I will always remember the day I gained real freedom in the workplace. September 15, 2015.
That’s the day my contract expired at Ford’s Rawsonville plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The day I was finally able to resign from the United Auto Workers without being fired. The day I got to choose, for the first time, whether union membership was right for me. It’s a choice I’d wanted for nearly 20 years.
Ever since, I’ve worked at the same plant, doing the same job, yet I’ve kept more of my paycheck, and my conscience is clear. For seven-plus years, I haven’t been forced to pay dues to the UAW, which lobbies for politicians and policies I don’t support.
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But now my freedom may be revoked. Michigan Democrats, fresh off a victory in the midterm elections, seem determined to force workers like me to pay union dues – regardless of what we want. I can’t imagine a bigger step backward for our state, or a bigger blow to my fundamental rights.
I started working at the Rawsonville plant in 1996, following in the footsteps of my father, who took a job at Ford in the 1950s, and many uncles, aunts, and cousins over the years. None of us – not one – got to vote for the union. Yet none of us – not one – could leave the union without losing our job. Paying union dues was the price of working there. It was a price hardly any of us wanted to pay.
Then, in 2012, Michigan flipped the script. The state passed a right-to-work law, giving every union member the freedom to opt out of union membership and stop paying dues. From that moment onward, as soon as a unionized worker’s contract expired, they could exercise this freedom, like I did in 2015. And I’m far from the only one.
In the United Auto Workers alone, membership has dropped more than 7% in the past decade. Other unions have seen even steeper declines, with the Teamsters losing almost a third of their members, and the SEIU losing nearly two-thirds. All told, across Michigan, private-sector union membership is down by more than 60,000 people, or nearly 20%. Clearly, a whole lot of folks didn’t want to buy what the unions were selling.
That was certainly the case for me. As a lifelong conservative, I resented going to union meetings where I was told in no uncertain terms to vote for Democrats. I was tired of being screamed at – on the line, no less – by my plant’s union chairman when I didn’t toe the party line. I despised the climate of fear and conformity that led, and still leads, so many of my fellow line workers to stay silent.
The right-to-work law gave me the freedom to choose my own path. Yet Michigan Democrats — who just retook complete control of the state government for the first time in nearly 40 years — have made clear that repealing the right-to-work is one of their top priorities come January. Governor Gretchen Whitmer and incoming leaders in both the state House and Senate are all on board. If they succeed, every Michigan worker who’s left a union will be forced to pay up.
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To me, this looks like nothing more than special-interest politics at its worst. These politicians look to set reward unions with a policy that will give them more money – money that they will then use to re-elect the same politicians. Even if you ignore this reality, the arguments in favor of repealing right-to-work don’t add up.
I was a union member for nearly 20 years, and I still work in a unionized shop. I know the arguments. They say right-to-work leads to "free loaders" who get the benefits of union membership without paying the dues. But under this law, unions actually have to show value to workers to convince them to stick around. Without right-to-work, unions are the real free loaders, taking workers’ dues without having to earn them.
There’s also a lot more to the story. I don’t want to pay dues to a union that’s been under a federal corruption investigation for nearly a decade, leading to multiple convictions for embezzlement. And I don’t want to lose the same workplace freedom that government workers have under the Constitution. Public-sector workers are free to leave their union and keep their job. Private-sector workers deserve the same respect. Anything less is both insulting and unjust.
It remains to be seen if Michigan’s leaders have the votes to repeal the freedom that I and millions of fellow workers enjoy, whether at the Rawsonville plant or any other shop. I will always remember the day I gained my freedom. I hope I never have to remember the day it got taken away.
