistics for 2009 for eleven Southern RTW states and eleven Northern states without RTW laws show an average wage for the Southern states of $16.61 and $18.45 for the Northern states. Lower paychecks are not really good for the economy.

Worker Priests, many Protestant Ministers, and Jewish Rabbis have worked diligently for the rights of workers. Every Papal Encyclical since Pope Leo XIII, RERUM NOVERUM, supports the workers' right to organize and the importance of Unions for the protection of workers rights. A discussion of their efforts can be found in Only a Priest: A Biography of Monsignor John Alexander Shocklee, Chapter Four, The Worker Priest – on-line at whmc St.Louis, Harry Berndt.