Over at PostEverything. I feel very strongly about this one. Not that everyone should end up where I am on this issue of labor rights, but just that the debate should be less fraught with such misleading and phony rhetoric.
“Right-to-work”–one of the greatest misnomers ever heard
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Sometime between end of March and end of April. And it will be free here at OTE!
This has been a perennial issue here in NH and the current conservative Republican legislative majorities will no doubt try it again this term. Our Democratic governor will veto it.
Opponents of RTW regularly refer to it as Right-to-Work-for-Less.
Why have liberals simply taken it without serious resistance? Why do they let Republicans bully them linguistically time after time after time.
Liberals would instinctively prefer to call it something like the “Right of Employers to Weaken Collective Bargaining Rights” — you know, as excruciatingly accurate as possible and with the maximum use of impressive three-syllable, Latin-derived words as possible. Of course, whether it actually accomplishes any mind changing is not very important to liberals. (We know that isn’t important to Third Way Democrats and their ilk because they really don’t like unions, anyway. “F— the UAW,” said our Chicago buddy Rahm Emanuel.)
Most real Democrats, however, have always been upset by the “Right to Work” language. But the only alternative I’ve seen is “Right to Work for Less.” Not too bad, but not very punchy, and it hasn’t really caught on. Some top-of-mind (late night) alternatives that may be a bit more powerful — more likely to make self-hating workers in Wisconsin, Indiana and other states with anti-labor laws squirm a little and think more about what is in their best interest:
Right to Surrender law
Right to be Paid Less law
Right to Make Less law
Right to Cave law
Right to Wave the White Flag law
Right to Be Weak law
Right to Beat Yourself Up law
Right to Chicken Out law
Right to Wimp Out law (My first vote is for this one: all one-syllable vernacular with taunt, and it’s “RTW” [or “RTW-O]. “Why do the workers at your factory wimp out, Daddy?).
Right to Give Up law
Right to Give Up Ahead of Time law
Right to Get Cold Feet/Weasel Out/Cop Out law
Right to Kowtow law (not bad; “not RTW, but RTK “)
Right to Do As You’re Told law
Or, looking at the “right” from the other direction:
Right to Steal from Your Employees law
Right to Pick Off Your Employees, One by One
Fair Bargaining Law: You Against the Corporation
Let the imagination soar, but short and punchy — big letters on a bumper sticker — wins the day. Run a contest in RTW states. Build a groundswell for finally, after all these years, going on the offensive to reverse the worst of Taft-Hartley and other efforts to weken unions. Make the corporations fight back with their usual bogus arguments and make it into a bigger issue than we ever could on our own. Hell, even Robert Rubin now says we must restore employees’ ability to bargain collectively.